Dante in Translation: Dante's Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise

This lecture covers Purgatory V, VI, IX and X. The purgatorial theme of freedom introduced in the previous lecture is revisited in the context of Canto V, where Buonconte da Montefeltro's appearance among the last minute penitents is read as a critique of the genealogical bonds of natural necessity. The poet passes from natural to civic ancestry in Purgatory VI, where the mutual affection of Virgil and Sordello, a former citizen of the classical poet's native Mantua, sparks an invective against the mutual enmity that enslaves contemporary Italy. The transition from ante-Purgatory to Purgatory proper in Canto IX leads to an elaboration on the moral and poetic structure of Purgatory, exemplified on the terrace of pride in Canto X.



Reading assignment:

Dante, Purgatorio: V, VI, IX, X

Transcript



October 9, 2008



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Last time, I was arguing with you about some of the novelties that Dante introduces within the poem at the start of Purgatory. One--there's some formal, what we would call descriptive novelties: light, time, the question of time. There's a moral innovation, the focus on the connection, the subtle connection between freedom and new beginnings. The idea of freedom as, first of all, a political value, and the meeting with Cato, so that though insisting on these novelties and that the novelty and the new, or the possibility of renewal is exactly what's at stake in Dante's new poetics.



I was also trying to emphasize, and I think that that came through, hopefully with clarity, the whole tension between the old and the new, the pull of the past, the sense of nostalgia and whether it's an existential one or in the biblical Exodus story, the nostalgia for the time of safety, apparent safety in--of the Jews in Egypt, even though within--under the slavery that Egypt stands for. These were some of the issues and then we moved onto Canto II where we specifically, on the encounter of Dante with a musician, by the name of Casella, where Dante dramatizes, as if unaware, as if mindless of what had happened in the previous canto and the experience of the previous canto, he just lapses into exactly the same type of predicament that the previous canto had featured. Namely, here he is indulging in memories of the past, lapsing into a form of idolatrous self-confrontation. He's listening to the beauty and lure of the canto--of the song that Casella will sing for him and then, finally, the presence of--the eruption of Cato once again who focuses on the ethical demands of the place.



Purgatory is a place of moral purification and so he urges all the souls that had gathered around the song of Casella, to move away, and the language that he uses is that of dispersion: like doves, like pigeons, like doves that go on dispersing throughout the plain. Clearly what--in retrospect, what is apparent, I think, in all of these situations, is Dante's insistence on the power, on the importance of a communal destiny, a communal fate. Though this communal fate appears as defeated. Let me just explain what I mean and then we move on with today's readings.



In the case of Cato, Cato has been defeated by the civil war between Pompey and Caesar, to the point that he had to commit suicide. In the case of Casella's song, that poem had managed to gather around itself, not only Dante, but all the other souls who had become mindless of what they really were supposed to do, continue their climbing up the mountain. And Cato intervenes and he also shatters the--as illusory that form of community. What I think that Dante's after is the following: there may have been defeat and therefore the value of these experiments in communal existence, that of Cato who commits suicide, and that of the aesthetic gathering around the poetry. They are both partially defeated, and yet they contain seeds that will be necessary for his rethinking about how to renew and reconstruct his idea of the common historical destiny. This is really what--and I hope it's fairly clear and we shall see this a little bit on today.



I turn very briefly now to Canto V, for a couple of reasons because it's--Canto V, if I had to give a general title to the canto, I would say that this deals with Dante's sense of retrospective knowledge. I have been really focusing on a Dante turned to the future, as you know, a Dante who thinks and reflects on hope, who thinks and reflects about issues such as the future in general, that this is freedom is--and time as the future is the real time. Nothing else really matters because everything else can only be understood as part of the future, even when it's past, with the logical underlying assumption that that which is past was once the future, the only real--the only reality of time. He understands in Purgatorio how time moves in a uni-direction, which is future oriented, so it's really a time as future, that it turns out to be also a return to the Garden of Eden, but that is kind of second thought for him.



Here now though, in Canto V, Dante meets souls that the--bring to the fore for him the power of retrospection. These are souls who manage to repent at the last minute. It's almost as if--again, it's time, it's a question of time, but a time that is sort of inexhaustible. It's always possible to fall back, reflect, and turn one's life around. One figure that he meets, and this is Canto V around line 90, you shall see in a moment why I select him. He meets a figure who is--he'll identify himself Buonconte da Montefeltro, who is the son by the way, of a man Guido, whom we met in Canto XXVII of Inferno, and this is why I like to focus on him.



The break between the past and the future, the son being always a sort of statement about a project, about a future--son or the daughter--a statement about the future and the father ends up in Hell. The son ends up in this purgatorial ledge on the way to redemption, so there is no chain of natural necessity and causality between the past and the present and the future. There is a focus on freedom, because once you break that bond of necessity, you are really opening up, inaugurating the idea that we are free, that we are really free to make ourselves regardless of what antecedents we may have behind us.



There is another little detail, which is a formal--it really tells you something about Dante's art, so here he goes on in line 88 or so: "Then another spoke: 'Pray so may that desire be satisfied with draws thee to the high mountain. . . " What extraordinary language about desire drawing us. We are--this is Dante's universe of desire. We're impelled by desire, and desire is really what moves us. It's love that moves us; it's desire that impels us to go one way or the other. ". . . do thou with gracious pity help mine. I was of Montefeltro; I am Buonconte."



And I hope now that you are sensitive to this temporal, to the tenses, the disjunction in tenses. I already pointed those out for you in the canto of Ugolino and here too, Buonconte is asserting his identity in the mode of the present and detaching himself with the view or the use of the past tense from the family, Montefeltro.



"Neither Giovanna nor any other has care for me, so that I go among these with downcast brow.' And I said to him, 'What force or what chance," or 'adventure' more than 'chance.' Chance is too heavy a word and I will come to this a little bit later where Dante reflects on the significance, which has "took thee so far from Campaldino, that thy burial place was never known."



This is an extraordinary scene, an extraordinary encounter for one very autobiographical reason. The reason is this, is that Dante fought at the battle of Campaldino. It was the moment his great maturity, his great entering into the battlefield of life, when he discovers that now, because of the victory that the Florentines had in Campaldino, that he also can have claims about himself, about his own family, and political future. But now he meets a victim. And there have been those who go on claiming with very little evidence, if you are in a battle--I don't know how many of you know the field of Campaldino; it's pretty large, about twenty-five miles east of Florence. The idea is that--so those who go on claiming that maybe this is someone that Dante killed at the battle, and now sort of retrieves him, brings him back--there's no evidence for this--but it is a painful autobiographical moment for him. A moment where he did experience violence and he perpetrated violence.



And this is the answer: "Ah, he replied, 'at the foot of the Casentino.'" Rather than answering the question of the battle, he goes on thinking about his death and recounts his death. This is a poem about births. You remember, I always like to say this about the event of being born, and the portentous quality that being born implies, the kinds of alterations that we all can bring on the world around us by the very fact that we were born. Now he talks about death.



"Ah he replied, 'at the foot of Casentino a stream crosses called the Archiano, which rises above the Hermitage in the Apennines. To the place where its name is lost I came, wounded in the throat, flying on foot, and bloodying the plain. There I lost sight and speech. I ended on the name of Mary and there fell and only my flesh remained. I will tell the truth and do thou tell it again among the living. God's angel took me, and he from Hell cried: 'O thou from Heaven, why dost thou rob me?" And so on.



The reason why I'm really reading this passage, not only to tell you about this notion of the power of time and the power of retrospection, looking back at that final moment in one's life, it's the decisive moment that confers, a coherence, and a meaning to one's life. We were born, and we are born with certain expectations of what we can do, but death becomes the revelatory event.



This is really the point of this passage, but there's another point. Dante deploys the same rhetorical genre of the debate which he had used in the encounter with Buonconte's father. So that by the sameness of the rhetorical genre, you are forced to really couple them together, and yet the point is that of the distance between father and son, that of the distance in the temporal disjunctions between the past and the present, and the future.



The canto ends with six lines which are extraordinary lines, where sentimentalists as occasionally I am, we'll go on even seeing a subtle allusion of Dante to his own wife. It's an encounter with Pia de' Tolomei, a woman from Siena, and clearly this little passage is meant to refocus--remind us of Francesca in Canto V of Inferno. It's the exact symmetrical canto. These are the lines which I will read, I will go on reading also in Italian, you read it in English. Professor Margaret Brooks was asking me to give some evidence of what the Italian language sounds like, and so it's a moment of nostalgia for you too, I take.



So, "Pray when thou hast returned to the world and art rested from the long way,' the third spirit followed the second, do thou remember me who am La Pia." It's a sort of--an epitaph of La Pia, who was mistreated here by the husband and yet incredibly forgiving and the word ends--and the passage ends with the word gem which in Italian is gemma, Dante's wife's name. So one wonders if Pia also doesn't stand the kind of wishful thinking on the part of Dante that his wife whom he had--because of exile had been forced to leave behind may also forgive.



That's the point: is Dante introducing this radical category of forgiveness, which is the true scandal? If you want to begin again, then forgiveness is exactly what's demanded. Let me read the passage in Italian and we move on.



      "Deh, quando tu sarai tornato al mondo,

      e riposato della lunga via,"

      seguitò 'l terzo spirito al secondo

      "ricorditi di me che lon la Pia;

      Siena mi fé; disfecemi Maremma:

      salsi colui che 'nnannelllata pria

      disposando m'avea con la sua gemma."



Now we move to--after this highly--I find it a passage of a great pathos--as all of them are--great intimacy, where Dante's really involved. And just as he's obliquely involved with Buonconte, they fought in the same battle on opposite sides, and then this encounter with Pia de' Tolomei.



We turn to a public canto, a political canto. Let me just try to explain a couple of things before we move on to something that I care about here, in terms of the Canto X and XI. That's how he begins Canto VI, political canto like Canto VI of Inferno, and like Canto VI of Paradise. You know that now, it's a principle of symmetry at work. This is not--Canto VI of Inferno is about the city of Florence, Canto VI of Purgatorio is about Italy, and the disarray, the chaos, the disunity of the country.



Here he starts, "When the game of hazard breaks up the loser is left disconsolate, going over his throws again, and sadly learns his lesson; with the other all the people go off; one goes in front, one seizes him from behind, another at his side recalls himself to his memory; he does not stop, but listens to this one and that one; each to whom he reaches his hand presses on him no longer and so he saves himself from the throng. Such was I in that dense crowd, turning my face to them this way and that, and by promising I got free from them. There was the Aretine," and so on.



It's an extraordinary simile. To explain, that's the burden of the simile, that all the penitents are so surprised at seeing Dante alive in the beyond, that they all go after him. He is--there's a throng of people pressing on him, that's the simile. The simile that he uses is that of the winner in a game of hazard. That is to say, he is the winner. Dante's the winner and they all go after him, and they all neglect Virgil. Virgil is the loser.



