Dante and His Divine Comedy Course Guide

DANTE AND HIS DIVINE COMEDY COURSE GUIDE

Professor Timothy B. Shutt KENYON COLLEGE Dante and His Divine Comedy Professor Timothy B. Shutt Kenyon College

Executive Editor Donna F. Carnahan

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Lecture content ©2005 by Timothy B. Shutt Course guide ©2005 by Recorded Books, LLC Cover image The Empyrean by Gustave Doré © Clipart.com 72005 by Recorded Books, LLC #UT068 ISBN: 978-1-4193-5866-1 All beliefs and opinions expressed in this audio/video program and accompanying course guide are those of the author and not of Recorded Books, LLC, or its employees. Course Syllabus

Dante and His Divine Comedy

About Your Professor ...... 4

Introduction ...... 5

Lecture 1 Dante: His Life and Times ...... 6

Lecture 2 The Structure of the Commedia ...... 10

Lecture 3 The Dark Wood ...... 14

Lecture 4 The Gates of Hell ...... 20

Lecture 5 The City of Dis ...... 26

Lecture 6 Malebolge ...... 31

Lecture 7 Cocytus and Satan ...... 37

Lecture 8 The Shore of Purgatory ...... 42

Lecture 9 The Seven Terraces ...... 49

Lecture 10 The Earthly Paradise ...... 55

Lecture 11 The Lower Heavens ...... 61

Lecture 12 To the Sun and Beyond ...... 67

Lecture 13 The Eagle of Justice ...... 72

Lecture 14 To the Heaven of Pure Light ...... 77

Course Materials ...... 82

3 Photo by John Seavolt courtesy of Kenyon College 4 T we th Va a in re me p a t e S B va a a D h h w Al You o a E B A D a hi The Sh S n d n re n a e s i o t s i f tu row ib n l is o t c o n e i r u i sp g u sp a i r e m A - l ghi nde l tional u h 3 d d, d T s l g e . in di le d t . h P u u f e c alw ext e vol ira t g n The or ts h cour l bir e h s i i wil Si y r ec t t t ng , a n es, , s a x l n o r ne t l a r i, i ts t t nclai , s.: ti nat is h d s i . D i p p a h Fami revi tures h o and ti Dan on. l few l arly s a and e ing astr ys s i f get o t anoucer mes, se he In R a n a c l a e f i ionw i s a e d i w Grek sion r ferno, n h c r a e s e h g i h te. j the n a n d a r g t de heavi Shut ovial e r e h ranslt i i teachs ly R onmy s n evrything , 4 8 9 1 the a y l the f o on par i w s Th ach e v i t of deicat tra the adit Envirometal e t a u d a r g r e d n u r e v e de, e h t e Purg e e t a u l o o h c s t a behalf tu t most clasr nsl he l r e m m historan extro e h y e i D also o re o f o hist l e h t i a r n t t u h S claim oversu ion vi S o i h O s w o l l e F and a Jacof, t f , e c n i s h g u a t m’a io i ne lit oci h O or to n a l o o h c s ory ns cl re vert from eratu, ri t om i n U t ravels e of Co u s r a e y o Kenyo d n a and o , o i c t‡ the ing my de t , to ha t n e p s .e d i s y r t n u o c cora P s, of his me the t bscried, t i s r e v D s and ar . y l p e e d d e s i a r d n a t who o my h s i l g n E this an longtime th d e t o v e d Virgl, lore evrybod. scien. a dy w n i ad acdemi pear e coleg Centr tesca n. t a regula t a / iso of philosy, E a teach or t k o o t l y f o w course a long e h t g n of ot e l a Y ignal Dante . polymath— f o n i Ne car g n i y o j n e and in I ve sp te S h Abo Ti fo l S i l the talin e n , h s i r e h t r u f d n a bal F and a i n i g r i V o s s i k h c t o H n a g i h c i M w h tu m a cture. te ly a r h c u m at ago He Detroi o ri l fr n Italin u r e ’ ( y cher mot excpti Yo di Aligher n o i t i s o p r s, ng rdi ored, om Dante star. t ndi e as . ) 2 7 studie own if Kenyo g n i z i l a i c e p s In games, ni es y r o t s i h he rk: has has Tr buona scipl cr first you net comi ut a t coast it s r a e y history, he f o au at and Oxfor on n o i t c a r e t n i tex lect ical Profes r e t f A teachi spokern s a Tiger both writ . h He t onal evry i go s i h Kenyo facing aught taug read nary Tr d n a Integrad born , l o o h c S Yo tex. t a ures com y and a d n a i d ans. and on imag n t tmen ten also to t a years, Univer e m i t e e r h t u D by n o y n e K ng, the L ht anoucer skil B. e, d e l o o h c s art the I migr Integrad coast. al p teachr ur year V gives an d e h c a o c on at have n i on for age the for me ine we t n o P a i n i g r i works, literay Departmn d has Shut’s history, t sity l a v e i d e m w to Kenyo folwing o e h Homer, s r a e y S the s, at milt coment champions in r, Pro h t i P coleg . to t taken . a m a r d Progam the ory o taken regula h . But Pres, Jam n i s a w the e . w o l l e F most for ro . lov a s i h ary ver f and a ut e i / , 6 8 9 1 when n libera birds packed tradi s i w s sor t a Ernie course di my his Progam e religous Kenyo, clasrom es fesor from C d e r o n o h Coleg, s t n e d u t s a par history, Plato, ben by 197. Dante. lectur— . t S voi and e r u t a r e t i l .t u c i t c e n n o , g n i m m e H boks: own n o l l e M C. talks real t, of John in A Timothy time and on, t e r e h w he f Harwe s ’ k r a M arts. r e t f rom Norhnbeg, e r o j a m by Huma English quotains more house Arist voca Giusep swimng in a at D. g st on b i p Sinclar n studen, nd e famed a ivng a o P ase Kenyo’s h S No u ermit and n r a t Sinclar. s d n Humane h inters he l a d ot ob tio n often unwa o h c S e Baker a d -t s . d n ie u as e ba le n i n t t ser alike h n s, i t h as ta n s, , f g a as rom t l, e h for is h th lks s - is and o a - e a e - l s Introduction By near universal agree - ment, Dante’s Divine Comedy stands very high among the greatest liter - ary works ever written. This may come as a sur - prise, because Dante is best known for the Inferno, the first cantica of the Commedia , which is, by any standard, fairly grim in some respects. If you think of Dante with the Inferno primarily in m

mind, then it may be hard o c . t r a p

to imagine what it is that i l C

makes the Commedia © such an enduring work Dante Through the Fire of art. by Gustave Doré But the Commedia , as a whole, is about the afterlife, not just Hell, but Purgatory, and Heaven too. Dante’s genius is the genius of the allegorical method. In talking about his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, Dante is talking about the whole course of human life. The Commedia is, in the first instance, an account of Dante’s own salvation. In midlife, he was beset by deep depression and doubt. He was a reasonably prosperous and highly esteemed Florentine citizen, ambitious and well aware of the unsurpassed gifts with which he had been blessed. And then, in a coup d’état engineered by his enemies, French forces with papal backing took over in Florence, and Dante found himself not only exiled—but condemned to death in absentia . If the Florentines caught him, he would be burned alive. At a stroke he lost everything—except for his fame, his ambition, and his talent. He had lost his way and, it may be, he lost his faith. He found himself, as he tells us, “in a dark wood where the straight way was lost” ( Inferno 1.2-3). The Commedia chronicles how he got out. But in chronicling his own recovery, indeed his salvation, Dante not only provides us with an autobiography, he also suggests that not only the problems he confronts, but the means by which he overcomes them, are in some sense universal. He is talking not just about himself, but about everybody, about all Christian history, and about non-Christian history as well. In talking about his salvation, he is talking about the salvation of his readers too. All things considered, Dante is the best guide to life that I know, this side of unambiguously sacred scriptures, and generations of my students have, on the whole, agreed. And even if such purported guidance leaves you uncon - vinced or untempted, he is still, by the most skeptical judgment, one of the greatest poets who has ever lived.

5 LECTURE ONE 6 “ co d r p th fo ch h fa in e m o s i h e t D r h G d d n a fi so n e hi mo es th e th e gr an c Lif The t a h tr ou em “S n I Da T An om p r we ro er nt al ie ob nt i t a n o s st a m m e f l e s m a r st th ea e he t me ar cial d e f d re t ly s, he s ba s. him mbl ead , 7 7 2 1 am le v to er i Co li mi n aried l li ch si i in he te r o t n A t ls of Sug ta in te cri y e h ty— Di v n os e ni Ali Bea bl a st t e y a w p e bi m ild ot b th e o i mb i i t a f a 12 n mson, ng, y Da p A the re ers ri th a l, t a le hen g ti o of m ’s e h i r a ru r b , me g d. lig ne n m fro Gem th h t i e v i l , le trice you 72, e h w s he ear an es ed i nt , a i Flo ca se iero ti o n s le u o n choie h so y l i e it h ased beg a On e th a f m . is Co e Dante a l to ier Da n d s ted us , d spoke gr over m a h g ed Dant ng o h w ” ren e h t and . a w tha n ma e t po we rs , m wel. P th s a an ost me dy tr i eat in in co sm os —a ll r e t o e h o or 3 8 2 1 — r nd was ode mi gh t d an d ey wom te ’s . tine s Rea nig in um ph a f h t i w d r re Do c o tinar e, Dant me est f o an ge r e t a l Dant S a se e s o l was s a w f th a Ga sho se the ha ke sp rat n g t o nat f no b ding cre b is , e ’” an u o Bu ame of d o o e h r I “t or an brie i tali ar ely in e’s se e e rt d , ( hat “ ne , n i was nt just i, v l e w t t VN r D fo r n t t a ar r gu e d ly who o ker. r o D ultima i th e n u o y ce rt ai nl y, ch n ur who ep th , a words: e f i l in la, d an “ne l a e d f ly fath h c a e n an is ther ea re , or mo or my istnguhe th 2 1 ante, 2 b u s ambe conlud ti me s the Flore p 12 m d fo r pr es en ce ). , e rev Dante t e w b o so oet m e: th er, , 6 8 g en du m a c e r mo ne y tely He 90s, h o m an d m t n a t s e t n a D life.” after ent, da H t o is c h “ e ” His I it B ‘Her ost who e r d l i h r L aling, e since nce o d i v e r e h wo ul d a an d f e r ma y ughte e go lectu e o me r, n ir fo ’s s n ri in sc op e. la and ct f o st e l a i and n In evr Life nobl und es he o r p ha th g first , i g h t d ” ur — y l t n e si ng le live a n s a w a e of th n is e the . y r w o d h in f Ro for d l fu lf il lm e t a re fa ncout or or o r n l was e May e n i m ar gu e, whic is e what n i ( e h Go d n pl a himself n u an a a d o fa ct sight miles, men 1: man r i e h t eart” g on e is short, t f Fo r nit of Vita b t he go da int r o d F r o o r t e ce wo rk e e d n u caled d n a or Giov t n olc col a o p d ughte be hi ms el f. tions , r e d T I h love erd h S s— an establih Da nt e’ s mi gh t te raise of nt . times, ha s im h say Nuova be Dan str n a h t earl d e h t ye ors, p e s u o s wer th at with e o o s r Beatric of t erhap es ani gan Por onge G ar e h t si n of a very in r y mo re is at te’s Sh ak es pe ar e’ s d n n a v o i d n her a a D as ar gu e n o t June a hi s s tinar, a Dante’s an Dante true,” gl e , a No he me “to nd subde a n su bj ec t, e r th Boc h s ed s h , s ’ e t n e t n a D G wel. te p early y h g u o n in tha en ti alf e th or ou gh ly arty e m le av a a m m e li te ra ry po e she ens, trem d e r a of was, h o e , i bo fo bit be n a th b is f xtravgn re wr his ac P B r f o rothe, 1265. t es ok I, e wealthy in given e t i p s e d r just life ble,” reputa , o r t e i past e r e w S ela, s very ha s ote: oe uv re a at e t n a D who spirt so a e B “ and ha ke sp ea re , life, works, of us . i t a n o D io’s of wo rk a w was th e begin he be en the p and their howevr, at quickly ma tc he s His by , l l de i r r a m I br ou gh t deco wa shal a oems .) ” e c i r t tion ,o p o c a “th br oa d nd e h t and claims, la st , f ev er dn a a is dn u o lower her terms: s but par par at T two as ing their - tc a f eh to - - - “This too has God Almighty graced her with: / whoever speaks with her shall speak with Him” (19). For that very reason, she is a “nine”—Dante shared entirely in the medieval enthusiasm for numerological patterning—“or a mira - cle, whose root” is “the miraculous Trinity itself,” a three-dimensional repre - sentation, as it were, of the Triune God (29). Despite the magnanimity of her father and her family, Beatrice was simply out of Dante’s reach, and out of the reach of Dante’s family in an age of arranged marriages. When Beatrice did marry, it was to Simone de Bardi, scion of a Florentine banking family more prominent even than the Portinaris. She died in 1290, at the age of twenty-five, and Dante for a time was inconsolable. At the end of the Vita Nuova , though, Dante claims to have come to a sort of rec - onciliation. There “appeared to me,” he writes, “a miraculous vision in which I saw things that made me resolve to say no more about this blessed one until I would be capable of writing about her in a more worthy fashion.” That end in view, Dante concludes, “I hope to write of her that which has never been writ - ten of any other woman” (42). Dante’s Commedia , the Divine Comedy , is, among other things, Dante’s fulfillment of that promise. In a sense, Beatrice oversees Dante’s entire journey in the Commedia , though he only meets up with her directly at the end of the Purgatorio , when Dante has arrived at the Earthly Paradise. Thereafter, however, she guides him step by step through the heavens above and at last to the heaven which, as he is told, “has no other where than the divine mind” ( Par . 27.109-10). Throughout the Commedia , she represents, of course, the real Beatrice whom Dante knew and loved—but she also works in absolutely critical ways as a symbol. She represents divine love, grace, revelation—and all of these interpretations are right to varying degrees. More broadly, though, she repre - sents religious experience—the felt expression of divine grace and love, and, likewise, revelation as it makes itself known as a lived experience , as a living, ongoing sense of divine presence. Revelation, so to speak, for you.

Dante and the Political Situation in Italy During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Italy was characterized by party strife. The two factions at issue were the Guelfs and Ghibellines. The north of Italy at the time was composed of a number of rival “communes,” in effect city-states—Florence, Siena, Milan, Venice, and others. The question at issue was what power, or powers, if any, should claim their allegiance. The Holy Roman Empire or the papacy? The Ghibellines supported the former, the Guelfs, on the whole, supported the latter. The rationale for imperial precedence was the example of Charlemagne and, indeed, the example of Rome itself. God had chosen, after all, to submit himself in the person of Christ to Roman rule, and Dante was by no means alone in thinking of the Romans as a chosen people, whose divinely granted mission it was to bring the rule of law to the world. The rationale for papal precedence was, perhaps, more straightforward. Wasn’t the pope, after all, the vicar of Christ? Didn’t he bear “the keys to the kingdom”? And to the degree that spiritual power was nobler and more exalted than earthly power, didn’t it make sense to think of the pope as the superior of any earthly monarch? So Guelfs tended to be pro-papal and pro-French; Ghibellines tended to be pro-imperial and, in a sense, avant l’event (because Germany did not exist as a country) pro-German.

7 LECTURE ONE 8 c n no ab tha s 13 ca an T s p e e Gu e wa th ti p m Hi La bu s Fo co fi wa tu to co Gh title po wa B be c F an of k Dur By Da In anz hor ome ome om m ill e m g evr ro ar ne r oi he lor la c un e a s ur ught me ngru t le 04 d tin t litic en d th th r of s s s e e n i t l pe l the bel y my, lon unfi n d. the en own Da Div 1295 lf t, f tly k e e. he e the pa e ing P be g d o to o ocu te Phi s. of . th s a o a rty o e ne ar it te d G mo time n in las t ce a Th n lin g He nd ust ed pal ent l n Sh n- gun ne, eply aft e t in ni j e e o he ori ga w oti P here ue l oin adi hi treati Cors hi P te, —l lip s Ro b fte W e is w reign e shed as nths rom was ne of urgato ort s s efore or gin 13 in valued and rea l for ces— and a wa sen wit fs hite rma th to so Com be Bo ong n wa n the IV me, a him d l s xt t co ong after. a ly 08. re he so, fter, ecisio all som e se, saw ine th a h th twee s conf niface ing a itsel s la l Wh of yea se, nviced nd tur re w y th Dona led ish at y G e to a h edy six i ter a spe n neg rio ork, Ar n Da eff e er e the Fr is uelf propo ned wa pa pa or o r t i th e Pop th civ xile, d b i b f, r h ev t n Se po sca n ound f ea t e am ance eci etw were that y death he e nte “ e on e otia , the and ma was prio s 1309 cti ve ti. e to De De Gu t ems—and ptember fter wor b wa f W p ars to e re si action on te not for ce. cy Ch ur Dan Be a se olitca life of wr be yb th ve the hi te bat tle Boniface elf. rs” nce d. , monar in s vulgar 1 Flo thus , ne g t co in king . d. hing e n a eng rump urch bef ore. ite fo emp ero e 305 the ga howevr g and nevr In and the T nd te def ea d ine Flo rent ine circulation. of faith re glorious just renc. Not He on wo Gu el fs . n fo The serious exile, was a iner kept , the impor m to in Flore power o of he r d t res li 1 i ch ed-u into by o rea beha f ve wo mo eloquentia e 317. before, thels e finished later conju and Fr an ce , was t B 1 ta mpire. ia Flo rent ine xact As en r VI’s had domina for m . 321. ene v writing rked son , bef or , mbling ke in nths cor nce, His p tance d ost tire po Th e a fin lf poetry a And rea of the Dante ch Ravenna, by l a y a Gue lfs defense time of li pr al He in uption en Ind ction public n dema accounts, t on his coup the Comm arge co later sympa e He ica the son. other Bl ac k act ical a Flor th e . Ghi bell ines cantos a nt, r to his of Dan te’s eligous He mit eed, the completed ct bit the (paradoxically l to exile. ’s pa in was, Gue lfs hige (1 disat life i and Wh it e wit enc, ve of nds he masterwork, . d’éta ret urn s mor re retu be lif pacy his conflit 2 edia Convivio And, theic Gu el fs of t the in 6 h e politca mat ter, most la ed on p g was were 6) Dante By f art empire, for Cha tion h e an own rn st i pra he er t tim e, r re as , , ad st whic t E Gu el fs div ided ed than on tend o was fol M po home, the i a an asitnce at to struck. began n sentc ise are of o the rles emp we anf red— the by rth tha found we re falen to T litca f b Florenti , Ghi bell inis m the a inde Fre deri ck uscan his coru elaborate ehalf al, wing mid-13 appare a l released of pow er ma tales a d Paradiso ran enough, had was of ire the a as post quar s int o han ds his to family Dante mo deply another ed riage, to go od am Da we o Va ge ption in secu A of fice we Commedia resitd completed d tongue). that ne re -Enlightem piecs, achievement) ter quinas, 10s, nte l fac tion s: beca lois, ong ntly, . aft er the of to the aken While as or politca II— was had de al , series of wa lar , a of “na tura l” atiudes in death—if it co was, and and evidently, ful his the le ss the the Black defense me between in surviving Fre nch was the hav ing the s terms. mited its been and some le ss exild Dante Dan effects. His morta his Inferno life br for the at work of fi rm ly com spir at only (the oth life. tha he son te a to so . in of i - - - l FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING

Questions

1. What was the role of Beatrice Portinari in Dante’s life? 2. What was the effect of exile upon Dante? Suggested Reading

Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Life of Dante (Tratello in Laude di Dante) . Trans. Vincenzo Zin Bollettino. Garland Library of Medieval Literature, vol. 40, ser. B. New York: Garland, 1990.

