Concluding Essay
CONCLUDING ESSAY:
DANTE’S SELF-PRESENTATION AS POET
Between 1304 and 1306 Dante wrote a work entitled De vulgari eloquentia, in which he argues for the use of the vernacular languages in serious literature. This unfinished systematic treatise of linguistic philosophy and literary criticism informs us of some of Dante’s views on poetry. But if we wish to learn Dante’s view, not of the art, but of himself as the artist, we must turn to the Divine Comedy, an epic work of autobiographical fiction. Through narrative description of himself as a character and through authorial comment on his composition, he reveals much of his own self-understanding.
Dante knew himself to be endowed with great natural talent. In the heaven of Venus, the Hungarian king Charles Martel explains that God’s providence, operating through the secondary causality of the spheres, provides for the nature and well-being of all people according to the principles of divine art (3.8.97–111). Consequently, when Dante enters his own constellation, Gemini, a sphere thought propitious to the pursuit of art and letters, he sees that he derives his native genius from its workings (3.22.112–114). Brunetto Latini, the Florentine encyclopedist and poet, can therefore prophesy that if Dante follows his star, he will “reach a splendid port” (1.15.55–57). Acknowledging both his favorable stellar influence and his gifts of lofty grace,[1] Beatrice, who rebukes Dante on the top of Mount Purgatory, claims that by virtue of his youthful potencies “every rightful disposition would have made in him a proof of wondrous gain,” had he not strayed from her in his young adulthood (2.30.109–145). Now that, through his descent into Hell, ascent of Mount Purgatory, and flight through Paradise, Dante has accomplished his return to her, those innate potencies stand ready for full actualization in the mature Poet, who will recount that journey.
To come to fruition, however, native endowment requires training and practice. On almost every page of the Divine Comedy Dante gives evidence of his great erudition in mythology, geography, history, literature, astronomy, physics, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics, as well as in biblical and dogmatic theology. Dante hints at his moral and intellectual formation when, according to a generally accepted allegorical interpretation, he crosses “the streams” of eloquence in Limbo “as if on solid ground” to pass through the “seven lofty walls” of the cardinal moral virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) and the speculative intellectual virtues (understanding, science, and wisdom) in order to enter the “seven portals” of the liberal arts, comprising the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music), so that he may arrive at the inner courtyard of the “noble castle” of philosophy (1.4.106–111).
Dante’s vast education prepares him for the exercise of art in the Divine Comedy. Aware of the enormity of the undertaking, he proclaims that “it is not a sporting enterprise to paint the depths of all the universe” nor one for the tongue of a child still crying Mama and Papa (1.32.7–9). Likewise, to sail such “seas” as the celestial spheres “is no voyage for a little boat” nor one for “helmsmen who would spare themselves afloat” (3.23.67–69). Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, defines the practical intellectual virtue of art as “right reasoning about things to be made.” One cannot believe, therefore, given the impressive architecture of the work, that Dante simply wrote things down as they came to him; he must have carefully thought out the construction of each canto and its place within the whole.[2] What Dante says of the second canticle certainly holds as well for the first and third: he has “plotted” its number of pages and the “curb of art” prevents him from going further (2.33.136–141). Thus, in the Inferno, Dante cannot depict all the virtuous pagans he sees within the noble castle of Limbo since his “lengthy theme” urges him on, leaving his “words” to fall short of the “facts” (1.4.145–147), and when he comes upon the false counselors in the eighth ditch of Malebolge, Dante stays “his genius” that it “may not run where virtue does not guide” (1.26.21–24). In the Purgatorio, having described the four living creatures representing the Gospels in the Pageant of Revelation, Dante declares that he “cannot waste another rhyme” portraying them, “constrained to spend henceforth on other needs” (2.29.97–99). And in the Paradiso, Dante announces that he must soon “bring the flight of [his] hard subject to an end” (3.30.35–36).
The principles of art guide Dante in both the selection and the expression of his subject matter, for, in the sphere of Saturn, Beatrice has taught him “the how and when of speech and silence” (3.21.46–47). At times, an omission stems from a sense of propriety, as when, traveling to the noble castle, Dante, Virgil, and the other poets talk of “things that silence here should grace as much as speaking there of them was right” (1.4.104–105). At other times, practical limitations come into play. For example, moving from the circle of the gluttonous to that of the avaricious and the prodigal, Dante and Virgil converse, “saying more than [he] can here relate” (1.6.113). At still other times, artistic preference decides, as when, passing from the ditch of the diviners to that of the barrators, they discuss matters “of which [his] Comedy cares not to sing” (1.21.1–2). Of the Pilgrim’s arrival at the gate of Purgatory proper, however, the Poet writes: “You clearly see, O Reader, how I will to lift my theme, but if with greater art I now sustain it, do not marvel still” (2.9.70–72).[3] The reader immediately senses something of what Dante’s “greater art” entails. No sooner does Dante arrive on the first terrace of Purgatory than he beholds carved in bas-relief three examples of humility: the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Annunciation, King David dancing before the ark, and the Emperor Trajan heeding a poor widow, all wrought with such skill that the greatest human sculptor and “even Nature” herself “would be put to shame” (2.10.31–33). So lifelike do they appear that Dante describes them as a divinely fashioned “speech for sight” never seen on earth (2.10.94–96).[4] When Dante the poet invents such pieces of art for Dante the pilgrim and then as poet represents what the pilgrim has witnessed, he seems to be presenting himself as nothing less than a vehicle of divine art. In these three examples of humility Dante “lifts his theme” with respect to content; in the twelve examples of humbled pride he does so with regard to form as well. Here each of the first four tercets begins with the letter “V,” each of the second four with the letter “O,” and each of the final four with the letter “M,” spelling the Italian word uom (man), with the three lines of the thirteenth tercet repeating the acrostic, in order to emphasize pride as the fundamental human vice (2.12.25–63).[5] His artistic virtuosity displays itself in an entirely different way when, on the terrace of the lustful in Purgatory, Dante has Arnaut Daniel introduce himself, describe his condition, and request Dante’s prayers, all in his native language, Provençal or, as it is generally called today, Old Occitan (2.26.140–147).[6]