Therefore, the simile introduces a language which is extraordinary. It is as if Dante were speaking of his salvation, of the uniqueness of this journey that he is undertaking, in terms of a game of hazard. We all have been thinking that this is really a providential journey and now he is casting it as if it were just a game of chance. Here is the word chance that he uses: hazard. It's an interesting metaphor, first of all, from the point of view of the language of play. This is playful. It's a way of almost of casting one's salvation as the casting of the dice. It's a lottery here that someone loses and someone wins, and Dante says, well I was born after the incarnation, so I had the possibility of saving myself and Virgil did not.



It's also an interesting metaphor because it really introduces the question of play in Dante's theological perception, and it's an issue that I will talk about much more extensively when we reach Paradise. But one thing is clear: that Dante understands that the relationship between--and that's all I'm going to say unless you press me a little later but we'll talk more about this metaphor--Dante understands that the relationship between the soul and God is a relationship shaped by risk on both sides, and that this idea of risk that would seem to be a blind casting of the dice in effect constitutes the freedom that the human beings can have in the scheme of things. The whole point of salvation is, by using this language of hazard and chance, is rescued, it's disengaged from my--the idea that God knows it all and we are going to--we are determined in what we are doing.



What Dante's saying, by focusing on a time bound metaphor, is that we are engaged in a risky relationship and as in our relationship between God and the soul, there is this element of danger. That's it, that's the metaphor. To make it more precise so you don't--you know where I'll be going in the days ahead, whenever in antiquity, they would discuss--mainly Boethius is the most important author--the relationship between human freedom and God's foreknowledge, they would always present the case to say that God is outside of time, always says being outside of time. All times converge in God, and so that God sees all things in the present so that should really--God is here, it's a point of view which is transcendent and therefore synoptic and we are in a diachronic world: past, present and future, but everything is at the same time. We think that we live in a world where we do not know what tomorrow may bring us. Whatever decisions we make now have already been--what kind of consequences, whether they're unpredictable or they have been determined by things that escape our control, but God knows. And this is the Boethian scheme of harmonizing God's foreknowledge and human freedom.



It doesn't take too much to realize that this is really a little bit of a delusion, because either I'm free or am I not free. It may be that God knows it all, but it doesn't mean that He wills that I do what I do. He knows but He does not will it, and yet, He knows and I'm here and I don't know, so my own freedom is still a little bit rhetorical.



Dante does it differently: it's a departure from Boethius. The relationship between God's foreknowledge and the souls being in time is one that introduces the question of chance and hazard, and that involves both God and the soul. To be very precise, he doesn't say it here, and that's why I hesitate to get into that. I would like to work with the text to make this very clear. The issue is that in a love relationship between God and the soul, we are always at risk. If you accept the principle of a love economy, regulating the universe, which Dante does, certainly does, then you understand this notion of hazard in--not as a principle of just chance in the sense of casual blind randomness, but in the sense of this risk--proposition risk element. Then the canto goes on--this particular metaphor goes on with another meeting between two poets. Yes?



Student: What do you mean by love economy?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The economy of love--the question--the clarification is what do I mean by the love economy? Dante's universe, it's a universe of love and that's how creation takes place, the creation of the universe and the creation of human beings. So we are--the involvement that we--every soul has with God is one of love. Just as in the relationship between say, Beatrice and Dante, there is an element of risk in loving. What is that risk in loving? I can think of several. I think we are all grown ups to understand that, one loves and one may not be reciprocated in love. That's a pretty bad risk. Certainly, it's a risk of God who creates and may not be loved, which is the story of what disobedience is, and certainly is the existential experience of human beings to be involved with someone. Either we love the wrong person, then we say wisely I was loving the wrong person? I'm being ironic with that idea of wisdom or discovering that indeed in every relationship there is time, feelings change, we have so many ways of thinking about it. There is a--Dante's response is look, he likes figures--we shall talk about this--like Francis who goes to pray on the cliffs at night because he wants to dramatize the idea that even a prayer puts you at risk of being hurt or not being hurt, of being disappointed, of discovering that the world does not go the way you want it to go, and that which is true in prayer is true in love. That's all I was saying. I wasn't saying anything more than that.



In Canto VI also, the political canto, there is an encounter between two poets. One is Virgil with Sordello, who is a Mantuan poet. They all share the same birthplace, Mantua, across the centuries. They meet and the very idea of Mantua, they ask Virgil, Virgil starts saying, "Mantua--" clearly playing with a famous epitaph, I think, the line interrupts. There it says: "Mantua made me," the famous epitaph written on--in Naples where Virgil is buried. "Mantua made me and the south, Calabria, took me away. I sang the arms," the Aeneid, "the herds," the Georgics, and the story about the Bucolics, "the fields." It's just--in two lines the account of his whole life. So he starts saying, "Mantua."



I think I'm alluding to this birthplace--once again the birth--and Sordello and he embrace. This embrace, this existential encounter, this other little moment which is insubstantial, because they can't really embrace. They're spirits, another failure after the one that we saw with Casella in Canto II of Purgatorio. That triggers Dante's political invective against Italy. It's the moment of--which I will read very briefly. I mean I will not read the whole thing but it's an invective--the kind of civic sense of responsibility.



"O Mantuan. . ." This is line 75 of Canto VI: "And the gentle leader began, 'Mantua"; and the shade who had been all rapt within himself, sprang toward him from the place where he was, saying: "O Mantuan, I am Sordello of thy city." He's a Provençal poet, but he wrote in Provençal and from Mantua. ". . .the one embraced the other." Look at this phrase, which is extraordinary because in Italian, now I feel that I can read--thanks to Margaret I can read Italian as freely as I care, e l'un e l'altro abbracciava. I'll return to this construction in a moment, "the one embraced the other." It's a phrase of reciprocity -- one embraced the other -- the reciprocity of affections across time.



Dante begins his incredible vituperation, his attack against enslaved Italy and look: "Ah, Italy enslaved, hostel of misery," a number of metaphors, "ship without pilot in great tempest, no princess among the provinces but a brothel! So eager was that noble soul, only for the dear name of his city, to give welcome there to its citizen, and now in thee thy living are never free from war and of those who one wall and mote shut in one gnaws at the other."



Another line that seems to have a sort of grim version of the reciprocity. Earlier one embraced the other, now one gnaws at the other. If you look at the Italian, it's really slightly different. The English doesn't give that--this translation at least. Line 82, in te non stanno sanza guerra li vivi tuoi, e l'un l'altro si rode. One has a reflexive form, the other one does not, and the moment of violence Dante uses the verb "si rode" in the reflexive form in order to imply that the exchange is an exchange that it always turns on oneself. One knows that the other for oneself, therefore it reverses and denies the reciprocity, the action of reciprocity indicated by the previous phrase.



I could also emphasize a couple of details here, where Dante says: "to give welcome there to its citizen, and now in thee thy living are never free from war and of those whom wall and moat shut in." It's a very--you do know that the word for community, which we always use, community--it's a word that etymologically comes from the Latin for wall, moenia. Community meant, and stems from, a concept from the sharing of walls, houses, piling, and built one on top of the other. That's the idea of a community. The shared walls of the city, which here is now seen as--viewed as separating one from the other. This will continue with the lack of laws and the families, including the Montague's and Capulets, for you Shakespeare lovers, who are mentioned here, and then Dante ends up with--on line 125 with a returning to Florence and a little--clearly bitter satire.



"My Florence thou mayst well be at ease with this digression," I'll come back to this metaphor in a moment, "which does not touch thee thanks to thy people who are so resourceful." Dante talks about Italy but it turns to Inferno VI with the invocation of Florence. He's calling this poem, this invective, a digression, which literally means that it does not belong in the poem, that Dante is stepping out of the economy of the poem, and talking in his own voice. It's a digression. That's what we call a digression, right? You use a particular language that doesn't really belong to the general plot and theme, but then the meaning of this digression is made really clear, later, when he says, "which does not touch thee."



How ironic. Of course he's saying literally in this digression, you are so much better than all these other towns. That's the irony: Florence is no better, therefore this digression doesn't really concern you.



It can also be understood in another way, in another more tragic and more sinister way. This digression does not touch you: my language will not affect you. The whole statement in all its ambiguity becomes one of the reflection on the impotence of the poetic language to affect the historical--the unfolding of history, the ordering of the city. It is as if Dante, were, here, that the relationship between the voice of the poet and the political order is one of inevitable rupture. Dante tries to improve and change, that's clearly the thrust of the passage, and the thrust of the invective also declares the powerlessness in his doing so.



We are doing very well with time, so I have a chance to read a little scene. Dante moves on talking about the first night of Purgatorio will take place and he takes refuge in the so-called Valley of the Princes, where a new garden, another garden is going to be described, which in many ways fulfills the garden of Limbo in Canto IV of Inferno. Dante has these motifs that keep reappearing and here it's more than a natural beauty of the place it's--there are precious stones implying that though Purgatorio is the world of transition for transient souls, there is something abiding about this place.



Then Dante moves on, I want to read a paragraph here with the meeting with the princes. I want to read the first passage which is the--an evening song. Dante's--Dante the pilgrim now is taken with nostalgia for his hometown. It is the pilgrimage of desire, which is the poem, the poem of desire, desire for God, desire for Beatrice, now turns into the desire for the comfort and the shelter of the home he had lost.



Listen to this passage, it's written in many ways in--along the lines of Provençal poetry of nostalgia. Listen to the assonances as you--the first six, seven lines of Canto VIII, listen to the assonances the chiastic structures of the sounds of which I'm not going to point out to you, you can do that on your own.



      Era già l'ora che volge il disio

      ai navicanti e 'ntenerisce il core

      lo dì c'han detto ai dolci amici addio;



      e che lo novo peregrin d'amore

      punge, se ode squilla di lontano

      che paia il giorno pianger che si more;



      quand' io incominciai a render vano

      l'udire e a mirare una de l'alme

      surta, che l'ascoltar chiedea con mano.



Then here, I'm not going to be able to read it, but to tell you how the poem should be read, then they go and hear a hymn, a medieval hymn, Te lucis ante terminum, which, if we really had the time, I would come to class with the whole Latin hymn because we--Dante gives only the first three words but clearly we are supposed to hear the whole thing about the dangers of the night, the sense that the night is fraught with phantasms and that they will intrude on the powers of judgments of the various souls, Dante's own included.



With Canto IX, Dante moves from--as he does in every Canto IX, marks the rupture from a particular area of the poem to another. Remember Canto IX of Inferno and the encounter with--failed encounter with the Medusa, the passage into the City of Dis. Now with Canto IX, Dante moves into Purgatory proper, and so we'll go with Canto X, XI, and XII. We're not going to be able to do all three cantos today, so I will return to some of the things that I will say now about Canto X and XI that I hope to cover.