Other Books of Interest

Alighieri, Dante. Monarchy . Trans. and ed. Prue Shaw. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ———. Vita Nuova . Trans. and intro. Mark Musa. Oxford World’s Classics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Hollander, Robert. Dante: A Life in Works . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Jacoff, Rachel, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Dante . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Lewis, R.W.B. Dante . New York: Viking, 2001.

9 LECTURE TWO 1 0 m w ve b ta te to m p St h e p e Bu th w sa i e L fr th a sto Le pr th g mo th e ti me The Co t. Da In In In Da n o e u a n o n vo a scend o o ha hi e o ke a e e e oc r r n lvat T in rpo s ts. sal li st ri t m v d m r me n tapho y re uct chin he ch, p th th ght kes y cal Co m n hi Co co proc els dhi t g—the s an tha es Sug ursi cen Ju te fr te th at e —h it s A o se o ion a ur nt om ver enm s me pe ed st r e mong so is—or g s C n le dgm im ast c stru of the re se , s. se es of me di l ter l rical se is o g es Gar vel, P ai o e r p “koa y of t ia: plies—and ate I a m nse, es f ver- onish A D u er ha ms of sa en eks vast of cen ctur be gap pro dia en S rg of s le t ant of den he ted E ta m s. is t. a lv at i tho th t co th n,” wh ato ed liev t. nar the lem a go is ces ter his te ps , akes es A is , the e’s to at itself. spi D e s unte r learn be F ia se ug ea at Rea r like a of an on , ry our h of de ro gly y, bring no at his , Ea of ritu twen o bu t is He Com so de th h the nt ta win E te wn wr et ch ed ne ss g a o rpa ble stine up , e so me th in g th, the ding rth in pu rp an h a acu d re nd r l f al s r, co l bu ents, T t er finds t pr et ty would en re g, salvtion g salv is, h o d abou . of the h or in a smo go t t rise Earth. f te e spira The e what utobigr is to his it os e to rat edia th and rid is in descr f Str in al, S hop or wo rk s thr struc h rough in himself wh the de—a her tr lev tion. t co ns is te nt ly owevr, ef spirtua have str uct Da in l l wha uct e-d into th th in e ultima is some es, ich cou As cl , ibng e uctre natu co mp os in g to is in nte ct, a l th wh u o ur aphy. An L on n f five—n th t re r so the can s ir in to im taken rse, h bring e gen lectu e e. it e e in a st a at e e l thing ct d tely makes re mething p nd fo ur n ensioa of nalog describ vison, the is to o d inca urpo a heav inst in ur o eral, be on e in f of until of escnd the Dante ne one her da it s re t it e o vertd so as ot fr om he course or Hel evil ance or f enact rnatio about 2: se rk might de ep es t is Plato, of Infer o as th e use doing usly salvtion at mo tha ns. Com and some es. nly l wo is or Charles o ha itself. imag be gi nn in g wo is la it f re the Co mm ed ia l con n no . e The of som whic T pp in es s. ” de st h ap co is describ of d his rks cal d, vel , med he is evil a le ve ls —n ot o in evry he nd inato. u mplicated plies and litera e, ne his le ve l, Fo goes n own per nusa eon uns next in anlo six—th the a histo is a a con th ia r is S. is own “ko spatil Pu vast third Dan ing, and e a to to salv supoed reso cour no lev Singleto rpas throu an front lev Re Th is dimnshe has anic gy ry rgat l a any en d. t in sa e te, a de al le go ry ho to sur a lev, de si re urce se way, is lbeit a salvtion l, sed poets. tion, lvation, s s ory terms failed gh at one t is epr, ficton”—a low folwing explain the to Satn a ev er y of ection to whic Hel, whole for poetic n’s a at indr an h reading but who to first “t o sa y reaching e Zen to a Dante Dan his of d h be Dan s evoks si ng le at ectly, is t th le ad he fuli what of to the th e ale — th at a gains of d the e tal own te and the is you, fic th te - - - e - its potential. For that reason, in Dante’s world, pure evil cannot exist— absolute evil would be nothing at all. As Dante descends the infernal cone, Hell itself grows ever narrower and the walls come closer and closer, until at the center there is, in effect, absolute fixity, absolute immobility, and some - thing close to total intellectual extinction. Dante’s Purgatory is the precise converse. The central axis of the cone of Hell descends directly from Jerusalem—in effect the center of Dante’s world—and Purgatory, as Dante conceives it, lies directly opposite Jerusalem, in the south - ern hemisphere, on the other side of the world. Instead of a hollow cone, how - ever, Purgatory is a conical mountain—a positive rather than a negative shape, both literally and metaphorically. Just as one can think of the walls of Hell as ever more stringently and tightly enclosing those who descend, so as Dante’s penitents ascend, they are more and more fully surrounded by sunlight and air. Spirals Because one of the keynotes of Dante’s cosmos is his conviction that the world itself is a reflection of the divine, it should come as no surprise that Dante’s heavens are, with a very few simplifications for the sake of visualiza - tion, the heavens as they were actually believed to exist in Dante’s day. Dante knew about as much about the astronomy of his time as anyone who was not in one capacity or another directly concerned with such matters, and he rises through the real heavens as his age conceived them, once again taking a spiral course as he revolves with the heavenly spheres, his track arching ever wider as he rises. A spiral, by virtue of its geometrical structure, answers to several of Dante’s thematic concerns. Imagine a “Slinky,” the flexible, spring-shaped toy. If you look at a Slinky head-on, it looks like a circle—the perfect form in antiquity and the Middle Ages. If you stretch it a bit and look at it sideways, however, it looks like a sine wave. A spiral thus represents, by its very structure, the intersection of time (which moves in a line, as we perceive it) and eternity (which does not). It all depends on your point of view, and so too the process of salvation—a series of actions undertaken within time that lead to eternal, blessed effects, which lead, in fact, out of time altogether. The Rabbit Problem The work that introduced what we customarily call “Arabic” numbers to the West was the Liber Abaci, composed early in the 1200s by Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa. In that book, Fibonacci introduces his famous rabbit prob - lem, which introduced to the world what have become known as Fibonacci numbers. Here are the first several: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13. The formula that generates the numbers is to add the two previous numbers to generate the next. A peculiarity of Fibonacci numbers is that they occur quite often in nature, most frequently giving rise to spirals in things like pinecones, snail shells, and sunflower heads, where the relation of each row or chamber to those preceding is ordinarily in Fibonacci sequence. If you look at the Fibonacci numbers cited above, you will notice that their sum is 33—the num - ber of cantos in the Purgatorio and Paradiso, and after the initial introductory canto, the number in the Inferno as well.

11 LECTURE TWO 1 2 a d p su b o h sa Re In o Da Ho ca In n An th Da M d Bu str o so th d b sh th tw ca a wa a to a Ea r Go Ge th An ect Da Da Th nd en oe ot f ist f in at f ef at he wa nd ar ca ca e e e w e o it cre me und. e l a th th th d t r sure n l n s e o thse h o e e y y abl ory. ard th, e Ea t t igh ed” ad n n crea beg Last “da ch t te, te re re rna rna d wa s. re su e e e o n ha it mo te te wou in was of Sp u C d n o sur t Fri Ne Cr East se s e was sug w tf The ch o th 2 or ce C rk om s t t men Mar d Pur Th 13 ti ti i ma i th at t B i ction— or nth ni s 5, tion he fo rit. er clea d on on ate hr at eat the Jud da ful imp ld w re ut e wo twelv tra ating nu wel wa 0 twe e med dawn r gest ist kes the n er gat , , ch also s Po su ctions, y, world ver Yea Hen be h s to io Mar tr g mer d gme an when ods” o Vir reg r he rd —his mas—o is to a adito nty- evn n, in iton ch whe f in ory, em 25 of him, nd awr pre nal s, ia like it d t pur gin is as r. t he h ce, ch nat tur th salvt t he ical on Dan h a q , nt he sprin th e th is four is on By in not a sump n e our uite in ly e ts one he Gab pose ns it mo “d nal e m wo e 2 ed M ly, t e q beca d f East quin the Chr da he or 13 5 cor mig a to uite te’s ay ost f ar Mau da ary was p s th so h m g. l vem rld. ho io th was la b cle te as d 01, k riel is wh be p so at tiv te re p s. ist y oves date n at ox, e cing er ht — use The ro u n articul a t c ndy a b t spo ime hind. ul e e rs as i en Virt he of s ent leary g ced. was whe r ack mo also, ht th is lat acord his h the from nde ualy Thu at was rnig—t chang e of resu er, n on ent Dant rs, p an in his jo t But t Leo soul he ase he rsday, when Sa ces urney on ombed whet n rect F r Ea ing n one e journey eflctd es lo actul soul.” for tan ard e ab wice h renc ster wer h to t as o he the Dante emisph he when of as d and F . ndos Aug r ib e it , t As poem He this l o astro o arive t o he in cent he t both t naci an Go he akes cal beg b ustine, he , fact, lis. d Jesu d does, time is th d’s escnd result er nomical . tim sin, re m ins ( s depar ways— e ca. the Dan plac any at of once s wil wor to e wo 17 h and pr Dan a the b the way is te the of e y ld ts uld o ayed a red 0 ascen ther at nd spe twelv p situa in into – the shor Earth, te con Hel, o nd rovid tha ca be Eas ther. the God’s em is nds . in places, second tained th Hel 1240) es twelv t ion able a he terid, enc. at bowels the to hours. m d He his contemp of is at is was oving Purg soul thoug, and Garden to Purgatoy. is n the night “resu sunet the wh hour o place an likews 13 Wh mo atory, of en mati aci en aloe date 0. oray joys in s re at - at - of - on it plant

Questions

1. In what sense is the Commedia an allegory of salvation? 2. How does Dante make thematic use of the physical structure of the realms through which he travels?

Suggested Reading

Singleton, Charles S. Commedia: Elements of Structure . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Other Books of Interest

Anderson, William. Dante the Maker . London: Routledge, 1980. Cornish, Alison. Reading Dante’s Stars . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Williams, Charles. The Figure of Beatrice: A Study in Dante . Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000.

13 Lecture 3: The Dark Wood

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is John D. Sinclair’s The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 1: Inferno .

Inferno 1–2 Dante’s universe is “theomorphic,” or God- shaped. God is revealed, if we can but see it, wherever we might turn . Dante authorizes the follow - ing claim in the first lines of the Paradiso: “The glory of Him who moves all things pene - trates the universe and shines in one part more and in another less. I was in the heav - en that most receives His light . . .” (1.1-5). Thus Dante’s poem, or so he maintains, is authorized by his own clear vision of m

the divine. o c . t r a p i l C

The Journey Begins © When people think of The Dark Wood by Gustave Doré Dante, they tend first to think of the Inferno . True enough, that is where Dante begins, but his story does not end there, and indeed, the point of his story is in very large part how he escaped. The point of Dante’s universe is joy and blessedness. It is a comedy, Dante sug - gests, not only because it is written in the vernacular, but also because it ends happily—indeed, in the most utter happiness that Dante can conceive. But though it ends in bliss, the Commedia begins in wretchedness. “In the E

E middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where R

H the straight was lost” ( Inf . 1.1-3). T

E As his journey starts, Dante is lost, frightened, and confused. But with the R

U dawn, he sees a beautiful sunlit hill, a “ dilettoso monte ” (1.77), which he T

C attempts to ascend. The mountain here represents a good life and serves as E L

14 Background: © Clipart.com/Recorded Books, LLC

15 LECTURE THREE 1 6 p f a a l a u d a w w b l r p r o T t w r l u m s l t e n t f t l t t A l w t i l w n a t e r d m e g l i u n i a p u p o e r e w o i z c n e s e am y e h e h e k a c r o e h o e h y e h s n a r e D Th , n o n o l a u s n e n a n b s se i e r he s e g hic i s a t a h t a h d e pa scou i a a s e v o t s i s t ght Gre r d u e r a d t s e t n a i s n o c - e h s h s a ch h c an t wn e ou se n d e k r a d s e l f m m o c . e o t n d r a s th Re h, p e r of Thre c t a s a f se w e r a e v o r p r r o c e t a l e d e h . l e h t u o w h g i r alo tem r a h e w u e l b i f t e ek ex s f t ra eap t. u c a I a h h T of f e r r o o in o t th o w pa mus, h n ro a f a p s o r , y t i e d e h t l cap , s i d n i ged u ms —and pect gue o e l , d e r e l b e r r p s e a v e c a t e t M D Ro a h t s i m pte e m i h b r d l , o t u d pa a n o . f l on t e s e i t l r g a s a t u r p e s e e ant e’ thou n i n d i d n o p s . y e l l r i r o Beas n i e t a p acity, s i e v n e t t s th t a l mpir to man r u e c o c o t o t n a D e h t d , the s e by to of el d h t e p , n i l c e z i r h t the to “ d n e n e s e h h h t r n i s g g n o r e s i by h t r e n p s a . n su d d f o in n e e e gh, e l b a t e the a t o s r t n t l o r t e s u h T p eh T a t la e ow e yl l a e. anks he foun et de y a w l t dn a o t i r i e l p t s s t u o d d oi v ge e m o c si powe lu urs s ,e s rea vie w, s whic the o e h t t f b n o i t c n u fo pa s a is Ear ” , eing m s i h - n i son st, de t e a e m Re b mor l u o s isu e e h t o h t to o s r, thy d e k c o l f t a l P the e s l u p m i t rs e a f o e is o p Plato se th f u c a or re irst e ublic r a p o e l , g n i n ore a m i n a , l e b of rthly P me r o e h o e s ’ o difcult. of by ara dise . s i r o for f mpi re wo Rome. on p t h t ant ’s e h spond, b reason o j e h c y s o r e b u p e R intelc th goals. Dante e y s lf n i n r u gu . d the l es r a u g t d n a tha o w t to s e r h , s f e ardin is , l u o h T , y e The , t c e f guide Th part t, o It . me e la e is e r g ci l s e d r n a i d an O The con a mar ks us st r o s e d s a e b r i s e d fro , n o i l cording e n , reason ant t d of t a s. hir h t d n a , co .s e r i centra t se m s us in he n i e t i p s i e the But d n i w r a D resp to n i telc s t . e y b with p a p a c a the a and f s t i lupa : acul roblem b ach ieve . t s t I G e h pa s i h a t l u c a f y t n o c Dante or The ted in n u f Gu k e e r to ond hap e l brin y t i c o r inte ty . e R n a i sem on r p acy , d r a p o stave leg Leo In t s a r in n o i t c e l of py, y m e l b o s, ci l b u p to stead, g lect— n o c th o t doe Ro r e p m i p o c t an the t a h But a , or us nd, D e the rd wel l-go vern ed e f e d o c d n o p s e r r o me—th s i , t x e t d p s to ré a so ev art soul, , s n a c . d n o p s e r r Da nur second e h t not p di e v i t a , n o i l it sug e t n a D d n hilosper t e h anoi he sem, r nte of so m u h t sed b se f closer t n e m l l i f l u n o e to e s i others ev i v r u s — s n a figure est s em is most t c a r a h c f l e s e ly whic Romul e r o m s u h t d o t or s una bl the on a to , o t he t to n sta te, a h t f o of ap u l wh oe king h gu s r o the h w God o is t we a e ne fo th re r si o ve fo s ot ta to , e - - s, ,

© Clipart.com Dante’s Guide When he returns to the dark valley, Dante encounters a voice in the “ gran deserto ” (1.64), a voice crying in the wilderness. It turns out to be Virgil, who will be Dante’s guide through the Inferno and most of Purgatory as well. There are many reasons for Dante’s choice of Virgil as his guide. First of all, in the Aeneid , Virgil was the apostle of empire, cele - brating the mythical foundation of Rome at the hands of Aeneas, and by consistent, over-arching implication, its entirely historical refoundation m o c at the hands of Augustus. . t r a p i l

Second, as Dante freely and C gratefully acknowledges, Virgil © The She-Wolf is his poetic predecessor and by Gustave Doré mentor. The Aeneid is the classic of classics in the European West, continuously and carefully read in every generation from Virgil’s time to Dante’s—and indeed in our own. Dante, or so we are told, knew the Aeneid virtually by heart. Beyond that, because of Virgil’s prophecy in “Eclogue IV” of a virgo who would give birth to a son who would inaugurate a new golden age, Virgil was often taken in Middle Ages as a pagan prophet who somehow foresaw the birth of Christ. And finally, since in book VI of the Aeneid Virgil depicts Aeneas himself taking a journey to the underworld, Virgil is an entirely suitable guide for someone about to under - take such a journey. Another Road And sure enough, Virgil tells Dante that if he wishes to reach the sunlit hill, he must take “another road” (91)—and a far more difficult road. Willpower and personal effort, in and of themselves, are simply not sufficient to the task at hand. Dante understandably quails. He is not eager to descend into Hell. Dante claims that he is clearly unworthy of such a journey. Otherworldly journeys are undertaken successfully only by divine behest and by those with great works in prospect otherwise. Such a journey is the merest hubris, more likely to result in destruction than in success. Virgil says that Dante is afflicted with “viltate ” (2.45), which means some - thing like vileness, baseness, or moral cowardice. In contrast to Virgil, a “magnanimo, ” or “great soul,” Dante is simply not up to the task before him. Dante claims, with seeming modesty, that he is not Aeneas or Paul, both of whom were vouchsafed journeys to the otherworld, the one the founder of

17 LECTURE THREE 1 8 la a wo e h R w a e B t a L t o b D t t s n a e m d n a s e m o c f f e w ) a i c u L s e h e b i V f l e s Ch a s e i n e d m e e s t d n a He th Fi i d in e h e h e z i n i m e o i A t n , e m o o h t n a e s o h st d e n i v or e c e f n i g r l a n l u u b i ea subt n i . h ag s s a ing vid . Fathe u h C s a l e, c i r t l rch, rew e t n a D e h d , e c S , t s st “ e V , e m o u q e t , u xu l o w g s i m t r e t h t e a M go a n r i e h t a t n i s a b “ o n a D al yet s i i f o h c r ho n a ve e B d l i g wh xt lir t f e h w ( e , , s n i r r n e v spel. m e ib e l a v i ” t c re n e A . t S o i s y r , ted s t u m s ’ e h y l a r th n i r m i a l e f f . wr t o to r o ose h e char e le; e t a velation e g ise n i B r e s o a p h c rou e h n e h t , s i s s ’ y t i u L ote d , h c t c e b co a u s r a e h g i l with h t r n h th t a t n e s e r e t s t a r , r to o wr , t e m o c p r e h t acte f o y c gho f l e s me, h e e g r f o e , s a s m i a l c s e v i y r e v e h a t a t n a D of t s e f e r m o r f . t s a s it an h e b a g n i s s e l b n r u t the n e f r o n o r r o ( t t n i ten d n A d n u o t i . ge ut th rized p m r o e h on s i the l i g r i V f o “ t t u t e f t er n t t s e ev , e e u s s n r u e v i o r i e h t t S no o o s s e c r G o tex he t n i a s em a t a t a th s i e t t n f m c u L age o eh d o e t n a D . n i r e r o tion yl e v i r e the being rlasting by , s fo f o eh t t u a P a Co eb , s i eh t cn u f ,) ” s a f u o was p fo e v e h , y ,n o i ni a art the of media ,t c mi So tha ni ,t l , - n the - thre the of n, Mosaic t go o his the chart Spirt, New e o f e r spel.” Com a con Spirt ges d n u Law, Testam cerns whic erizd media Some of t e h t o whose salvtion a the l h C would ent by have migh the Be h c r u pro b the or y writen a red Gu t t thou ri phecis b Christan in history—e ce instuo e n a sta emd, fact ch a ve d n ght d ar te e D Vi e r i p m be o xt tha r of ré g cterizd n i Bible was l and tha Joach of Dante age .e k i l a the the whic ; evr and im by of - of

Questions

1. What does Dante imply by suggesting that in terms of his mission he is, in effect, the equal of Aeneas and St. Paul? 2. What is represented by each of the three beasts who block Dante’s way?

