"Love follows knowledge."
"Beauty above all beauty!"
– St. Catherine of Siena

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Comments to Dante's Purgatorio, Cantos XXIV to XXVIII

One of the points I wish to point out in these cantos is the culmination of all the poets in Canto XXVI, where we get more of Dante’s poetic “fathers,” Guido Guinizzelli and Arnaut Daniel.  We have seen quite a few poets up to now.  In Inferno there was Bertran de Born and Brunetto Latini.  Though he was still alive we heard of Dante’s friend and fellow poet, Guido Calvancanti when we met his Guido’s father in Inferno’s sixth circle.  In Limbo, where Virgil resides, we met some of the great Latin poets of Ovid, Horace, and Terrance.  Of course there is Virgil, who has been Dante’s guide.  On the lower regions of purgatory we met Casella, who not exactly a poet, set poetry to music, and we met Sordello, a Troubadour poet from northern Italy.  In the middle regions of the purgatorial terraces we met Statius, an ancient Roman pagan poet, but Dante the author re-writes his biography to now include a Christian conversion.  On the terrace of gluttony we met Date’s friend and cousin-in-law, Forese Donati who as an amateur poet traded farcical poems with Dante.  Forese points out Bonagiunta de Lucca, whose poetry Dante had once criticized.  And now we come to the terrace of lust where Dante meets two masters of love poetry he greatly admired.  The intensity and frequency of poets encountered seem to be accelerating.

What to make of it?  As I’ve mentioned, there are three major themes that are at the center of the Commedia, the journey for the formation of one’s soul to be in harmony with the divine, the proper organization and authority of governing society and the church, and the formation of poetic work and language to reflect the beauty of God’s creation.  I’ve also tried, perhaps not very well, to point out that these three themes are also integrated, though on the surface they may appear disparate.  The secular and church authority are there to shape the lives of the citizens so that they can through their free will attain harmony with God.  Poetry is there to instruct men toward the divine as well as praise God and His creation. 

Since these poets in purgatory are all undergoing their respective corrective penances, it suggests that their poetry failed to live up to the high order of worthiness that would reflect God.  With Statius we know it’s not his poetry but his lack of courage to declare himself a Christian that held him back.  But with Bonagiunta, Guinizzelli, and Arnaut we are dealing with poets of courtly love, though perhaps all in different styles.  Dante too is a poet of courtly love.  This exchange between Dante and Bonagiunta in Canto XXIV is most fascinating.  He asks Dante if he is the one who wrote a particular poem in the New Style.

'But tell me if I see before me
the one who brought forth those new rhymes
begun with Ladies that have intelligence of love.'

And I to him: 'I am one who, when Love
inspires me, take note and, as he dictates
deep within me, so I set it forth.'

'O my brother,' he said, 'now I understand the knot
that kept the Notary, Guittone, and me
on this side of the sweet new style I hear.

'I clearly understand that your pens follow
faithfully whatever Love may dictate,
which, to be sure, was not the case with ours.

'And he who takes the next step sees in this
what separates the one style from the other.'
Then, as though with satisfaction, he was silent. (Purg. XXIV. 49-63)

As Hollander points out in his commentary, these lines are a bit allusive and what they mean is controversial.  Let me give you what I think. 

Uncertain of who is before him, Bonagiunta asks Dante if he is the poet who wrote in the new style, especially that poem beginning with “Ladies that have intelligence of love.”  Dante confirms it and goes on to say he wrote of love that came from deep within him.  Bonagiunta confirms the difference in style and understands that Dante’s pen followed whatever love might dictate.  Bonagiunta wrote of typical courtly love, while Dante’s poetry was more philosophic in nature.

Then in Canto XXVI Dante meets the “father” of that new style, Guido Guinizzelli, and Guido is in the terrace of lust.  Also in Canto XXVI we meet Arnaut Daniel, also undergoing penance in the terrace of lust, and Arnaut is known for writing in the vernacular language.  Dante too is known for writing in his Tuscan Italian, which makes Arnaut also a poetic father.  Both poetic fathers are in the terrace of lust, or perhaps more accurately the terrace of disordered love.

Let’s return to Statius because he was a poet who was able to reach salvation.  Statius considered Virgil his “mama” because he showed him how to write poetry, but it was Virgil’s Eclogue coupled with meeting Christians that led Statius to reach faith.  Pagan philosophy could only go so far.  Indeed in Virgil’s discourse on love to Dante, Virgil was able to outline the philosophic arguments but could not complete the dissertation because philosophy could only go so far and faith was needed to complete the understanding.  The philosophic argument aligns with the Cardinal Virtues while what is needed are what one learns from the Christian Virtues.  Indeed, there is a tension between the limits of the Cardinal Virtues and the Christian Virtues throughout Purgatorio

One other thing to look back to before I pull this all together into a thesis, and that is Dante’s second dream of the Siren.  We see the Siren, through her mellifluent voice and song seducing Dante.  Though she starts out as an ugly creature, she begins to look more beautiful as the seduction takes root.  Her beauty is an illusion that arises out of Dante’s mind. 

