The Divine Comedy Part 6
AN INTERMISSION:
Dante's letter to his patron Cangrande della Scala, and what it tells us about The Divine Comedy. And, is it real, or a fake?
When Dante published Paradiso, the last of the three cantata that make up The Divine Comedy, it was prefaced by a letter to his "friend" and political patron Cangrande della Scala. It is lengthy, and as you might expect, Dante is careful to observe the niceties, or protocols, deemed appropriate in a subordinate addressing his social superior. But, true to form, and anticipating public censure, Dante defended himself from a charge of familiarity, in addressing Cangrande as a "friend." But, before we get to the letter and the issues that surround it, a thought about poetry more broadly.
When a poem leaves the poet it belongs to the reader, because in putting it into the public domain, the writer is sharing his or her experience; and they have no certainty that the reader will see it from their point of view. Why? Because when we read, and irrespective of whether it is prose or poetry, it is inevitable that we will measure it against our own experiences. So people are not necessarily agreed about the value of something, or the significance of what it is that is being said. And more interesting perhaps, is that a discerning reader might identify something from the subconscious of the writer, (including the influence of other poets). All of which, is just another way of saying that even if the poet thinks they know what it is that they have created, that is not necessarily the case.
So it is against these general principles that we have arguments, or better, perhaps, difference of opinion, as to what is actually going on in any given literary work. And so in respect of The Divine Comedy, there are no shortage of differing opinions and speculations.
When the third book, Paradiso was published, it was prefaced by a letter of dedication to Can Francesco della Scala, who, on account of his physical and mental precocity, became known as Cangrande, a word that translates as "great" or "big dog". A warrior and autocrat, and from an illustrious family, he at first shared power with his brother Albiono, but when Albiono died in 1311, Cangrande, at the age of twenty, became the sole ruler in Verona. In the years that followed, until his death in 1329, Cangrande, with an appetite for territory, engaged in several wars and treaties with the cities of Vicenza, Padua, and Treveso. In the first instance, and as a Ghibelline, (a supporter of the Holy Roman Emperor), his allegiance was to Henry VII, and after his death in 1314, to Frederick I of Austria: allegiances in defiance of the Pope, who, at first threatened, and finally excommunicated him. What angered Pope John XXII was Cangrande's defiance, for by accepting imperial titles: Imperial Vicariates, Cangrande was not only publicly acknowledging the authority of the Emperor, but agreeing to act as his representative in his absence. But more important than all of this, in the context of Dante's exile from Florence, is that Cangrande was his principal patron.
Contemporaries described Cangrande as a man of physical strength and endurance, jovial, and with an open disposition, someone who enjoyed discussion and debate, but, whose temper could be ferocious when things (presumably battles}, were not going well. And not withstanding his excommunication, he was described as a deeply religious man, with a particular devotion to the Virgin Mary, (on whose account he fasted twice a week). Widely respected for his bravery in battle, even his foes praised him for the mercy shown to them in defeat. But for all his achievements, his dynasty did not last, so that today he is remembered mostly for his association with Dante.
On the 18th of July 1329, and having yet again defeated the city of Treveso, Cangrande entered the city in triumph, but five days later, on the 22nd, he was dead, having become ill, it was said, by drinking from a polluted stream. But if his dynasty didn't last, the historical interest in him was sufficient to cause his naturally mummified body to be exhumed in 2004. And in the autopsy that followed, (and with some of the internal organs remarkably well preserved), the conclusion was, that death was caused by the ingestion of a lethal quantity of the poison, digitalis, probably given to him in the guise of a medicine. A conclusion that lends credence to the suspicion at the time, that he might have been poisoned.
But, returning now to The Divine Comedy, to Paradiso, where Dante meets his great-great grandfather Cacciaguida, Dante, as noted previously, used Cacciaguida to foretell of his future expulsion from Florence and of how Cangrande woulc come to his aid:
70 "Your first refuge, and your first entertainment
Will be the courtesy of the great Lombard
Whose arms are a ladder bearing the sacred bird; [Cangrande]
73 And his good will towards you will be such
That doing, which generally comes after asking,
As between you two, will be what comes first.
76 In him you will see one who at his birth
Was so marked by this powerful star
That his performance will be notable.
79 He is someone people have not yet noticed,
Because of his youth; for nine years only [b.1291]
Have these spheres circulated around him.
82 But before the Gascon has deceived the great Henry [Pope Clement V]
Sparks of his virtue will begin to appear
Careless alike of money and exertion.