How is Purgatorio--where is this purification proper going to take place? This is the ordering. Dante will go these so-called seven deadly sins. I don't know that you know what they are, but the first one we shall see, the first one is--they go from spiritual sins, pride is the root of all sins, to lust at the end. In every representation of this sin, Dante precedes it with a representation of its opposite virtue: so that we have humility in Canto X, and then in Canto XI punished pride. First of all, as if Dante has to learn that which he's going to witness a little later. In a sense, it's the absolute reversal of the economy of Inferno in Purgatorio.



You may remember that I said last time that the incredible quality of the structure of the poem is that Dante wants us to see experiences of evil in Inferno first, so that when we get to Purgatorio and Paradise, we really have the chance to appreciate what the good is and appreciate what the absence of the good may be, but evil really generates and engenders. Here now, he changes all of this. In Purgatorio, he starts with the representation of the virtue of humility and then the sin.



The representation of the virtue of humility takes place through the language of art. Dante approaches the cliff and on the sides of the cliff he sees three sculptures embodying examples of humility. The word pride, which in Italian is--we have the English "superb," in Italian, we call it superbia. To the word "superb," you add -ia, which is pride. The word humility in Italian is the same thing as umiltà. The word humility means--comes from the ground, the sense of being down, of being--the idea that one is really with--let's say--the feet on the ground. The very opposite of superbia which implies some kind of immoderate flight away--a sense of the view of the overman, the idea of being a superman. It's the idea that someone who wants to transcend the limitations of this world and being human.



The word for humility and the word for human have the same etymology, in case you wonder where it comes from. The homo, which means 'man' in Latin, comes from homos. We are called man, human beings, because we come from the earth and we are close to the earth, and we return to the earth. We come from the earth and we're returning to the earth. The idea of humility is the same notion. There is a kind of implicit connection, etymologically, between the two words, the two terms.



One more remark to make, this whole idea of having--a couple of remarks before I go on with the text that will serve you for the rest of Purgatory. The idea of having the virtues and the vices, first one and then the other, seem to cast Purgatorio, but it's not really that way, as a variant of a medieval poetic form called psychomachia which means "the battle of thoughts." By the way, this is a Latin poem, one of the early Latin poems by this Latin Spanish poet called Prudentius. It's a kind of psychomachia, the battle of thoughts, of contradictory thoughts.



The second thing that I have to say, is more important for the poetics of Dante. Keep in mind that the whole poetic mode of Purgatorio, unlike the poetic mode of Inferno, is played out in Purgatorio through the imagination, art images, memories, phantasms. In other words, we are really in a world which is in between that of bodies and souls, the world of the middle ground of the imagination, and now we have the world of art. A world of art, that Dante says, and I read from Canto X, at the very beginning. I just want to give you this as--it's an extraordinary--I don't want to go into excessive detail, but I have to do it this time.



"When we were within the threshold," Canto X, the very beginning, "of the gate which the soul's perverse love disuses." Purgatory is all a sequence of variations on love. That's the moral law of Purgatory. All sins in Purgatory are sins--either we use the--we give love to the wrong object, or we love too much in terms of what--how we are being loved back or we love too little. These are the three general subdivisions of Purgatory. That's "perverse love disuses, making the crooked way seem straight, by the resounding I heard it closed again; and if I had turned my eyes to it what excuse would have served the fault?"



The reflection of what happened before: "We were climbing through a cleft in the rock which kept bending one way and the other, it goes around the mountain," that's really what the language is, "like a wave that comes and goes, when my Leader began: 'Here there is need to use some skill in keeping close to this side or that where it turns away." The cliff is--there's an abyss underneath it, so it's an invitation to prudence along the way. ". . .and this made our steps so scant that the waning moon had regained its bed to sink to rest before we were forth from that needle's eye. But when we were free and out in the open above, where the mountain draws back, I weary and both uncertain of our way," we know now this has become a sort of formulaic expression of the uncertainties of this exile as he moves up the mountain, "we stopped on a level place more solitary than a desert track. From its edge bordering on the void to the foot of the lofty bank which rises sheer would measure three times a man's body, and as far as my eye could make its flight, now on the left hand, now on the right, the terrace there seemed to me the same."



What is all this about? What I want to point out is that Dante is measuring the whole landscape in terms of the measure of a human being. He's using the human beings--a human being as the measure. Is man the measure? You have heard that expression, right? Are we the measure? Are we the measure of what, creation? Are we the measure of what we should do?



This is exactly the point of the canto because pride means an inordinate love and belief in our own excellence. Pride means that we do not think that we are--we can be measured by others, that we want to become the measure for others, or that we really do not belong where others may think we belong. That's what pride is. It's a sin, very common. Who do you think you are? Who do--don't you know who I am? This is the language we use and it's pride--I always like to say that we are never really proud when we are dealing with our janitor. They are not proud; we've become so human, so good. We are always proud with those who endanger our sense of our own measure, who seem to take their own measure of us. Dante is starting with the idea of measurement and I'll come back--this is the crucial metaphor and I'll come to that.



How do we measure what is human and that is not human? One thing is clear: that pride, superbia, means an inordinate love of one's own excellence. We are really far superior, we think, than anybody else would have thought us. Then he goes on looking at images made on the white marble, "such that not only Polycletus but nature would be put to shame there." Extraordinary metaphor already talking about measure and about order, these are works of art produced by the hand of God directly.



God is an artist and God has made these images, but it's such that nature, which as you know, is the daughter of God and the mother of the arts, and also an artist, the famous Polycletus, a Greek scholar, a Greek scholar Polycletus, would be put to shame. Already there is this sense of rivalry within the pattern of generation of arts. That's the first thing, and then the first image that we see, is the image of the angel Gabriel, the messenger who came to earth, that's humility. He came to earth, the descent of the high becoming low, while the human beings who are low want to think of themselves as very high.



"The angel who came to earth with a decree of the many-years-wept-for peace that opened heaven from its long interdict appeared before us so truly graven there in a gracious attitude that it did not seem a silent image." That's God's art, but very clear, there's no difficulty in understanding this art. "One would have sworn, he said: 'Ave,' the first words of the angel Gabriel doing the Annunciation. The Annunciation is the story of the humility, whereby obliquely, God becomes man. So that's the descent, another form of, not only the humility of Mary in accepting the mandate, but also the idea of the descent.



By the way, let me just point out that this 'Ave' is what we call a boustrophedon--I have spelled the word out for you--for 'Eva.' It's very conventional in medieval literature: the idea that Mary becomes the one who reverses the role of Eve. With Eve there is the loss of the Garden and the Fall, with Ave there is now the turning of the key, as it were, and the Redemption.



"For she was imaged there who turned the key to open the supreme love, and in her bearing she had this word imprinted--this word imprinted: 'Ecce ancilla Dei.'" She acknowledges her--Mary acknowledges her ancillary role. She is a servant and she acknowledges herself as a servant. Now, along side with this, what we could call an ethical education, Dante has to learn what humility is. There is an ethical education, learn about what this humility is about. There is also an aesthetic education going on, simultaneously. After all, Dante's really looking at art.



The question is what is the relationship between the virtue and art? How can the two be together? To give you an idea of how complicated the problem is, in the next canto Dante goes on meeting all the painters. You read Canto XI, Giotto and Cimabue, who are emblems of people who invest their productions with an inordinate sense of its value. Then Dante puts himself--puts his friends Guido Cavalcanti--you remember the two -- Guido's, Guido Guinizelli, one Guido removed the other Guido from its nest, and now the third person has come, meaning himself who probably will rout both of them. What a proud statement. It is as if the artist is always prone to this sort of inordinate idea of who they are and what their value may be.



So art and humility and pride, this is the issue. The ethical education and the aesthetic education. What is the aesthetic education? Virgil is telling Dante how to look, that's really the most complicated thing. For those of you who are doing art history, that's really what it's about. How do we look? What do the eyes really reveal to us? "Do not keep thy mind only on one part." That's the looking--the belief that we--or the temptation to lose sight of the totality of things and not--and just taking one part for the whole.



"Do not keep thy mind only on one part,' said the kind master who had me on that side of him where the heart lies," on the left, "so that I turned my face and saw beyond Mary on the same side as he that prompted me, another story set on the rock."



Dante has to learn how to look and what he's looking at are stories. Story, the word is Greek, for those of you who know some Greek. It comes from 'I saw and I narrate,' and it's the same etymology for story and history. This is a little bit of allegory of history, we are saying. As if Dante's really telling--begins with the New Testament, the story of Mary, now we're going to see a picture from the Old Testament, David dancing in front of the ark and then an episode of Trajan, the emperor who is an example of humility. You shall see him in a moment.



The point is that the whole of history is an allegory of humility and that's God's art. That's what Dante has God represent for us. ". . . Mary. . ." etc. ". . .There, carved in the same marble were the cart and oxen drawing the sacred ark on account of which men fear an office not committed to them. In front people appeared and the whole company, divided into seven choirs, made two of my senses say, the one: 'No,' the other: 'Yes, they sing'; in the same way at the smoke of the incense that was imaged there, eyes and nose were in contradiction with yes and no. There the humble psalmist," David, "went before the blessed vessel girt up and dancing, and that time he was both more and less than king; opposite, figured at the window of a great palace, Michal looked on, like a woman vexed and scornful."



This is really the story that is told in Samuel, in the Bible, and Dante's really reinterpreting it for us. So I beg you to really pay a little attention to some of these episodes. First of all, David is humbling himself. He's dancing. He lifts up his ephod, his dress, and starts dancing out of joy. It's an episode that is used as one of the many cases of so-called ludic theology, playful theology. Its intrusion is that--in the plan of salvation there is always the presence of this comedy, this comic idea and David embodies that.



Then there's this little phrase which we--you must have noticed that appears so often in this canto. More often in this canto than ever before in the whole poem, "more and less." It is as if it's impossible to use or find in a canto where measure is the issue, the position about where we are, who we are, and what we are doing. One thing is clear; that opposite to David, there is his wife, Michal, sitting at the window, a different perspective. What she sees, this is art, this is a question of perspective what she sees. She is so angry at David because he, by his action of dancing in front of the ark, is humiliating himself. He's losing his state as king. He's losing his stature as king.



The fact is that for Dante, Michal is completely missing the point. It is a stance of someone who thinks that she's superior, a stance of someone who's sitting at the great--at the window of her great palace, who will not have anything to do with what's below her. We are entering the world of the--the domain of what pride may be, what's wrong with pride, and why pride may really be a sin. Pride may not be a sin because we want to reach higher than we are. That's probably okay. What makes pride a sin is that we tend to have contempt for what we think is below us. That's really the displacement; it blinds us. So--I'm introducing here, since this is a world of art, the notion of a perspective. We've been talking about perspective. Pride is tied to perspective, because it sets--by being proud I think that I have, within myself, I certainly have a view of myself that may be at odds with the reality of me. Certainly, this is the case of, not David, but it's the case of Michal, his wife.