Natural talent, moral and intellectual discipline, and the exercise of artistic skill would not, however, have sufficed to produce the Divine Comedy. Experience, Dante writes, is “the fount that feeds the streams of art” (3.2.94–96), and Virgil speaks with hyperbolic understatement when he terms Dante’s experience a “different journey” (1.1.91), as does Dante himself, who calls it “quite outside the modern mode” (2.16.37–42). Undergoing “alone the coming war of pity to be felt and journey made” (1.2.3–5), Dante shows himself well aware that in traversing Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise he is charting a course on “untraveled sea” (3.2.1–15). To whom—his ancestor Cacciaguida, in the sphere of Mars, asks in Latin—was the gate of Heaven ever twice opened as to Dante (3.15.28–30)? The answer, for Dante, is “only two”: Aeneas, who surveyed the underworld from Tartarus to the Elysian Fields, and St. Paul, who was snatched up to the third heaven. When, balking at the proposed journey, Dante protests to Virgil, “Aeneas I am not, nor Paul am I” (1.2.32), he ostensibly considers himself less than either of his forebears, but in the course of the poem he will nevertheless show himself to be greater: he alone descended through all the rings of Hell, climbed all the terraces of Purgatory, and ascended through all the spheres of Paradise to behold God face to face.[7] Few readers would be willing to take Dante’s experience of the afterlife literally. Yet there may be a sense in which Dante’s study of literature and history, his dealings with people and cities, and his prayer and contemplation gave him an “experience” of damnation, moral purgation, and salvation, to which he has given narrative expression in his poem.[8]
Whatever the case, Dante claims to owe his extraordinary experience—as he tells the father of his friend and fellow poet, Guido Cavalcanti, in the circle of heretics— not to his genius but to a heavenly calling (1.10.61–63). It is at the instigation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of mercy, and of St. Lucy, patroness of the blind, that Beatrice, Dante’s childhood love, symbolizing grace, revelation, and poetical theology, sends Virgil to lead him through Hell and Purgatory (1.2.52–126),[9] whereas Beatrice herself raises Dante by her eyes from the Garden of Eden to Paradise (3.17.113–115), clothing him with “plumes enough to make the lofty flight” (3.15.53–54).[10] Just as the Blessed Virgin initiated Dante’s journey out of the dark woods, so St. Bernard, a figure of mystical contemplation, brings it to a close with a prayer, on Dante’s behalf, to Mary for the grace of the beatific vision (3.33.1–39). These human figures serve, of course, as mere instruments of an amazing, even unique, divine grace; consequently, in the sphere of the moon Dante devoutly offers thanks to God Himself, “who raised [him] from the mortal world” (3.2.46–48).[11] So assured, in fact, does Dante feel of his special grace that he prophesies his own final salvation no fewer than six times.[12]
Dante both attributes his experience to grace and prays for the grace to express that experience. With the first of his four major invocations,[13] however, one wonders whether, in opening the Inferno proper, Dante does not yield to a temptation to pride when he invokes the aid not only of the Muses as images of poetic inspiration but also of his own “high genius” and “memory” (1.2.7–9). Be that as it may, as he begins the Purgatorio, Dante strikes a clear note of humility, beseeching the “Holy Muses” and requesting the accompaniment of Calliope in particular, the Muse of epic poetry, who transformed the daughters of Pierus into magpies for their pride in having challenged her sister Muses to a choral contest, in which the human women suffered defeat (2.1.1–12). For a moment, at the start of the Paradiso, Dante appears to lapse into his former pride, imploring Apollo, the god of music and poetry, and a figure of higher inspiration than the Muses, to make him worthy of the bay-leaf crown. But Apollo is also the god of the sun, the planet “that steers men straight on each and every road” (1.1.18), whence Dante accordingly recalls that, like the daughters of Pierus, the Phrygian satyr Marsyas had presumptuously challenged Apollo to a flute contest and, when the Muses declared Apollo the victor, was bound to a tree and flayed alive (3.1.13–36). Having learned humility from these classical examples, Dante, in the last canto of the poem, entreats the Light Supreme to lend to his memory some small part of how it appeared to him and to make his tongue “strong enough to plumb [God’s] glory that one spark of it may be left here for people still to come” (3.33.67–75).
Dante saw his prayers for inspiration abundantly answered. On the terrace of the envious, he poses the question to fantasy, as the power of imagination, “What moves you if the senses show you naught?” and answers, “Light formed in Heaven moves you, either willed by One who sends it down, or else star-brought” (2.17.13–18). As a keen of observer of people and things, Dante certainly put his imagination to work on the materials provided by sense experience and, in doing so, proved exceptionally sensitive to the impulses of his own natural temperament, which he considered influenced by the light of the celestial spheres and, especially, his own constellation, Gemini. But Dante also thought himself divinely inspired, christening his poem “a sacred song, to which both earth and heaven set their hand” (3.25.1–2).[14] When the poet Bonagiunta, on the terrace of gluttony in Purgatory, asks whether he sees before him the author of the new rhymes beginning with “O maids who have intelligence of love,” Dante makes this important declaration on the source of his inspiration: “When Love has breathed in me, I’ve been a man who notes it well and, at his lead, goes setting forth what he dictates within” (2.24.52–54). At this stage, before he has passed through the purifying fires on the final terrace of Purgatory, the love inspiring Dante may still resemble the refined romantic love known as fin’amors of the Provençal poets or the spiritually noble love of the stilnovisti Italian poets. But by the time Dante comes to the heaven of the fixed stars, he confesses unequivocally that God “is the Alpha and Omega of all writ that Love may read [him], whether loud or low” (3.26.16–18). Dante, then, ultimately feels himself inspired by God, the “Love that moves the sun and every star” (3.33.145).
