A brief mention should be made of Il fiore (The Flower), the authenticity of which has been questioned by many scholars. It is a sequence of 232 sonnets based on the French Roman de la Rose. Those few who are sure that this allegorical story of a successful seduction was written by Dante give two reasons: first, the author is referred to as Durante, which is a form of Dante; second, it is much too well composed to have been written by anyone else but Dante. Il fiore, which is worth reading in its own right, is to be found in one manuscript of the late thirteenth century (first published in 1881 in Paris by Ferdinand Castets).
There are approximately fifty-four (and a possible twenty-six more) short poems (not included in the Vita nuova or Convivio) that Dante did not group together or organize in any way, but that modern editors have collected and called the Canzoniere or Rime (Songbook or Rhymes). They consist of scattered lyrics written over a long period of the poet’s life, many of which he probably tried to, but could not, fit into the structure of the Vita nuova or Convivio. Many, of course, were inspired by Beatrice, but there are some written for other women; some done as exercises, as part of his correspondence with other poets; and some composed simply to please ladies and gentlemen who were fond of poetry.
Dante undoubtedly wrote many letters. Unfortunately, only ten letters considered authentic have come down to us; all ten are written in Latin, and none is of a personal or intimate nature. There are also three other letters that Dante may have written on behalf of the countess of Battifolle, but they do not reflect his own thoughts.
To the student of the Divine Comedy the most interesting of Dante’s letters is the one addressed to Can Grande della Scala in which the author sets forth his purpose and method in writing his poem. The letter is extant in six manuscripts, three of which (all sixteenth-century) contain the letter in its entirety. He talks about the different meanings contained in the Divine Comedy: the first is called literal, the second allegorical or mystical. We learn that on the literal level the poem is about the state of souls after death; on the allegorical level, “The subject is man, liable to the reward or punishment of Justice, according to the use he has made of his free will. ”
In his letter he also discusses why he has called his poem a “comedy. ” The word, he says, is derived from comus and oda and means a “rustic song. ” Unlike tragedy, which begins in tranquillity but comes to a sad end, comedy may begin under adverse circumstances, but it always comes to a happy end. The style or language of comedy is humble while that of tragedy is lofty. Therefore, because his poem begins in Hell and has a happy ending in Paradise, and because it is written in a most humble language, which is the Italian vernacular, it is called the Commedia. The letter goes on with a meticulous, almost word-by-word examination of the beginning verses of the opening canto of the Paradiso up to the invocation to Apollo. The letter is thought by many to be an important piece of literary criticism seen in the framework of Dante’s time and tradition, and as such it certainly is worth reading in its own right.
THE DIVINE COMEDY
Dante’s masterpiece is, of course, the Divine Comedy (the word divina was added to commedia by posterity). It is to some degree a result of his determination to fulfill the promise he made at the close of the Vita nuova: “If it be the wish of Him in whom all things flourish that my life continue for a few years, I hope to write of her that which has never been written of any lady. ”
No one knows when Dante began composing his great poem; some say perhaps as early as 1307. In any case the Inferno was completed in 1314, and it is probable that the final touches to the Paradiso were, as Boccaccio states, not made until 1321, the year of Dante’s death. The purpose of the poem, which has moved readers through the centuries, is, as Dante reveals in his epistle to Can Grande, “to remove those living in this life from the state of misery and lead them to the state of felicity. ”
The poem is divided into three major sections: Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Heaven). Each section contains thirty-three cantos, with the exception of Hell, which has thirty-four—the opening canto serving as an introduction to the work as a whole. For the Commedia Dante invented a rhyme scheme known as terza rima (tertiary rhyme: aba bcb cdc), thus continuing to display his fascination with the number three, which was so much on his mind when he was composing the Vita nuova many years earlier. And each canto is divided into three-line stanzas called terzine, or tercets, in which the first and third lines rhyme, while the middle or second lines rhyme with the first and third of the next terzina. The basic metrical unit of the verse is the hendecasyllabic line, quite common in Italian poetry: it is an eleven-syllable line in which the accent falls on the tenth syllable.