The third episode is, I think even more interesting, and then we'll see what's going to happen. "I moved my feet from where I was to examine close at hand another part of this," how do you examine? What is an aesthetic education? How do you look at the images at hand? "another story which I saw gleaming white beyond Michal. Depicted there," now the third episode is from secular history, Roman history.



So you have the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Roman secular history, "there was the glorious deed of the Roman Prince whose worth moved Gregory to his great victory--I mean the emperor Trajan; and a poor widow was at his bridle in a posture of grief and in tears. The place about him seemed trampled and thronged with knights and the eagles on the gold above them moved visibly in the wind. The poor woman among all these seemed to say: 'Lord avenge me for my son that is dead, for whom I am stricken'; and he to answer her: 'Wait now till I return," he's going to Romania, Dacia. If you see the column of Trajan in Rome, it's still the monument--document of that expedition.



". . .wait now till I return'; and she: 'My Lord,' like one whose grief is urgent, 'if thou return not?'; and he: 'He that is in my place will do it for thee'; and she: 'What shall another's goodness avail thee if thou art forgetful of thine own?' . . . 'Now take comfort for I must fulfill my duty before I go; justice requires it and compassion bids me stay."



It's the story of Trajan who gets off his high horse, levels with the little widow. The diminutives are Dante. The language is of humility, the little widow, and administers and gives her justice, because for Dante, the perfect emperor in Trajan certainly is the perfect emperor must be--must have the attributes of mercy and justice and he gives evidence of that: "if for whose sight," etc. Now that's the drama that now develops. Dante's seen all this, he has understood these images and the meaning of these images and--I'm just going to tell you about this little drama and we stop here.



"While I was taking delight," no problem in taking delight. After all, this is God's art, so having delight in itself is part of the appreciation of this art--". . .the images of so great humilities," I think that the oxymoron is deliberate, "so great humilities, dear to sight, too, for their Craftsman's sake," I love them because they were made by God. Virgil prompts him, "See on this side many people, the poet murmured, 'but coming with slow steps; they will direct us to the other stairs."



Now here is Dante's drama: "my eyes, which were looking intently, were not slow in turning to him being eager for new sights." He yields to the temptations of the eye. Have you ever heard about the three temptations? The pride of life, the pride of the eyes and the curiosity and the pride of the heart, but I would--and the three temptations are present here.



"But I would not have thee, reader," Dante's turning to us in an apostrophe, as he has done before, "fall away from good resolve for hearing how God wills that the debt be paid; do not dwell on the form." He's telling us not to care about the images as such "of the torment, think of what follows, think that at worst it cannot go beyond the great Judgement." He sort of is making a preemptive strike. Don't worry about the peculiar form of the art, look at the meaning of the art--and he can't--but that's what he wants us to do.



He says--look at what he says to Virgil: "Master,' I began, 'that which I see coming to us does not seem to me persons and I know not what they are, so confused is my sight." What an incredible contrast between what Dante had seen with God's images, all clear to him, but now that he's seeing some human beings who are doubled under massive boulders--because that's the punishment inflicted on the proud, to put them and press them against the earth--he does not recognize them. It is as if his aesthetic education has been for nothing. It is as if ethical education has been for nothing. He had no difficulty in deciphering God's art, which is so clear and luminous, but now he does not want to identify with what he sees. He resembles Michal, who from high up, does not want to have anything to do with David. This is the--exactly the same problem that Dante is facing. He has--he had no problem with Gabriel, the descent of Gabriel, he had no problem with Trajan, but he himself is unwilling to identify with those that he believes are beneath him.



Then he goes on. Virgil explains, "The grievous nature of their torment doubles them to the ground, so that my eyes at first were in debate about them, but," he says, they are really human beings like you. Dante goes into a further apostrophe to all Christians calling himself superbi, in Italian, cristiani.



The Italian line is actually very interesting for a reason that I'll tell you in a moment. Look at line 121, O superbi cristiani, miseri lassi. . . There is an incredible contrast between the word superbi, meaning superior, right, a claim of superiority and the word lassi which means lapsed, having fallen. So within the same line you capture the two--this dynamic of how we want to be up and how we're going to--the more--the higher up we want to go the quicker we seem to be falling. "Weary wretches," mistranslation, "who are sick in the mind's vision and put your trust in backward steps, do you not perceive that we are worms born to form the angelic butterfly."



I want to stress this shift in pronouns, 'do you not perceive,' Dante is literally taking the higher ground. We do not know, he knows, right? Do you--he's preaching to us, ''do you not perceive?' But then he--with a subsequent pronoun that we are worms, he literally erases the distance between himself and the readers, between himself and the other Christians. He places himself on the same ground where we are. That's the quality of the double voice of Dante, systematically punctuating this text, as claim of a transcendent superior perspective, because after all, he really has seen the whole--the unfolding of God's cosmos. He really has witnessed it, but at the same time, he descends and is part of a common plight.



That's really what the line is, "Do you not perceive that we are worms born to form the angelic butterfly?" It's an allusion that the word for butterfly, not in Italian, but in the Roman sarcophagi, in antiquity, whether they are in Aix-en-Provence, if you happen to go there, or you go to Fiesole, where there was a Roman cemetery, you would always see a butterfly imprinted on the sarcophagus because the Greek word for butterfly is psyche. It's the same word for the soul and the butterfly, and by putting the emblem of the butterfly that indicated at death the soul finally would be capable of flying off toward the light and toward the creator. So Dante's clearly using and remembering this kind of motif that he has seen.



"That soars to judgement without defense? Why does your mind float so high, since you are . . .imperfect insects, like the worm that is undeveloped." The language of a metamorphosis. We are in the process of making ourselves both alive and in the penitential world of Purgatory.



And then how he ends with a kind of iconographic motif that recapitulates the whole iconographic element that make up the poem, Canto X, "As, for corbel to support ceiling or roof, a figure is sometimes seen joining the knees to the breast, which begets from its unreality real distress in him that sees it, in such a posture I saw these when I looked carefully. They were indeed bent down more and less as they had more and less on their back, and he that had most patience in looks seemed, by his weeping, to say: 'I can no more."



What is this about? What is this story about? Well, the story is first of all about this passage. It's about the fact that Dante has just warned us not to pay attention to the form and to look at the meaning of the particular message. Now he returns to us and focuses on the form. What he's describing are the so-called Caryatides, human forms, that if you go--maybe in New York you may see them, but certainly in European cities these human forms seem to be buttressing edifices and buildings and they are decorative, but Dante is saying, the form matters. We cannot really go to the ultimate meaning by bypassing the form. He's literally, by picking up the sculptural motif of the canto, returning to this idea.



We shall see as I have to leave you hanging on this problem of perspective. Next time, we'll read XI and XII and continue, and therefore the meaning of art, how art can change a moral perception of the world. That's the idea in which you are all wondering--have been wondering with your questions. What is Dante's understanding of art? It's so dangerous and it can be, of course, but there is a role that art can play in altering our perception, our moral perception, in an effect form becomes a way to go to understand the moral world and the moral terms in which you are. We shall see this next time.



Let's see if there are questions now? The real--I think we are approaching the heart of the matter in Purgatory. The relationship between ethics and aesthetics and what I really pointed out so far, then is this idea that Dante is trying to find out what is the measure for human beings, because you cannot say well, it's pride. What criteria? If I want to reach for what is so far away from me, why should that be viewed as a sin of pride? What are the criteria? What is the context in which we can really talk of pride and why is humility any better? We haven't touched any of this yet. One thing that is clear is that Dante is, for now, on the one hand, giving examples of art and humility, making mistakes, the confusion of his perception. He says that he cannot quite figure out what are these shapes that he sees. There's something disfigured. He cannot quite identify with, he cannot recognize them and then claims that we really should be looking at the meaning, at the ultimate meaning of things, but then he returns and valorizes the idea of form. We cannot bypass form in art or in experience. We cannot skip the idea of time, that's really what existentially it amounts to. That's all I really have said.



Then, maybe, I explained to you a few etymological connections: humility and the human, the meaning of history, and introduce this principle of perspective that I have been talking about before. This is really connected with the representation of art. Perspective, what is the--what kind of perspective does art then give us? We all know that in art, we use perspective, especially the modern language of art, the modern language of painting, ever since the fifteenth century explicitly discusses the question of perspective. I see the world according to the position that I occupy in it, and the position that occupy in it reveals things to me which are unique and irreducible.



At the same time it implies--it also implies--but this is not the case, the possibility of manipulating space. The fifteenth-century Renaissance discovers that space is not unalterable and fixed, but it can be manipulated. We're dealing with--up to that point, maybe we're dealing with time and the manipulation of time. You don't have to watch a football game to know what I mean about the manipulation of time, but then there is such a thing as manipulation of space. I can create the space. I can make of a small space something appear large. Space is not a fixed entity. That's what perspective comes to mean in the fifteenth century.



For Dante, perspective is connected to an inner world. What is my perspective of myself? What is my sense of the measure of things? How do I view the world? Michal gives one answer, and she can be angry about what David does, misunderstanding the whole point of David. What does she misunderstand about David? That in humiliating himself, he had really found himself higher by the idea of humiliation of self, which is exactly that of Mary, and which is exactly that of the story of Trajan. How do you--Michal does not understand the reversibility of positions. That's really the argument, so far and I think that Dante is making a big deal with pride because pride is seen as the root, the spiritual root, of all evils. Let me see if there are some questions that I can--we have a few minutes--please.



Student: Why does Dante have trouble sympathizing with the sinners in Purgatory, or other people when he doesn't have trouble doing the same in Inferno?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: In Inferno, why does Dante's trouble sympathizing with the sinners in Purgatory? Especially here, because in Inferno, he even kicks some of the heads. You can't--I mean he has sympathy, but when it's necessary he just--he has had it. And in Canto XXXII, the guy was frozen and stuck in ice, it wasn't pretty.



But here it's true, especially now he has--he declares this--his confusion. It may be because I couldn't--I did not know what these forms are. I think they have to do with the whole question of what did he learn, first of all, from the images that he saw because you know Virgil had just taught him how to look. Look here; you move around; don't stay in one place; you can look underneath, so that's one problem. What is a moral and an aesthetic education?



Then he's just also, I think, indicating the whole idea what--is it ever possible to look at the world? More of this next time, as disengaged spectators. Think of ourselves in the theatre, which is an image that I probably will bring in and discuss. You go to the theatre and you really--sometimes we all feel that we should jump on the stage and rescue the damsel in distress or whatever, and yet, you may see someone who can do that, but many of us won't. We want to be unaffected by it, that's what Dante's doing. He would like to be--to feel that he is no longer like any of these sinners. That's the mistake he's making.