With his great natural endowment, his formidable education, his masterful artistry, his singular experience, and his sublime inspiration, Dante sets about recording his journey, “which now unerring mem’ry tells once more” (1.2.6), leading him to exclaim in his first invocation: “O memory that wrote what I descried, here your nobility shall be displayed!” (1.2.8–9).[15] Dante’s recollections, moreover, often come with a powerful emotional charge. The mere thought of the dark woods renews his fear (1.1.6). He is drenched with sweat, recalling the earthquake at the banks of the Acheron (1.3.130–132). He shakes, remembering the blood-red color of the river Phegethon (1.14.76–78). His heart quakes in fear on recollecting the grappling of a barrator (1.22.31–36). His blood chills on calling to mind the snakes in the circle of thieves (1.24.82–84). He grieves to think of the false counselors (1.26.19–20). He shudders to see a frozen ford, reminding him of traitors to kindred, frozen to the neck in ice (1.32.71–72). He versifies with fear the sight of traitors to benefactors, fully immersed in ice (1.34.10). Finally, he cannot forget his own shame at Virgil’s rebuke of his idle curiosity (1.30.133–135). Negative feelings, however, are not the only kind that accompanies his memories. He still exults at the scene of the virtuous pagans in Limbo (1.4.120). He hears the sweetness of Casella’s melody on the shores of Purgatory sounding within him even now (2.2.112–114). He has never been without the desire to hear again the Hosanna of the souls in the sphere of Venus (3.8.29–30). He has written the words of the Imperial Eagle on his heart (3.20.28–30). His thanks for his Lady’s smile will “never fade out of the book in which the past is writ” (3.23.46–54). He has recorded in his memory the reflection of the deiform point of light in Beatrice’s eyes, which “imparadise [his] mind,” so that by them “Love made the cord to capture [him]” (3.28.1–12). Lastly, the sweetness of his fading vision of the Divine Light “still drops within his heart” (3.33.61–63).
Yet memory cannot exist without experience. He confesses, for example, that he “did not see and therefore cannot tell” how the angels in the Valley of Princes took to flight (2.8.103–105).[16] If his attention was initially distracted, his memory falters: he does not remember what else Virgil said when the hellish Furies suddenly appeared at the gates of Dis (1.9.34–38) or whether Matelda spoke further in the Garden of Eden once he saw his beloved Beatrice again (2.32.91–93). Most often, however, his memory fails utterly when its object exceeds its capacity, be it the suffering of the maimed sowers of discord (1.28.1–21), the sweetness of the Asperges me sung at the river Lethe (2.31.97–99), the loveliness of Beatrice’s smile, transporting him to the sphere of Mars (3.14.79–81), his ecstasy at the vision of Christ among the Church Triumphant (3.23.37–45), his vision of the Divine Light, remaining only like the feeling impressed by a forgotten dream (3.33.55–66), or his view of the entire universe in the Divine Mind, more difficult to recall immediately after it happened than the voyage of the Argo twenty-five centuries later (3.33.94–96).
Speech, and thus poetic expression, ultimately depends on sense experience no less than memory. Thus, Dante finds himself unable to depict his falling asleep after the Pageant of Revelation since, precisely at the moment of drifting off, conscious experience fades away, whence Dante concludes: “But whosoever can, let him paint sleep” (2.32.64–69). For the same reason, understood metaphorically, Dante cannot retell how, in his morally somnolent state, he forsook the true path and entered the dark woods (1.1.10–12). The insufficiency of sense, as opposed to its absence, has an equally stifling effect when Dante’s sight proves too weak to follow the re-enactment of Christ’s ascension (3.23.79–87) and Mary’s assumption into Heaven (3.23.118–120). Referring to both inadequacies, “since the time now flees that makes [him] drowse,” St. Bernard exhorts Dante to turn his eyes to God, the “First Love,” and to “penetrate His splendidness” as far as he is “able to” (3.32.139–144).
Even when sense experience occurs, understanding may remain unable to penetrate it, leaving little, if anything, for poetry to express. Since the “pathways” of his “school” lie as far from the divine as earth from the highest sphere, Beatrice’s words soar far beyond the straining vision of Dante’s mind, even though it has received their stamp “like wax beneath the seal” (2.33.79–84). Dante does not shy from revealing that he saw “such things” in the Empyrean “as none return with either wits or power to recite” (3.1.4–12) and makes a similar confession with regard to the song of the soldiers of faith in the sphere of Mars (3.14.118–126), Cacciaguida’s initial speech (3.15.37–48) and the holy love of Beatrice’s eyes in the same sphere (3.18.7–12), the song of the Imperial Eagle in the sphere of Jupiter (3.19.97–99), and, in the sphere of Saturn, the contemplatives’ cry of righteous indignation over ecclesiastical corruption (3.21.139–142). Confronted by the mystery of the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures in Christ, Dante finds himself like geometers trying to square the circle, “though they can’t embrace, by pondering, the principle they need” (3.33.133–138).