The drama or main action of the poem centers on one man’s journey to God. It tells how God through the agency of Beatrice drew the poet to salvation; and the moral that Dante wishes his reader to keep in mind is that what God has done for one man he will do for every man, if every man is willing to make this journey. The reader of the poem would do well to distinguish from the very beginning of the Commedia between the two uses of the first-person singular: one designates Dante the pilgrim, the other Dante the poet. The first is a character in a story invented by the second. The events in the narrative are represented as having taken place in the past; the writing of the poem and the memory of these events, however, are represented as taking place in the present. For example, we find references to both past and present, and to both pilgrim and poet, in line 10 of the introductory canto of the Inferno: “How I entered there I cannot truly say” (italics added).
There are times in the poem when the fictional pilgrim (Dante the pilgrim) embodies many of the characteristics of his inventor (Dante the poet); for the Commedia, though it is above all the journey of Everyman to God, is in many ways a personal, autobiographical journey. It is often difficult, most times impossible, to say whether what is happening in the poem belongs to the real-life biography of the poet or the fictional biography of the pilgrim. For instance, at the beginning of canto XIX of the Inferno the pilgrim alludes to having broken a baptismal font in the church of his “lovely San Giovanni” (line 17). Now, Dante the poet may well have broken the font to save someone who was drowning within, but it is highly unlikely (and most inartistic) that he would mention the incident for the sole purpose of clearing his name in connection with an act that some of his contemporaries would have thought sinful. The breaking of the font is an event that took place in the life of the pilgrim, and the pilgrim is not trying to “clear his name, ” as critics have suggested. Rather the poet is giving an example to the reader of the true nature of the sin of simony (the sin punished in canto XIX), which “breaks” the holy purposes of the church by perverting them.
The poet is the poet, but he is not the pilgrim, and the story traced in the Commedia is the story of Dante the pilgrim, who is at once himself and Everyman. We must keep in mind the allegory of the opening verse of the poem: “ Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai…” (“Midway along the journey of our life / I found myself …”). Dante begins to construct his allegory of the double journey: that is, his personal experience in the world beyond (“I found myself”), open to Everyman in his own journey through this life (“of our life”). The poet finds himself wandering in a dark wood (the worldly life). He tries to escape by climbing a mountain that is lit from behind by the rays of the sun (God). His journey upward is impeded by the sudden appearance of three beasts: a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf (the three major divisions of sin, signifying the three major divisions of Hell: fraud, violence, and concupiscence). The poet is about to be driven back when, just as suddenly, Virgil (reason or human understanding) appears. He has been sent by Beatrice (divine revelation) to aid Dante, to guide him on this journey that cannot fail. The only way to escape from the dark wood is to descend into Hell (man must first descend into humility before he can raise himself to salvation or God). The way up the mountain, then, is to go down: before man can hope to
climb the mountain of salvation, he must first know what sin is. The purpose of Dante’s journey through Hell is precisely this: to learn all there is to know about sin as a necessary preparation for the ascent to God. In fact, from the opening canto of the Inferno to the closing one of the Paradiso, Dante the poet presents his pilgrim as continuously learning, his spiritual development being the main theme of the entire poem. His progress is slow, and there are even occasional backslidings.
In Inferno IV the pilgrim and his guide, Virgil, who are now in Limbo, see a hemisphere of light glowing in the distance, and as they move toward it they are met by four great pagan poets. Virgil explains to his ward:
“Observe the one who comes with sword in hand, leading the three as if he were their master.
It is the shade of Homer, sovereign poet, and coming second, Horace, the satirist; Ovid is the third, and last comes Lucan.