It's really that he's--it's an indifference coming to him from something akin, though not exactly, to Michal's sure sense of herself. I have nothing to do with the mob here. What is this? This is the king? I don't want to even be his wife. That's what Dante's doing in that scene. I do not want to be with this kind of disfigured lowly forms of life. I am better, I have seen God's art, and I have learned about God's art. Do you see the moral and spiritual confusion that this kind of drama is going to generate in him? That's the answer.



The one who reflects beautifully on this, I will bring the passage in, but I would like you to read it if you can. Book II of the Confessions of St. Augustine, because St. Augustine loves to go every--he doesn't like to go to the spectacles at the Colosseum because they are so vulgar and beneath him, but he loves to go to the theatre and he has an extraordinary reflection. What does it mean to be unaffected in the theatre? How do I have to understand my discomfort at the theatre?



It's the very image Dante uses at the end of Canto X. You remember when he says that we see Caryatides, which we know are phony, and yet they can inspire some kind of distress. I'm paraphrasing very poorly the last paragraph, the last lines of Purgatorio X, "Is it possible to ever be indifferent spectators of the turmoil around us?" What's at stake when I say, well these things don't touch me, have nothing to do with me, and Dante's saying, they always touch us. It takes time for him to understand it and I think that he is unveiling that. He's showing it to us in Canto X. Please.



Student: You seem to draw a connection between form and time sometimes--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: I think that we can draw a connection between form and time, and continue, you want to make a reflection on that?



Student: Then also if there is some way to draw in the notion of futurity as time at--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The notion of?



Student: Futurity or--as time necessary at the beginning.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Yes.



Student: I'm kind of struggling with the idea of an art form which is sort of like a fixed immutable thing and I have no idea--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The question is since--I think that was implied, if I didn't say it in what I was saying, that there is a connection between form and time. The struggle--the question then becomes we are usually--think of form as something which is fixed, how can that be part of the world of time? Well, in a number of ways, I would say. That the form--Dante is saying first of all, witnessing or watching history, therefore it has a kind of unfolding and he discusses art in terms of a metamorphosis, an ongoing process of change that includes the idea of time.



One way in which Giotto really differs from shades from what we're going to see next canto--it's not an arbitrary relation here that I'm making--distinguishes himself from Byzantine mosaics is that he introduces a history. Painting is a series of elements and you got to keep looking at all of them. So it's a form for all--it's unalterable quality the form indicates; forms change, there's a history of forms to begin with. I could become generalized in my answer--Dante understands it in a way as a metamorphic sequence. From that point of view form sense of all time, in fact, Dante says whenever you see a particular scene, avoid what you are seeing and see that what it means, now that is the occlusion of time. That is an eclipsing of time.



Let me just go to the ideal lesson, the ideal poem, it's like when you are reading a poem. You're reading a poem, of course the form is unchanging, but unless you know the beginning, and you start from the beginning and you read through, i.e., time, you, come to the end; you miss the point about the poem, right? I mean I do. You got to read--you got to be in time and the novel, you got to read Proust, forget it. Pulci, which I'm reading now, that takes forever. So thank you; we'll see you next time.



[end of transcript]

In this lecture, Professor Mazzotta moves from the terrace of pride (Purgatory X-XII) to the terrace of wrath (Purgatory XVI-XVII). The relationship between art and pride, introduced in the previous lecture in the context of Canto X, is pursued along theological lines in the cantos immediately following. The "ludic theology" Dante embraces in these cantos resurfaces on the terrace of wrath, where Marco Lombardo's speech on the traditional problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom highlights the playfulness of God's creation. The motifs of human and divine creation explored thus far are shown to converge at the numerical center of the poem (Purgatory XVII) in Dante's apostrophe to the imagination.



Reading assignment:

Dante, Purgatory: X, XI, XII, XVI, XVII

Transcript



October 14, 2008



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Last time then we talked about the cantos of pride. We introduced the cantos of pride: X, XI, and XII. I was arguing that Dante comes to know and understand the virtues and vices of pride and its opposite, humility, which he sees featured--humility he sees featured in Canto X and pride he'll see punished in Canto XII. He gets to understand the nature of this virtue and this vice by looking at the work of art. So that in Canto X, we already have a sort of representation of what an aesthetic education can turn out to be. How do we look at art and what are we likely to learn from it? This was the argument.



Dante arrives into Purgatory proper and the first image that uses to give us a sense of the dimensions of this place is the figure of the human measure. He measures the world around him through the dimensions of the human figure. Obliquely, it's not quite--we are not quite there yet to that point, but he's warning us that indeed the issue--what is the issue about pride and about humility really is--what is the man's measure? We are--he says that he's going to--that the place is measured according to the size of human beings, but then the question is what is the measure of human beings in a moral sense, of course. Since pride, superbia in Italian and in Latin, is a sin of excessive love of one's own excellence. The sense that one isn't quite reducible to what perhaps others see about us. The idea that there may be a touch of vanity in the way we judge and view ourselves, the way in which we measure ourselves.



Humility, on the other hand, is the opposite--is the remedy to pride and it is really a virtue in that it really reduces us to--reminds us of the fact that we are earthbound. That's the meaning of the word, and by the way, that's exactly how humility and the etymology of human are connected. They're both derived from a common root, a common matrix in humus which is the Latin word for the earth. We are called humans, homo, because we come out of the earth, because we are made of the clay of the earth, and we return to the earth. That's the other implication. On the other hand, humility is the virtue that reminds us that we really should not view ourselves as all that elevated. So these are the issues.



Dante then confronts some scenes of humility. He begins with the virtues, and the sins of humility--the virtue of humility are all taken from the three histories that interest him. He's always placing himself at the confluence of these three strains of history. An image from the Old Testament, David, who dances in front of the ark, therefore he humiliates himself. He tells us that he's more and less than king. By the way, this phrase "more and less," this lack of precision is really an expression that pervades Canto X. This "more and less," the grief is "more" than I can take, etc.; it appears in a variety of forms, at least five times in the context of the canto.



Next to David, and that image of humility from the Old Testament, and above him actually, watching down from the balcony of a high tower in the royal palace, there is his wife Michal, who looks down at David. Not only she looks down at David, she obviously has contempt for him, because in her view he is humiliating, he's offending, violating the principle of decorum of what a king ought to be. She has a different understanding of what is the measure of a king and the place of a king, because pride is exactly a question of place. What place do I occupy in the world around me? Am I where I think I would like to be or am I where somebody else is placing me through his/her gaze?



The second image is an image of--but they're all--you'll notice the little detail, they're all placed above, they're sculptures placed above the normal sight, so that there is obvious reversal now in what the value of humility can be. There is the story of the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel who descends, literally, and that descent is a story of humiliation of the divine, the divine enters history, and therefore in that sense the divine is truly omnipotent. There is the idea which is really something developed, I mention it here, but I will come back to that, the idea that the divine is detached from the human would make the divine less omniscient. A divine that does not know the human, does not know death, cannot claim to be omniscient. That's an argument that Dante uses.



So there is the story of the angel Gabriel who comes down and the obedience of Mary, the Virgin Mary, who says, 'Yes, I am your servant.' So there's a story of--and Mary is the one who said to turn the key between the old alliance and the new alliance. She reverses the story of Eve. It is as if her obedience is a response to some kind of violation and the promise of being divine in the eating of the tree.



The third example, or story, that the pilgrim sees--looks at--it's the story of the emperor Trajan, secular history, who stops his--from marching onto his campaign into Dacia, into Romania, in order to give justice to a little widow, the diminutive is Dante's. A little widow who has been asking for justice before he departs, justice for the death of her son. This is what he--what Dante is confronted with and what he is confronted with is we do know that he's being asked and directed by Virgil to look at the whole scene, not to stop at one detail, to even move beyond Virgil himself, in what would appear to be a transgression of the reverential bond that ties them. He--Dante is always following as a disciple follows the teacher.



So he just even transgresses his place but that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the aesthetic education of the pilgrim. He's witnessing what he calls visible speech, synesthesia. That's why this phrase it says, visibile parlare, in Italian, visible speech. It's a synesthesia that combines the sight to sensory experiences, the eye and the hearing; so speech because this is God's art and God's art has also a precise meaning. A precise meaning that Dante has no difficulty understanding or finding delight in, so this is the argument.



At one point, in the drama of the canto, some figures keep appearing and Virgil directs Dante's eyes toward the people that are appearing. Dante does not recognize them. He says, I don't know what they are. My sight is so confused. He doesn't want to even know who they are or what they are. Virgil will explain to him they are human figures crawling on the huge boulders and almost moving like, on the ground, on the earth like worms on the earth. And Dante is not really capable of deciphering them or having even sympathy with them. At that point, as you recall, because I had the feeling that maybe the explanation is a little bit--was a little bit too wriggly, but Dante's poem--canto moves in that way with a lot of sinuosities there.



I mentioned to you a particular passage in Chapter II--Book III, Chapter II of the Confessions. It's an extraordinary passage and I brought it in so that you can--I want to read a little bit from that. It's a passage--it's a book where Augustine is living in Carthage, you know. At about now, at this stage he's about 17, 19--has been talking about his attraction for shows, his attractions for the Manicheans, the distaste for scripture that he has, and how he is going to be--has been led astray by some of his friends with the stealing of--gratuitous stealing of the pear tree--the pears from the pear tree, which he doesn't understand why he would ever do that. And now he talks about once again his experience of the theatre. That is to say, he's discussing his experience of himself as a spectator, which is exactly what Dante was.



Dante--the problem Dante in Canto X of Purgatorio is that he is at first a spectator of works of art, which he seems to have no difficulty understanding. Then he has to be involved--show them at least some compassion, some self-recognition with the souls who are these shades, penitents, who are under these huge weights that they carry, and he cannot do it. He still has to learn what grief is and what is it, and how do you go on connecting to the images that you see.



Let's see how--what Augustine says, Augustine is--that's what he says: "Stage plays," this is really Chapter II of Book III, "stage plays carried me away, full of images of my miseries, and a fuel to my fire. Why is it that man desires to be made sad? Beholding doleful and tragical things which he himself would by no means suffer."



The real pleasure of his going to the theatre, he claims, we have a great pleasure, is in the images of grief. They don't really touch us, we are not even expected to jump on the stage to relieve the characters were involved in this sort of situation. He goes on, and then you'll see what the point is, "which would himself by no means suffer, yet he desires as a spectator to feel sorrow at them, and this very sorrow is his pleasure." I was just paraphrasing that.



