Anti-Climacus

WHAT DANTE MEANS TO ME I: Lactantius predates Dante by, oh, a thousand years or so, but anticipates well the opening of the Commedia:

"Many cling stubbornly to vain superstitions and harden themselves against plain truth; they do no favor to the religions they assert and even less favor to themselves. They have the straight path and yet they go a roundabout, devious course, abandoning the obvious line and tumbling over the edge; they shun the light, and collapse blind and enfeebled in darkness. They need advice, to cease the fight against themselves and to will their tardy release from long-standing error; if they eventually come to see why they were born, they will do so anyway."

-Diuinae Institutiones, 1.1.23-24


I am coming to Dante again now, as part of a reading group with a couple of my friends. It will be my fourth extended period with him: the Inferno was, somehow, the first thing I read when I decided I wanted to try to master world literature (and so my experience with Dante predates even my experience with Eliot). I broke down, then, somewhere towards the beginning of the Purgutorio, feeling the theology to be too 'Catholic' for my tastes. The second time was in college, perhaps best remembered for being half the occasion to meet one of my favorite people (hi Dara!). It was also when various parts of the Commedia leapt out at me--Oderisi's speech in Purgutorio XI, Gregory smiling at his mistake, my first exposure to Anselm and Aquinas in the explanation of Christ's sacrifice. That reading affirmed my sense of the work not being so much epic as total: Dante's mind was one that could somehow hold absolutely everything. The third reading, admittedly a minor effort, was, as I recollect, at the beginning of my second year of grad school.

And so I come to it again. I recognize now I am better equipped to make something of it--I know more of the relevant political history, I have some familiarity with the theological debates of the time (thank you, In the Name of the Rose), and my Latin and residual knowledge of Spanish allow me to follow--if haltingly--Dante's Italian, to appreciate the significance of the poetic acheievement. Eliot's judgment here is right--I can think of very few other works of literature where I can say the writer said exactly what he wished with every word--and it could not be any other way with terza rima over such a extensive subject matter. And I think I am better prepared to read and interpret the text--to watch the use of 'love,' 'hope,' and particularly 'fear' in the first five cantos and see the work each is called upon to do.

But this is simply extended confessional autobiography. What does Dante mean to me? I happened to think this time around of the first canto--where Dante finds himself lost in the middle of the wood, no idea how he ended up there, aware he emerged (he knows not how) from someplace bad, unable to push ahead as he knows he should. A lot of commentary has been devoted to what the three creatures he encounters are meant to represent, what or who the greyhound is supposed to be--but a parallel to Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man seems apposite here: we can make no sense of the images presented to us as readers because they make no sense to Dante as the protagonist. I think here of Mark 8:24--we only see the outlines--men as trees, and it takes advice and guidance for Dante, and ourselves, to see anything else.

Dante means something, I think, because he comes to guide the reader, but as one who has failed in ordering his own life. As Virgil says to him:

"But you, why do you return to so much suffering?
why do you not climb the delightful mountain
that is the origin and cause of all joy?" (1.76-78)

Excellent question. Who hasn't ever asked themselves that? "Look, the solution's right there in front of you! Why can't you just do it?" But there's an understanding, an experience that comes from taking the longer way; it would be easiest to just be a good person, and do what you're supposed to, and always be beautiful and perfect to everyone you encounter; but in the other way, ah, there's the beatific vision.

And then:

"I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul
neither I nor others believe me worthy of that" (2.32-33)

This is odd, coming from the man who will, two cantos on, place himself alongside Homer and Horace as one of the eminent poets of all time, and will boast, further on, to be producing metamorphoses that surpass anything Ovid did. But I think the moment is genuine here, not merely rhetorical. He is a man who has been called to to great things, and as he does them, he doesn't hesitate to name them. But the moment here is of reflection: that someone could match Homer, or surpass Ovid, is not difficult to imagine, but why should that person be I, Dante?

There's more text, there will be much more to say (unfortunately or to the good, as it goes), but hopefully this serves as a starting point.