Dante’s artistic frustration runs highest when he cannot adequately express an experience he has understood to some degree. “How hard to say what it was like back then—that savage wood, that rough and rugged lair!” he exclaims already in the second tercet of the poem (1.1.4–5). He does not have “harsh and grating rhymes” befitting the “dismal pit” of Cocytus (1.32.1–3) and finds it “hard to tell” of Caina, the ring for the “ill-born crowd” of traitors to kindred (1.32.13–15). On seeing Lucifer for the first time, he pleads: “O Reader, do not ask me now to write how faintness then and freezing gripped my frame—I can’t: all words fall short of such a plight” (1.34.22–24). When Beatrice finally appears ten years after her death, revealing to Dante the first beauty of her eyes and then the second beauty of her mouth, he consoles himself with the thought of the classical poets, asking her: “Who, having paled beneath Parnassus’ shade, or drunk out of its cisterns’ depths in turn, would not have had his mind quite overweighed to render you in your appearance where the harmonies of heaven veiled a maid who stood disclosed now in the open air?” (2.31.139–145). Speaking of the light of the saints in the sphere of the sun, Dante concedes, “Were I to call on genius, art, and skill, my words could never image it, but one may yet believe and long to see it still,” while he hastens to add that “if our fancy is too low to run to such a height, the marvel is not great, for eye has never gone beyond the sun” (3.10.43–48). The song of the theologians resembles a jewel too precious to export from its native land, so that “he who dons no wings to reach that goal may wait for tidings of it from the dumb” (3.10.70–75). And since his “memory outstrips his wit,” Dante can find no fitting comparison for the cross of Christ flaming in the sphere of Mars, though, trusting in his readers, he writes: “he who takes his cross and follows Christ will yet forgive me that which I omit, beholding in that dawn the flashing Christ” (3.14.103–105).[17] In a similar way, “were [his] speech as much in wealth increased as [his] imagining,” he would not dare attempt to describe the beauty of the Blessed Virgin Mary atop the Celestial Rose. Finally, his speech falls at least as far short of his memory of the Most Holy Trinity as that of babes “who have their tongues still bathing at the breast” (3.33.106–108), so that it is not enough to call both his conception and his speech “slight” (3.33.121–123).
At this point, one may have the impression that Dante was simply not poet enough to rise to the challenge; yet the deficiency lies not so much in Dante as in human language itself. Since words cannot tell of Dante’s “trans-human change” on rising to Paradise, he can only allude to the myth of Glaucus, a mortal transformed into a sea god (3.1.67–72). The song and dance of the theologians in the heaven of the Sun exceeds all that “our muses and sirens” can do as far as a direct ray of light does a reflected one (3.12.7–10). Were all the poets inspired by Polyhymnia, the Muse of song, together with her sisters, to aid Dante with their art in singing Beatrice’s blest smile, it still would not reach the “one thousandth part” of the truth (3.23.55–60). And “fancies, not to mention words, appear of far too light a hue” to paint “folds so deep” as St. Peter’s song of greeting to Beatrice (3.24.22–27).
Since human language expresses first and foremost our understanding of the things of experience, it necessarily falls short in speaking of what transcends ordinary experience, such as the two rings of theologians in the heaven of the Sun, whose brilliance surpasses our brightest stars as much as the swiftest sphere the sluggish Chiana river (3.13.1–24). In like manner, Gabriel’s song to Mary in the sphere of the fixed stars stands to earthly music as our sweetest melody does to raucous thunder (3.23.97–102). Conversely, all that Nature has wrought in human flesh or art in portraiture compares as nothing to Beatrice’s smiling face (3.27.91–96). In fact, Dante, as an artist at his utmost reach, goes so far as to claim: “Her beauty seen not only does not fall in human measures, I’d expect none but her Maker who enjoys it all. At such a pass I must concede defeat, more than a bard outdone by any themes the comic or the tragic poets treat” (3.30.16–36). Although Dante frequently exposes sense, memory, imagination, understanding, expression, and human language itself as inadequate to a transcendent object, the very expression of his inability to express the inexpressible somehow captures it, increasing rather than decreasing our respect for him as a poet.
Just as the virtue of humility does not preclude a just appreciation of one’s worth, so Dante’s humble supplications for inspiration and admissions of inability to express the transcendent do not rule out a consciousness of his own greatness. True, Dante does confess to Sapìa that his besetting sin is not envy but pride (2.13.133–138), but he also seems to participate at least symbolically in the purgation of pride when he walks with Oderisi da Gubbio, completely bent over, like the proud beneath their burdens (2.11.77–78), going with him “pace by pace, just as two oxen go beneath their yoke” (2.12.1–2). This just appreciation of his own artistic excellence may come into play when Dante the pilgrim praises a character in the poem for the clarity and precision of a discourse which Dante the poet has just composed. We find such praise lavished on Virgil for explaining the nature of Upper Hell (1.11.91–93), detailing the structure of Lower Hell (1.11.67–69), relating the terraces of Purgatory to the purification of disordered love (2.18.10–12), and expounding the nature of love itself (2.18.85–86). Likewise, he praises Marco Lombardo for rooting human depravity, not in astral influence, but in free will and the lack of civil and ecclesiastical leadership (2.16.130–131); Cacciaguida for showing that divine foreknowledge does not impose necessity on contingent events such as Dante’s impending exile (3.17.31–36); and Beatrice for revealing the true relation of the material to the spiritual universe (3.28,79–87).