Suggested Reading

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 1: Inferno . Trans. and comment by John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

19 Lecture 4: The Gates of Hell

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is John D. Sinclair’s The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 1: Inferno .

Inferno 3–7 The early cantos of Dante’s Inferno are more or less conventional in terms of organizing scheme. He begins by addressing the traditional seven deadly sins in their traditional order—in reverse order of severity or toxicity: lust, glut - tony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy, and pride. After Dante and Virgil enter Hell, the first group of sinners they encounter are the “neutrals”—those who, in effect, stood for nothing, and their leader is he who, according to Dante, made “from cowardice” the “great refusal.” Commentators have varied as to whom Dante has in mind here, but most believe that Dante refers to Pope Celestine V, a humble and pious soul, later canonized as a saint, who is the only pope who chose to abdicate—under pressure in his case from the cardinal who ultimately became his successor as Pope Boniface VIII. Dante views Pope Celestine’s action not as an expression of humility, but as a dereliction of duty, a willful and self-indulgent thwarting of God’s will that had disastrous results. R U O m o F c . t r a E p i l R C © U

T The Gates of Hell C

E by Gustave Doré L

20 Limbo The doctrine of Limbo is a consequence of the severe, Augustinian notion of human sinfulness. All have fallen through origi - nal sin and can be saved only by grace. Those who are unbaptized remain in their sins and thus must inevitably be damned. A problem arose, however, in considering unbaptized infants, who while con - demned by original sin, had not done anything sinful. Limbo was devised for them—in Hell, to be sure, but if without bliss, likewise without hellish m punishment. Everyone in o c . t r a p i

Limbo is in Hell—the best l C part of Hell, but Hell still. © Everyone in Purgatory is The Virtuous Heathen by Gustave Doré going to Heaven—not there yet, but on the way. Dante places in Limbo those pre-Christians and non-Christians who were not virtuous Hebrews (like Moses or David) but who lived the most virtuous lives that they could. Virgil is prominent among them, along with Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. Dante also includes three Muslims on his list, the philosophers Averroes and Avicenna and the courtly military leader Saladin. These “virtuous pagans,” as Virgil tells us, are “only so far afflicted” that “with - out hope” they live in desire, wishing for an illumination and blessedness that must forever lie beyond them (4.42). Even so, Dante is at pains to depict the realm in which they live as very much like the Elysian Fields of classical tradi - tion. They get, in effect, what they hoped for. Dante encounters among them his poetic peers. He depicts himself and Virgil greeted by Homer, Lucan, Ovid, and Horace—the greatest poets of classical tradition as Dante conceives it. And they welcome Dante as their equal. Woeful People The lines that Dante devotes to the inscription marking the entrance to Hell are deservedly famous—especially the chilling last of them: “Abandon all hope, you who enter” (3.9—the numeration here is deliberate and dreadful; here, at least, the divine Trinity finds expression). Equally revealing is the way in which Virgil characterizes the people who dwell in Hell. He calls them the “ genti dolorose ” (the “woeful people”) who “have lost the good of intellect” (3.18). The damned, for Dante, have rejected grace and have, as a result, fatally and wilfully failed to fulfill their human potential.

21 LECTURE FOUR 2 2 D t D Pu “No o d r a fa i n e t r a p i s Gu On d t t u b s a h Da r h Vi lo m a a o An th o w s r e n r e p e e d e b t p s e r t D w w t n t a h e s o h r e , h g u o h ea ea e h T Th Da D Da r an po ea op nd s ld r t n a t n a i t n a e s r o . y a s n ve ost i a ta h t nt t c a , e t n a anothe mo r d n e e e h t t c i v d o G se son t i w gat rou ce l t es n n f e r a l u c i , ne te r s. ogy niver r e a r r a h d n o mo Fran e r a Nu fo a h w e , e , e d te te n i S d n a n i s Pa o brot f st n i h h w ay fre h w (fo c a r o m i I i sing o y u s gh f wi t m o mp t s s a I ova hat s ’ st tha i th c c a y rio t s s his dam o d a ol g n e n o m o for , is, he d e t u o n i th r e l i cesa e, u g g o out a — y l en her s r o t m . l l i w a so h so S m e ly e h lie P a t s e d e s r e as . a a h r o r a v s i the . q a o whic in e r time e a e lu ediva aol wh h s M ot o a xemp n i f T r co h c s, ag u m t u his . nd sh s t s ca the .e a d h t e r a t p n i L st s l a f e v his a her e t i o n th Dan wel, h t e c i o h T d a oves e r o h at n a e o nfe a oa ma Co in late r e ful, e r e k , r resp c n at l l e H e ’ their ca r ea t s a talking s ll a f t ie g I se e ta h t ss e l ,r e , —s say, ll a la i c ,m is one eh nfer thsome” lif s po th se, m ni s e y te se b l d sta. rlie of Dan s d o g - Dan y ot a u m - thinke ro e me ha on ond ems a v a h a nse, - the love sin, no com the to has wa sk ve h c dia Fr te t wor sh te rmen s o to it , , e ir y r a r ance a can be b e rs is show confr a plimen b fo inspred write her char mu F by nd can far ks e y s y a palino rances lo on o (thou pa ts nd o m a n rde sympath ha in in an o t sca, to ws b i r t t e acteris lea raph th t de n o e r P nt ve light t, o d k a e p s descr a at gh b a the f dic lea d g n i t u o a t Paol d efor m a d st ol a his a hose f the rasing way u s , rikng t not d cou of ver s hem moe pr da i it y—and ib n we own , F fro g n i g a i various his t Pa hap . n e c rance a failngs. y o th Dante) rse, w Polen an T ciple s o h re m h o dif sl when e s ho hrou one sympath lo ow cu pron e m o nt. d ig readin so d , ens, e but ernt F t evil’s F ht rent have sca perhas o n by ra o ta row sh A rance of ghout l shad f th y ncesa, ounce t t he e h f o Gustave o it palino “ e a Dante d ought was contra a g nd is p i h s r o w convit ef if a y, fal be nd t discover to e h c y s p e h fe a nd es sca also the ect. bout as l her st rent en d hap her m an a de r e n n i s e Pao ’s D . failn paso of selr arie d wel ndure bit o Comedia, victm silenty Th alr poe th ré is lover Lancelot mo a ines, e s l a f e lo ns. of n a h t s, ed e a gs. d L he s —the ming. ms de, u becam ,” result guilt—ha if sort to stfu in their se i t i l a n o s r e p to to in not might, He , s d o g .s r e h t o wep from Paol’s in on l it the sin acor of sin stand and If sp th the e betrayl). her e Dante literay Da e sen and failng ends ing the lovers, b since, of worst - t u nte , h lust. e to ro f is

© Clipart.com in the early, higher rounds of Hell he regards with wither - ing contempt, and to some whom he meets much later, and much farther down, he shows real respect and regard. Some have seen this disparity as Dante’s encoding of his own moral education:

where he sympa - m o c . t r thizes, he is wrong. a p i l C

But I am more © inclined to think that Ciacco and the Gluttons Dante has two (or by Gustave Doré more) scales of eval - uation. Sinfulness is, by definition, diminishing and damaging, but not in all ways and on all fronts. Different moral toxins attack different aspects of the psyche. It is possible, for instance, to be a good speaker and a bad person, lustful and honest, avaricious and brave, and so on. Hence, though he thinks of gluttony as relatively mild as deadly sins go, he also finds it contemptible in a way that lust is not. Thus, when he encounters Ciacco (or “Hog”) wallowing in the muck, Dante observes that if any penalty “is greater, none is so loathsome” (6.47-48). As I suggested above, Dante has special loathing for financial sins. In Dante’s eyes, it is avarice rather than lust that is the devil’s glittering loss leader. The avaricious (and the squanderers), earthbound souls that they are, push heavy weights like Sisyphus—burdened with cares that are never rec - onciled. Dante thinks of their avarice, like the moral cowardice of the neutrals, as intrinsically depersonalizing (as lust and even gluttony are not), and hence he names no names. A Noticeable Break Dante makes use of the circle of avarice, however, to detoxify another tradi - tional figure, the figure of Fortune. In the Middle Ages, where you found your - self in the hierarchy was ordinarily where you were born—and where you remained. Thus the medieval fascination with Fortune—one’s fate was simply beyond one’s control. And because most fates were limiting and frustrating, Fortune was supplicated—and feared. Dante believed that the heavens were moved, sphere by planetary sphere, by angelic intelligences. The pagan gods and goddesses (Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and the rest) were not illusions and were, to Dante, not demonic. They were misapprehended angels whose charge it was to govern their spheres in service of divine providence. And the angelic governor of Earth, the “tutleary intelligence,” to use the technical term, was none other than Fortune, whose

23 charge it was to make sure that wealth and favor never rested too long in the same place. Dante moves from the circle of avarice to the river Styx, which, in a depar - ture from the traditional pattern, seems devoted not to sloth, which is the next of the deadly sins, but rather to the mode of anger that is a loss of control rather than a settled conviction. And he devotes particular attention to those whose anger is directed not toward others, but in some sense toward them - selves, the people who, in a contemporary context, are in a permanent bad mood, and who feel that somehow the world has been arranged to cause them the most trouble possible. At the conclusion of canto 7, there seems to be a break in the composition— at this point, it has been argued, came Dante’s exile. Some would support this, and perhaps more would not, but all would agree that after this point Dante seems to have reconceptualized what he was about. R U O m o F c . t r a E p i l R C © U

T The Avaricious C

E by Gustave Doré L

24 FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING

Questions

1. What does Dante mean by characterizing those in Hell as having “lost the good of intellect”? 2. How does Dante alter the traditional doctrine of Limbo for his own thematic purposes? 3. What particular grounds does Dante have for sympathy with Francesca?

Suggested Reading

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 1: Inferno . Trans. and comment by John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

25 Lecture 5: The City of Dis

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is John D. Sinclair’s The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 1: Inferno .

Inferno 8–17 After canto 7, Dante appears to depart from the relatively simple scheme, based upon the seven deadly sins, that he fol - lowed in the preceding cantos. Dante describes his voyage across the Styx, where he is accused as a “guilty soul,” or an “anima fella ” (8.18)—just as in his earthly life Dante had been exiled on the charge of graft. On the way across, he encoun - ters—and denounces—an angry shade named Filippo Argenti, who was, according to Boccaccio, “more contemptu - ous, foul-tempered, and touchy than any other citizen of m o c . t Florence.” Then he and Virgil r a p i l arrive outside the City of Dis, C © where the presiding fallen Filippo Argenti and the River Styx angels refuse to let them pass. by Gustave Doré Virgil, for all his eloquence, is unable to persuade them, and Dante finds him - self filled with doubt—does Virgil in fact know the way? Will they ever escape? This is where Dante departs from the pattern he has employed thus far. What we would expect to find here is a circle devoted to sloth. Or, indeed, to anger, because traditionally sloth appears between avarice and anger. What we find instead is heresy. Heresy Dante seems to think of heresy as characterized by two propositions: first, that there is no God, and second, that there is no afterlife. What is most note - worthy about the situation, though, is that Virgil is unable to help Dante here. Indeed, as they stand outside the walls, the Furies threaten that should E

V Medusa appear, Dante will be turned to stone and will be confined to Hell I F forever. Virgil turns him away and covers Dante’s eyes with his own hands, E

R but Virgil can do no more to protect him. U T

C What Dante here suggests, I think, is that reason in and of itself is unable E

L to prove the existence either of God or of the afterlife. And beyond that, he 26 seems to suggest that he himself has been seriously, all but fatally, afflicted by such doubts, perhaps in response to his misfortunes. Medusa, in this con - text, would represent despair—in effect the refusal of grace—and perhaps the suicide that might well be the result of despair. Virgil’s only recourse is to turn Dante the other way, to advise him to stop thinking about such ques - tions. The only way past the walls of Dis is grace, which Dante represents by the appearance of an angel, who effortlessly opens the way within. A Relatively Noble False God Once within, Dante proceeds in a way that we would not expect. The first person he meets in the realm of heresy—where the sinners are punished with fire—is the great Ghibelline leader Farinata degli Uberti, Florentine victor with the Sienese at the battle of Montaperti in 1260. The Ghibellines, as parti - sans of the empire and often enemies of the papacy, were often characterized as irreligious by their Guelf rivals, and in some cases, the charge was true. It was evidently true of Farinata. But even so, Dante respects him. And he revealingly characterizes Farinata as a “ magnanimo, ” (10.73), like Virgil him - self, a “great soul” and an exemplar of pagan virtue. Dante says that he holds himself “as if he had great scorn of Hell” (10.36), and this too is revealing. People resort to torture for two reasons. The first is to extort information from the unwilling. The second is not just pain and humiliation; it is the public destruction of personality. It seeks not just to destroy the body, but to destroy the soul. With Farinata, it most conspicuously doesn’t work. He quite literally rises above the flames. His per - sonality is intact. That is how we know that he is a magnanimo — and a worshipper, like Francesca, of a relatively noble “false god.” For Farinata’s god was Florence and his vision of the political good. After the victory of Montaperti, most of Farinata’s allies wanted to destroy Florence herself. As he proudly tells Dante, he alone refused—and carried the day. And that is why Dante so honors him. The Violent In the next canto, Dante pauses to make clear the conceptual structure that the division at the City of Dis implies. Above Dis lie the incontinent, those who gave way to their desires. Below are,

first, the violent, and next, those m o c . t r who practice treachery or fraud, a p i l C

who make use of intellect as a © weapon. Dante’s conception of vio - Farinata the Heretic lence, however, is wider-ranging by Gustave Doré than our own. As he descends, he 27 first encounters those who have been violent against others, immersed in the fiery stream of Phlegethon, which represents their own “hot-blooded” deeds. Their guardians are centaurs—half-human and half-horse, betokening the inhumanity, the “bestiality,” of violence. Next are those who are violent against themselves: suicides, and surprisingly, those who dissipate the family goods. The suicides have become trees (Dante here reconfigures an incident from the Aeneid) . Virgil instructs him to break off a branch, and from the wound speaks a soul identified as Piero delle Vigne, falsely accused of treason, who killed himself, supposedly by beating out his brains against the prison walls as he awaited execution. As in speaking with Francesca, Dante is overcome with pity. In the same realm, he encounters the spendthrifts—torn to pieces by infernal hounds. Their grisly fate is testimony to Dante’s high regard for family, for in deliberately squandering their families’ resources, they undermine not just themselves, but those whose welfare depends upon them. The third round devoted to the violent houses those who were violent against God. Violence against God, like heresy, finds its symbolic answer in fire. The third round is, in effect, a desert upon which flakes of fire rain. Blasphemers lie prone and immobile. With the limited resources available to them, they have attacked God as they could, in words. Dante also conceives of violence “against nature” as violence against God, and under this rubric we find the “sodomites,” homosexual practitioners of anal intercourse. Medieval church teaching was, from a contemporary perspective, markedly “homophobic,” but Dante’s own attitudes were significantly less harsh, as his reaction to the “sodomites” reveals. E V I m o F c . t r a E p i l C R © U

T Wood of Suicides C

E by Gustave Doré L

28 Dante’s father died when Dante was in his teens, and one of his mentors during this period and afterward—here confined—was the Guelf worthy Brunetto Latini. It was Brunetto, as Dante claims, who taught him “how man makes himself immortal” (15.85)—through literary fame . And Dante certainly yearned for fame himself. It is, in that sense, yet another appealing false god. In the Inferno , the Purgatorio , and the Paradiso alike, Dante is at pains to make the center of the cantica thematically appropriate and significant. At the center of the Inferno , canto 17, Dante and Virgil encounter the monster Geryon, on whose back they must traverse the vast gap separating the sins of violence and those of fraud. Geryon himself is a symbolic representation of fraud. His face is that “of a just man,” but he bears a scorpionlike pointed tail (17.1, 10, 28). And as Geryon spirals down through the dark abyss separat - ing fraud and violence, Dante and Virgil on his back, Dante evokes in tactile terms the nullity and emptiness of evil. It is at heart a nothingness, a void— and that is just what we find at the very center of the Inferno . Just before their flight into the abyss and the realm of fraud, Dante encoun - ters the last of the “violent” sinners, those who offend against “art”—a natural and appropriate human activity in accordance with nature and with God. And here he meets the usurers, by which Dante means not those who charge an extortionate interest for loans, but those who charge any interest at all. Dante’s manifest antagonism to usury so defined is theologically in accor - dance with much then-contemporary Christian teaching, but it is a bit surpris - ing all the same. Beatrice herself, after all, was a banker’s daughter, and Florence in Dante’s day was already well on its way to becoming a first-mag - nitude financial center. To Dante, though, usury lies on the very edge of fraud itself—and someone deep in debt and financially crippled by interest pay - ments may well think he was closer to the mark than at first we might expect. m o c . t r a p i l C © Brunetto Latini and the Blasphemers by Gustave Doré

29 LECTURE FIVE 3 0 3 Al 2 1 Sugest Question . . . ig Tr Pr hi W he W Wh hie m a e ha ha n e s, a se ri s. nco t t t , i d do lf s Da and 1 oes “im unte 971 th es d nte. e m Re com Dan Dan . iro rs or The ading ny tal”? in te te en He in F m a Divn OR dm t Bru ea l by a n ire fter GR net e Joh by C in E the o o “he n Far ATE medy L D. atin’s resy”? City in Sinclar. R at of UN of h degli Dante In Dis aving DERSTANIG what New be Uberti? Aligher. shown conside sen Yor k : Dante can Oxford red Vo l. evryon hertical? 1: ho Un Infe w iversty to rno make whom . Lecture 6: Malebolge

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is John D. Sinclair’s The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 1: Inferno .