85 So well will his magnificence be known
That not even his enemies will be able
To keep their tongues from talking of his actions.
88 Look to him and the benefits he will bring;
Through him many people will be transformed,
Changing their condition, the rich and the beggars.
91 And you shall bear a record of him in your mind
But say nothing"; and then he told me things
Incredible to those who will live through them.
(Paradisoo, Canto XVII (17) 70-93)
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We are first made aware of Pope Clement V in Hell, where, Pope Nicholas III, (buried head first in a hole with only his legs visible), welcomes him, and marvels at his early arrival. He has of course mistaken Dante for Pope Clement: a clever device by which Dante foretold of his damnation. Not only did he excel Nicholas III as a simonist, but being French and owing his election as pope to the influence of the French King, Phillip IV, Clement, in return, moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon. But more significant in the context of the tercets quoted above, Dante blamed him, again at the instigation of Phillip IV, for abandoning Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg, in his attempt to unify the warring factions in the northern Italian cities.
Now as it was the third and final book of The Divine Comedy that Dante was dedicating to Cangrande, he felt it necessary to put the book in context: to explain the nature of the entire work in the context of allegory, as well as to say something about the structure and content of Paradiso. And in context of the original title, Comedia, (Comedy), to explain the nature of comedy to Cangrande. And in all of this, he tells him, he will do: "under the guise of a reader."
To begin with, and in the context of the work in its entirety, Dante distinguishes between the literal and the allegorical:
"The subject of the whole work, taken only from a literal standpoint, is simply the status of the soul after death, taken simply, the movement of the whole work turns from it and around it. If the work is taken allegorically, however, the subject is man, either gaining or loosing merit through his freedom of will, subject to the justice of being rewarded or punished."
Then, taking a passage from the Old Testament, (Psalm 113. 1-2) Dante uses it to show how allegory works: how the reader can go beyond the literal so as to arrive at the "moral or anagogical" [higher level] of spiritual understanding. The lines he quotes are:
""When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people, Judea was made his sanctuary, Israel his dominion.""
After which he goes on to say:
"If we look at it from the letter alone [the literal] it means for us our redemption done by Christ; if from the moral sense, it means the conversion of the soul from the struggle and misery of sin to the status of grace; if from the anagogical, it means the leave taking of the blessed soul from the slavery of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory. And though these mystical senses are called by various names," he tells us, "in general, all can be called allegorical, because they are different from the literal or the historical. . ."
An idea that he applied to the Divine Comedy, with these introductory remarks:
"The sense of this work is not simple, rather it may be called polysemantic, that is, of many senses the first sense is that which comes from the letter, the second is that which is signified by the letter . . ."
As for conveying the idea of what comedy is, Dante, having traced the etymology of the word, does so, by contrasting it with tragedy, and with his own work in mind:
"...It differs therefore from the tragedy, in matter by the fact that tragedy in the beginning is admirable and quiet, in the end or final exit it is smelly and horrible. . .But comedy begins with harshness in some thing, whereas its matter ends in a good way . . .They differ also in the way of speaking: the tragedy is elevated and sublime, the comedy loose and humble . . ." To which, he adds: "At times, however, even comedy exalts her voice. And from this it is obvious that the present work is called comedy. And if we look at the matter in the beginning it is horrible and smelly,.Inferno; in the end it is good, admirable and graceful, for it is Paradiso; as to the manner of speaking, it is easy and humble, because it in in the vulgar tongue, [the spoken language of every day, as distinct the classical languages of Latin or Greek] in which also women communicate. And thus it is obvious why it is called Comedy . . ."
And in respect of Paradiso, Dante describes it as being divided mainly into two parts: "the prologue and the real part". The idea of the first part, (here he is citing Cicero), is to "render the listener well intentioned, attentive and malleable", so as to prepare them for the second part, which by tradition, should be, "something marvelous". The prologue he tells Cangrande, is likewise in two parts. The first, and again by convention, is to outline what is to be said, and in the second to invoke the help of the gods. So he begins by explaining that he is recalling something of what he can remember, (but with an oblique reference to Saint Paul and Saint Thomas Aquinas), whose unique mystical experiences defied description. And secondly, an invocation, in this instance a prayer asking for help from Apollo, the Greek and Roman god of, (among other things), poetry and song:
The glory of him who moves everything
Penetrates the universe and shines
In one part more and, in another, less.