Whereas the vice of pride desires excellence inordinately, the virtue of magnanimity seeks honor according to right reason, and since “poet” ranks as a “most lasting and most honored name” (2.21.85), it is perhaps in this spirit that Dante prays to win the bay-leaf crown merited by his inspiration and theme (3.1.13–36) and hopes to be crowned poet in his native Florence (3.25.7–9). Recognizing that his “name as yet makes no great sound” (2.14.21), Dante gives the unmistakable impression that some day it will, and if he fears that his poem will leave a bitter taste in the mouths of many of his contemporaries, he ultimately fears even more to lose his life of fame “with those who’ll call the present ancient times” (3.17.112–121). Dante voices his gratitude to Brunetto Latini for letting him see “how man may find eternity” in everlasting earthly renown (1.15.82–87) and shows himself already well on the way thereto. No sooner has Dante the pilgrim professed his poetic credo to Bonagiunta than Dante the poet has the latter acknowledge him as superior to himself as well as to Giacomo da Lentini, a member of the Sicilian school, who helped establish the poetry of courtly love in Italy, and to Guittone d’Arezzo, who aided in transplanting the Sicilian style of poetry to Tuscany (2.24.55–62). Likewise, though Dante the pilgrim addresses Guido Guinizelli, the founder of the “sweet new style,” as his poetic “father” and thus as his superior (2.26.97), Dante the poet immediately has Guido call him “brother” and thus his equal (2.26.115). But that is not all. On the terrace of pride, Oderisi had said that Dante’s first friend, Guido Cavalcanti, had stolen “the glory of our tongue” from Guido Guinizelli but clearly implies that Dante himself will chase them both “from their nest” (2.11.97–99). And if Guido Guinizelli points to Arnaut Daniel as “a better craftsman of the mother tongue” in both the verses of love and the prose of romance, outdoing even Giraud de Borneil, the master of the troubadours (2.26.115–120), then Dante, as the poet of divine love, outstrips even him—a fact he perhaps intends to demonstrate a few lines later when he composes Provençal verse and places it in the mouth of Arnaut Daniel himself (2.26.140–147).[18]
Dante’s hope for poetic glory ranges far into the future. “As long as modern use shall last,” Dante tells Guido Guinizelli, Guido’s verse “will render dear their very ink” (2.26.112–114) whereby he imagines a period perhaps as long as the 500 years of fame that Cunizza prophesies for the troubadour Folquet de Marseille (3.9.37–42), though probably no longer than the 1,000 years that Oderisi says will obliterate the difference in fame between the man who dies of old age and the child who meets death while still pratthng (2.11.103–108). Yet Dante hopes to be the “spark” that will ignite “great flames” (3.1.34–36), just as the “godlike flames” of Virgil’s Aeneid lit the poetic fires of the silver-age Latin poet Statius and a thousand others (2.21.94–99). If in Limbo Dante has Virgil, Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan salute him and invite him to join their ranks, so that he “among such minds was sixth in line” (1.4.97–102), and if at that time Virgil’s fame had already lasted over 1,300 years and Homer’s over 2,200, can Dante have expected his to endure less?
Not only does Dante imply his superiority to his near contemporaries and place himself on a level equal to those he considered the greatest classical poets; in narrating the transformations of human into snake and of snake into human in the circle of thieves, he commits what to his contemporaries must have seemed poetical blasphemy, crying: “Let Lucan hence be still,” “Let Ovid too be still,” for neither ever told of such a metamorphosis as he was about to describe (1.25.94–102).[19] In the same spirit, he claims five times that what he witnessed exceeds what Ovid wrote in his Metamorphoses: the disease that destroyed the population of Aegina raged less than that which afflicts the counterfeiters in Malebolge (1.29.58–66); no Fury at Thebes or Troy ever inflicted such madness as that which he saw among the impersonators there (1.30.1–27); Erysichthon, who cannibalized himself out of hunger, did not see his skin so shriveled as those on the terrace of the gluttonous (2.23.25–27); Matelda in the Earthly Paradise shone more aglow with love than Venus, pricked by Cupid’s arrow, did for Adonis (22.28.64–66); and Dante’s readers will not feel such amazement as the Argonauts felt to see Jason plowing with fire-breathing oxen and planting dragon’s teeth that sprouted into men (3.2.16–18). Similarly, he trumps Lucan in his Pharsalia once, for the Tarpeian rock did not so loudly echo the gates of the temple of Saturn when Julius Caesar seized its treasury as the pivots of the gate of Purgatory grated when Dante passed through it (2.9.136–138), and he tops even Virgil in the Aeneid twice, for Rome never celebrated the triumph of an Africanus or an Augustus with a chariot so fine as the one he portrays in the Pageant of Revelation (1.29.115–120), and the sturdy oak is uprooted by the winds from the North-African lands of King Iarbus with less resistance than Dante’s chin was raised at Beatrice’s rebuke (2.31.70–73.
Dante’s outperformance of Virgil necessitates a brief examination of his complex relation to his classical forebear. On a certain level, Virgil figures as one of the “wise” (1.4.110), honoring “science and all art” (1.4.73), and thus as one of the “worthy” and “honorable people” detained in Limbo (1.4.44, 72), whose honor “gains Heaven’s grace, advancing thus their fame” insofar as it counts as the natural reward of virtue (1.4.76–78). Both a “singer of bucolic strains” (2.22.57) in the Eclogues and the poet of the founding of Rome (1.1.73–75) in the Aeneid, he preeminently deserves the name of “poet,” by which “they do him honor, and it’s well they do” (1.4.91–93). Hence, the Italian poet Sordello exalts Virgil as “the glory of the Latin race, through whom this tongue of ours has shown its might” (2.7.16–17), so that through him “Pietola would be more famed than Mantua” (2.18.82–83), and, at their meeting in the dark woods, Dante goes even further, dubbing Virgil “honor of all poets, light so clear” (1.1.82). Although Virgil deferentially terms Homer the “sovran poet of the band” assembled in Limbo (1.4.88) and later, from the heights of Mount Purgatory, admiringly deems him “that Grecian wit whom Muses suckle more than all down low” (2.22.101–103), Homer himself venerates Virgil as “the bard most high” (1.4.80). Dante, therefore, may well intend Virgil when he writes: “I thus beheld the goodly school unite around the lord of songs of highest style, who soars above the rest in eagle’s flight” (1.4.94–96), though he may have Homer in mind instead. In either case, as “that fount which pours so broad a stream of speech to hear” (1.1.79–80), Virgil utters in “embellished speech” (1.2.67) an “honest word” that “honors [him] and all who’ve heeded it” (1.2.113–114). Indeed, Statius does not shrink from claiming that Virgil not only turned him from the sin of prodigality (2.22.37–45) but—“like a man who goes by night, himself unhelped, his lamp behind him when he makes those wise who follow in his light”—also made him first a poet and then a Christian (2.22.64–93). To have lived when Virgil did, Statius would even have been willing to spend another year in Purgatory (2.21.100–102).