Inferno 18–26 After his descent through the abyss at the center of the Inferno, on the back of the mon - strous Geryon, Dante finds him - self in the land of fraud— “Malebolge,” the “evil pockets,” or the “bad bags,” as Dante calls it. The fundamental image here is confinement. Malebolge consists of a series of concen - tric rings, each in effect a circu - lar ditch, and each lower and smaller than those before. Over the ditches stand arching bridges, by means of which Dante and Virgil descend. Sinners are confined in the vari - ous rounds as they were con - m o c . t r

fined in life by their failings, and a p i l C

Malebolge, seen from above, is © a kind of antitype of the cos - The Geryon and the Descent to Malebolge mos, of the nested celestial by Gustave Doré spheres that make up Dante’s heavens. On that very account, it is an antitype of the divine logos as well, because the cosmos for Dante is itself a reflection of the divine mind. Here, too, Dante devotes varying degrees of both sympathy and attention to the sinners he encounters. The first realm of the fraudulent that he encoun - ters is that devoted to panders and seducers, whipped in opposite directions around their circular track in a motion that presages the final purgation of lust in the last circle of the Purgatorio. He then encounters the flatterers, mired and encrusted all but beyond recognition in the physical analogue of their specious words—human manure or “merda” (18.116). Simony The first two rounds of Malebolge bear a certain analogy to the first two cir - cles of Hell proper, the panders and seducers corresponding to the lustful, and the flatterers to the gluttons, in the shape of their punishment if not of their offense. And Dante continues the pattern in the third of the bolgia , that devoted to “simony,” a kind of ecclesiastical avarice. In Dante’s Italy, simony

31 LECTURE SIX 3 2 ti a tu Co sio m wh r se n a p Da wa e se 5 Da p a h c r r o c I sim le d s u g a M g n i e e s b e v i r e d t s e d w i s t e l p i c n i r p s a t se t t l c t t p u r i g l t d n a f o , y t z i r o e h e h m e h e h e h o ed Da As n ut at fte op nt 3) ow ur s a y n o m s m i a g s u o en a c i f , s n a e m e, emi e es v a h n n e n ys n c e s y r e v h l ion h empti ni on r e n y u b A o l p m e o p s e , n o i H sta ” re te, te n s e he c u r l wh t en rone c e s e f i r i an r e t wh ng te a fe s o p a i s e l c th o e th t t a n ai in . f o s e o e h l i f Bon a , d e ti n nt t o n , g d n a a d e e t , O e v i t g n i at con cs, o en to ra c. a l u r f e h e c i f d e n bap o m i S oil, o c Hel. o a , ly a m a n o in d n d in asto s e l t st t n Catho fe o f n e s o p he n a the n ter n. do m y n i Nicho n i tub A stru r a s n m e,” d if in d and c A he . d r ye wed d clu c i t s m a V g n i , s a p o s u t i t s tism, ace’s cor e r c eni a c i t i l h T t, wn n e s d n Nichola , e h t y l m irgl f r nd r e d i e w o n e m i a r i nishg Rom a n On t es, , s t ol a e o an n a des move t r me al th th s l a r o an a i n o m i s e s d .r o g i v s t e f f a t lic ged h t “ ward yl e s n e m t s u o l u c g n i l l e s las a z i l a n o i t d e r ding t e f o an s t c abo f d e r e h w e hey l f o t at win t s r i t f a r g on e l th s r ear th a oth ntal . m r e f o s r suce e e, pi h s d r o l r e v o la d e to re with o m a o r b a D r o g i r e at ba alr o s his n i e d upsid o f yman c i g a M a p a p s alm ve s, r i e h t o t g er ly wh a u t i r i p t pe s n i e mo t kic he o t lev h in e t n p e r r ptism o knows ead t -me s t i ntr a te with e h a c is o b ro s k r o w a side, le e p y l d nig h om yl s u o o m i S d n th so c n a t t i th f me y u rms: n o i t b of fl e livng im vel, ances t ring e l c l , c r m e e s e r y l, and n o s r o r t i w h g i e , n a i dieval e il e apitl ude ni f a r to in t s o c l the r Nicholas f nt, e “Donat Dan and a of mo r e ,e the h he - ,l l i Pop n ndur fo ing wher d and th vents consig .t r “Stan fo ” - la writhe. - ht Boniface fire not from e s to te do mista from denu forg e e es in whic ra arth, turns io least Clem dest tha he r t the n,” ther su ery knows heolg t kes One Rome withn o gest ciat is the the thou bro an sp in ho ent the tha lok than h Dan ir t ion y les, of ead he ught first sha ica itual is V tab his po to in the the a te of is of on tha sher ly a sib Byzantiu de le Da b Christan d, ficton re re abo h life for wate the s it con que his ead nte’s of a on aflme like simon alred ilty . nd b Po ut so tem demn y T Po way. stionab r h Bonifa Gu a Dan pe baptism of n e tha -caled pe day m, ot Si erity livng sta as y y, emp rep Bo m t as T is o te’s ve Nic h ext on Bon d his wel. nly was enc ce, le niface a D if i t siner ero st ntace hat holas and “Donati ingushe or al terms, sort own coverd is tha, iface?” who é taken r, The forwad fonts. in alows , reign Consta of s condem curently many I he was, an acost pun he “in ca as (19 T kn with d ver spir heir o not to ish f ows .52- - - - i - -

© Clipart.com be known as “Constantinople,” left political hegemony in the West to the Church in the person of Pope Sylvester, thus providing, in Dante’s view, a sort of imperial authorization of simony with disastrous political results. The Barrators Dante next moves to the realm of for - tune-tellers—whom he finds with their heads inverted, fac - ing backwards, the idea being that as they once sought to foresee the future, now they can see only behind. Following that, Dante encounters the bar - rators, or those guilty m o of political graft—the c . t r a p i very charge upon l C which Dante himself © The Barrator was condemned. by Gustave Doré Dante exemplifies in his works pretty much every possible form of literary excellence—with the possible exception of humor. But these two cantos have a bit of the tenor of farce. The barrators suffer, submerged and invisible, beneath a bolgia-round lake of boiling pitch that Dante compares with the giant vats to be found at the arsenal in Venice, where each winter the Venetians recaulked their gal - leys. Wily souls that they are, the barrators seek to escape their torments to the extent that they can, and to keep them where they belong—in the pitch— contingents of devils wander the banks, ready to hook any sinners they can catch for further torment and amusement. They are eager to have at Dante, and he is very frightened, at one point hiding behind a rock at Virgil’s direc - tion, while Virgil himself goes to negotiate with the leader of the devil-crew to secure a safe passage. The logic of the contrapasso is clear enough: the “sticky-fingered” barrators, by necessity, kept their corruption out of sight, and now they are submerged in sticky pitch. And the presiding devils threaten Dante as he was in fact threatened in life—while Dante in his turn characterizes his accusers in glee - fully mocking demonic terms, as something not far from malicious buffoons, for all their bluster and ill-will. Like dogs on a chain, they threaten and growl without really doing very much damage. Dante and Virgil make their escape, toward a bridge to the next bolgia, which the devils tell them lies ready. But the devils are liars, the bridge has collapsed, and as they set off in pursuit, Virgil gathers up Dante like a mother would her child, and slides down with him into the circle below—the circle of hypocrites.

33 LECTURE SIX 3 4 t , e r e h sto e t a r e b i l e d h su ve so is in n o b Hy sil l a w d a e t p m e t A Th e h T In er at ne ack t a h c e at gest nom rs, t po r he .l w a r u e nt th ie y c re a pa t n a t i w su ves e in t y h o Ovi cr g n i n n i h y e h f f u oth an or to se i g it h ns o p us o Ede le t tha d e h t — n i e ro f o t d vent them y l 2 est er, ake s, st r c s a h sn 6 se e e t h t nd n er g i f s e t i e l , an imag Th th in akes. e h h t lf h e b a , m wha u selv. b e ho d L y d iev o a bo “ e r to etw ucan y l w o l s e s l a f mo s t u o , h g u awe, the e p a inab h lgia, t f o d n co d—an es, ideo His is e l p o st first mp s e s s y l U e d i h t le in n no o g s a te Th for a t us p f e hat nd g w o l l o are rible violatn p t o ” . s d d t s a a ey an e w ra “ t articul in the d n parod he t h g i e w then Fa ce devo t d , y a r his exchang e is ir , a D e d i s n i thievs m lse and e h t r e t n s, a a D to ost nd work reg y , e t n h t ted by a r, ” r i The of e t n Coun higlt of nd e lastin f o h t joy Gu aing in n u o r d self. d e n o t to inte ange t a e e H to r i e h t her st n e r e f f i are the ypo a sh a i g l o b ave t a e l hi selo g nd t d t n u o c rcouse he ir cri apes, evs, tra h c rous o r d them t s D t s d t a te f damn his hey or wo p e c e y l g n i k i r e e g n a counts rs nsform me s t i c i l p m i é s s r e f o s rk poet of , joing d e tamor the lose s l a f o an n o i t s o serpn t a h w nly tion, f n i h s d . ed ic at h e , y l T t of b is heir to s w o l s n e d l o g mo phose y l p r a exp e h r o l e s n u o c irth, in with broug f i t n e d i s i meta clasi lose to ts. spher e t i r c o p y h o r p very rtise, se losing c n o and m e h t them y l b a b ht c s e i rpe is s k a o l orphse se e abou tha , s tur but is nts, pr n i a g a e s m i h lves. human o t e s o h t o s one nig edcs t nce e h also l l a a h t whic e r a t then in Dante . ts o m of f l tu b t into ro F agin and the to n er a oh w to ht i w - he

© Clipart.com Ulysses’ failings, so we are alerted before we even encounter Ulysses that Dante here addresses matters that he takes very seriously indeed. According to Virgil, Ulysses finds himself in Hell because of various decep - tions practiced in the course of the Trojan War, but what he talks about instead is where “he went to die” (26.84). According to Dante, after his return to Ithaca, Ulysses grew bored. None of the satisfactions of home, not even his love for Penelope, he says, could conquer within him his passion “to gain experience of the world and of the vices and the worth of men” (26.98–99). And so he sets out to sea, heading westward through the Straits of Gibralter to parts absolutely unknown. In Homer, Odysseus returns to Ithaca having lost all of his companions. In Dante, he has a few remaining, and these he encourages to continue the voyage in the following terms: “You were not born to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge” (26.119-120). For five months, they sail, bearing southwest, crossing the equator, seeing new stars, until finally they come within sight of Purgatory itself—in a sense, the sum of earthly striving. But you cannot attain Purgatory without grace—and God calls up a storm and sinks Ulysses’ ship. Ulysses, meanwhile, had gone as far as unaided human effort and aspiration could take him. Ulysses is punished for false counsel, but what seems to be most at issue is the possible danger of intellectual curiosity—in Dante’s eyes, evidently, the most enticing and seductive of false gods. Ulysses made it farther under his own power than anyone else—to within sight of Purgatory. But even so, he resides in Hell. Commitment to virtue and knowledge, however admirable, is for Dante not finally enough. m o c . t r a p i l C ©

Thieves by Gustave Doré

35 LECTURE SIX 3 6 2 Al 1 Sugest Question . . ig Pr Tr a W Wh hie a si e ha n s, y n ri s. t ? doe , i s Da and 1 971 simo d s nte. Da Re com . ny nte The ading an en se F d Divn OR t why m by GR e to Joh does C id E o n entify, ATE medy D. Dante Sinclar. R of at UN Dante least con DERSTANIG sider New to Aligher. some it Yor to k be : degr Oxford Vo so e, l. very 1: with Un Infe har iversty rno Ulyse? mful . Lecture 7: Cocytus and Satan

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is John D. Sinclair’s The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 1: Inferno .

Inferno 27–34 In canto 27, Dante illustrates two of his leading concerns: the importance of individual repentance and the corruption of the papacy in general (and Boniface in particular). He tells the story of Guido da Montefeltro, a wily Ghibelline leader who late in life renounced earthly cares and became a Franciscan. While Guido is in retirement, Pope Boniface approaches him for political advice on how to take the Palestrina, the stronghold of the Col-onna family, bitter rivals of Boniface in Rome. Guido hesitates, but Boniface reminds him that as pope, he has the power “to lock and to unlock Heaven” (27.103). Therefore Guido need not fear; if he should sin, he is absolved in advance. Or so Boniface assures him. When Guido dies, however, he finds otherwise. St. Francis comes to whisk him to Heaven, but so too does “one of the black cherubim” (113). And it is the black cherub who takes him, saying that “he cannot be absolved who repents not, nor can there be repenting and willing at once, for the contradic - tion does not permit it” (118-20). These last are to me probably the most chilling lines in the Commedia, for how many times have all believers simul - taneously sinned and asked for forgiveness? But Dante has another point to make as well. Boniface is deceived as well as a deceiver. He does not, in fact, hold the “keys to the kingdom” in quite the sense in which he believes. Absolution avails only the repentant—otherwise, so Dante suggests, even papal indulgence is utterly void. Through to Cocytus Dante next encounters the “makers of discord,” Muhammad and Ali promi - nent among them. Dante is at pains to assure us that virtually all of the wor - thies of the Hebrew Bible have been saved, and he places three famous Muslims in Limbo, but in accordance with the ideas of his time, he regards Muhammad and Ali as apostates. As makers of discord, they are accordingly mutilated, walking slowly through their round, and healing all the while, until they are mutilated once again. Dante imagines Ali and Muhammad to have sown discord within the fabric of Christendom itself (and indeed, the rise of Islam swept away three of the five most prominent Christian sees). The tenth and final bolgia is devoted to the impersonators, the counterfeit - ers, and the alchemists, those who make things, even themselves, appear to be what they are not. The most prominent figure is the notorious Gianni Schicchi, who had been hired by the nephew of the newly dead Buoso Donati to impersonate his uncle on his death-bed, there to dictate a will entirely in

37 LECTURE SEVEN 3 8 re s Co re p m a co sin b r a wi sto e th th g a ta cla On to lo o p th Ju b b a in is u a Bo cit wh wh b a “ th b o th Ev As Da He ick oi s ei nd d, no ia fte oi o et re le nd e nd eq ca un e e ke w e e alm pe th y, di mu deca, l e o cy g si o e a n n r n son n d r t il ers, on y n t k n ue n r Tow if revo wo nep n ay t k vid l l se n te he t g ts n t e i he h t a titiv e me re lad e t an ty te es he tus in he en o o t o cal n e b a of r, in a to e o of ath f to p ach ag rld f f p f o r, ed the nce ui n ra d l i n a s, Da y he l an ie e, s er em us t er eav Dante hum post- l t han tho Ma l l Ge los fa ho icaton ang p t lt i in be an i a he ud, P ta —wh ainst s ce. of ed s wit po nam di son, pr of ir w’s into sto in ero Dante dead ct nte de otiph of ies. at not le u Hel—no he cabe with se d ne min d, oach g the a cou sib is h gh, uag an the t he mosp but Evil s fen Home n o de o B us of lp o clasi si. f ed ’s a is o who ish f four t Dan the avor a and Ma abe hinkg ishme . f T him , ed ar ntr p vote com stud. a could the lo le, tur e sive be re mo In im the ower a and bur rea es re en is afte es in ’s gainst s so le spo y, her bel god l te t tra n self ag sump such re . gly ric have a he o no coun ral bo in wife Cocyt lm revo ned d mon ter rt But an nd rea ” pa ou of towe cold. alms: r nt, is pe e. s y n’t. e nce ken nbe to a lg tr Ge s, o Ju liter d d m, of o Buos’ a ar the rty t in ng t o aditon f t l rsua , e eath, hinkg f un hat lt n beca te Schi a tio th tr to wh a f is da id h la te He wh e nesi—a f Nimro alogue rs us, ing , els. aitors, an usel by ir an o civ uman al-mind rs T eir co io special bridgeable ngua n le o e Cain, be de thus e, f s, ich hat re o is for de r mpire d cy ; th ntex— r G only ct, use “idolect” Da eward relativs. numbly voted ca is but it slan O giant e th e rifoln to was was strife in the is d thems nters is prized n of a use. devot nte e t com tho hen to e, a could he a ed why the a sig der nam for claim Dante the and nd s. Troja a - se to se tha told - and n Pt Cocyt traio ed those po of d ed o lves who Chr olmea Ante not f o ns Jo to seion, Albe Arezo, be enco hum civ w n after ist seph us, hat to leav t t in set ar to hose heir who . ora, ro orles e ta whic unter discor. Tr t he Cain, is he t n ke he da in fidelty oy, ot bet damn it named who name t l akes th t ast a Italy s at only Sien he man, is to ray Mu e is Sino fine th b betray devot Tr realm la h ed W h y d d a at a, o a to old fr th ter evot G ojan nd m after h a f brod n aud tha ust eir as a at fter wh ma his be fro nd chap out r ave egard. d he o a God’s g o d Hor towers. d m times, f Ptolmy he Anteor, Ma n ue lent, also must to the aginst mare D to takes alchemist the ters n or st. se could g th those é l ed Infer but ose Cocytus or withn Aenid famile have of And caled In der to in fraud who fly, the the no who th who be the for e ir the s , -

© Clipart.com solipsism, and silence. It is a hairsbreadth from utter nonentity. Milton’s Satan is, some have suggested, the real hero of Paradise Lost. Dante’s Satan is a drooling, inarticulate nonentity. The Center of Hell Dante and Virgil make their cold way through Caina, and then to Antenora, where, in a sense, the Inferno reaches its grim climax. Dante m o c . encounters two shades t r a p i l frozen together, back to C front in the ice, one gnaw - © Traitors in the Cocytus ing at the brainstem of the by Gustave Doré other. Dante asks him why he does so, and wiping his mouth on the hair of the head that moments before had formed his meal, the fierce shade identifies himself as Count Ugolino, onetime Guelf leader of Pisa. His neighbor and enemy is the Ghibelline Archbishop Ruggieri. Both were hard and unscrupulous men, both on Dante’s account of the matter traitors. Ugolino recounts the cruelty of his death. Bested by Archbishop Ruggieri, Ugolino was imprisoned in a tower with his four sons. After a time, Ruggieri has the door nailed shut and leaves the prisoners to starve. Ugolino’s sons are first to go, one after another, begging their father for his help. He then goes blind, calling to them and fumbling over their corpses. And then, Ugolino says that “fasting had more power than grief” (33.75). It is not entirely certain that Dante means us to imagine that Ugolino ate the bodies of his children. But that certainly seems to be what the passage suggests, and it goes far toward explaining Ugolino’s voracious attack on the mind that imagined this moral torment for him. The center of Hell is a realm of bitter cold and silence—a sort of moral and ontological absolute zero in the face of which even imagination can go no fur - ther. Dante encounters those in Ptolomea, those who have chosen to murder their guests, and finds that after such a deed its perpetrator is snatched off still living to Hell, his body above taken over by a demon. Such treachery as that, we conclude, is instantly and utterly soul-destroying. And then, in the last realm, Judecca, silence—for in Judecca, the most debased shades are wholly immobile and covered in ice, on the very edge of utter nothingness. And then, at last, Satan himself, frozen at the dark center of the cosmos. He has six wings, as a fallen seraph, and three faces, as an antitype or parody of the Trinity. And each mouth chews on a condemned sinner, to Dante the greatest traitors of them all. The two faces on the sides chew on Cassius and Brutus, for Dante the assassins of Caesar—and hence of the empire at its

39 birth. The center face chews on the shade of Judas, the betrayer of Christ. As Paul and Aeneas sought to found Church and empire, Judas, Brutus, and Cassius sought, in effect, to prevent their birth. And then Dante finds himself, before he even realizes what has happened, out of Hell and heading up. As Dante and Virgil approach the very center of Hell, Dante is none too happy to realize that Virgil intends to lead them out by climbing onto the flanks of Satan himself. Dante has no choice but to do like - wise, and shortly afterward is astonished to see Virgil do what appears to be a slow, head-over-heels somersault. Dante does the same. And at that moment, they are out. What was down is up; what was up is down. Dante is puzzled, but Virgil explains. They have passed the center of the earth. They are, quite literally, on the other side of the world; it was evening, it is now Easter morning. On the third day, Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Dante, in effect, rises with him. And, in fact, he does so twice. This is a complicated maneuver on Dante’s part, which once again testifies to the power of his three-dimensional imagination. On the other side of the world, the time is twelve hours different; whether faster or slower is a matter of convention. But Dante chooses to have it both ways—within his poem Dante escapes Hell twice, once here, and once twenty-four hours later when he ascends to the shores of Purgatory “to see again the stars” (34.139). He has, in that sense, two Easters—which correspond to St. Augustine’s notion that so, in fact, do all redeemed sinners, once when they renounce sin and repent and again when they rise to bliss at the end of time. N E V E m S o c . t r E a p i l R C U © T Satan C

E by Gustave Doré L

40 FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING

Questions

1. What steps does Dante take to “deglamorize” evil and Hell? 2. In what sense does the situation of Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggieri exemplify Dante’s conception of the nature of evil?