"What is this, but a miserable madness, for a man is the more affected with his actions. The less free he is from such affections, however, when he suffers in his own person, it uses to be styled misery. When he feels compassion for others, then it is mercy. What sort of compassion is this for feigned and scenic passions? For the auditor is not called on to relieve, but only to grieve, and he applauds the actor of these fictions the more he grieves. And if the calamities of those persons were of all times or mere fiction, to be so acted that the spectator is not moved to tears, he goes away disgusted and criticizing, but if he is to be moved to passion, he stays intent and weeps for joy."



This is an extraordinary passage, I think, in the history of antiquity and the criticism of the theatre, dramatic theatre. The point is, can we ever be disengaged spectators? Yes, we can be disengaged spectators and Augustine is criticizing the disengaged spectator, the belief that we can be in front of the play of the world and that things only touch us, as if in a fiction, and yet we ourselves are not going to be able to acknowledge it. He's really criticizing the limits of the theatre, the limits of that kind of aesthetic experience. I think that Dante is picking up exactly from this--what Augustine says in this chapter, and he's showing how unavoidably one has to be involved. There's--in the measure in which we think that we are not touched by somebody else's grief, we're really admitting the overpowering quality of that experience. That's his argument.



He has learned something then; he has learned that there is no such a thing as a safe perspective. The way--and he has learned what Michal had been doing in--from the high window of her palace, that she was expressing disgust at her husband because that offends her own sense of superiority. Dante says, I may be no different from Michal in my disclaimer that I do not know and I do not see any of these penitents who disfigure the human form. In refusing to acknowledge that they are like me, and refusing to have any self-recognition between me and them. This is really the aesthetic education.



Let's see now how for Dante it is aesthetic and it's ethical. He goes on understanding that the stakes are in the idea of perspective, the idea that the world is a projection of my own wishes and that world is really reformulated. If I think that I can take a safe distance, it's because I do not want to look within myself. Canto XI and Canto XII, I think, will answer that question.



Let me just go on with Canto XII--Canto XI, I'm sorry. First of all--if there are questions you can interrupt me, because I don't think this is a difficult argument, but if there are questions interrupt me now or keep them for later. Canto XI begins with the penitents, who now change, reverse perspective. They are so close to the ground, but they are looking up, and they have the Lord's Prayer, in what is Dante's own recasting of the canonical prayer.



"Our Father, which art in heaven, not circumscribed but by the greater love Thou hast for Thy first works on high." This is the prayer of the penitents. "Praise be Thy name and power by every creature as it is meet to give thanks for Thy sweet effluence; May Thy peace of Thy kingdom come to us, for we cannot reach it of ourselves, if it come not, with all our striving. As Thine angels make sacrifice to Thee of their will, singing hosannas, so let men make of theirs; Give us this day the daily manna, without which he goes backward through this harsh wilderness who most labors to advance; And as we forgive everyone the wrong we have suffered, do Thou also forgive in loving-kindness and look not on our deserving; Our strengths," and so on. "Thus beseeching good speed for themselves and for us those shades went beneath their burden," etc.



What about this prayer? First of all, how is this related to what we are talking about? The first thing is that in the Lord's Prayer, the change Dante makes is to emphasize that God is not in space, not circumscribed. God is not in space and therefore He is really everywhere, or He is free. That formula he is using, you may want to know, is a traditional one in medieval thinking whereby God is said to be an infinite sphere. This is a formula to define what--the idea of the infinity of God. An infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere. God is not in a place; God does not have a perspective. There is--indirectly there is a critique of perspective here, or the inadequacy of a perspective.



God is everywhere, not circumscribed, that's the first change. The second change that he's making, this is a neo-Platonic element that he adds on to the Lord's Prayer, and then the second one is that he literally places, "Give us this day the daily manna, without which he goes backwards," he literally makes the Lord's Prayer the prayer of the exiles in the desert. Like the Jews in the wilderness who ask and get their manna, so now this is another element that--another metaphorical element that casts Purgatory as a journey through the desert between the bondage of Egypt and Jerusalem.



The other point is that there is a reversal of perspective somehow, and what kind of a perspective is he gaining now? The perspective, I think, is what I call a Franciscan perspective. Let me just explain first of all, the line, "Praised be Thy name and power by every living creature."



This is literally an echo of the first poem of the Italian poetic tradition, a poem written by St. Francis, which is known as the Canticle of Creatures, which is really a sequence--a anaphoric sequence of praises. 'Praised be Thy name, praised be the water, praised'--and so on. The point of that poem is that it begins with the look of human beings up to the highest and then it ends up with the idea of humility. We are, Francis says, "Not the most important or the center of creation, we are like everything else valuable in creation." That's the thrust of the poem, and the only way in which you can really understand the creation is really to look from the bottom up and not from the top down. This is the true, the kind of perspective that he is describing in the poem.



The rest of the canto really is a connection between art and pride, which we are not going to be surprised, since the whole of Canto X was a reflection on the premises of that--of the two metaphors, art and pride. So you have the illuminators and then references on lines 90 to the painters, "O empty glory of human powers, how briefly last the green on its top, unless it's followed by age of dullness! In painting Cimabue thought to hold the field, and now Giotto has the cry, so that the other's fame is dim and so. . ."



And then the poets, Guido Cavalcanti and Guido Guinizelli: "So has the one Guido taken from the other the glory of our tongue, and he, perhaps is born that shall chase the one and the other from the nest," meaning Dante himself. The idea of fame, which is what the proud souls may be looking for, is here dismissed as having the inconsistency of the wind, just vanishing like the breath, a breath of wind, and so this is the sort of moral understanding of pride and humility.



In Canto XII, I just want to show you and describe the reasons why, and try to explain to you the reasons why Dante deploys a peculiar rhetorical artifice. And I ask you to turn to around lines 25 which is a sequence of new visions Dante has. This time the images are on the ground. So he has to look down; he doesn't have to look up, and they are images of the proud souls who have been punished and therefore now they appear now on the ground.



The text starts, "I saw him that I was created nobler than any other creature," now of course you know who he is, "on the one side; I saw Briareus," one of the giants, "pierced by the heavenly shaft, lying heavy. . .I saw Thymbraeus, I saw Pallas and. . . I saw Nimrod. . . " All figures you have more or less seen before. ". . . at the foot of his mighty work, as if bewildered, and he was looking at the peoples in Shinar that shared his pride." And then four tercets: "O Niobe. . .", "O Saul. . . ", "O mad Arachne. . . ", "O Rehoboam. . . " And then, once again, the four more tercets: "It showed too, that hard pavement, how Alcmaeon. . . It showed how his sons fell upon Sennacherib. . . It showed the destruction and the cruel butchery that the Tomyris wrought. . . . It showed how the Assyrians fled in rout after Holofernes was slain." And then one final tercet: "I saw Troy in ashes and in heaps; O Ilion, how abased and vile the design show thee that we saw there!"



These are all the figurations of punished pride: pride that has been now literally humiliated. I did have to ask you to look, so that you can understand the artifice. This is what we call a visible speech that Dante himself has been deploying, and to do this I have to ask you to look at the Italian text that begins with the word--every tercet with the letter V, though I'm sure you would like me to read a little bit of the Italian: Vedea colui che. . . , Vedea Brïareo, the next tercet Vedea Timbreo, next Vedea Nembròt. And then, the four next tercets with the letter O: O Niobè, O Saùl, O folle Aragne, O Roboam. And then the next four tercets with M, Mostrava ancor. . ., next Mostrava come i figli si gettaro. . ., Mostrava la ruina. . . You've got to read down, Mostrava come in rotta. . . and then final tercet from line 61 to 62, Vedea Troia. . . o Ilion. . mostrava il segno. . . which sort of recapitulates all of the key elements of this artifice.



We are in the presence of a so-called acrostic that if you read from the top down, it spells the following V-U-M and then recapitulates. This is the V, but in Italian it's also the U. That is to say, the fall of man. So he's doing this--he's using this artifice that you can only understand if you read the text. If you have to hear it, you can't quite get to it. In other words, he's doing two things, using God's own art as a model for himself. This is pride, it would seem to be pride. After all it's excessive love of one's excellence, but God did that in Canto X, he's going to do the same thing now with the text.



The second thing that it shows is that the text is not a text to be just heard, it's a text to be read. It's a text to be looked at. It's what we call visible speech. What is Dante doing in--is he lapsing into a sin of pride? Of course, but what he's telling us is that pride is not a sin. He is, in a sense, redefining the ethical language of the Middle Ages and the ethical language of his own text. He's saying that in the measure in which you love what is above you, that is not a sin. The sin--it is a sin, pride, in the measure in which you do have contempt for those that you think are below you.



We have, thanks to the world of art, a re-evaluation of the moral language. That's the first and most important example of all of this that happens throughout Purgatory in Purgatory itself. Do you see what--is it--do you want me to say this again? Dante, by imitating God's form of art as he does here, with his own text, he's drawing attention to this as an artifice available to us thanks to his text and it's only possible to view it the way he describes it within the text. He's giving a peculiar status to his own text. This text has also its stages and artifice that we normally--and he has learned from God directly, which means that the sin of Lucifer, even, is not just the sin that he transgresses what's above him--it's the sin because he has contempt for what is below him. So the humility and pride really have to go hand in hand and one attenuates and changes the meaning of the other.



This is really something that in many ways a Franciscan canto--you might want to write a paper on that on the song of the so called--the Song of All Creatures by St. Francis and this particular canto. And so you may draw your own conclusions, if you do not agree with what I have said.



Let's move on to the next few cantos. I want to go to, above all, to Canto XVI because here we have--we are approaching now the center of the world of Purgatory. We are in the--we skipped envy altogether and I will get back to that on another occasion in Canto XV, but in XVI and XVII we'll talk about anger, the sin of anger, the purgation of anger. Here, in XVI, Dante meets a famous magnanimous figure called Marco Lombardo and he has a discussion about human--he has a discussion with him about the so-called--the issue of human degradation, of human degeneracy. The scene takes place in a kind of--the cloud of anger, the biblical cloud of anger, sort of a world deprived of any light, a kind of madness, if you wish, anger understood as that which violates the clarity and light of reason that--as we refer to it.



"Gloom of Hell or night bereft of every planet under a barren sky overcast everywhere with cloud never made a veil to my sight so heavy or of a stuff so harsh to the sense as the smoke. . ." And then the language: "Just as a blind man goes behind his guide that he may not stray or knock against what might injure or perhaps kill him, so I went through the foul and bitter air listening to my Leader."



He meets then, within this context, in this background of a cloudiness and near blindness, near invisibility of the world around him. The kind of invisibility that has been carried over from the sin of envy, which as you know, is all about being blind. Then he hears a voice and Dante asks one question. The question is: do we have the "world is. . .wholly barren of every virtue," on line 55, "as thou declarest to me, and pregnant and overspread with wickedness, but I beg thee to point out to me the cause that I may see it, and show it to men, for one places it in the heavens and another here below."