So if Dante says to Bonaguinta hat he wrote of love that came from “deep within him,” and this love was based on philosophic learning and therefore limited, can we now surmise that this love, just as the Siren was distorted because he reformulated her image from within himself, was also distorted?  Can we now surmise that his early poetry spoke of a disordered love because it lacked the Christian Virtues of faith, hope and charity?  It is this realization that leads to Dante’s the character’s growth.  The fullness of this realization will occur shortly when he meets Beatrice.

I don’t know if this is the correct reading, but it’s how I read it.


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Here are some random thoughts on these cantos.

So where is the proper role of the poet shown?  Well, we still have Paradisio, and can consider the beauty and instruction of that last cantica to be the culmination of Dante the poet developing into a divine artist, one that shows humanity the proper way to live with God and to praise God with sublime beauty.  But we do get an early inkling at the beginning of Canto XXVIII where Dante begins to explore Earthly Paradise.

Eager to explore the sacred forest's boundaries
and its depth, now that its thick and verdant foliage
had softened the new day's glare before my eyes,

I left the bank without delay
and wandered oh so slowly through the countryside
that filled the air around with fragrance.

A steady gentle breeze,
no stronger than the softest wind,
caressed and fanned my brow.

It made the trembling boughs
bend eagerly toward the shade
the holy mountain casts at dawn,

yet they were not so much bent down
that small birds in the highest branches
were not still practicing their every craft,

meeting the morning breeze
with songs of joy among the leaves,
which rustled such accompaniment to their rhymes

as builds from branch to branch
throughout the pine wood at the shore of Classe
when Aeolus unleashes his Sirocco.  (Purg. XVIII. 1-21)

Now that he is in earthly paradise the language does get prettier, and it sounds even better in his gorgeous Italian.  What also catches my attention are the bird’s songs of joy, and he links them to poetry by referring to their lines as rhymes.  They are singing in heavenly praise, and this is the role of the poet.  Consider that the only musical note in hell was a demon’s fart and we will see in Paradisio how the heavens themselves create celestial music.  Music gets more sublime as the journey heads toward God.  One can consider the Commedia as a Bildungsroman where Dante the character learns the true nature of poetry.

Do you think it’s an accident that the canto prior to entering the terrace of lust is where Dante the author has Statius describe how sexual intercourse leads to the begetting of people and their souls?  If you’ve learned anything by now, there is nothing that is an accident in this work.  Of course it isn’t.

There are three nights spent on purgatory and each night Dante has a dream.  These dreams occur in the ninth, eighteenth (carrying over into the nineteenth), and the twenty-seventh cantos.  So every ninth canto.  Your annotations probably explain that Dante in real life met Beatrice when he was nine years old, again when he was eighteen, and then completes his great poem of her, La Vita Nuova, at age twenty-seven.  This nine year pattern is part of the intricate and complex numerology of the entire work, which I can’t say I completely understand.  Finally Beatrice first appears to Dante in Canto XXX, a multiple of ten, which is a number of perfection. 

Let’s compare the three dreams.  The first dream is of an eagle that carries Dante away.  As it turns out when he awoke, St. Lucy had carried him up from Ante-Purgatory to Purgatory proper, where the terraces begin.  The second dream is of the siren who attempts to seduce Dante but St. Lucy appears and has Virgil reveal her true nature, all inside the dream.  The third dream has Leah from the Old Testament appear gathering flowers in a meadow and refers to her sister Rachel staring into a mirror fixed on her own eyes.  Is there any coordinating pattern to these dreams?  Women seem to be at the center of each of them, but it’s hard to find anything else. 

Each of the dreams do have particular motifs that get carried forward outside the dream.  Rachel’s eyes highlights the eyes motif that comes up frequent, especially in these recent cantos.  Beatrice’s eyes are her distinguishing feature, and we will see that when she finally meets Dante she will have them veiled along with the rest of her face.  But it is her eyes that Dante recalls frequently throughout.  It is interesting to note that St. Lucy is the patron saint of eyesight.  As a martyred woman in the fourth century, she had her eyes plucked out.

Matelda in Canto XXVIII is a rather curious character.  She is there only to guide Dante about Earthly paradise.  One would have expected Beatrice here, or, perhaps, St. Lucy, who has been frequently popping up to assist the journey, but Dante the author introduces a new character.  Hollander cites some of the debate on her role.  He says that she represents the unfallen Eve.  Also, just as Leah and Rachel are opposites in the active life and the other in contemplative, Matelda is the active to Beatrice the contemplative.  I’m not entirely convinced by that.  Beatrice has so much more weight in the story, that the balance between active and contemplative would be distorted. 

Finally the tension that Dante the author creates in having Dante the character hang fire from entering the purgatorial fire is immense.  What tension.  Is the fire from the terrace of lust this same fire that one has to pass?  Hollander seems to imply so, but to me that last fire seems separated from the terraces.  This final fire is one that all souls must pass, whether they needed to purify from lust or not.  It seemed that the path up the mountain reached a dead end at this fire, and to go forward one has to pass through it.  This is the only place where Dante the character has to undergo penance throughout the pilgrimage.  He didn’t have to carry that boulder in the terrace of pride or be forced to run in the terrace of sloth.  But here he has to pass this fire, which is another reason why I think it is separate from the terrace of lust.


I should note that this final fire that all have to pass through is the only Catholic dogma (as per 1 Cor 12-15) concerning purgatory in the entire Purgatorio.  The rest is all out of Dante’s imagination.

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