4 I have been in the heaven which takes most of his light,
And I have seen things which cannot be told,
Possibly, by anyone who comes down from up there;
7 Because, approaching the object of its desires,
Our intellect is so deeply absorbed
That memory cannot follow it all the way.
10 Nevertheless, what I was able to store up
Of that holy kingdom, in my mind,
Will now be the matter of my poem.
And the invocation:
13 O good Apollo, for this final endeavour,
So make me the vessel of your virtue
As to be fit to receive your beloved laurel.
(Paradiso. Canto 1:1-15)
Apollo is of course the Sun god, associated with truth and prophecy, music, poetry and more besides. And the "laurel" which Dante hopes to prove worthy of, was the traditional symbol of victory in battle.
As for the "marvelous", he tells Cangrande that Paradiso "is going to tell about those things which are most attractive to the desires of man, namely the joys of Paradise;" adding that "he touches on the marvelous when, he promises to tell about such difficult, such sublime things." After which Dante moves to the "letter", the main part, where, in a long discourse and by arguing according to the principles of Aristotle's Metaphysics, and theology, as to how God's presence is manifest in scripture, he analyses the tercets quoted above. And in the context of his claim that the poem is divinely inspired, he makes the not unimportant, and many layered statement, that: "he [himself] was in that heaven "which most receives the glory of God, or his light.For which reason you must know that that heaven is the highest heaven, containing all bodies, and contained by none, within which all bodies move (while it remains in eternal quiet), and receiving power from no corporal substance. And it is called empyrean, which is the same as fiery heaven or flaming with heat; not that it is fire or material heat, but spiritual, which is holy love or charity."
__________
Now if, as he did, Dante acknowledged his poem to be an allegory, and he explained clearly how allegory works, that for most of us would be sufficient. But not if you are Charles S. Singleton.
In a contribution to Bloom's Modern Critical Views, entitled, "The Two Kinds Of Allegory" Singleton asks in respect of The Divine Comedy, what kind of allegory it is. Is it the allegory of the poet, or the allegory of the theologian? What he is doing is addressing a contentious issue about the true nature of the poem. And as Dante was a poet, "Why?" he asks, wouldn't you start with the assumption that it is allegory, as poets understood it and as Dante described it in the Convivio : a poem in which the first and literal sense is a fiction, and the second or allegorical sense is the true one. What Singleton later describes as a case of "this for that". And so strong is this view among some scholars, that the Divine Comedy is the allegory of the poet, that they question the authenticity of the letter to Cangrande. Why? Because by way of explaining allegory, and how it works, Dante quoted not from other poets, as they would have expected,: poets such as Ovid, but from Scripture: from Psalm 113. And this, for Singleton is the nub of the issue.
Importantly Singleton makes the point that in his letter to Cangrande, Dante is not making a comparison between the different kinds of allegory; but the fact that Dante quotes from the Psalms, is what makes the poem the allegory of theologians: for, in quoting the lines "When Israel went out of Egypt . . ." that is the direction that Dante is pointing. And Singleton presents us with a definition of the allegory of the theologian as given by Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica, which he says is well know to all medievalists. But he, himself, gives effective expression to the difference between the two types of allegory, where he writes:
"It [the poem] is that kind of allegory, the "allegory of the theologian" not only because Holy Scripture is cited to illustrate it, but since Scripture is cited, the first or literal sense cannot be fictive [fictional] but must be true and in this instance historical." To which, by way of making the distinction, he adds: "The effect of Orphius' music on beasts and stones may be a poets invention, setting forth under a veil of fiction some hidden truth, but the Exodus [to which the Psalm relates] is no poet's invention."
So for a poem to be the allegory of the theologian, it has in the first instance to be true, not fictional, as with the allegory of the poet, and therefore the first meaning is both historical and literal. And in going beyond that to the allegorical, as Thomas Aquinas points out, is what takes the theologian into the realm of the spiritual, a case as Singleton puts it of "this and that", rather than ""this for that"", or as Aquinas puts it: "That signification whereby things signified by words have themselves also a signification is called the spiritual sense, which is based on the literal and presupposes it."
Well, all of that said, there is yet another angle to be considered, which is as to whether or not in a reading of the poem today, this distinguishing between the different types of allegory, matters, when in either case, as in reading any poem: "we must enter in to the willing suspension of our disbelief."