(86-90)
Together with Virgil these four non-Christians form the group of those classical poets whom Dante most admired and from whom he drew much of the material for his poem. It must be said, however, that while Homer was known in the Middle Ages as the first of the great epic poets, the author of the Iliad and Odyssey, few people—and Dante was not among them—could read Greek; thus Homer’s great epics were known almost entirely second-hand through the revised versions of Dares and Dictys, who told the tale of the Trojan war in a way that exalted the Trojans and often disparaged the Greeks. Dante admired Homer more for his reputation than for any intimate knowledge that he had of his works. The second of the four is Horace, whom Dante calls the “satirist” but whom he must have thought of mainly as a moralist since Dante was familiar only with the Ars poetica. Ovid, who comes next, was the most widely read Roman poet in the Middle Ages, and he was Dante’s main source of mythology in the Commedia. Dante, however, seems to have been acquainted with only the Metamorphoses. Coming last is Lucan, author of the Pharsalia, which deals with the Roman civil war between the legions of Pompey and those of Caesar. The book was one of Dante’s important historical sources.
When the pilgrim and his guide have seen all there is to see of sin (canto XXXIV) they find they must exit from Hell by climbing down Lucifer’s monstrous, hairy body. Only by grappling with sin itself, by knowing the foundation of all sin, which is pride, personified in the hideous figure of Lucifer frozen in the ice at the very center of the universe, can they hope to make their way out “to see again the stars. ”
The island-mountain of Purgatory, invented by Dante, is divided into three parts. At the very top is the Earthly Paradise; the upper part of the mountain is sealed off from the lower by a gate that a resplendent angel guards, equipped with St. Peter’s keys. This upper half, with its seven cornices corresponding to the seven deadly sins, is reserved for those who have been permitted to enter the gate from below in order to begin the self-willed torments of their purgation; after its accomplishment they pass to the Earthly Paradise, from which they ascend to Heaven. In the lower half, the “Antepurgatory, ” dwell those souls who are not yet ready to begin their purgation. As for the reason why certain souls are forced to put off the experience they all desire, the pilgrim is told by a number of individuals he meets that, while alive, they had put off repentance until the end (thus their delay is in the nature of a contrapasso, or retribution); it is generally accepted that all of the inhabitants of the Antepurgatory are to be considered as “late repentants. ” (The Antepurgatory is dealt with in the first nine cantos.) This mountain (whose creation was the miraculous result of Lucifer’s fall) keeps not only those assigned to Purgatory but also those destined for immediate passage to Heaven.
The middle portion of the mountain of Purgatory is surrounded by seven concentric ledges, each separated from the other by a steep cliff. On each ledge, or terrace, one of the seven capital sins is purged: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice (and Prodigality), Gluttony, Lust. The setup of the First Terrace (cantos IX-XII), where souls are being punished for the sin of Pride, establishes the pattern of purgation that is followed throughout Purgatory proper.
Each group of souls on its particular terrace is assigned a prayer. When a soul has finished purging his sin on one level, he climbs to the next via a stairway, where there is an angel-sentry who performs a final cleansing gesture. A beatitude appropriate to the sin that has been cleansed is assigned to each ledge. In addition, on each terrace of Purgatory, representations of the sin being purged there are found, as well as examples of the virtue which is opposed to that sin. The representation of the sin is intended to incite disdain for the sin, while that of the virtue is designed to inspire souls to the emulation of virtuous behavior. These representations take on various forms—on the First Terrace they appear as carvings in the stone of the mountain—and both “disdain for the sin” and “inspiration for virtuous behavior” are drawn from examples of Christian and pagan love. But the first example of every virtue is always taken from the life of the Virgin Mary.
In the first canto of the Purgatorio Dante and Virgil are at the foot of a mountain again, and the reader is naturally reminded of the first canto of the Inferno : it is the same mountain, the one they could not climb then, because Dante was not spiritually prepared. But now, having investigated all sin, having shaken off pride during his perilous descent into humility, Dante will be able to climb the mountain.