Suggested Reading

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 1: Inferno . Trans. and comment by John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

41 Lecture 8: The Shore of Purgatory

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is John D. Sinclair’s The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 2: Purgatorio .

Purgatorio 1–9 The Purgatorio , by design, stands in the sharpest possible contrast to the Inferno. For despite the various purgations that the penitents undergo, it is always and unambiguously a realm of joy—in the last analy - sis, at least. For all souls in Purgatory are redeemed. Sooner or later, each and every one of them will take a place in Heaven. Hell’s Waiting Room After the confinement and darkness of the Inferno, Dante and Virgil find themselves on a fresh dawn on an open beach on Easter morning. The sky above is deep blue. Venus shines bright in the east, in the m o

ascendant. Dante sees “four c . t r a p i stars never seen before but by l C the first people” (23-24), by the © unfallen Adam and Eve. In a Sweet Hue of Eastern Sapphire by Gustave Doré purely physical, tactile sense, the contrast is striking, but the scene is loaded as well in an allegorical sense. Venus in the ascendant pre - sides over the configuration in astrological terms—the most beneficent of planets, here explicitly betokening love. The four stars represent the four car - dinal virtues, prudence (or wisdom), fortitude, justice, and self-control (or tem - perance), all perfected in Adam and Eve before the Fall and to be regained in Purgatory. Most striking of all is the sky above, which Dante characterizes as

T bearing the “sweet hue of the oriental sapphire” (13). “Oriental” recalls the

H oriens of the Vulgate, the Latin Bible, referring to the “dayspring from on G I

E high,” which was taken to refer to Christ as the “light of nations.” And “zaffiro,” E or “sapphire,” recalls the sky-blue traditionally associated with Mary, “full of R

U grace.” All told, the image is about as auspicious an image as Dante can T

C make it. E L

42 Background: © Clipart.com/Recorded Books, LLC

43 LECTURE EIGHT 4 4 Un ter s s se Da en s hi be the yo th Ma F Da la a wh lo ba F e p o o is fr th th te su Sa a b p th fi th a th sin in o T An He Da how urp trai n r vid oe ne th el ri mo n re re o ms so b e e e r e e a str he enra lves u d bmi i co yo ttle si s m e i tan n n i s. ts ique o o nfr e mselv r ir t the ved. de nc sk d m las r n answe li e d ng. te phy te ently gh rs. nge to t ri a un r o o en e, elf g un nd hemslv. te f an s Tho p imp sed so ed, h ul ng f ric so C o t ht le o pe f hi t h tfor bo he p ts ro cour Dan the oth in f ver ter to th My l a th and in adi ysical real T on all d. tur far k Bu uls S mse i wha i p o to nite nco pa m s ort se th, re he em to the in Pu se ou a wa urg Caes f II, P m, er y s r, i And ed, n ng expectation, t nd s te be e th ks sit, ag r astr th l urgato who sug a t p ot od to y tisan Cato rga in of nt but afte nou w ming Ca t ls lf. rd. sid m e o ation “ apal at a e his st Dan waitng ed e hi natur ho of stru del f and dly, in t P uch D who B sta ffective ay. he ph we Con to tor s e le re Da gu r gh, ur it t r. ante’s eyon have P est o itse t fata i was troops of ast a of hem ghted, is ilos ry. ctur ady wh te , wo rs ship forces y. gato ur I t es th l, ha nte be Ca so more al” ask an vio ch mu Ca not the the gat lf is r ey om l n’t He find so ep ve gin d ro th e sela d killed woun eerf to . just son t finaly ph ry enc is em up to st o o n th Ou or at om to a me fin it an re o . le sa world. f ext against at just is Dan enco at nd ic t t ove a Dante confe y has soul, th is hat ad heir ully sentig the peror, t phi d find oun d me tside of t, al . o han and as ds, em of in in T t in Cat h sen he te rcome - hose urag work er - Dante’s politca a th - its It d. s h Purgat Ro o a m is as works nat th the has is perso ount the e “an man who to at in not th a ure. m virtu do, te-Purg e mind suicde, entir n f poe ory ai action as o on nal wer Cat in n n Tho ewly e , for es. ly ms i a de xplant t preci o, f self, was ly riend, th the epst D se atory” late On to to as satife ematic ar who ante ir sely in h whic a mu rived t se sin, owevr, he to io the biter Hel Hel, kile by sic. enco th veral n rep a gatek d counte at ntipodal I Gu penit Flor Bru but have me are d Casel op sta Dan C in unters, nt him counts, a enti Dante . tus to ve the the confirmed m Noneth epr, nts te rpa evr self D net u and o to st dispotn very and ré rt b to d fin Jerusalm Ca wait rathe egins this a ebarking to e of Casiu a dorne ncou ds Virgl mo sela, dres les, Hel, Caesr, is to in r what uth to than sur their beg first - both who sin b of - y in g

© Clipart.com Benevento in 1266—the battle that spelled the effective end of Ghibelline hopes in Italy. Not only was he fighting papal forces, he was excommunicated at the time and was suspected of, among other failings, having indulged in incest with his sister—not a likely candidate for salvation. But in his last moments, bleeding from his wounds, as he puts it himself, “I gave myself up with tears to Him who freely pardons; horrible were my sins, but the infinite goodness has arms so wide that it receives whoever turns to it” (3.119-23). But in Dante’s Catholic cosmos, you don’t get off entirely free. Manfred has a long spell in Purgatory ahead of him, and indeed, in ante-Purgatory before he can even start. That being the case, his one request is for prayers on his behalf. For in Dante’s world, intercession, prayers on behalf of oth - ers, is far more effective than prayers on one’s own behalf. Dante is puzzled by the fact that he can’t see the top of Purgatory from the bottom. Virgil pauses to explain. The climb gets easier as you go, and in metaphorical terms, when you first begin the process of purgation, you can’t really and fully know what the result will be when the task is completed. As they discuss these weighty matters, a rather skeptical voice breaks in. It is Belacqua, another Florentine acquaintance, m o c wry and mocking in . t r a p i l

Purgatory as in earthly C life. And this too is good © Ship of Souls news. There is room in by Gustave Doré Purgatory for the ironic and lazy as well as for the zealous and the conspicuously devout. Belacqua repented late. But there he is. Dante’s Hell is full of individuals, concerned with themselves and their own desires, whose individuality, in becoming absolute, is reduced at last to total self-absorption. The redeemed life, on Earth, in Purgatory, and in Heaven alike, is different in all points. It is communal and focused on community—and yet the heavenly community is composed entirely of individuals, human and angelic, each unique.

45 The Valley of the Princes Dante next encounters a group of shades whose sto - ries once again reveal God’s eagerness to accept repen - tants, no matter how flawed. Jacopo del Cassero was cut down in the swamplands of the lower Po Valley by hired thugs and bravos, and he repented with his last breath. So too the unfortunate La Pia, who says simply, in a line of terse pathos, “Siena made me; unmade me Maremma” (5.134), the place where her husband evidently had her killed so he could marry another. m o c . t

Most conspicuous in the r a p i l

group, however, is C © Buonconte da Montefeltro, Buonconte da Montefeltro whose father, seen in the by Gustave Doré bolgia of false counselors, was whisked off by a “black cherub” because the absolution of Boniface did not hold. Fatally wounded while fighting for the Ghibelline side in the battle of Campaldino in 1289, Buonconte stumbled off to die, mouthing with his last breath the name of Mary (5.105). At that point, says Buonconte, “God’s angel took me” (104), frustrating the demon that had come for him—the same con - test, in effect, as occurred at the death of his father, but with an entirely differ - ent result. Though Buonconte was not absolved by Pope Boniface or anyone else, he truly, though belatedly, repented. Dante and Virgil next meet the shade of a north Italian poet, Sordello of Goito. Sordello devotes himself to a longish condemnation of Italian factional - ism and of the refusal of recent emperors to take on their Italian responsibili - ties—a subject dear to Dante’s heart. Among the feuds and factions that he denounces is that between the Montecchi e Cappelletti, better known to English-speaking readers as the Montagues and Capulets immortalized in Romeo and Juliet. In Purgatory, you can’t advance after dark—moral progress requires divine illumination—so as the sun sets, Sordello leads the travelers to the so-called “Valley of the Princes,” and he points out recent rulers who have fallen victim to party strife and been derelict in their duties. But in this place, their differ - T

H ences are reconciled, though those on Earth still suffer the consequences of G I

E their neglect. E

R As Dante and Virgil—and the princes—prepare for the night, a pair of green U

T angels comes to protect them, bearing flaming swords with broken points. C

E Sordello explains that they have come to guard against serpents, and sure L

46 enough, shortly thereafter, a serpent appears. The angels, of course, drive it away. Dante’s references to the story of Eden suggest how this passage is to be interpreted. Aquinas taught that temptation itself was not a sin, though it did often lead to sin. And temptation is what the angels drive away. Redemption, in short, is not only a matter of will and choice; it is a matter of grace. Meanwhile, Dante sees three new stars above him, replacing the four he saw at dawn. These represent the three so-called “theological” virtues—faith, hope, and charity—which are, in traditional teaching, not so much the result of will and discipline as they are the result of blessing and grace. Three Dreams As he sleeps, Dante undergoes the first of his three dreams in Purgatory. In his dream, he is taken up by an eagle, as the beautiful Trojan boy Ganymede was taken up by Zeus (or Jupiter) to become the cup-bearer of the gods. When Dante awakens, he finds himself transported to the entrance of Purgatory proper, and as he slept, so Virgil tells him, Dante’s patron saint, St. Lucy, bore him up to the entryway herself. The implication here seems to be that our conscious awareness and conscious motivations do not always or entirely reflect what may be going on in a deeper and more spiritual sense. The entrance to Purgatory is, in effect, a physical counterpart to the process of penance and repentance. Dante finds before him three steps, the first white and mirrorlike and meant to reflect the first penitential step of contrition or regret; the second dark purple and meant to reflect the difficult act of confession, and the third blood-red and meant to reflect “satis - faction,” both as pur - gation and restitution. The presiding angel then traces seven times the letter “P” on Dante’s brow, repre - senting one of a series of words meaning peccato, or sin—the propensity toward the seven deadly sins that are successively to be purged above. And last, the angel makes use of the two “keys to m o c the kingdom,” the . t r a p i l

golden key of absolu - C tion, or remission of © sins, and the silver key The Eagle by Gustave Doré of counsel.

47 FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING

Questions

1. Why is Cato a surprising figure as gatekeeper of Purgatory? 2. In what sense does Manfred serve as a thematic counterpart and antithe - sis to Pope Celestine in the Inferno ? 3. What is the role of the green angels in the Valley of Princes?

Suggested Reading

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 2: Purgatorio . Trans. and comment by John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. T H G I E E R U T C E L

48 Lecture 9: The Seven Terraces

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is John D. Sinclair’s The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 2: Purgatorio .

Purgatorio 10–26 The overall structure of Purgatory proper, as opposed to ante-Purgatory, is that of a steep, seven-story mountain that narrows progressively as it rises. It is, in this sense, the opposite of Hell. And here Dante follows the traditional pattern, running through the seven deadly sins, terrace by terrace, beginning with the most toxic and ending with the least: pride, envy (or “ invidia ”), anger, sloth (or “ accedia ”), avarice, gluttony, and lust.

Pride and Lust Unlike in the Inferno, where Dante is at pains to let us know that he is not damned, Dante here is a penitent too, as all of us save Mary and Christ must be. As Dante ascends to the terrace of pride, the first thing he sees is a series of spectacular bas-reliefs inscribed with divine artistry. “Ecphrasis,” the tradition of description of significant artifacts, has a venerable history in the epic, beginning with Homer’s careful description of the fabulous shield of Achilles. Virgil takes similar care in describing the shield of Aeneas, which depicts Augustus’s triumph at the battle of Actium against Antony and Cleopatra. Dante, never one to refuse a poetic challenge, claims that the bas-reliefs here are more amazing still. The penance undergone by the shades to be found on the terrace of pride is to carry weights so heavy that they are all but bent double to the ground—the weight of their self-esteem, most like - ly. To talk with them Dante is forced, so to speak, to “assume the position,” symbolically sharing in their penance, and he after - wards freely confesses to his own pride. m o c .

Theological pride means, t r a p i l essentially, not “thy will be C done,” but “my will be © The Prideful done”—preferring what you by Gustave Doré want to what God wants. 49 LECTURE NINE 5 0 to p lo im sio Pu b th m e th im h “ e o o th b a m wi o se o It “ Co Env e li No se p th a ju g n ce in A evi i As En Th As Bu g ar ol n nvy er d al f th ro ti rd f ra ai nd oi at nd ve st or e al e e a sh h p p ve nse emi ive th vida th o e r n med t i ian n n ir e t o to al e ad i sed c gat t. e orta l l i vy, t nari li the il nvy. al ica , ce— y fo th th th eo ti g rs r, e as i ing i ey of g l t D le ey n are te s ng, f re H a th th ly, i n u ht r at a e e pu is b v t. or ant o (a nd t log i l , have rs. t th is ,” a rm i g n h nd em y e p ntly, oid l t Oder li io e n rio, a y ce he t th nd One ,” n ctions ha e nvy, o d En s re nd it rg taking o at ia pun ilust l nd is pen so n o o t ea e s, dne think f esir har e cal his nte atic and sewn me m wn sent ation ha Ch ld rd th th is f vy, s in a m is Da . Latin ir ot ve oclud Dan o co ost is e s ished it at e B mf st ve no o a isfor rpiec f s, th ans rat ter ari to nse sen her som also enc pr nte f a ut cen nd unt cha the or sun a th o himself pleasu lay at tim a we ul tion the e id or for ms, so se s te sh f ty who ) e shu m ntire sor to tun ’s en six erw f e il-w it il-w sin. e a te ter rita ar e, , met e ing pe cone ut. of by , is ver te or discov his pro fo , is in discu rm o str so u give vy of pri de th t le ting es piec r e is Dan m nite “a in f se m ble rms ly of Th ha re y p We sym ace g —is hing rt at on th , ig the ud or once “ as l anuscr ur r ra th grea ne or ne a ela s h ving t e o e in rned bu e de g he te nd ge er e ce. out t f a ts soul is tha - ar - g of of to t t p sire - - simultan d, pa t the was ef roces to pr the be d with ipt rt and faced.” prid esir id the as whom fir of found e, b Purgat to st e oks. pride one sinf any hear Da ilum of eously e and for ven ul. nte becom Dante in oth e of excln ori t as Oder inatg, w o the Dan fuler the f o o f els w confes r rst —and th sin e ter in enco is te e let of woul g expr clasi unpr race atribue tels you as in sin s. by rs unter i .” n po Th Giot d Gu ecd s So “ can a Da devot sio P” be e etry—h to sta sen En methin s nte on s more pride, ve Grek nam e n. vi is to has ntedly se, o Do his u Od tha d s O r to e g é of de incled be eris, . forehad a e best Tha t very he the nd th thic ris fre come e is in sh an pu the the clo is of un his rgation and to ilum to why , are se re der claim is con is. to te - - , -

© Clipart.com at the very center of the Inferno. As evil is at last the antithesis of being, so the redeemed life is at last love. Dante’s word for generative, endlessly compounding love is “ caritate ,” or “charity,” the Italian version of the Latin “ caritas ,” which in its turn reflects the Greek agape of the Christian Bible. This is the antidote to envy and the keynote of the redeemed life in all its realms and guises. On one hand, we think of charity as financial generosity, and on the other, we are sometimes told about charity as “selfless, self-sacrificing love.” But charity can also mean something more like kindness, geniality, and goodwill. That, I think, is what Dante has in mind. Anger Dante then enters the realm where anger is purged, and for Dante, anger can block out the light of grace and love. The penitents of anger are purged with smoke, which chokes and blinds them as anger did in life. Here, as on the terrace of pride, Dante suffers along with the penitents, and his fierce denunciations of the ills of his age, justified as he feels those denunciations to be, do much to suggest why this must be so. Sloth and the Avaricious Dante and Virgil then move to sloth, about which Dante has rela - tively little to say. The penitents in slothland find themselves on what amounts to a purgatorial run - ning track, and as they speed by, Dante is able to speak with them only briefly. The negative examples that Dante chooses to illustrate the m o c . t potential costs of r a p i l sloth, though, sug - C © gest that he takes The Avaricious the failing a bit by Gustave Doré more seriously than his treatment might otherwise suggest. He cites in the first instance the Israelites in the wilderness who did not attain the Promised Land. And in the second, he alludes to those Trojans with Aeneas who chose not to accompa - ny him to Italy, and, as it were, the pre-founding of Rome.