To which Singleton adds:
"Indeed it happens to matter very much, because with this poem it is not a question of one meaning, but two meanings, and the nature of the first meaning will necessarily determine the nature of the second - will say how we shall look for the second . . ."
And further along, he writes::
"The crux of the matter, then, is this. If we take the allegory of the Divine Comedy to be the allegory of poets, (as Dante understood that allegory [in another of his works], Convivio) then we shall be taking it as a construction in which the literal sense ought always to be expected to yield another sense, because the literal is only a fiction devised to express a second meaning. In this view the first meaning, if it does not give another, true meaning, has no excuse for being. Whereas, if we take the allegory of the Divine Comedy to be the allegory of theologians, we shall expect to find in the poem a first literal meaning presented as a meaning which is not fictive but true. And we shall see these events themselves offering a second meaning because their author, who is God, can use events as men use words. But, we shall not demand at every moment that the event signified by the words be in its turn as a word, because that is not the case in Holy Scripture . . .
And by way of concluding, this:
"One should have no difficulty in making the choice. The allegory of the Divine Comedy is so clearly the "allegory of theologians" (as the letter to Can grande by its example says it is) that one may only wonder at the continuing efforts made to see it as the "allegory of poets." What indeed increases the wonder at this effort is that every attempt to treat the first meaning of the poem as a fiction devised to convey a true but hidden meaning has been such a clear demonstration of how a poem may be forced to meanings that it cannot possibly bear as a poem."
And clearly implicit in Singleton's narrative, is that he doesn't consider the letter to Cangrande della Scala to be anything other than authentic.
_______________
© Cormac McCloskey
Dante's letter to Cangrande della Scala
The autopsy on Cangrande della Scala in 2004
The next blog in this series, The Divine Comedy Part 7
JUSTICE: from God's point of view will be published on Wednesday 19 February
The sources listed below were referenced, and in most instances used in the composition of these blogs:
Translated by C.H. Sisson
Introduction and Notes: David H. Higgins
(Oxford World's Classics)
Oxford University Press (2008)
ISBN: 978-0-19953564-4
Dante: The Divine Comedy
I: Hell
Translated by Dorothy L. Sayers
Penguin Classics (1953) edition
The Complete Danteworlds
A Reader's Guide to the Divine Comedy
Guy P. Raffa
University of Chicago Press (2009)
ISBN:10: 0-226-70270-7
The De Monarchia Of
Dante Alighieri
Edited With Translation And Notes
by Aurelia Henry (1904)
Printed in Great Britain
by Amazon.co.uk Ltd
Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol's 1,3,7,11,14 and 28
in respect of a variety of related topics (1991 edition)
Vol 14: Aristotle. 28: Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle
A very Short Introduction
by Jonathan Barnes
Oxford University Press (2000)
ISBN: 978-19-285408-7
BBC Radio 4 archive
In Our Time, 17th September 2009
"Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, works and enduring influence of the medieval philosopher and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas, with Martin Palmer, John Haldane and Anabel Brett." here
Bloom's Modern Critical Views
Editor, Harold Bloom
Chelsea House Publishers,
Philadelphia U.S.A. (2004)
ISBN: 0-7910--7658-X
The Poetics of Conversion
by John Freccero
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London England (1986)
ISBN: 0-674-19225-7 (alk, paper (cloth)
ISBN: 0-674-19226-5 (paper)
Saint Augustine
City of God
Penguin Books 2003
ISBN-13: 978-8-14-044894-8
Evangelii Gaudium
The Joy of the Gospel
Pope Francis
The Word Among Us press 2013
ISBN : 978-1-59325-262-5Penguin Books 2003
ISBN-13: 978-8-14-044894-8
Evangelii Gaudium
The Joy of the Gospel
Pope Francis
The Word Among Us press 2013
(1) Wikipedia unam sanctam
Virgil (40-19 BC) Regarded as one of Rome's greatest poets
(2) Wikipedia, for an excellent broad sweep of The Divine Comedy, go here
(3) De Monarchia Boo II: XIII In the chapter headed "Christ in dying confirmed the jurisdiction of
the Roman Empire over all humanity" Dante argues the case for the Roman Empire being the lawful authority by which Christ was put to death (lawful, in the sense of being ordained by God) and at XIII.4 he writes "Wherefore let those who pretend they are sons of the Church cease to defame the Roman Empire, to which Christ the Bridegroom gave his sanction both at the beginning and at the close of his warfare. And now I believe, it is sufficiently obvious that the Roman people appropriated the Empire of the world by Right."
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