Purgatory is a place of repentance, regeneration, conversion. Though the punishments inflicted on the penitents here are often more severe than in Hell, the atmosphere is totally different: it is one of sweet encounters, culminating in Dante’s reunion with Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise and Virgil’s elegant disappearance. Brotherly love and humility reign here, necessary qualities for the successful journey of man’s mind to God. Everyone here is destined to see God eventually; the predominant image is one of homesickness (especially in the Antepurgatory), a yearning to return to man’s real home in Heaven. Toward the close of the Purgatorio the time comes for Beatrice (divine revelation) to take charge of the pilgrim; human reason (Virgil) can take man only so far; it cannot show him God or explain his many mysteries.
The Paradiso is an attempt to describe the religious life, one in which man centers his attention wholly on God, divine truth, and ultimate happiness. Only in perfect knowledge of the true God can man have perfect happiness.
Unlike Hell and Purgatory, Heaven in Dante’s poem does not exist in a physical sense. The celestial spheres through which the pilgrim and his guide, Beatrice, ascend and in which the souls of the blessed appear to the wayfarer are not part of the real Paradise. That place is beyond the spheres and beyond space and time; it is the Empyrean, and Beatrice takes pains to explain this early in the Paradiso, while they are in the first sphere of the moon:
Not the most godlike of the Seraphim, not Moses, Samuel, whichever John you choose—I tell you—not Mary herself
has been assigned to any other heaven than that of these shades you have just seen here, and each one’s bliss is equally eternal;
all lend their beauty to the Highest Sphere, sharing one same sweet life to the degree that they can feel the eternal breath of God.
(IV. 28-36)
The dominant image in this realm is light. God is light, and the pilgrim’s goal from the very start was to reach the light (we are reminded of the casual mention of the rays of the sun behind the mountain in the opening canto).
The word “stars, ” the last word of the poem, glows with a number of meanings which The Divine Comedy itself has given it in the course of the journey. The sun is another star, as the last verse surely implies through the use of the word “other, ” and we know that the sun is the symbol for God—this is clear from the first canto of the Inferno, and the stars stand for all the heavens. It is through the sphere of the Fixed Stars, immediately below the Primum Mobile, that God’s grace is filtered down through the lower spheres, finally reaching the material universe—that is what canto II concerning the spots on the moon is all about. The star
s, then, are the link between God and His creation. They are His eyes set in the outermost limits of the physical universe:
O Triune Light which sparkles in one star upon their sight, Fulfiller of full joy! look down upon us in our tempest here!
(XXXI, 28-30)
They are the constant reminder to mankind of his connection to his Maker. Through them we see God from our earth. Through them God touches us. Through them Dante connects the three distinct parts of his miraculous poem, the Inferno, the Purgatory, and the Paradise, into a single unity which is The Divine Comedy.
The formal beauty of the Commedia should not be dissociated from its spiritual message. The universal appeal of the poem comes precisely from a combination of the two: poetry and philosophy. For Dante, though not for the majority of poets of the Renaissance, ultimate truth was known—in principle it was contained in the Summa of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the doctrine of the Commedia comes largely from the writings of Aquinas and the other church fathers.
Dante was in accord with Hugh of Saint Victor, who, in his Didascalia (VI. 5), says: “Contemplating what God has done, we learn what is for us to do. All nature speaks God. All nature teaches man. ” Dante, then, with his special kind of allegory, tries to imitate God: the symbolic world he creates in his poem is in principle a mirror of the actual world created by God himself.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: ON BEING A GOOD LOVER
TO WHAT extent should the translator of Dante’s Comedy strive to be faithful to the original? Ezra Pound distinguishes between what he calls “interpretative translation, ” which is what most translators are after, and a more creative, original type of paraphrase—the translator using the original mainly as an inspiration for writing his own poem. But even those who attempt an interpretive rendering differ greatly in the degree and manner of their faithfulness to the original. The question has been raised and debated: should it be the poet’s voice that is heard, or the voice of the one who is making the poet accessible in another language? This is obviously a delicate, sophisticated, and complicated problem.