Is there such a thing as free, what we call free will? What is it, what is free will? What is the cause of all our deeds of our doings? Is it--as the astrologers will say, in the planets and therefore a matter of determination by forces that transcend us and which we have no control? A severe limitation of the meaning of choices and the possibilities of choices, and therefore of merits and demerits. If we have no choices, then we can really--we cannot be praised or blamed for what we do, or is it within us, and this is Marco Lombardo. It is a revisit--Dante's revisiting the whole story of--and debate, an ancient debate about the relationship between free will and God's foreknowledge if you wish, that Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy, as is well known, had been confronting.



"He first heaved then a deep sigh," line 63 and following, "which grief forced us to 'Alas!', then began: 'Brother. . ." I don't have to point out to you, this is the form of salutation in Purgatorio. You already had "Our Father" in Canto XI, with this idea that there's a human family, therefore a brother is the appropriate form of interlocution and address among the souls and Dante.



". . .the world is blind and indeed thou comest from it. You that are living refer every cause up to the heavens alone, just as if they moved all things with them by necessity. If it were so, free choice would be destroyed." I think the text is very clear. I would have to tell you that there is a distinction between choice and free will, they are not the same thing: free choice or free will. And this is a very difficult argument because choice implies that we--that it's an intellectual problem, that we choose thanks to what we know. The will is a difficult argument, because free will implies that the will is never in bondage, and it's possible to attain the moment where we will freely. In fact, so many theologians go on asking that free will means that the will finally can be moved by an act of choice that it is--it follows on the prior act of knowledge.



Dante uses the two terms: "if it were so free choice would be destroyed in you and there would be no justice and happiness for well doing and misery for evil." That's the answer that Marco Lombardo will give. "The heavens initiate your impulses; I do not say all, but, if I did, light is given on good and evil, and free will, and if it bear the strain in the first battlings with the heavens, then, being rightly nurtured it conquers all. To a greater power and to a better nature you, free, are subject."



Which in Italian it really is, I have to say, more of an oxymoron, line 80: liberi soggiaciete. You are free subjects exactly, you are--and you can--you do sense the--you understand the contradiction in the two terms. That is to say, we are free, but at the same time we are subject. I can only understand it with--in terms of what Dante will say a little bit later when he discusses--he shifts the argument to the law, saying that that's really the--we are free subjects and the law is exactly the--the metaphor for him that will make us understand what it means to be free and subject at the same time; where limitations are going to be posited and within those limitations we can be free. That's the argument.



"And that creates the mind in you which the heavens have not in their charge. Therefore. . ." etc. Then here the first thing that Dante does is give a sense of creation. He posits human freedom in the act of creation of the soul. This is, "from his hand," lines 85, "from His hand, who regards it fondly, before it is, comes forth, like a child that sports, tearful and smiling, the little simple soul that knows nothing." This is the famous poem, for those of you who remember a little bit of Latin, Hadrian--of the emperor Hadrian about the little simple soul that goes wandering around and Dante's reinterpreting it as not the soul that is lost in the world, but a soul that is playing.



The creation is a playful act. The soul is a like "a child that sports tearful and smiling, the little simple soul that knows nothing, but, moved by a joyful Maker turns eagerly to what delights it." We have the idea of creation as a free and playful act. Play in the sense of the innocence of the experience and play in the sense of being free. Now when one is at play one has all the attributes of spontaneity and freedom that go with it. It is the basis of what I call the playful theology of Dante.



God creates the world in an act--in a moment of freedom and that freedom becomes the foundation for positing our own human freedom. It's because we were born free that therefore we can go on believing and--that there is such a freedom for us. That it was not an act of necessity--that would be the opposite in the moment of creation and the experience of creation--but it's spontaneous and playful.



Then the canto goes on with these extraordinary political arguments, political and legal arguments. So we talk about human freedom and Dante moves to political freedom and look at what he says: "Rome, which made the world good, used to have two suns," which is a kind of Baroque image and I'll explain that too, in a moment, why he uses this image, "which made plain the one way and the other, that of the world and that of God. The one has quenched the other and the sword is joined to the crook, and the one together with the other must perforce go ill, since, joined, the one does not fear the other. If thou dost not believe me consider the ear of corn," etc.



What is he talking about? God has--Rome had two suns? The phrase translates--the line mistranslates--deliberately mistranslates, a line in Genesis where it is said that God gave mankind two luminaries, the sun and the moon, but whereby we could really see both in the day and at night. This little image from Genesis was used by the so-called hierocrats, the Canon lawyers of the middle ages, to explain it as the emblem for the Empire and the Church. That the Empire--the sun having the larger light the hierocrats would claim, was the light of the Church, and the moon having a reflected light was the light of the Empire. It was an argument, they would use this gloss as a way of explaining the superiority of--the Empire over--the superiority of the Church over the Empire. The Empire had to take its light and its direction from the Church.



Dante is deliberately violating that idea of the sun and the moon, equating them by saying "the two suns," in order to convey his conviction, the conviction that the two institutions God provides for the guidance of human beings, the Church and the Empire, are equal. He's conferring on them an equality rather than a hierarchical ordering of the two luminaries, the sun and the moon. It's an argument that really is addressed against the lawyers at the University of Bologna where they are--they were working for the pope, explaining the sense of the superiority, the superior status of one above the other.



With this whole argument here, now the--which is about a kind of legality or the questions of history's boundaries, that's what I understand by legalities, you have retrospectively also some light shown on this claim of being free subjects in Canto XVI.



We turn now to the very center of the Divine Comedy. The center of the Divine Comedy, which is, clearly, numerically the center, Canto XVII, and we'll see how--what is it that Dante discusses here in Canto XVII. The canto--its visions of anger of the--the canto begins with an apostrophe to the reader's memory: "Recall reader, if ever in the mountains mist caught thee for which thou couldst not see except as moles do through the skin," the difficulty of sight, the difficulty of seeing is highlighted again, "how, when the moist, dense vapors begin to disperse, the sun's disk passes feebly through them; and thy imagination will quickly come to see how, at first, I saw the sun again, now near its setting. So measuring mine with the faithful steps of my master, I came forth from such a fog to the beams which were already dead on the shores below."



It's a twilight landscape; you have a number of reversals and contrast--antithesis actually the mole--blind mole, that burrows underneath the earth and then alpine scenery which makes vision also impossible. Dante's evoking the heights and the lowest possible point of sight with the mole. The sun is setting and the night is approaching. It is as if the whole--so the solidity of the world around him is vanishing--is disappearing.



What's the experience? At this very moment, he's appealing to the memory of the reader and the imagination of the reader. It is as if that when the world outside seems to be failing us, we have this--part of this inner light, this inner possibility of recollection of the world or imagining the world. He's specifying what some of the claims about the inner lights that he says we have within us could be. He had just said that.



Also he's preparing this extraordinary second apostrophe to the imagination. Dante is--we are approaching the center of the universe, this poetic universe, and Dante reminds us that this is a work of the imagination. Why does he do this? What is this--what does he say about the imagination? The first thing that he says about the imagination: "O imagination, which so steals us at times from outward things that we pay no heed though a thousand trumpets sound about us, who moves thee if the senses offer thee nothing?"



It's the same question he had been asking earlier: where do our choices come from? Why do we what we do? Is it because a power from the outside moves us, or is there something that is within us? Now this question is asked in slightly different terms, in terms of the imagination. The imagination is a power, that's what he--the way he describes it--that removes us from the outside world. There's such a power--in other words, it's not just the imagination that translates sensory experiences into images for the benefit of rational judgment: this is the triadic Aristotelian order; the imagination has the middle ground between the senses, the work of the perception and the work of reason. This is a triadic pattern that Dante could have found in Aquinas; we, in turn, found it certainly in Aristotle, that's the way it precedes.



He has another imagination that he's talking about now, an imagination that removes us from the outside world. It frees us--it needs nothing of the world of perception. It is a power that, in many ways, steals us from it, it's a power that--how does he describe it? It comes "from the outward things that we pay no heed though a thousand trumpets sound about us." It's a faculty that is completely free from the outside world, a power that we have within us to imagine worlds that don't even exist. To imagine things that without the solicitations of what lies outside us and continues: "a light moves thee which takes form in the heavens, either of itself or by a will that directs it downwards. Of her impious deed. . ." and then he goes on describing three images of anger.



At the point in which Dante is approaching the center of the--his world where this--where we are witnessing, we are shown the power of the imagination as a visionary faculty. As a faculty that is not a transcription of the real world, and one wonders why he has to make this kind of claim. It encompasses the real world and yet is something that almost prophetic, something that does not come from the contacts with the world. I'll come back to this in a moment, I hope.



He has three images, then three--that come down to him gratuitously. They seem to have been descending into his mind without anything that--around him and then Dante goes on here describing the law of Purgatory. What is the world of Purgatory? How is it constructed? What's the architecture of this world? Unsurprisingly, this is a fabric of love, an architecture of love, and it's at the very center, lines 91, 92, and 93--that this is the actual numerically even, in the center the poem--not surprising, that's what Dante says, "Neither Creator nor creature, my son, was ever without love, either natural or of the mind."



That's the center. What does he mean natural or of the mind? He's distinguishing here between the two types of love and in fact he will clarify: ". . .and this thou knowest; the natural is always without error," whatever impulse we may have," that's the impulse of love, that is never prone to sinfulness. It's a natural impulse, a natural desire, that which is instead sinful is the one where choice is involved. "The natural is always without error, but the other may err through a wrong object or through excess or defect of vigor."



Whenever we make a choice we may either not love the right object or we may love it too much, or we may love it too little, and so this is the topography of Purgatory. This triadic division in terms of love. Everything is a problem of love but then there are varieties that organize its subdivisions.



"While it is directed on the primal good and on the secondary keeps right measure, it cannot be the cause of sinful pleasure; but when it is warped to evil, or with more or with less concern than is due pursues its good against the Creator works his creature. From this thou canst understand that love must be the seed in you of every virtue and of every action deserving punishment. Now since love can never turn its face from the welfare of its subject all things are secure from self hatred. . . " and so on.



And Dante now responds: "Now I would have thee give thought to the other, which pursues its good in faulty measure. Everyone confusedly apprehends the good at which the mind may be at rest and desires it, so that each strives to reach it, and if the love is sluggish that draws you to see or gain it, this terrace, after due repentance, torments you for that. Other good there is. . ."



The question then will become--and I did not ask you to read this canto, but I can give you a sort of brief preview of it--Dante has to ask if--what is this love of choice? Does it depend--since I may have a particular perception of the world that makes me see whatever I encounter as beautiful and desirable, where is my fault? He repeats the same problems that he's been raising in Canto XV. Dante will try to explain it in terms of love, and yet, we are going to be brought back to the world of how do we perceive what it is that we love.