51 LECTURE NINE 5 2 scie A h su wa wo h Da h fi r o m r m cla d d “ th o b Gl cia g Sta s e e s so l v o b a e t a th lu in n s k o o e s o h o ep swe Vi Th Lu Ne Da Th N Da To n im o et ver iscove evot gn ea re d ose nd p g omen an e e d ade ds ut on g i ll” uld nte rg i l a e the s i m l ed ms ti st en, e se of d ies i ri xt n n poe “ nce he his zab t h co rosexu ne to us, Gl i il a t ” e (2 ng te te t , ( . t th a ed e t , t 27 lf t w is a h w hat i o or h is makes ny V i me. e c n h or n r s f 0 bi t bu . n ne w to re o w t l , s l l a t en th ” ry ( o hat ave ast dlesn le l i oug g r i be wh .10 whic walk 9 1 He .35-3 . th m, e to rt nonpl in ia who ith ( t so o e en t cirles , he 27. w T Da ve a coun to h o a m e , aut l i onishm be 5 . save o al, u f nd T he whic in unr th ), f “I b a h cast is, p of style” Dan ry a te e he m im his nte ) 9 20- e ut h y l l r t t en raise wh cause 6). n o a d n exc a l p x wrot Dan if i th ar ussed: r as e t avr esr oun Lu C he , bit n m e h t — t ul ter agine c a o Da s. throug ace ter t i m b u s ’s e a 3) t ich h ch te a by of myse th Th e c n o hines be st o t fru e v i t pu rist. s dvan Da as s n i te d e ot en , (57 h ts ra nte lsi ne e ar f ico ved se , ictae th t s r i en, Bo . claimng vo or en her th t it. o of ce aco a t, nte te to ha e r u l l a e ove f em th “L ). ro h t nd e s o l c e who A ice h. cter lf us na resp De a g a r The Dante ce lust—for its co lu t t a n u an e pr th o t rd t a ook of Th can no into ace soul, th , reva s s giunta . stfu rcomin Vir ma e l rding aise o nfie it to eq d istc ie at e h t , as t a h w lust is to n i t. with ,” ond p ter wh f o zone is only gil now, , p u ualy boilin t pr t c a r ter witho enit tha is, l o wit e t n a D he lid imp he .m fe Dante mo time vercam race t of en one is p d in s, e h me to ates els h in of e h t oetic a g Dan tera , e v i feared mildy, o th ly, a Be vin such go “And d n tha my whic g love cu Dant n ut it et c - o s th Lu en, b with for what h of s glass atrice, is is th a h g at la lpabe, te, his s a on b r o m lea o h w him. ce ca, so ar voice. e e eing ap avrice, zing in so ta will him s d e l l a breat e, sen, dir I : e t , th n, n e e s rns, to t reluctan their e ntamo stod he of “As a erac op e se aco depl ectns arlie r so em to ears r g n It a epr b Dante set n a h t whic gl t fire, burn posite most etwe o p m i if s w o tu hes f Da s n i s cool has ms soon em ut el faces in e r m le rns rding it a stil, t unt the sent in ow y nte ony, work s ake bare r o e r p ed of acited g n i l l i w life. t. forth” l distncly en in r o m ike comple impl consent o “ me” t marke Vita n a t out erif Virg is directo as av ign to “a poe thems me s t n e s confes thoug f in B to his ly wh an th e h t nciet e rathe t the ic ea imagn I ominu to the (27.48-49). ying rice , Nuo il (2 m a e r d Luke e t leavin was g n i c i t n e ated t er take way earthqu trice o who d, doe as ted 4.51- b secr h s e l f most h a h w ns, e a l c d to a va lves. in n a ust, ag to nti-p they , in th wolf,” than s ot in nd p s thr en g note, and the m i et as . ef o urgation, e t 54) XI ” , ainst h s be g it,” it h T becau o the ne w s i “ is fect, ter ough ks difcult of rub Roman ake o e h t t n e l l e p e r alinodc our ur d r o l Withn is idespra find angels renoucig posite, . s i a he thee , best Nonetheless, or evidntly Da w o n Bonagiut if l the and pilgrms he very the my e m i t r e g n o l p i h s extinco. and Dante’s but ing Dante says, antic se tre the nte’s an flames. is to first con in Da t p e w and sin es poe person their of unr gret d hears eh this re v o fire per mo r f th fina nte “I - eh to is fail ec at t - o f it. - - - - r - We—or, in any case, Dante—cannot imagine life without lust, and only Dante’s love for Beatrice urges him through the fire. Reason alone, or cer - tainly Virgil alone, is unequal to the task. Once through, Dante pauses to rest as night falls, and he dreams his final dream in Purgatory. This time he dreams of Leah, the plain older daughter of Laban, who in Genesis is Jacob’s first wife before he is able to marry his favored Rachel. Rachel and Leah in traditional Christian exegetics were con - sidered as counterparts to Mary and Martha in the Christian Bible, who respectively listened to Jesus and did the housework when Jesus came to visit. Rachel and Mary were considered as representatives of the contempla - tive life, Leah and Martha, in their turn, as representatives of the active life. Here Leah and Rachel prefigure Matilda and Beatrice herself. As it dawns, Virgil addresses Dante in one of the most moving passages in the entire Commedia: “That sweet fruit which the care of mortals goes to seek on so many boughs shall today give peace to thy cravings” (27.115-17). All that Dante has ever sought he will at last find as they ascend to the earth - ly paradise—he has at last achieved the sunlit hill that so many cantos past he sought. And he there hears Virgil’s valediction: “No longer expect word or sign from me. Free, upright and whole is thy will and it were a fault not to act on its bidding; therefore over thyself I crown and mitre thee” (27.139-42). Dante has regained the paradise lost by Adam and Eve. He is now his own pope and his own emperor, no longer in any need of earthly guidance. m o c . t r a p i l C © The Lustful by Gustave Doré

53 FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING

Questions

1. In what sense is envy or invidia the most harmful of sins and the precise antithesis of charity? 2. Why is Dante so reluctant to pass through the fires purging lust?

Suggested Reading

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 2: Purgatorio . Trans. and comment by John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. E N I N E R U T C E L

54 Lecture 10: The Earthly Paradise

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is John D. Sinclair’s The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 2: Purgatorio .

Purgatorio 28–33 As Dante advances at last in the Earthly Paradise, he meets a beautiful and transcen - dently happy young woman, singing and picking flowers. She turns out to be Matilda, the genius loci , or presid - ing spirit of the place, and in a sense the fulfill - ment of Dante’s dream of Leah. Matilda repre - sents, in effect, the active life in its perfec - tion. Matilda’s look recalls that of the god - dess of love—in love. Dante could hardly make it clearer that in his view, at least, sexuality is very much a part of the redeemed life. m o c

Pageant and Revelation . t r a p i l Dante and his compan - C © ions make their way fur - Matilda ther into Paradise—the by Gustave Doré onetime home of Adam and Eve. Heading eastward, they see a sudden brightness, like lightning, which doesn’t pass away but grows brighter and brighter. Dante turns with amazement to Virgil—the last time, in fact, that Dante sees him—but Virgil too is overwhelmed with awe. Whatever approaches is clearly beyond Virgil’s knowledge and Virgil’s powers—as necessarily it must be, since what they witness is an elaborate parade, or a pageant of revelation. Seven candlesticks are the first things Dante sees in the procession, leaving behind them like overarching vapor trails a multicolored rainbow of light. They represent the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit—wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. After the “living lights,” Dante

55 sees, clothed in radiant white, and marching two-by-two, twenty-four elders, who in their turn represent the books of the Hebrew Bible. Then follow four hallucinatory “living creatures,” each with six wings, full of eyes, like those that Ezekiel saw in his vision on the banks of the river Chebar. These represent the four gospels: Matthew, traditionally in human guise; Mark, in the guise of a lion; Luke, in the guise of an ox; and John, in the guise of an eagle. In the midst of the four “creatures,” Dante sees a triumphal carro on two wheels, like the elaborate civic carroccio that the Florentines—and their rivals—drew into battle. Drawing the carro is a griffin—an imaginary beast with the body of lion and the face and wings of an eagle. The carro here rep - resents the church, drawn by the griffin, who represents Christ as both God and human. To the left of the cart, four ladies dance, clad in imperial purple and repre - senting the four cardinal virtues of classical tradition: wisdom (or prudence), N m E o c . T t r a p i E l C R © U

T Pageant of Revelation C

E by Gustave Doré L

56 fortitude, justice, and temperance. To the right of the cart dance three further ladies: faith, hope, and charity, the three theological virtues dressed respec - tively in white, green, and red. And to the rear Dante sees two old men: Luke, author of the Book of Acts, and Paul. Then four more: Peter, James, Jude, and John, authors of the non-Pauline epis - tles. And finally, an old man sleep - ing: John, author of the Book m o c . t r

of Revelation. a p i l C

Central to the © process of reve - Beatrice by Gustave Doré lation, in Catholic and Protestant tradition alike, is the Bible, and biblical figures of one sort or another make up most of the procession. But not the whole of it. The overarching rainbow of spiritual gifts suggests that in order to reveal to us its message, the Bible must be read under the guidance of the spirit, working within. At the center of the cart—as its burden, so to speak—Dante sees a lady, “girt with olive over a white veil, clothed under a green mantle with the color of living flame” (30.31-33). At first Dante doesn’t recognize her. But some - how, he feels who it is, and as he turns to Virgil in order to tell him as much, he finds Virgil gone, “Virgil sweetest father” (30.50), and Dante begins at once to grieve. Only to be reprimanded by the lady in the cart. “Dante, because Virgil leaves thee weep not” (55-6). She addresses him by name—and that is the only time that Dante’s name appears in the Commedia . It is, of course, Beatrice herself, and her presence in the cart—drawn by Christ, supported by the Church, surrounded by the virtues, the gospels all around her, Bible figures to the fore and aft—is in one sense at least astonishing, and utterly breathtaking in its daring. Dante is, so to speak, here claiming that Church, gospels, and

57 LECTURE TEN 5 8 n o m e g e h t t C t e r C i e c n o t t c e j e r f o l i n a e B C t n i o p h T a e B n g i s e d e l g a e to D s u o i g i l e r t f “ D r e v e a o Wh Ch e Tr fi g The cr r e w s n a t if m m a a s d e n i e h o e h e s e h e h T e h T Da n s r at ot nd l t a e h c r u h t s n o h c r u h t n a t n a s u o we uci at ou e e h t e g i d e m t r o e s n r u the r the reps n , ten. e en i t te n race e p m e f c i r t c i r t st ow s o d n e o t n x o ” r e h f C a s ’ e e s te he t a h t t c a o h of t g a e a c n o i r a g a o n a l hin s i d a o D “ t t a r e h a e h t C n h e t a re h f o thing of , e e im t a v e rt re A pa u s o d o e K con r t i w u t r e hur , e h t e n i t o t st al. k c a h t k e h o h w s u c t x e n e l h t o , no v , n i d e w y lie o r e po by exp m e y lon co d and n g g e se s e y x s i th w e i e d f u a h ntig h of s e i s t a o i t a wor l e o ch, stiue a e r e s r e p t a wle v e w o a h rta , s me ” , is Dant s o c e h o mo c a s e e v n o i s a t cou m i t g o p n o C r a r s h t c a her t i pen r d er ) s n e i r , t i b h t r a rienc tn e m h s i l b e N s a d n Churc p t nce f l n k n gn i d r o c s t h e r r n e B su o i dge s a h la c i t i l si th y t’ n o d re, e t oint s e v i ,n o i t c i v e v e e Ch nte t n i t ea s e v i r d on , c n c i h w walks fo no p u e to, eh ,t s a e l n a t s . rou ,h c i h w t , o r .y s e r t d. c i t ot a h w ( t t as t a h ta h to eh , r ta h W n i m the o is , .e trice, rist er e w rma b Da f not whe gh e b d o u l c o i D Da h eh h me - re ni s ff n d f t d am nt n i g Hist p e r act - ndig f o velation alf Le st nte h raws only re re o e e . f il. n a i t e r ong s the, ly e s e r r of tre re he, h T “ or di, p o t revlatio In un veals is Bea la th ats the y s i us f f u s and , othe s t n unlike cemn the dersco e th as a r r p e u trice. F cart, d n in at r e s e h t al. G pa eficaou al r human Phi to n e s e comes n od—the e h t o wor a Adam gean t ring hi At whic e fo l If an e i r g he ip y l r a s ds, r we I whic . s r s t V re si yo aleg his t v “ ns fo e h t alive th go s u o Da and r e p u,” is th h T n s rep e rm. d i and ne, re h lite n ory gi nte n e ep-r t u c e s point and g n o l er by k resnt a s velation—r Eve for nt” r e Al of the G a placem of finds fa short s e i usta the x o f an Beatr us oted o c i tha s n o i Dante befor Ch lings grifn d . ve e s r u f o th virtue a t t a urch the himself of rema e D g i d n i ice d n u e a or W sen nt evla blasp re s k c fals Chu é f o hi is ho histo as s, i e n o g r e s m, ins r bles . s e i t i n se gone h e wh not , t i in y l h g i rch, Da of into tion hemous. does of is ry. hc i h w B the ich, nte’s abylon blasp the the to to a tha dly The nA y b om i r c a world swo not subject the — cart, eh t for love he a g But s on. rif - - - a -

© Clipart.com western Empire—in Dante’s eyes, of course, a well-meant but nearly unmitigated disaster. And then, the most taxing trauma of them all. A dragon appears and drives its spiky tail through the bottom of the cart and drags part of the cart off. Here Dante refers to the rise of Islam. Early in the seventh century, when Islam arose, there were five first-tier Christian bishoprics—Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome. Before the century was out, Islam took three of them. Two centuries after Dante’s death, Constantinople fell as well to the Ottoman Turks, which left only Rome. The eagle returns once again, so Dante informs us, this time in the guise of Charlemagne, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire, and again the eagle “feathers” the cart—which thereupon grows seven hideous heads, following the Book of Revelation, as a sign of its simoniacal corruption. Upon it a “har - lot” appears, the very “whore of Babylon.” And then a giant, who first caress - es the “harlot” and then beats her and hauls both her and the cart upon which she rests off into the woods. What Dante has in mind here is, first, the corrup - tion of the Church under Boniface and his predecessors, and second, Philip the Fair of France, who first worked hand in glove with Boniface, then had him fatally beaten, and finally brought it about that the papacy moved to Avignon, far closer to his own dominions. And in that parlous state, things rest. Beatrice prophesies that they will improve, thinking perhaps of the new emperor Henry of Luxembourg, of whom at the time Dante had great hopes. Dante thereupon passes through Eunoe, all his good deeds fixed forever, and finds himself at last “pure and ready to mount to the stars” (33.145).

59 FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING

Questions

1. Why are Virgil and Statius so happy to hear that the classical vision of the Golden Age does indeed recall the Earthly Paradise? 2. Why might we be surprised to find Beatrice in the center of the Pageant of Revelation?

Suggested Reading

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 2: Purgatorio . Trans. and comment by John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. N E T E R U T C E L

60 Lecture 11: The Lower Heavens

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is John D. Sinclair’s The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 3: Paradiso .

Paradiso 1–9 If the Commedia is the single greatest literary work ever written, then the Paradiso , the work of Dante’s last years, is its greatest part. Dante here attempts things beyond the ambition, let alone the powers, of any other poet, and, by and large, he fulfills his ambition. His goal is to bring us into the felt presence of the divine, and on that account, because what he is writing about is almost entirely beyond the experience of the

senses, his poetic m o c . t r a

palette is limited, and p i l C he makes astonishing © use of what lies avail - Dante and Beatrice able to him. He makes by Gustave Doré use of all of his poetic skills, and he makes use of light imagery in pretty much every way that he can imagine. But beyond that, he makes exceedingly deft use of what is technically termed the “inexpressibility trope,” in which authors or poets seek to evoke what they cannot directly describe by describing not the thing itself, but rather their inability to describe it. This sounds like a pretty backhanded operation, unlikely to be very successful, but in fact, at least in the hands of a consummate master like Dante, it often works very well indeed by calling upon the readers’ resources and encouraging them to fill in the blanks. Dante Rises Dante begins the Paradiso by laying claim to a vision of God that authorizes all that is to follow: “The glory of Him who moves all things penetrates the universe and shines in one part more and in another less. I was in the heav - en that most receives His light.” Dante continues, “I saw things which he that

61 LECTURE ELEVEN 6 2 yo th th to d a m r li sib th ( su wo kn h we th Co sio The Al Be wh a sio Go t i n a m u h c s a r e h i h a sta n n a c d m in a o k “ it s a e m ep de Da Da As Da Fr D Me fe . ur nd ea te mo esc t m a e or e in e l u n, ow el N e t n a e a l u r med n e n d n om t m ly t es, r si e t n e at e d ven n n n nha hat Ea sa al d n a esn trice a ev l lect re, he ” ces” ma t ng , y l l a c i n i kn d A of of gne t o f Ma o te te te n nwhile, fo st e r u ta sha , so (1. n i me you r p rth ts o a o h w r to an d d th s sp t y ke a d nce the ask al asce , ke r rth ut o for an rs, wle no y r s e s i y a s s u d i nd low e ts dr con abso ia vine ), like l ar se e l a h s 03- t d his ir n oca m o s c pla eps e h t r c s hem els, fro the ar t the g m n awing als n a o e e Ju and the the ” dge r in on to the rev s e ow eflct nds ter , e se tinu if 05) h t m Da nets b i aco a r air. men time tes hem m o n piter g r a h t p s lute th e th o Ea do u wilng ou the atic, e Ear lve a r nal ref p p closet van mo g n i p or it s be the fam a o nte tha n i e . t e lation h f t so rth e c t Be ugh tward to ir h On weigh e s, e b e h nea in . s e r e t a i r p o r le y s, unt ce : t revo , best. in st t a as th. e h t st as Divn tag mat t “ a an of p iles’ ction hig di , is the atr be mu actu Do r e s e r an nte lies t nd t e s ath th x e pa t he r e h “ to t a h such r to close In n for d e hap e the r e p x e can lve cause ice e ter to d ap ot ch r e p n rt ted th s A xpla r yo sp th Sa e est b . But p p y l e puts th al ope f ot wealth ord t of of b the t r o e o ay Th ro its v becau pr his e the Wo a pily in u her of sek is of y He come in e i s e turn—wih a speak fact. e h ly c e p s brea d ugh oach mon. the heav the in o n e h e er wh such e c n e i r i v t, n e c n the desir resp sph own view, my the daily is a the rd, a aven kno s e h t n i Pag p d Da t s e u t familr o o huma erplx why of s e o th cart etr se , h g u k Inde the an t ers price, po o w song” or more holy t to th a ect, sun to wle nte’s e I is t a h wisdom to th x e . n the eant re motin d s the f o He , a w t e sib f : s d r Log heir explain: nal eir sphe wisdom, sinfule , o s b sink orm of the e i r e p us p dge r . hapy n i n’s eyond. h w the arou e h ed d, the kingdo s ower. mon T t crea no rev de convi to d vo heraf (1. le of L from o c he c e h e l familes hea they t a s. ogs. tha n e e s res, e g n a h t or ar?” ws Earthly ” e c n us, o th 1-2) sta Revlation t one so atur m nd th is med orde e h ted a c T lation—re e h t e fi s. vens p the her at But “Al cti nus hat s k n m nd rs, an by the dep n a wit make Ea must, D a ter s n o i t u ecsar (3 s a h can on ( we ctual cosm ante . a a x e l ywher. d e 7 6 . 1 o t y powe him alone choie? t h rth .64- t wh is s place insted he hings asce first ru Pardise d ” . n i h t i w tha t i w tha th w e k o v e I at esir t i r w why fo s th e l p m ns er in self was if, ho so-caled , e al skie. u h th rce at ribute velation of 2 7 - 0 7 r 6) in . : s nds ily e so t we m as the n e t B e he is to broke whatsoe xception is m Beatric is risn the the Dante on, e It “ a . a Beatri un yo f u s infer th e h T on traces Dan emor . e c i r t a e H tel the enco ble e H the sa th is world hige e w In e rep u ivers . ) to , e c i f vir Ea rough g m me Da h a h to ag ior Mercuy, n a D th t s u m D to te ju is p “ physical the a m above ighe arying tues, resnt first ce y rthly unter e is g n i s s a a stice eir nte’s ver s do r in a treasu claims, ord is nte’s e H to th canot can f e r e h t in; y risng, place, u g e b , e t suget rotain re sort at fa st vows the an mover” an n i the kr o w have er Pard tha sembl for n r u t ct in in n i relativ wher heavn. “light ap ything. m o s them cosm, exprs as e b planets e of n , e r o exprs Ve evry wisdom the placin e ou ,t r o h s proi arthly the folw s th is un si h dn o y orde in the nus, ise e r ot at of sub pos der o f my of we - y - g r - - - - Background: © Clipart.com/Recorded Books, LLC