Given Virgil’s supereminent position among poets, his role in Dante’s life becomes more comprehensible. “With lengthy zeal and love of great degree” Dante searched the volume of Virgil’s work (1.1.83–84) and perhaps thought himself the first after many centuries to listen to him “who, from long silence, now seemed hard to hear” (1.1.63). As a result of his study, during which he may even have learned the Aeneid by heart (1.20.114), Dante can say to Virgil: “You are my master and my author, he from whom alone the comely style I took that since has brought such honor unto me” (1.1.85–87). One extremely short scene in the Purgatorio may perhaps body forth the ultimate importance of Dante’s readerly relationship to Virgil. When Virgil, Statius, and Dante have mounted to the sixth terrace, we read: “They went in front, and I alone behind; and I was listening to words they spoke, which gave poetic keenness to my mind” (2.22.127–129).
But just as we must reckon with both Dante the poet and Dante the pilgrim, so we must consider not only Virgil the historical figure but also Virgil the character in Dante’s poem. Nothing summarizes Virgil’s role in the Divine Comedy better than Dante’s declaration to him at the end of the second canto of the work: “‘Now go, the will of both of us is one, my Leader, Master, Lord,’ I thus could say; and when his forward movement had begun, I entered on the rugged, savage way” (1.2.139–142). In passages too numerous to cite, Virgil, whether walking in front, taking him by the hand, or carrying him in his arms, leads Dante “with intellect and art” (2.27.130) down all the rings of Hell and up all the terraces of Purgatory, now allowing him to delay, now urging him on, but always mindful of their divinely allotted time. He directs Dante when, where, and how long to look, as well as when to turn away or close his eyes; he instructs him when to speak, and with whom, and when to keep silence; he tells him when to approach and when to withdraw, when to lie down to sleep and when to rise again, when to kneel in reverence and when to flee danger. He consoles Dante in his grief, encourages him in his fear, comforts him in his doubts, and soothes him in his anger, but also rebukes him in his faults, then heals him in the pain of contrition. He answers Dante’s questions, explains what he sees, reads his mind, predicts the future, tells time by the position of stars invisible in Hell, refers to Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophy, appeals to sacramental theology and Christian eschatology, quotes Sacred Scripture, and even adapts a Christian hymn to his own purposes.
Virgil is not omnipotent, of course. He fails to obtain from the demons entrance to the city of Dis (1.8.115–120), and, unable to see through the black air and thick fog, listens at first for the delivering angel but soon seems to waver in faith and grow impatient (1.9.4–9). Nor is Virgil omniscient. Even in Hell he gets duped by the demons in the ditch of the barrators concerning the way to take (1.21.106–117), misinterprets the grinding of their teeth (1.21.133–135), does not know where the slope descends to the next ditch (1.23.31–32), must ask the hypocrites for directions (1.23.128–132), and turns angry when he learns of his demonic deception (1.23.146). In Purgatory Virgil’s ignorance only increases: he does not know the way (2.2.61–63),[20] must either ask directions (2.3.73–78)[21] or wait for an escort (2.4.39), thinks the ascent will be easy (2.2.64–66), wonders that none can ascend by night (2.7.49–63), does not at first recognize the proud beneath their boulders (2.10.117), does not understand that the mountain shook at a soul’s release (2.21.34–36), can no longer guide Dante once they arrive at the Earthly Paradise (2.27.127–129), and marvels stupefied at the Pageant of Revelation (2.29.55–57). Able to show Dante the way only as far as his “school” of reason and poetry leads (2.21.31–33), he must in all matters of faith defer either to Statius (2.25.22–30) or Beatrice (2.6.43–48).[22] Nor, as a consequence of his ignorance, is Virgil infallible. On one occasion he prophesies to Dante that Beatrice will discover his life’s way to him (1.10.130–132), but Dante’s ancestor, Cacciaguida, does so in fact (3.17.43–90). On a similar occasion he foretells that Beatrice will explain how spiritual goods, contrary to material ones, enrich their possessors when distributed (2.15.76–78), whereas it is Piccarda Donati who actually enlightens the pilgrim (3.3.58–90).
Virgil’s successes and failures in the Divine Comedy result not so much from his personal strengths and weaknesses as from his allegorical status as natural reason without the aid of supernatural grace. As a result, Dante perhaps feels justified in handling the text of the historical Virgil somewhat roughly. Thus, for example, after Virgil says in the very first canto: “I was a poet, and my singing turned around Anchises’ righteous son, who went from Troy when haughty Ilium was burned” (1.1.73–75), presenting his Aeneid as a historically accurate epic, Dante, in the second canto, targets its factually most vulnerable point, the descent of Aeneas to the underworld, and counters: “You say the sire of Silvius, while he was yet corruptible, went cross the sill to the immortal world—and bodily” (1.2.13–15), implicitly contrasting Aeneas’ journey as mere story-telling with his own as literal truth. A second example comes from the similarity of two events in their respective works. At one point in Virgil’s poem, when, to adorn an altar, Aeneas plucks shrubs in a Thracian grove from the grave of Polydorus, blood issues from the torn roots, and a voice speaks from the mound, just as, when Dante snaps off a twig from a thorn tree in the ring of suicides, the branch darkens with blood and utters a reproach of his cruelty. At this juncture, Dante the poet narrates Virgil’s words to the plant: “‘Had he been able to believe before, O wounded soul,’ my Sage replied, ‘what he had never seen but in my verses’ store, he’d not have stretched his hand against a tree’” (1.13.46–51), implying that the prior episode in the Aeneid does not merit belief, whereas the present one in the Inferno does.
