Throughout
what must be hundreds of characters that appear in La Commedia, Dante (the author) never brings in a single family
member nor does he mention any, all except for one. He doesn’t mention his wife nor any of his three
children. We never hear of a father or
mother or siblings. We hear of many
father figures, men who in some respect “fathered” Dante. The work of literature Dante most revered,
Virgil’s Aeneid, had at its heart a
trip to the underworld by the protagonist, Aeneas, to locate his father
Anchises, to ask for some key advice about his future. Here in this epic of a journey through the
underworld, Dante (the author) never has Dante (the character) seek or encounter
his father. The theme of fatherhood
being so important in the work, in lieu of encountering and speaking to his
father, Dante has Dante encounter his great great-grandfather, Cacciaguida degli
Elisei right in center of his third cantica, Paradiso.
Dante
(the author) makes it quite clear that Cacciaguida is almost a parallel
character to Anchises. At the moment
when Cacciaguida steps up to great his descendant, an allusion is made to the
affectionate greeting Anchises gives Aeneas.
With such affection did
Anchises' shade reach out,
if our greatest muse is
owed belief,
when in Elysium he knew
his son. (XV. 25-27)
And
so Cacciaguida greets Dante with much fatherly love. Indeed, he greets him with pride. He speaks in Latin, the only Latin tercet in
the entire poem. The Latin connects to
Virgil’s work, and to an ancestry that goes back to the Roman Empire. He says, “O blood of mine, O grace of God,
poured down from above, to whom, as to you, have the gates of heaven ever been
opened twice?” He is proud that his
blood descendent has been chosen by God to be the only person to ever enter
heaven twice. The pride blossoms just
before he finally introduces himself: “O bough of my tree, in who I have
rejoiced/even in expectation, I was your root.” (88-89).
I
don’t know what, if any is the significance of Cacciaguida’s name—and for some
reason I have never seen any commentary on it—but Cacciaguida literally
translates into “hunting guide.” Perhaps
it’s just the real name of his great great-grandfather, and so it doesn’t carry
any significance. But it is just too
convenient and smacks of suggestion.
However, I can’t come up with any allusion or significance. It’s a great name, having a sort of reverence
and dignity, a sort of Hemingway-esk patriarch.
A masculine name.
That
his character spans from Canto XV through the first half of XVIII, three and a
half cantos, certainly suggests significance.
Also he gives his key advice right at the center of Paradiso, Canto XVII having sixteen cantos before it and sixteen
cantos after it. It is in Canto XVII,
the exact center, that Cacciaguida tells of Dante’s fate in exile. He is under the sphere of Mars, the fifth of
the ten spheres of heaven. Virgil has
Aeneas meet with Anchises in the sixth of twelve books of the Aeneid, also exactly mid-way. Having your protagonist meet with a lost
father at the center of the structure to seek out wisdom is a powerful story
element. It is akin to a hero climbing a
mountain or wandering through a desert to seek wisdom from some venerable sage
who will set him on the right path. When
that sage happens to be your father, then all sorts of family dynamics and
ancestry are intermingled.
Cacciaguida
says that he has read into The Book of Life and learned of his descendant’s
history and knows his fate.
And he went on: 'That
long and welcome craving,
derived from reading in
the massive book
where neither black nor
white is ever altered,
'you have satisfied, my
son, within this light
from which I speak to you
by grace of her
who dressed you out in
wings for this high flight. (XV.49-54)
By
parsing through the various details of Cacciaguida’s monologue, we can piece
together that he was born in 1090 in Florence, baptized in the Baptistery od
San Giavanni, belonged to one of the oldest of Florentine families which traced
its roots to Roman times, was knighted by the Emperor as he joined the Second
Crusade, and was killed in action on crusade at the age of 57 in the year of
1147 trying to retake the Holy Land.
Since the Divine Comedy is set
in the year 1300, Cacciaguida has been dead for 153 years, some six
generations.
A
poignant moment in the encounter is when Dante calls Cacciaguida his father.
I began: 'You are my
father,
You prompt me to speak
with bold assurance.
You raise me up, so I am
more than I.
'My mind is flooded by
such rivers of delight
that it exults it has not
burst
with so much happiness
and joy. (XVI.16-21)
Dante
goes on to ask about his ancestors. It
is interesting that though Cacciaguida alludes to his noble ancestry, he
refuses to answer Dante’s question on who his ancestors were (XVI.43). Why? I’m not sure.