63 by marriage, Piccarda Donati, sister of both his friend Forese, now in Purgatory, and his enemy Corso, on his way to Hell, who answers: “Brother, the power of charity quiets our will and makes us will only what we have and thirst for nothing else.” There is, in Heaven, no envy. And there is likewise no equal - ity. Every redeemed intelli - gence—human or angelic—is unique, and all are entirely ful - filled to the limit of their infi -

nitely varied and invariably m o c . t r

unequal capacities. a p i l C The cantos devoted to the © sphere of the moon are suf - Piccarda Donati by Gustave Doré fused with feminine imagery. Dante refers to the moon as “the eternal pearl” and claims that as he and Beatrice rise, the moon receives them “into itself, as water receives a ray of light and remains unbroken” (2.34- 6). Pearls were more highly valued in medieval times than at present and were cherished especially for their perfect spherical form, their smoothness, and their milky texture. They were, traditionally, the most feminine of gems. Dante and Beatrice enter the moon, we are told, like a ray of light entering water, and this too is a loaded image—a traditional image, in fact, the image for the Incarnation, the Holy Spirit impregnating the Virgin. Mercury and Venus The spirits on Mercury could hardly be more different. Mercury is, as a mat - ter of astronomical fact, the fastest-moving of the planets in its orbit, and for earthly observers, it is almost always obscured by the beams of the sun. Those appearing “in the sphere that is veiled” in “another’s beams” are those who ruled and indeed sought justice—but largely for the good reputation and glory that would result. If, as John Milton suggested, the desire for fame is “the last infirmity of a noble mind,” then in Mercury it is noble minds that we find. Chief among them is the emperor Justinian, who, ruling in sixth-century Byzantium, oversaw the codification of Roman law, and in the person of his generals, Belisarius and Narses, succeeded in reconquering much of the lost western portion of the Roman empire. N E

V Dante is evidently still troubled by the seeming inequities that he encounters, E

L but Justinian sets him straight: “In the measuring of our reward with our E desert lies part of our happiness, for we see it to be neither less nor more; E

R thus the Living Justice sweetens our affections.” The diverse characters and U T deservings of the redeemed are, in fact, a source of heavenly harmony, even C

E in the eyes of these notably ambitious and vigorous souls. L

64 Dante then advances to the sphere of Venus, traditionally associated with love and “ folle amore ” (8.2). Here Dante finds shades who in one way or another gave way to lust, gloriously redeemed though they are, and thus are to some degree diminished by a weakness in impulse control or temperance, or, so it has been argued, by a certain distortion of charity. The keynote, though, of love in all its guises is interconnection, and Dante here emphasizes the point in several ways, beginning with his first sight of the souls revealed in the sphere. As “within a flame a spark is seen, and with - in a voice a voice is distinguished when one holds the note and the other comes and goes,” so, says Dante, “I saw within that light other lights in cir - cling movement swifter or slower, in the measure, as I believe, of their eternal vision” (8.16-21). Dante sees the “lights” in fundamentally harmonic terms, as bound by love always with others. And beyond that, all of the souls, in con - templating God, see, to the limit of their capacity, all that God knows and God has made. Thus, in Heaven as Dante conceives it, they communicate by a sort of instantaneous telepathy. As God knows each of their thoughts, so each of them knows the thoughts of the others. Dante spends a good deal of time talking with Charles Martel, whom Dante met in Florence before his early death in 1294, and of whom he had great political hopes, since Charles was himself a scion of the French royal family, married to the daughter of Emperor Rudolph. His heirs might accordingly have knit the rift between France and empire, Guelf and Ghibelline, but his early death prevented that. Nonetheless, he greets Dante with cheerful affec - tion, citing a canzone from Dante’s Convivio that refers, appropriately enough, to the guiding angelic intelligences of the “third heaven”—a distinctly non-palinodic moment. The Superior Planets Dante will next ascend to the sphere of the sun, in his own astronomy mov - ing beyond the planets touched by the shadow of Earth, and in our own from the moon and “inferior” planets, those with orbits closer to the sun than our own, to the untouched, “superior” planets beyond. The “lights” whom Dante will meet in spheres beyond are unmarked by the limitations that have char - acterized those whom he has met thus far. But even they, as Dante makes clear in the person of Folco, no longer repent, and no longer need to—“Nay, we smile, not for our fault, which does not come back to mind, but for the Power which ordained and foresaw. Here we contemplate the art that makes beautiful the great result, and discern the good for which the world above wheels about the world below” (9.103-08).

65 LECTURE ELEVEN 6 6 Al 2 1 Sugest Question . . ig Tr Pr ma W pl W hie a a e hy hy ce ki n s, ri s. n doe are , g mi Da and 1 use 971 gh d s th nte. Dante t e Re com . be of sou The ading ? t he ls en fe F “ Divn in ine OR t l by Heavn it xpr GR nec e Joh esiblty C E o n ATE sary, medy con D. Sinclar. R ten of tr UN and ope” Dante DERSTANIG d what with in New char Aligher. doe the Yor ir s cterizng pla k he : Oxford ce, Vo hop l. wh e 3: H to erv e Un Par aven? a iversty chiev, diso th at . by Lecture 12: To the Sun and Beyond

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is John D. Sinclair’s The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 3: Paradiso .

Paradiso 10–18 Dante devotes the sphere of the sun to the classical virtue of wisdom, here exemplified by the - ologians. In each of the planetary spheres to fol - low, Dante sees, in effect, a symbolic light show, and here the theologians arrange themselves around Dante and Beatrice in two concentric circles, devoted respec - tively to the two great fra - ternal orders: the Dominicans and the Franciscans. Their arrangement in Heaven recalls their earlier posi - tion as the two “wheels” m o

supporting the cart repre - c . t r a p i senting the Church in the l C Pageant of Revelation in © the Earthly Paradise. If Sphere of the Sun : the pageant represented by Gustave Doré the height of wisdom available to those confined on Earth, these circles represent wisdom perfect - ed, a deeper and fuller knowledge of God and of all creation. Speaking for the Dominicans is Dante’s own philosophical mentor, St. Thomas Aquinas, probably the greatest of Western philosophers between Aristotle and Kant. Dante owes a great deal to Aquinas, most notably perhaps for his high valuation of the powers of human reason and his optimistic assessment of human nature and human prospects. Aquinas spends most of his time praising the man who was perhaps his only equal in long-term impact among medieval religious teachers: the founder of the Franciscans and perhaps the most beloved saint of them all, St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis’s infectiously joyful temperament, his deep love for all peo - ple and all creatures, his deep humility and love of poverty, and his deep and

67 LECTURE TWELVE 6 8 to t a h D e b O l s o w W r p e r i A i B i B P s s e n D F F i ce p i su p fo i fo a e e s as tiv e n n v n g n n io In In W F Su Fr om ee iz s l u o lon f mo xu o ye e n o i e n ra ra o s a n i u q t e o s e d i s e ay a o h, to et rm rm s m e l b o a w e i n sor, r b h t p g ces t r d ima a ed pe d s r ting nt mi u o i d i ith a p cei ncis ncis’ a in lta s s, y ch ei s i e an al fi e g e ncis tru a tio n ri e co po ed thi nker to ny s u i h t e’s d e d r nd th n ed g o th n ways si tha c J nt o c B A w h t gine wi of ve viab o D i f g a a m e to w e o ohn c g He to n a onaventu u q the hic c s , s, St. re e the ans, th ntr ol ’s St. te ospel p m p g ans, d t er and St. ing tem u q A ase, t , sp hea a a m , se r t exam iet y th save n i ll o f a n i th t stimon a b s le, th a -lust a reco my e p u w , a c i n i arkling w Bo cord X t u e h t ut n i s i r e Ansel s u l c “ev dop i r e Fra Dante t we “ at pe f we hat rt a n i ” s h XI. orl thir St. doin s of h r o h h and lon such death ” afte the r tra ther Com to nave Lady, of d o i s m i F r a nciled. an ple p a ncis’s re t i s r e v i n U d. o tion am the g ia fi n s r d rlastin n ra Most D nsf orme d g-t Do h dra re ( f y nd the m, g. f o r d 8 3 1 . 0 1 l d e n e f l e s m i h r i e h t n i c r i c im he , s T ante age” o th ncis of to in med ent the de insp b ntu erm ver we rad itio min t a eve r e f o n of w of e e h t P e h . y a e r o f an to mot ions ew pu spe Dan t his , e l par withering Fra eter followers he telling, est his the m e g i S re g” Bathsheba’s com u vision di n t r find p s e r d, escap m ic ired high ia of res t or te e h t h c u m , y l h y e w . ) sp was , B ts aks faith ight gospe ncis ablished Holy te’s h nal lest who itself contem d n a gan the the f o o r no the n o N imself. r e irts the Nathan er e v i t c e e v a n tho e v p int o de .e f i l d n i f f o a a P t we for o overty ed eth ics, consid as v o l - iza S day, it wa in Fra ncis Spa nd blessedness.” y r m s i h med ieva l Spirt! f vo with usand e l e h t e b a r B might spher pirit, of l m to be this r ake ser vice a condem to the , s i abs olut ely tion. r u t n find g n i K sn’t e l l e t n i tio n aking pora d e could the have o Relation nia r i c Chu co but thought come p the n w husband o h w er , t n a thir was which mo Chr isti an . apl e o s n o C for , s e l c ming e Ho Abbot int rd, , s s per It established Fra n o S dis agre e rch, r t n i mor ies. in o to a u t c t d pr a erst been not is st h c a e w admi f in Chu rch an a n i natio haps ? a n o m o l e h cir t op r th join asitnce he c u d o he p ing n a sud n o c s e third c the would coret So and that e h t art n o i t a l e l cle, ce bea Joachim influential is’ s he s i be exalted r , r e d From in spher nist who inaugurated su r o g i ntr al d his beyond denly and t, p m e t serv much rel igio us t x e n on d. n i e twen e i v , r order all as was Dan ide a age n, in r e b l A wh and o m a f rat it!” o t see b For o f o Church, io w beha n a speak reb he popes pag an h t o a rde, one to o i a r o e t n a D n te ve o t (1 glowin of o l i h P im o than d was in hertic. at so, of of r sha to Fra ncis , a s u t the uking. a se f the s u ebuked logician 4.73- th finds T e h t r g e t n i y r mediat the geniu nd u q A lf som e perspective, least the Fiore, vir tuou s lif e. m o h secure e it inde ped r o f of in not g a M f o yh p o s writing the ali ke, two e r by was oth in r was n a Spir ebuk s a n i a sun 78) the Dante himself t S , m o d s i w s a y t i He noth s, the r a it som But d Francis to er mea sure the divine whose s u n r King d, emo tion s . w becam e ival Francis’ it ly , e c i r t a e B a thought Is a h t foun her ,f l e s m i h had h T . sup pres s ho two lif e. was o l l y s “ such nd cirle e s i r p r u s and of tha er M it e and Francis this to sa m o f o find t orde was t s o David became of an as thoug ring. “translated, der wisdom de s u a c emp ha it cirles. An the in o l o C prophecy himsel to it de z i g dn a the grate difer is thir “ever of his ters p r u s their tra ns is to by rs his int u his of cou l t hard wealth suc “I eh .s th d a for the fu n g m we wi th - - e fuly r r - b nc - f. y - ing si - fe. d e of e s it re , d - - theologians, but the answer is clear: acting in accordance with that wisdom. And hence we find Mars devoted to a second classical virtue, courage, or fortitude. In this sphere, he finds warriors for the faith and martyrs. Mars Dante and Beatrice see the planet sparkling with reddish “splendors” that form a sort of equal-sided cross, arising at the intersection of an equator and a prime meridian and circling the planet from pole to pole and halfway between. The implication is that the “splendors,” in their fortitude, have willingly shared in Christ’s crucifixion—and final triumph. The figure of the red cross on white ground is familiar as a token of the resurrection and more directly of the red cross borne by the crusaders (in Dante’s eyes, heroes of the faith). The figure also comprises the cross of St. George—and the flag of England. The cross flashes forth appropriate worthies—Joshua, Judas Maccabeeus, Charlemagne, and Roland, as well as more recent crusading figures—but Dante spends most of his time in the sphere of Mars speaking with his own revered ancestor, a crusader himself, Dante’s great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida. Dante’s discourse with Cacciaguida occupies the very center of the Paradiso , a position analogous to that of the discourse on love in the Purgatorio , and the Geryonic void in the Inferno. Dante clearly means us to remember the central encounter between Aeneas and the shade of his father Andrises in the Aeneid, in which Andrises prophesies the coming glories of Rome. But Dante’s deft touch here seems to waver. Cacciaguida spends most of his time recalling what seems like the “good old pioneer days” of Florence, when things were simple, people stuck to their business, and plain speech and hard work were the norm. I cannot help feel - ing that, human nature being what it is, there is something a bit naive about this kind of nostal - gia. And Dante weakens his case by having m o c .

Cacciaguida complain t r a p i l

69 LECTURE TWELVE 7 0 Fl and sig Ju of am o ma Ju cha gr o th e fl eu ap p th at sh th e ab o wh o is it s as re s com ab li k Fr bol app ala figu form the the th em of Mi d on sio Dan emp eag the muc del Da T N or e an he “ pi te am o on th e m piter n n s rme igh DI LI G w t i e up r re dl e nt r o ea v ea le nt e ut—a fig u C le c enc id a te, h i ng ire fo r ge—th it lik ar art ed ce ri tt e ng o o j e f le e de pp e ud ge om sp he , e tt e ai e. nu r te f f ur r ta ke s Capeti ra ra ta th B of th. ew ar a th e d, el of , yr Ag es b n the di b an d e. that er th e co s a d oo k exil r kes e ly s els, nc e nce the T n mb e y me ing eg i est ieved si o IT E sp i s vin but ise “M ,” pr H mo me he n and su mp ar e D is porti i gn re di “M m, tha n and —a th e at Gu e of ou nd n ante di a ri ce a e i party vin of on h bject o expres tra s, of of an th e r of of ts IU lo i th ” an o is to n s in t ha s justi . w a el 3 on so . Wi f ea r ok s Ca fo e ns en a an sy m th ST IT IA w th e si r the Ju p hi fs, nt politca d In th fo rm wr on is e s i r will ario e ng s sd om - c ciagud of de c al e th ” h tr ou i pa rt ic ul itng h n e an d - it er - is to a th th em s ( rs r as ce nt bl e 18 .9 1, 93 ). M e b is to t un sw er vi ng (1 .1 ), he l for and us h. ils QU I d de vo te d Dan a Da nt e r, Com e th at certa perso lv es to th e e an On ce IU DI CA T te’s tendig f Ju p d aith. media fa te Th e in in si nc e as to h nal ly to it er eart. co n ar ri ve d, ju st ic e, th e ha o pa ss ag e le tt er s. in it, , f IS to ce fi rs t and s th e tegriy, and Cacig sp ir it s TE RR AM ,” a rn a pe rs on long “v ir he he likews an d to the Th e S by co me tu ou s Da nt e a le ar co nc lu de Dante pher nd n list di vi n Gu uida m la ’s ne d e stave Be at ri ce es sa ge ys o s of ov er co mi ng in pa ga ns ,” or e f si nc e pred fr om is Jup civ upo ju st ic e en of “L ov e Do joing th ei r i during te Vi rg il ’s ré icts n th e r th e th at ils se e h im j me ss ag e, ha s Vi rg i to us ti ce , Vu lg at e to ve ry th th ey th e his a his Dante fa te . e complain be en l se ns e company pr om in en t ou ts e exil sp ir it s great sp el yo u ve rs io n his a th ey l of t an al l ou t of in d

Questions

1. What is the importance of Joachim of Fiore? 2. Why does Dante choose to place his discussion with Cacciaguida at the center of the Paradiso ?

Suggested Reading

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 3: Paradiso . Trans. and comment by John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

71 Lecture 13: The Eagle of Justice

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is John D. Sinclair’s The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 3: Paradiso .

Paradiso 19–26 Just as justice is in and of itself a social virtue, a communal virtue, so the eagle of souls speaks communally, with a sin - gle voice: “A man is born on the banks of the Indus, and none is there to speak, or read, or write of Christ, and all his desires and doings are good, so far as human reason sees, without sin in life or speech. He dies unbap - tized and without faith. Where is this justice that condemns him? Where

is his fault if he does not m o c . t r

believe?” (19.70-78) a p i l C The eagle gives Dante © his answer. In fact, it The Eagle of Justice by Gustave Doré gives him three. The first is straightforward enough. Even to begin to understand what God means as a concept is to understand that human intelligence cannot fully understand what God is. As Dante puts it: “Every lesser nature is too scant a vessel for that good which has no limit and measures itself by itself. Thus our vision, which must needs be one of the rays of the Mind of which all things are full, cannot by its nature be of such power that it should not perceive its origin to be far beyond all that appears to it. Therefore the sight that is granted to your world penetrates within the Eternal Justice as the eye into the sea; for though from the shore it N

E sees the bottom, in the open sea it does not, and yet the bottom is there but E

T the depth conceals it” (19.49-63). R I

H The second answer is a sort of tautology. What “good” in fact means is “what T

E God wills.” Therefore, anything that God wills must by definition be good. R

U Both of these answers are perfectly logical, of course, but for that very rea - T

C son, Dante really has no need of the eagle to explain them to him. Virgil E L

72 could have provided the same answers. But somehow, despite all, our own sense of justice is offended by the fate of the virtuous pagans and those who have done the best they could without faith. And by the terms of Dante’s argument, our own sense of judgment is a reflection of divine justice— whence, then, our uneasiness. Is our own sense of things leading us astray? “Not exactly,” the eagle replies, in a long and complicated answer that marks a shift in emphasis in Dante’s thinking as he begins to conclude his great work and approach the end of his life, and which marks as well a festive entrance into the highest and brightest realms of heaven. Riphaeus’s Love of Justice The eye of Dante’s eagle is composed of the greatest of just rulers. Its pupil is King David, uniquely and God’s choice as both king and priest, and its brow is composed of five figures, in succession the emperor Trajan, King Hezekiah, the emperor Constantine, the recent William the Good of Sicily, and a figure from the Aeneid , the Trojan Riphaeus, whose story is Dante’s own invention and represents Dante’s final answer to the questions that had troubled him for so long. Riphaeus appears in only a single book of the Aeneid —book 2, which chron - icles the final destruction of Troy. When Aeneas realizes that the Greeks are within, he sets off with a few companions, wishing to go down fighting. Among them is Riphaeus, whom Virgil characterizes as “foremost in justice among the Trojans and most devoted to the right” (426-27). Immediately fol - lowing, Virgil has Aeneas observe that “to the gods it seemed otherwise” (428). The implication is that while the gods aren’t exactly indifferent to jus - tice, it is by no means their first priority. Virgil lives in a world with morally fuzzy edges. Not so Dante, and his portrayal of Riphaeus here is an answer not only to his own often-expressed doubts—it is a ringing and joyful endorsement of moral coherence. Dante claims that Riphaeus’s love of justice functioned for him as his Beatrice. Therefore, “from grace to grace God opened his eyes to our coming redemption” (20.122-23), and he was infused with faith, hope, and charity, who “stood for baptism to him more than a thousand years before baptizing” (20.127-29). Dante concludes, that thus “by that divine image was given sweet medicine to clear the shortness of my sight” (20.139-41). The implica - tion seems clearly to be that through the operation of grace, the virtuous pagans might be saved beyond hope after all. And as the eagle speaks, the lights that mark Riphaeus and Trajan happily wink in time with its words. Saturn Dante next ascends to the sphere of Saturn, putatively devoted to temper - ance, but in fact devoted to temperance as a mode of spiritual discipline in service of contemplation. There Dante sees a golden ladder that rose to such a height that, as he says, “my sight could not follow it. I saw, too, descending by the steps, so many splendors that I thought every light that shows in heav - en had been poured out there” (21.29-33). The reference is to Jacob’s vision of a ladder at Bethel, in response to which he says, “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28.17). Jacob’s

