Ferdinanda Cremascoli www.nelmezzodelcammin.it

Divine Comedy. The Title of the Poem

Explained to my Young Students

Dante did not entitle his poem Divine Comedy. This title appeared only in the sixteenth century in a printed edition of the work curated by Lodovico Dolce in 1555 for Giovanni Giolito, publisher in Venice.

1 Benvenuto da Imola hits the mark with his analysis and defines the novelty of Dante’s poem, the fusion of different styles.

Dante called his poem simply “Comedy”, as he says in two passages of the Inferno.

The first one (Inf, XVI,127-128)1:

but here I can’t be silent. And by the strains of this Comedy (...) I swear to you, reader,

The second in the XXI Canto, vv. 1-3

Thus from one bridge to the next we came until we reached its highest point, speaking of things my Comedy does not care to sing.

The Epistle to Cangrande, too, in which Dante dedicates the first part of Paradiso to the lord of Verona Cangrande della Scala, gives proof of the original title:

Incipit Commedia Dantis Alagherii Florentini natione, non moribus Here begins the Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Florentine in birth, but not in manners

1 All quotation from Dante’s poem are taken from the translation of Robert and Jean Hollander published by Anchor Books Edition, Random House Inc., New York, 2002.

2 Why Dante chose this title can be explained according to the precepts of medieval rhetoric, inherited from classical culture: the work is called “Commedia” because its subject has a sad beginning and a happy outcome; because his language is vulgar and because his style is humble and modest. “Commedia” is a literary genre that for matter, language and style is opposed to "tragedìa", the sublime genre that Dante had already described in De vulgari eloquentia, the treatise on the vernacular, written in Latin a few years before the poem.

This might suggest that Dante ascribed a “modest” genre to his work. However the readers of the “Comedy” knows that it is all but modest. In the Eight Heaven of Paradise, the sphere of the fixed stars, the poet has the vision of the triumph of Christ and immediately Beatrice invites him not be scared any more. Dante turns his gaze towards the sky acknowledging, however, that his verses will never be up to describe the Paradise and he call his work “the sacred poem” (Par, XXIII, 61-62). And only a little further on, while undergoing an exam on the three theological virtues, the poet still defines his poem as follows (Par, XXV, 1-2):

Should it ever come to pass that this sacred poem to which both Heaven and earth set their hand

Dante did not even a modest opinion of the vernacular. In De vulgari eloquentia a completely positive judgment already emerged on the vernacular, a popular language, but understood by everyone. For this reason it challenges wise men: the language spoken by all could be refined and made as perfect as Latin.

Why then did Dante call his work “Commedia”?

When the poet writes the “Epistula” to Cangrande and is completing the poem, he has now developed a very original conception of literary genres, not released, but autonomous from the current rhetorical precepts that he had made his own in the past.

Even the commentators of the fourteenth century had difficulty in establishing which genre Dante’s work belonged to as there was nothing similar. One of the most analytic ones, Benvenuto da Imola, noticed that this book was at the same time tragedy, satire and comedy: tragedy because it deals with the deeds of

3 famous people such as kings, popes, barons; satire because it denounces all vices courageously regardless of power or position; comedy because its plot is sad at the beginning (the hell), but has a happy outcome (the paradise). This early commentator hits the mark with his analysis and defines the novelty of Dante’s poem, the fusion of different styles.

An example of the original way the poet adapts the rules ancient rhetorics can be found in Canto IV of Inferno. Dante meets here Homer, Ovid and Lucan, the greatest scholars of epic poetry (sublime style, tragedy, according to the ancient and medieval hierarchy). However, among them, there is Horace, the leading satirical poet. The great writer and philosopher Isidore of Seville had already defined satire as new comedy, thus differentiating it from the ancient one of Plautus and Terence. Including Horace among the epic poets is a precise sign: for Dante “comedy” is a new genre, emerging from the union of satire and tragedy.

It should also be remembered that the medieval meaning of "comedy" fits into the context of Christian culture, which knows well and admires the sublime style of the classics, appropriates it and proposes it in its own texts. But there is a profound difference between the ancient “sublime” and the Christian one. In the classical tragedy the world is dominated by fate and the central theme is in the struggle between hero and destiny; in the Christian “sublime” instead of fate there is the Divine Design of the Almighty and the struggle between man and sin. This explains why the story of Christ’s death, whose noble argument would surely suggest the use of sublime style, is basically considered “comedy” as the story concludes with the victory of good over evil, with the resurrection over the death.

This explains why the “comedy" for the Christian is not a minor literary genre, on the contrary only in it is realized the Christian dialectic between life and death, between humility and greatness.

This explains why Dante thinks of his own work as "comedy": it is both sublime and humble, great and common, whose meaning is in any case noble, because not only the impressive or great or lofty, but also the small and modest and humble have inherent in themselves the deep sense of human history: the struggle against sin in search of salvation.

4 This is how Dante understands his most illustrious model: Virgil's Aeneid. He reads the “lofty tragedy” (“l’alta tragedìa”) of his master as "comedy" because the Aeneid is already, even according to some Christian commentators that Dante knows well, an imitation of human life, just like his Comedy: the journey of Aeneas is in fact the arduous journey of humanity that returns to its ancient homeland, just like Dante's journey from the dark forest to the revelation of the Trinity, through a war imposed by the difficult trials “of the way and of the pity”, “sì del cammino e sì della pietate” (Inf, II, 5).

“Il cammino e la pietate” is the title of the lessons I wrote for Italian students. You can find it, in Italian, on my web site https://www.nelmezzodelcammin.it/i-miei-ebook/

I translated into English the first two lessons (“Divine Comedy. When and where the story takes place. Two lessons on Dante’s poem”) that can be found at the same web address.

Eindhoven, May 29, 2019

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