Perhaps it was just structural.
This would have been tangential and perhaps even a digression, and Dante
(the author) didn’t have the space to dwell on it. The suggestion was enough.
But
he directly calls him “his father” with
such affection and joy, a burst of emotion that in human relationship is
unparalleled. My father has been
deceased now for over twelve years. What
I would give to meet with him again.
Indeed,
Cacciaguida is the culmination of the father theme that has run throughout the Commedia. He speaks in three tongues, Latin (XV.28-30),
a tongue Dante (the character) could not understand (XV.38-39), which could be
a proto-Italian, and finally ”not in this our modern tongue” (XVI.33), which
would suggest an earlier dialect. So
from Latin to early Italian, Cacciaguida spans over a thousand years of
language evolution. Dante (the author)
who is so conscious of writing his poem in the colloquial language, has
Cacciaguida encapsulate Italian’s etymology.
In effect his language is the great-grandfather of Italian.
Hollander
cites that throughout the Divine Comedy,
Dante directly refers to seven beings as “father”: Virgil, God the Father, Cacciaguida here, St.
Benedict, St. Peter, Adam, and St. Bernard.
The last four we encounter further into heaven, and so we get a sense of
a journey to one’s father. In addition
to the direct addresses as fathers, Dante refers to five other beings as
fathers: Brunetto Latini, Cato, the old Roman stoic, Guido Guinizzelli, St.
Francis of Assisi, and the Sun. Twelve
fathers in all, a number which has much significance, one being the number of
Jesus’ disciples. Virgil and Guinizzelli
are his poetic fathers, Latini his father in scholarship and learning, Cato his
father in being a citizen, St. Francis for being his Franciscan father (Dante
being a Lay Franciscan), the other saints for being his spiritual fathers, Adam
for being his father in humanity, God for being the ultimate Father, and the
Sun as analogous for God.
The
search for one’s father is the search for identity, and Dante will find it in
Cacciaguida.
###
So
why doesn’t Dante (the author) have Dante (the character) meet his father in
paradise instead of his great great-grandfather? Well, the obvious answer would be that his
father didn’t die in a crusade, and so wouldn’t fit the sphere of Mars. But it’s more than that. We don’t know of any rancor that may have
occurred between Dante and his father that might have prevented Dante from
including him in his cast. But Dante is
definitive in not including any of his immediate family anywhere in the Commedia. The character of Cacciaguida, going back over
150 years, provided Dante (the author) with a number of advantages. First he can create the character as he
wishes, since no one knows what he was like.
Second, he’s free of any family dynamics, though I can’t see Dante
really being worried of that. Third, and
most important—if not the single most important reason—Cacciaguida’s distance
in history allows for a summation of Florence’s degeneration from an ideal
past.
It
is worthwhile to look at the transitions in the three and a half cantos with
Cacciaguida. (1) We meet Cacciaguida
(Canto XV.25-87), (2) Cacciaguida speaks on the virtues of old Florence
(XV.88-129), (3) Cacciaguida reveals his history (XV.130-148), (4) Cacciaguida
speaks on the evolution of Florence through the great families (Canto XVI), (5)
Cacciaguida foretells Dante’s future (Canto XVII), and (6) Cacciaguida catalogues
the blessed under the sphere of Mars (XVIII.1-57). Cacciaguida’s life from six generations back becomes
an indictment against the mores of Dante’s day, the civil strife of Dante’s
day, against Dante’s enemies who exiled him, and, as we see, against his
comrades who were exiled along with him but ultimately abandoned him.
In
Cacciaguida’s character, we see the ideal citizen. Obviously he is devout, noble, and
patriotic. When the need for the crusade
comes up, he accepts at a fairly advanced age the Emperor’s request for
recruits and leaves his beloved city and family to fight for the retaking of
the Holy Land. He provides a list of the
great and honorable families of his day, and speaks on their virtues. He shows how over time these virtues eroded,
and how the influx of neighboring cities diluted the virtues of old Florence,
both through the women who became obsessed with vanity and men who became
obsessed with wealth. He shows how citizens
became more loyal to their political parties than to Florence herself, and how
factionalism eroded the public good.