73 LECTURE THIRTEEN 7 4 C o T i t f t E y e f t a n a d i w I p T t w i sh “ Be a l h h h i t co Sa m h t t g a e se t t i l s t n ig n co a he ro n he ha he he he ic e h i Br A “ D d e x f o e n i e o i o n n he he t r a h h h So s mse d i e y l e h n s a n n s e d n th Ben e r d u a d ce an d th it m n t ri er er ni contem o e t m mig fect, urn t ot face l templa se s se l C oth Be i e d d a l re edict st not , h th er e n al ts em go ou those s c Las t o t near th be h ha n i a g a t s o n e no ti th e e s e St. l i er, o f last f f, il a ne n u mate o s r o h i i h i w er ver tsh y i r a t s n a n at mo gur a dictne l o i rch t worldie f um t t r a n a f u t tim as re alwys e sk o h sigh ipe, s dictne f Be ulfie the no Go g u , s se t , r t r s we uth ulfim nveild f in Sp urn wa hy y l t ns eplis, to plat sp sphe r a ea nastic wh an e ive ” ines mon our w a e. a es t w a , h ned d’s rium viso 2 ( ace fo d n or the he s Be t” h t d n lo sphe ch hig life b and d om tra him a f s, io on e d o t o l e . 2 s r a it. ng r e ( my nfo re ent re o r astic ict ned n, 2. pr t e c i r t a e B m h pa was, ab ditona Ru t n a D am do .) 4 5 1 he ce final pha f n t f a e s i h a e h poles; life, , Da w by whole es ona . re f with de f nd l or rt ove an es or own. 61- d ntr l of ict ong e h d n a nte - s a h nt, sir of th n w o is , r e ea e is d b f al s a th or 69 if e le - l s e s i l ven . an e an e k i l “ h c a se t ). d n a v a r e d g i s sight d d The ly d e t h g i l dnes,” y l g n i se our n . d e l e a ho n a D o es r i h w last f st lade we n i m e G . y n i t a e t e H as bove n i w l t spher se o D . w o l l o f the ant r o o l r T e z i l a e ” d g . i , n e h above them oes s k e e, sun e B ( ) 9 9 . 2 2 se T true d r t a up “ y e h n w o es t o t ilumne Th t a h “a ” e c i by ( to e a e h t hea 23.9 Sun , c s a S e h r h t Gust vi a it s e t i v n i phe l l sio ven, a f and h g u o d n e a h s f o whic re a r i -30). n ve al s o e e h t of f ther is D s e y o t e c s a Sa m i h of h t o th not ré For tu s t i r i p s h t kind e th efor e rn I e t e h p s , d e d n e o d e n r u t heavnly in Da r e h p s led star, k o o l space nte, ste d n e c s a s e r each o r p p a als e wo l e b ym and God a w o t f o an ho th o h t r p n d us st, r in e e i d -

© Clipart.com Beatrice says, “That which overcomes thee is power from which there is no defense. Here is the wis - dom and the might that opened the ways between heaven and earth” (23.35- 38). Having seen this vision of Christ, Dante is able at last to see Beatrice as she is. “Open thine eyes,” she says, and “look at me as I am” (23.46). The passage echoes not only Moses’s vision of the burning bush in Genesis 3, but also I Corinthians: “Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (13.12). m o c . t

And then Dante has a r a p i l vision of Mary, “the fair C © garden that flowers under Queen of the Heavens the rays of Christ” (23.71- by Gustave Doré 72). She is, Dante says, “the fair sapphire by which the sky is so brightly ensaphired” (23.101-02). As she rises to the highest sphere of all, following her son, so Dante writes, “like an infant that stretches out its arms to its mother after it has taken the milk, its impulse kindling into outward flame, each of these white radiances reached upward with its flame, so that the deep affection they had for Mary was made plain to me” (23.121-26). Mary is, in effect, for Dante, mater omni - um , the divine mother of all.

The Edge of the Cosmos What Dante does next is a bit surprising. He undergoes an oral examination on faith, hope, and charity at the hands of St. Peter, St. James, and St. John. On one level, this is a deliberate effort to draw back a bit before the conclud - ing images in the poem. On another, it testifies to Dante’s deep regard for intellect and for the intellectual life. And on a third level, I suspect, he is com - pleting the thematic spiral through the cardinal virtues that he began on the sphere of the moon, if not in the Earthly Paradise. Faith, after all, knows more than even theological wisdom; hope is what motivates fortitude; and charity, beyond dispute, gives in happy love more than strict justice would require. And with that, Dante is ready to ascend to the primum mobile , the crystalline sphere, so-called because it bears no stars or planets, the very edge of the cosmos, and the boundary of the world of space and time.

75 LECTURE THIRTEEN 7 6 Al 2 1 Sugest Question . . ig Pr Tr do I Tro W n hie a e hy m, wha n s, j an ri s. is , fo t Da and 1 Riph Da rtiu sen 971 d nte. nte Re com de, se ae . The so u ading ca and s? n ha en F Divn fa OR justice, p t it by h, y GR e to Joh hope C learn E o resp n ATE medy , D. an ectivly? of Sinclar. R d of the UN ch Dante arity DERSTANIG fina New l be rest Aligher. sen Yor in g k p : as lace Oxford Vo a l. ful of 3: ilment the Un Par iversty diso of wis . - Lecture 14: To the Heaven of Pure Light

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is John D. Sinclair’s The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 3: Paradiso .

Paradiso 27–33 The most astonishing moment in the Commedia comes just where, I would have to believe, that Dante wished it—canto 27 of the Paradiso , and more precisely, in and after the transition that takes place between lines 99 and 100 from the starry sphere to the crystalline. Before that, all Paradise rejoices that Dante has passed his examinations, and Dante himself rejoices in their joy—”What I saw,” he says, “seemed to me a smile of the universe” (27.4-5). m o c

Dante rises to “the . t r a p i swiftest of the heavens.” l C Beatrice explains: “The © nature of the universe The Primum Mobile by Gustave Doré which holds the center still and moves all else round it begins here as from its starting point.” Then an astonishing line, “This heaven has no other where but the divine mind” (27.109-110). The entire cosmos, in short, is God’s thought. Dante stares into the eyes of Beatrice, and “when I turned again and mine were met by what appears in that revolving sphere by one that looks intently at its circling, I saw a point which radiated a light so keen that the eye on which it burns must close for its piercing power” (28.13-18). And this point is surrounded by a series of angelic circles, the nearer rotating most quickly, the larger more slowly as they rise tier by tier. Beatrice says, citing Aristotle’s Metaphysics , “From that point hang the heavens and all nature” (28.41-42). Dante feels exalted, but puzzled. What he here sees is, in effect, the physical expression of the entire cosmos. But here it is inside out. In the

77 LECTURE FOURTEEN 7 8 se Go co a m r se b d h a li fl a m The Go o h in r b a de cir se sim t yo im d n a t o th th th s y h p t i The i l s d r a w n d e n r u e h i r ef eb Th On Da Da n As ke l o nd at oe um ga t f ou e ti pt s u g or in e e e , c e mp em cl m wi on nse u si th th le d d h im y ir in el ul e d. grac s i rs). n mos t u o e ce . n o i es be re Be e . n. al imag ct an e t u b p e e a t a S ng H The l a c i in ma te le te sp ta “wh a di D so w t o l sti l ed D h ike igh h c a be th a n d d Wha ten in a d i s se neo n i an as thing ate i h onclusi e s sou i at ng betw T an s ts y s e t y trice c t a S a D a he ug ge a o and er o c d i s hose ole n in on che th e ver an est te l l of t a ey of the , e an a log cy” els, la vir te o ly r k es, usly e a a t s ls t n e se m s iver t a wn a ro m e st s d h ll t liken the to d e b y tualy cle Dan e n o l b a n he rishe e fel explains hig y as a s st s Heav oves en kinet ( o se. in po ss ib xpan se egins n e c ea r s o so first th 30. an like smen point achie t u o y t ise distnc in o d ar be f t h g u o h .g b lo sum eir se tle exp t n ( s f , ch te t . es th at gels lesd on Be est d n wo 107 of the d s win e h t , Da wh I ic . c i r t a insta i pr se” n en fro n bu h o to at r ing o res t atrice the ro le stan ve. mit h ed er e c a p s esnt wn e o t nt go y e h t h to -09 n g t Go e h rive m is t who m E qu t s i h T ribute t tain ea of he of b wa mo spe he e’s a nt th e h b ld Go th id Vita teling, o time mer em d’ s s ivale et is ). se t e ven, a m an e the h e y p f d y. e logic de s of r e t Empyrea yet claim his we ow n s a w itse g d. What rem th a at Salv es flowers r a e n a in p eous, n a e r dy s m g r it.” b t in Nuova e n d reflction oint” “ nt im to But en al of anks, ot i rosa Dante l a d he farewl g is lf—a th n i of - h t primu ained h r a of eomt a r i p s Their Adam e. atio otain s, o etr . s uman . e m i t e ve , God the d r o p two ea be in g cirle f e t n e c does the t oints Da and p (28 “f With r e h u B semp on est. ch n, in roces olw so n nity, r e and joyf hea g n i l l y se nt b had num .10- t was e v a e H rical c u B t rt and anks eithr r se soul, th he to f o e’s e h t in of re d e r not mo mi g at edm sho in uly An of venly e from t it and a B t u o n i h t twen th the the infte erna Heavn ber its n i ti o bile his w , d new u 01). te Eve s y h p ht b of e Go se uld eir a S ma nivers has hat aptism is atrice, th n a D s d r a w n rms ir side, orb , s g ex is t. he salvtion po , th is uncha d ty ed host, at e ” t a h t - n a t wa s b vison b de wh Fro the vi rema s ’ e t n l a c i ntirely e he ( a onds int e becom i e finds 30.12 se t is d o G si sped, the s . soul fectivly r like ich god. on t ive m e t n e c on In m , s i the re hat tak conds, o pre For g of and d l r o w ange b f e finte in ly claim flectd fu n o i s i v , “e t t u r e h t geab thus dr ligh ne ro si ty , he t s light—an what es chan se ed 4) indvu she cisely “ pro in ly. works. to xalted” Dante livng aws s d n a e h d e r the then ciru ls is tim to t n i v i d efct unfal r s i sp mise To len the tha eturn swiftly ou , tha infte, gelsn, s a h and “ma befo be in an e e p t t o n fr ed from w t a h tlines , t a s t t lar d om e t of al viewng falen h The len hat parks” gels s. the e v i t c e p s r by in a d r o de the e is n e e b tha eprsnt red re , d n i m t o to and e h Plato, o would rive and when tha, ef fe ct to y l n point this the “en the r e d r for It the by a had an an the red Dante came ct e t n e c g he is ang reflcts lighten ne c o e g ain gn i l l a r i p s d loks gels primu a rise med a divn its of he a of e i l the emd not bout rive si he wo one made each ngelic a in ray but els s s i light life cre al must ’s r to up this uld in no e na if of - six - - m o c . t r a p i l C © The Empyrean by Gustave Doré

mobile , from the universe. Because what they see is a reflection, what they see is utterly unique, determined by where they sit or stand. The vision of the celestial rose is unique to each person who sees it. Beatrice’s last words are a condemnation of Pope Boniface, and Dante is too rapt in contemplating the vision before him to notice when at last Beatrice returns to her place within it. He turns to question her, and she is gone, replaced for the last three cantos by St. Bernard, chosen for this role in part because of his devotion to the Virgin. Bernard points out Beatrice for Dante, in the place where her merits have assigned her—sitting next to Rachel in row 998, three down from the top of the rose. Here and always, she is for him revelation, the personal manifestation of God himself. “She, so far off as she seemed, smiled and looked at me, then turned again to the eternal fount” (31.91-94), her mission too at a blessed end.

79 LECTURE FOURTEEN 8 0 st e n h m p t g e l i d a a r o f H p sn f e m i sw f p l b h h se D D m se ( e e m n a he or in or e h An In H D ve o i o u n e s n n a vo a l e e m e a a ar s aves rg e—t i o o ve is ght age a o e e th w, wers ise. ce, p d e r sio r en an e len nt nte’ D r st p may t. sel guid my b own n l, w, ke d s” e th oth e et on e Eve Ad al ha she comes an o e’s ce t B so res motin i th ” e p tha us, n h ok n s f. ta mor wi (3 n an He u th o l s si er ar v h am e e th te fl y for en an p , fail to t ke I f iso shar , be e nd s u wr a zes pectf e t ne F oints , n t, h 3 rou d most m what a S .14 a entia t gaze is ward al ce. in , e dep th saw h vison his oug h h ev o ent his ar last o ver cohe tha him. n se Mo on er to alf. e e is al f , t gh n an e 3-4 th o ah, alm ul the wer S ict th suce io vison o hu co o in t “sm r, l ht at ina d se s an V t he , “ d reo r h he he the ut bou n o was n no ifcult 5). ir ren Dan is s He evr e we of nsult ma Re the ot it f s, ost b in d e A r bilt lea in e the self, va iten th rg d y te is ligh on t her en b sor fe r He unive hat a nd ce his beca, evold n eds. tr se e it t ls to anize te’s re b riou ves. o nd bea who a he y ie mo ct. orn gu Tr f re wise, t so h ts task ath th id by pr to ef o V s u vison by th Be leav er Jo inty m C nly s , s, ise, irgl. at th ti -ca g re fortle who oph rse He ly “Like t e re , She ed o fic o Aena omed s lo oal, ains rna worth a hn e , t his f is Ruth, Trinty constiu fixe he ve m th le fa t in ” tha flash” it. in compa he by et vison, but as forth s ( just ake em. the advise des, Heavn sly d 3.85 d exprsib in ar my “d him in draft the Th a dly t o the efct ie thre Ch nd o s f Virgl esir it e anges on Rache ia fers us Ba s out Apo out voking The itsel view, by met is joins (3 at Sibyl’s and urch tha , res among the Love e and e -87) e, fro ptis, surp th 3.140 beyon the bot of vo how cirle l it Aena f and yearn is lo e a a m Sibyl’s —and the stil rest s se s h the l . ilty e the Fath lu rea , al h. sn final f risng Eter ad an a tha th ver He ul hi an ab Fran me, o -41), it wil, ow d And efct t s f e s racle m th Pa ch. d he el etr retu trop ed d ove, of t upon can ers s saw, f h of in o er atemp nal praye low of i Bea m ca ca sh n radise im. pen tha lose cis, to childre host becaus Virg like for al a oves thr nal rns an he e t refuly. ve e in he was be L drop sek to of d T trice, vis a T him, d e in ight, re, wr and Ben s ream dor whic th roj t il’s a hen, procesi th not the the of Second tha ted h wor its on ef it e joins the on, wh us is co an n lo to s es the world out La could and t he a st” to imprn withn a But Sib vison Dan wish lors, dict, by k. scater el some Augs throu be ct, nd, the and refug s sun is do tin is his redm in repo the Dante (3 wel yl’s comes an to wn ev the whenvr sca tha te’s ab Person reflctd West). 3.58-6) is an interc one is the n. no a y mind, t gh do my to Sibyl degr nd tine leavs o in like rts what as terd n d achievd poet. u t behalf, ve spin ter the melting no d find. the name this Augstin canot reflctd the hea the ream tha adults. for tha. was al, sion And su of power in leavs, Apol coher imp . An a sun; on rt othe Virg in cirle in ch some his Her with nd Cum “ human d M in the th th d ly the He we . osi a a a a o W il An e in its e, r r e th in - m by y t n o re a a - e us f d e - n , I; FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING

Questions

1. What does Dante achieve by “turning the universe inside out” in cantos 27 and 28? 2. What is the importance of the Sibyl’s leaves?

Suggested Reading

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Vol. 3: Paradiso . Trans. and comment by John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

81 COURSE MATERIALS 8 2 Wi L Ja Si Bo —. —. Al Al Ot Sug —. An Co Ho ew ngl ig ig D C H se Vi Si Pr Si Jo Pr i Pr N cof her l The caio, d n r l lan iams, nish hie hie .S a a e erson i n n n e e e s, r h th et mbr rva w f, . ce clai clai es s, s, s, n d e s B ri ri B. o R. Rach Bre Yo er, , D e nzo , , Th Th Vita te n, o H r r A i d W.B Da Da 2 1 2 . dge Ne , Ch . . b d ist rk: liso 01 96 0 e e Cha Sin w Robe W U N N ks o Giovan nte. nte. Rea Z w ory er, ar el, Divn Divn Nuova nive ew ew o ilam. O . in n. ks U cla of r . . . le Yor rles Da xfor e nivers 20 b B Yo Yo o s. d r Re The M rsity d. ir Int t. a y f oletin. e e i nte . k: ngs re on ni. The P d rk: rk: Dan . S. ca adin Th Dan New Com Com 0. er olitca Tra G . U arch Divn av Pres ity li The es Com e Oxfo Oxfo Ne arl niversty f te: Figur ng te g or ns. Ca e e t: Pres, York: il w y dy: dy: Dante e the s, nd, able A L . Gar Thi media: mbridg rd rd Re C Tho Yo and i Tr f C e Life 2 e OU 3 2 Universty Universty o 0. cor ans. Ma 190 s rk: o land : : o Oxfor medy: ught. on Pres, ’s f 193 Par Pur f intro Co RS in Beat ker Dan Vikng de e Stars Elemn line and urse: . Wor adiso gator Libra E Co d . . . New te rice: Lon MATE M 1: Un Bo 19 mpanio th . ed. ks , ark ( Pr Pr ry Infe io New Trat . 20 ro ive don: . ts Tra Yo . 2. es, es, ks A o New ugh Prue 01. Musa. Tra rsity RIALS rno f o elo Study rk: ns. f Me Ha at n Routled Stru ns. 197. 197. . to w.mod C Have 1-80 ven: Shaw. dieval Pre Tr in a a Oxford nd Dan a ans. mbridg cture in Lau nd s, 0-63 n: Ya come Da ge, te co de Litera Cambridge 19 and . Yale le nte . Cam 6-3 ment World’s e Ne 1 d 71. ernschola. Universty 980. i . Universty co w Dante) ture Cambrid n Universty 9. bridge: t m Yor by ment , b Cla vol. y k: John Texts . John Trans. sic. ge: by 40, D. m D.