In the preceding two examples, though Dante impugns their veracity, he leaves Virgil’s stories intact. Not so in the ditch of the diviners, where Dante the poet puts the story of the founding of Mantua into the mouth of Virgil and then has Virgil say: “I charge you that, if you should hear abroad my land originated differently, don’t let the truth succumb to lying fraud” (1.20.97–99), obviously referring to the different account in his own Aeneid. Immediately thereafter, as if to add insult to injury, Dante writes: “Your reasons bear such certainty, O Master, and such is the trust they earn that all the rest would be dead coals to me” (1.20.100–102)—an unmistakable allusion to the historical Virgil’s work.[23] Later, in the same canto, according to Dante’s Virgil, both Calchas and Eurypalus launched the Greek ships sailing from Aulis to Troy, whereas in Virgil’s Aeneid Eurypalus only reports the oracle of Apollo that human sacrifice must accompany the return from Troy just as it had before on the voyage to Troy. No sooner does Dante make Virgil misquote himself than he impudently has him say: “That this is so my lofty tragedy has sung somewhere, as you who know the whole of it well know” (1.20.112–114).[24] What justifies Dante in this irreverent revisionism? Perhaps two scenes towards the end of the Purgatorio provide a clue. In the first, Matelda, after explaining the breeze and the streams of the Earthly Paradise, adds this corollary: “The poets who in olden times appear to sing the happy state and Age of Gold perhaps dreamt on Parnassus of this tier,” at which Virgil and Statius smile to Dante as if to indicate that they indeed had only dreamed of what Dante has now seen with his own eyes (2.28.136–147). In Virgil’s next and final scene in the poem, Dante writes at the advance of the Pageant of Revelation: “And filled with wonderment, I turned to eye good Virgil’s face, and, no less stupefied in looks than I had been, he made reply” (2.29.55–57). Here, though Dante’s stupefaction stems from finally seeing what he has always believed, Virgil’s comes from witnessing things that he had never even imagined. If these two scenes represent Dante’s last word on Virgil, he seems to be suggesting the superiority of the public revelation of Christianity and of his private revelation as graced individual to the merely natural wisdom of Virgil.
Dante dramatizes his implied superiority to Virgil when, though he has followed behind him throughout the whole poem,[25] as soon as he has completed his purgation and Virgil has crowned and mitered him lord of himself (2.27.142), he sets out on his own, eager to explore the Earthly Paradise, without waiting for Virgil to lead (2.28.1–6). Even more telling, when Dante stops to listen to Matelda a number of lines later, we realize that Virgil and Statius have followed behind him, for Dante is now standing in front of them (1.28.82).[26] What consequence does this reversal of positions have for Dante’s status as poet? Towards the beginning of the Inferno, Virgil relates that Beatrice had addressed him as the “kindly soul of Mantua, whose fame still lasting in the world shall persevere as long as earth itself endures the same” (1.2.58–60) and had promised even to praise him to the Lord when she returned to Heaven (1.2.73–74). Now, towards the end of the Purgatorio, we are left wondering whether Dante, as he raises himself higher than Virgil, believes that his fame will last, not only for all time, but also for all eternity, being proclaimed, not only to God, but to all the angels and saints as well.
Regardless of whether Dante consciously drew such conclusions from the implications of his work, he further enhances his authority as a religious poet by other means. In his theological examination in the heaven of the fixed stars, Dante presents himself as the ideal Christian: he holds a perfect “coin” of faith in his “purse” (3.24.82–87); “the whole Church Militant has no one quite so full of hope as he” (3.25.52–54); and he has withdrawn from “the sea of wrongful love” to “the rightful love’s safe shore” (3.26.55–63). Just as no one less than St. Thomas Aquinas had praised his theological opinion (3.13.85), so now St. Peter approves Dante’s examination in faith, singing his blessings and circling him three times (3.24.148–154), as does St. James his examination in hope, joining in to chant the psalm Sperent in te (3.25.97–99), and St. John his examination in love, crying out “Holy, holy, holy” with Beatrice and all the rest of Heaven (3.26.67–69). Having recovered from his temporary blindness during his final examination, Dante finds his spiritual vision improved (3.26.79) and soon beholds the angelic hierarchies supposedly witnessed by St. Paul (3.28.136–139), the divine light of God illuminating his own infinite goodness (3.33.79–81), the universal order of all things in Him (3.33.85–93), the Trinity of three divine persons in one divine essence (3.33.115–120), and the hypostatic union of the human and divine natures in Christ (3.33.127–132), so that Dante now beholds immediately by intuitive vision the deepest mysteries, which the rest of the Church holds only by faith.
The grace of vision, however, comes accompanied by a mission. Apart from renewing the fame, as well as the shame, of the damned in Hell and securing intercession for the souls in Purgatory, Dante asks Marco Lombardo on the terrace of the wrathful the cause of human depravity in order to “show [it] forth to men” (2.16.61–63). On the top of Mount Purgatory, Beatrice first commands Dante to watch and record what he sees in the Pageant of the Church—the heresies, schisms, corruptions by wealth, and adulterous relations with the temporal power—that he “might aid the world not living well” (2.32.103–105), then further orders him to show “those who lead a life that is a race to death,” if not “in words,” at least “in sketches,” that violation of the tree of divine law constitutes an act of blasphemy against God (2.33.52–78). Such commissions continue in Paradise, where, for example, Cacciaguida counsels Dante to “make all [his] vision manifest; and then, where lies an itch, there let them scratch,” for he has been shown the most famous souls in Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven precisely so that his “cries will be just like the flurries when they strike the highest peaks most hard below” (3.17.124–142).[27] In the same vein, St. Peter, fulminating against avaricious and blood-thirsty popes, adjures Dante not to hide his denunciations of the Pontiff’s unworthy successors (3.27.64–66).[28] Throughout his journey, but especially in Paradise, Dante has gone like a “pilgrim,” noting all he sees in the hope of retelling it on his return (3.31.43–48). Now that he has returned, he records it like a “scribe,” thus laying out a feast for his reader (3.10.25–27), though anyone who has not yet tasted the “angels’ bread” of philosophical and theological wisdom had better turn back to shore than attempt to follow Dante, only to be stranded at sea (3.2.1–15).