Cacciaguida’s
discourse is one of the great conservative diatribes in all of literature. Progressives place some sort of ideal in a
utopian future; conservatives place the ideal in the past and rant about the
decay in the present. It doesn’t mean
one is more correct than the other; it’s a matter of view. Cacciaguida expresses a conservative’s appeal
to the state of Florence in the day of his great great-grandchild. And in turn, since Cacciaguida is really the
mouthpiece of the author here, Dante is one of the great conservative writers
in history.
By
bringing in Conrad II, the Holy Roman Emperor, through Cacciaguida’s life, we
see what a good and proper role of an Emperor was supposed to be like, and in
reflection we see the good and proper role of the city-states, and by
suggestion the good and proper role of the Pope. The Holy Father identifies the religious
crises of pilgrims denied a visit to the holy sites; the emperor coordinates
the martial means to right the injustice; the citizens of the city-states
volunteer with knightly honor to support the call to arms. This harmonious social constitution
counterpoints the social discord of Dante’s day.
Cacciaguida
identifies the roots of the social discord in the murder of Buondelmonte in
1216and it has the sense of a mythic story akin to the apple of discord that
was supposed to have started the Trojan War.
Buondelmonte dishonors his betrothed lady by running off with another
woman. The family of the insulted lady
take revenge and murder Buondelmonte. A
feud develops, which spills over into the political parties, and the die is
cast for not just factionalism, which had begun to form anyway, but for factionalism
where disputes are settled through violence.
Placing
the situation into history, we see how the feud between the Guelphs and the
Ghibelline parties is settled through the violent expulsion of the
Ghibellines. The then dominating Guelphs
shortly divide into the Black and White parties, and ultimately leads to the
violent exile of the Whites of which Dante is a leader. Dante will be exiled in 1302. He starts to write the Commedia in 1308 but sets the date of the story back in time to 1300,
two years before he is exiled. He
completes the work just short of his death in 1321, so even as he edits the
work in his late years he has been in exile from his beloved Florence for
nearly twenty years.
We
have gotten tidbits of his exile to come throughout the Divine Comedy, but it is here with Cacciaguida that it is confirmed
and explained. Cacciaguida’s foretelling
of events brings this thread in the story to a climax and conclusion. The foretelling of Dante’s future occurs in
Canto XVII, the exact center of Paradiso.
There
are some great lines from Cacciaguida’s foretelling of Dante’s future. Lines 52 through 69 deserve explication.
The populace shall blame
the injured party,
as it always does, but
vengeance
shall bear witness to the
Truth that metes it out.
'You shall leave behind
all you most dearly love,
and that shall be the
arrow
first loosed from exile's
bow.
'You shall learn how salt
is the taste
of another man's bread
and how hard is the way,
going down and then up
another man's stairs. (XVII.52-60)
The
general population will blame him, but vengeance will be obtained through the
“Truth,” and the capitalization implies a divine justice. Leaving behind all he most dearly loves (his
city, his honor, his property, and his family) will be the first arrow to be
shot. And then the great and memorable
tercet, “'You shall learn how salt is the taste/of another man's bread and how
hard is the way,/going down and then up another man's stairs.” He will have to live in poverty in another
man’s house and eat another man’s bread.
The synesthesia—providing an analogy through a sensation—of salty bread
is magnificent. Salt can make food so
tasty, but if overdone can make it bitter.
Hollander also points out the salt can be a result of tears. Cacciaguida continues:
'But the heaviest burden
your shoulders must bear
shall be the companions,
wicked and witless,
among whom you shall fall
in your descent.
'They, utterly
ungrateful, mad, and faithless,
shall turn against you.
But soon enough they, not you,
shall feel their faces
blushing past their brows.
'Of their brutish state
the results
shall offer proof. And it
shall bring you honor
to have made a single
party of yourself alone. (XVII.61-69)
His
“wicked and witless” companions will be ungrateful and turn against Dante. But ultimately the honor will be his alone
because Dante in the end will be a party of one. That phrase, “party of one” has been used
often since it was written.
Finally
Cacciaguida will devote some time to predicting the good fortune and future
heroics of Cangrande della Scala, a nobleman from Verona, who would become
Dante’s patron while in exile. In 1300,
Cangrande would only have been nine years old, so this is purely a
foretelling. Cangrande apparently was a
brave warrior and conquered a number of northern city-states. I don’t know if Cangrande’s conquests had a
religious element to it, but it is fitting that they he is featured in the
sphere of Mars. Dante (the author) in gratitude
for the patronage immortalizes Cangrande (which by the way translates into “big
dog”) with this passage.
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