With his position as poet elevated by his supernatural vision and celestial commission, Dante does not hesitate to assume the office of teacher. Readers accustomed to seeing in poetry the lyrical expression of personal feeling may find his didactic discourses strange or even offensive. But Dante makes no apologies. For him, poetry is as much a vehicle for communicating truth as for expressing feeling, if not more so, and such discourses constitute a major part of the Divine Comedy. Whoever the speaker—be it Virgil, Marco Lombardo, Statius, Matelda, Beatrice, Piccarda, Justinian, Charles Martel, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Solomon, Peter Damian, or Bernard of Clairvaux—Dante the poet speaks through all of them, and the list of his didactic discourses reads like an epic catalogue. He holds forth on
geography: the origin of the fluvial system of Hell (1.14.94–138) and the passage from the northern to the southern hemisphere (1.34.106–132);
astronomy: the path of the sun (2.4.61–75), the spots on the moon (3.2.64–105), the stellar influences (3.2.106–148), and the primum mobile (3.27.106–120);
history: the founding of Mantua (1.20.58–99), the Roman Empire (3.6.31–96), the lives of St. Francis (3.11.43–117) and St. Dominic (3.12.46–111), the former simplicity of Florence (3.15.97–129) and its present degeneracy (3.16.49–154);
ethics: the moral structure of Hell (1.11.16–90), the sin of usury (1.11.97–111), the attainment of fame (1.24.46–51), spiritual and material goods (2.15.49–75), the nature of love (2.17.85–139), the origin of action (2.18.16–39), free will (2.18.49–75), and monarchical prudence (3.13.88–108);
epistemology: the knowledge of the damned (1.10.100–108), reasoning from effect to cause (2.3.34–39), the sources of imagination (2.17.13–18), and the need for making distinctions (3.13.109–142);
metaphysics: the relation of soul and body (2.25.34–108; 3.14.37–60), the principle of universal order (3.1.103–141), the destiny of souls after death (3.4.28–63), the immortality of the soul (3.7.121–144), stellar influence and heredity (3.8.97–148), and primary and secondary causality (3.13.52–87);
and theology: the condition of the damned after the universal judgment (1.6.94–111), fortune as the minister of divine providence (1.7.70–96), intercessory prayer (2.11.31–36), Limbo (2.7.28–36), the Garden of Eden (2.28.91–144), submission to the divine will (3.3.70–87), vows and satisfaction for broken vows (3.4.64–114; 3.5.19–63), the Crucifixion (3.7.25–51), redemption (3.7.55–120), divine justice (3.19.40–105), predestination (3.20.88–138; 3.21.64–102), the theological virtues (3.24–26), the angelic orders and hierarchies (3.28.41–139), and the creation, fall or perseverance, and number of the angels (3.29.10-69, 130–145).
To find a more impressive list in the history of Western poetry would not be easy.
Dante’s mission extends, however, beyond that of teacher of scientific, philosophical, and theological knowledge to that of prophet (understood biblically less as foretelling the future than as pronouncing the divine judgment on situations and events). Granted, Dante does prophesy his own exile after the fact,[29] the advent of a godlike redeemer,[30] and future ills for Florence (2.23.106–111). But much more often he thunders with the best of the Old Testament prophets in his apostrophes to Florence (1.16.73–75; 1.26.1–12), Pistoia (1.25.10–12), Pisa (1.33.79–90), and Genova (1.33.151–157); in his short invectives against cupidity and rage (1.12.49–51), simony (1.19.1–6), pride (2.12.70–72), envy (2.14.86–87), avarice (2.20.10–15, 82–84), vain desires (3.11.1–12), haughty Christians (2.10.121–129), and immodest Florentine women (2.23.97–105); and in his stern verdict that the chariot of the Church “once was and now is not” (2.33.34–35) as well as that the See of Peter is “now vacant in the sight of Christ, God’s Son” (3.27.22–24). Dante exercises his prophetic function most forcefully in a series of longer discourses against the simony of Pope Nicholas III (1.19.90–117) and other Church officials (3.18.118–136), the political disorder in Italy (2.6.76–151; 3.9.43–63), vows lightly taken (3.5.64–84), Guelph and Ghibelline feuding (3.6.97–111), ecclesiastical avarice (3.9.127–142) and greed (3.22.73–96), lax Dominicans (3.11.124–142) and Franciscans (3.12.112–126), unjust rulers (3.19.106–148), opulent prelates (3.21.127–135), unworthy popes (3.27.19–66), human cupidity (3.27.121–148), popular preachers (3.29.70–129), and the rejection of the Emperor Henry VII by Pope Clement V and Italy (3.30.133–148).
In view of all that we have seen, we may say that Dante presents himself in the Divine Comedy as a man endowed with great natural talent by the heavenly spheres and divine grace. He develops this talent through extensive training in the liberal arts, philosophy, and theology and through the acquisition of the intellectual and moral virtues. Guided by this comprehensive education, he selects his materials and shapes both their matter and form in accord with the principles of art. He draws these materials, not only from his academic study, but first and foremost from his deep experience of human nature in its possibilities of damnation, purgation, and salvation—an experience that Dante sees as ultimately guided by divine providence and whose communication he views as divinely inspired, however much his human memory, understanding, and expression may be limited. Acutely conscious of human limitations, Dante is no less aware of his personal greatness as a poet who not only surpasses his classical forebears and the best of his contemporaries but whose fame will also endure through the ages, though this greatness stems from a spiritual vision given through the grace of faith, hope, and charity. It is this vision that imposes upon Dante the sacred office of teacher and prophet to the nations. All of these factors taken together may justify the conclusion that Dante ultimately wishes to present himself—rather than another—as the altissimo poeta (1.4.80).