The perception of what we love becomes crucial to our very responsibilities for it. So this is--at the center of the poem then Dante seems to be suspended between two ideas. On the one hand, the notion that there is a real world where you have responsibilities for everything that we do and on the other hand, a world where there's an imagination which is completely disengaged from the world of reality, and cannot quite be constrained or held in. So how are you going to--suspended between these two possibilities--how is Dante going to bring them together? You see what the issue is? How do you--if the world of the imagination is free and disengaged from reality then how am--I'm going to, on the other hand, going to be held accountable for what I do over the world, and with the world around me, and with my own deeds.



At the center of the poem Dante's raising this contradiction that's not--imagination is made to be the way to knowledge. I can only know through the imagination. The imagination of--that depends on my perception of the world or an imagination which frees me completely from the world, and then these two ideas of the imagination are really in contradiction one with the other. So where is the human responsibility? The poem gets nourished by this duality of the imagination. The poem moves back and forth between one and the other.



And let me just stop here because I think I may have said a little bit too much about these issues and I could respond to your questions, I hope, if there are some. Please.



Student: So just as sins of the Inferno were more products of the will, the sins in Purgatory are more products of love and he's not told where will may or may not have been factored into it, and because Purgatory is the place that's in between, is it also the place of that uncertainty between will and love?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Well I don't know about that. The question is really a perplexity about what I have been saying. In Inferno, will is crucial and you are absolutely right. There cannot be a sin unless there is a will involved. In Purgatorio, the argument here seems to be--the way I have been following it from Cantos XV, XVI, XVII and the way it's going to be developed in XVIII and actually frankly XIX, where Dante goes on telling a dream--Dante makes the word of love the crucial act of our being in the word, relating us to God, we are related to God, really born through the way of love, therefore, the way of the heart and not unnecessarily through some abstract metaphysical issues.



Then the issue becomes how is this love related to the will? Is Dante being uncertain between the two? What is the moral--Dante begins in Canto XV talking about moral responsibilities, this kind of free subjection that we have, and an inner light that is available to us. Then he--Canto XVI we'll also talk about the--in Canto XVI he talks about creation, the creation of the soul, the freedom with which God creates and that freedom authorizes us. It becomes a sort of ground for the human freedom. Then in XVII, first of all, he talks about an imagination which is completely free of any contact with the world and then talks about this theory of love, that rational love that organizes, the love of knowledge that organizes everything.



I could just have stopped there and shown you, this is really what the text says, and maybe ask you to connect imagination and love that I read at the two sides of Canto XVII, at the very center of the poem, almost to imply that we can love only and so far as--and we can love as well as our imagination takes us to loving. That's clearly one of the images.



But clearly there is more in that debate. The debate is that if I love according well, or not enough, or too much, that has to do with the way I perceive the world. Why does he have to talk about an imagination which is so unbounded that it needs nothing of reality? I mean to say this that in the subject and I call it--I say well this is a visionary aspect of the imagination. It's a poet who thinks of himself as being the visionary poet.



You have an idea of Romantic poets, for instance, English Romantic poets who distinguish between fantasy and the imagination, though Dante does it in terms of this imaginative power that removes me from the world of reality. It takes me away and opens up new spaces and the mind in itself. I ask this question though from another point of view, which I think is connected to what we have been saying here.



Can Dante ever write this kind of poem by being bound to the world of reality and to the way in which the real world is known? Clearly the answer is no. The only way that Dante can come to God and the vision of God is by agreeing with this idea, yielding, surrendering to the power of the imagination that will take him out of the real world. You cannot really write a poem like the Divine Comedy by following rules and laws, whether they are rhetorical, or whether they are just pure ideas of style. You try to--you have to go on imagining things that don't really--are available to our perceptions. That, to me, is the issue, that's how I have been moving this issue.



I think that the poem, that Dante's voice is suspended between these two possibilities of the imagination. An imagination that has to accept the world of reality, an ordinary imagination, and yet there is also another idea of the imagination, which is so much more powerful. But, if we accept this as being true for the poem, it follows we have to ask the question of, what about the moral life? Is the moral life then one that where Dante's saying, that in effect, all the language of blame and praise, which depends on accepting limits and free subjection to rules, is that--is he saying that that is also--maybe it's arbitrary? That there may be some other law that he has to discover? I don't think that there is yet an answer here, but that's the problem that I was trying to convey. Does that answer your--provisionally--your perplexities, okay. Yes.



Student: Regarding Canto XVI with the vision of anger served--the beginning of anger that served as a polar opposite condition to love, why does he think anger?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The question is does the sin of anger in Canto XVI, is that a kind of polar opposite to love?



Student: And why does he begin with it?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Why does it begin with that? Well I think that anger--I would define it as a form of madness to begin with. It's a kind of eclipse of all rationality and so it explains why Dante will have to go on retrieving the laws of reason, the laws of rationality to be opposed to the kind of--to that--the experience of madness in Canto XVI. We go into Canto XVII and he's talking about a sort of love which is very rational, but then he is undoing it with something that stands between madness and love, and that's the imagination. See the connection? Okay.



Student: I'm a little confused about what you just said about how the moral life might present a power to the imagination--I just think if--what if an understanding from what you've been saying about why you use the imagination is because you're approaching mystery so it's hard to use the real world to approach this. So it seems like--and so you need the imagination and I guess if Dante is going to God, so if he's approaching mysteries, so it's hard for him to talk about this in a rational language. But isn't that more of like an acknowledgement of his limitations than a transgression, so doesn't it still fit with humility and fit with the moral life?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: That's an excellent point. You not only asked the question I think that you are clarifying some of the problems. The question is still about the whole issue of the imagination that on the one hand the imagination seems to be the way to so large and so--such a force that will take Dante, I'm paraphrasing your point, take Dante all the way to see God. I seem to be saying that that is a kind of transgression, but you emphasize that that can be an acknowledgement of human limitations.



I call it--maybe that's true, that's really what it is. It's--I call that a visionary power within him. It may be coming to him from the outside. He asks that question, does this visionary power come to me from the outside, or is it something that is within human beings? That's the question. He doesn't answer that question at that point. What he does say is, well this is the image that came to me, the image of a martyr who committed suicide, and he goes on with his three images. He doesn't answer that directly and I think that he wants to keep you guessing if this is a human transgression or an acknowledgement of human limits.



He--I don't think that he knows yet, at this point, what the unfolding of that dilemma will be. He wants us to think in terms of that dilemma and that dilemma is at the heart of Purgatory.



The dilemma between what is this power? I have a power within me that--without which I can never really go to God, and is this in any way a transgression? Do I need a transgression in order to come to God? Ulysses thought that there would be no knowledge without transgression. Maybe Adam in the Garden also thought that there would be no knowledge without transgression--that the real knowledge is to transgress. Is Dante thinking that way? Or maybe he's thinking that there is no transgression without, at the same time, a sense of the limitations. That indeed, that the idea of transgression depends on some sense of limitations. Do you see what I'm saying?



What the argument seems to me could very well be, that in effect pride and humility are really more connected than what we like to think. We are always proud and Dante would say, it's good. To me that's what Canto X, XI, and XII were saying. You may not agree with that reading, that pride is good in the measure in which I can reach out for something really higher. That's not bad. What is bad is that that blinds me to something else.



I take that to be Franciscan thinking. He is invoking the humblest voice of the whole literary tradition up to this time, the Canticle of all Creatures. I'm glad that you are giving me the opportunity to refocus on the fact that that dilemma between pride and humility reappears as a question of limits and transgressions with the imagination and knowledge and with love.



Of course, Dante would say that there is such a thing of love within--with laws and yet love is one of those experiences where we usually don't like to believe that there are limits, right? You don't want anybody to come--I hope--to come to your door and say, I love you in a very reasonable way and with a lot of limitations. I'm sure you'll give--kick him out. Love is one of those experiences exactly like the imagination, that the powers of which seem always to be transgressing whatever limitations we want to--we wanted to transgress the limitations, rationally, reasonably we want to impose on it.



This is the question that Dante is raising. You cannot have, I think that you are--you are onto the right track with your--in your paraphrasing the whole--in your asking the question that maybe transgression and limitations really have to be seen together. Pride and humility will have to be seen together; subjection and freedom will have to be seen together. They are not terms which are so far apart from each other. Each involves the other, that's why I call it a paradox, the knot that joins these things together, is exactly that. Is this--am I--did I confuse all of you today here? Oh my, then I will confuse you next time. Other questions that we have? Yes.



Student: Can you talk about the section in Canto XV where he's talking about how true love and the love of God is like a mirror? It's around line 70--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Canto XV.



Student: Line 75--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Yes.



Student: How love of God is like his mirror that--the more people that love God, the more love he gives back and it's like a mirror that keeps reflecting and amplifying love. And I was wondering--I was intrigued by the image of the mirror, so I was hoping that you could talk a little bit about how the image of the mirrors and the idea of mirrors maybe are part of Dante's way of thinking.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The--this is around line 75, right? Let me just read this whole paragraph. Dante is in the--describing the virtue that is opposed to envy, mercy, the idea of--the notion of mercy and because--I read from 65 on:



"Because thou still settest thy mind on earthly things, thou gatherest darkness from the very light." That's part of--sort of reversals that we--how light induces and generates darkness; it's a certain kind of light. We seem to believe or to think in terms of the light that is available to us, but that does not necessarily produce more light, but can dim our understanding about the way things really are.



"That infinite and unspeakable good which is there above speeds to love as a sunbeam comes to a bright body; so much it gives of itself as it finds ardor, so the more charity extends the more does the eternal goodness increase upon it, and the more souls that are enamored there above the more there are to be rightly loved and the more love there is and like a mirror the one returns it to the other. And if my speech do not relieve thy hunger thou shalt see Beatrice and she will deliver thee wholly from this and every other craving. Strive only that soon may be erased, as the other two are already, the five wounds which are healed by being painful."



The question is, you want me to say something about the mirror, the image of the mirror that is being used here. I think that this is a Platonic image of the notion that all of creation--this is The Celestial Hierarchy of the Pseudo-Dionysius. I don't know that I have ever spoken of him, I will because Dante mentions him in Paradise, but in The Celestial Hierarchy, Dante--the Pseudo-Dionysius--thinks of all creation being a kind of occasion--being a kind of hall of mirrors where everything is reflected onto the other, a number of reflections that all give different light--in different ways the light of God, this is so--that's where the problem of mercy places us, so this idea of charity.



Dante is interested in two things, one the generative idea of charity. Charity produces more charity. It has a kind of power to generate itself and multiply itself, and the way he compares this is--he compares it to what I call--what he calls here, obliquely, the hall of mirrors. Let me just say something else about Pseudo-Dionysius, when Pseudo-Dionysius wants to--mystical theology--he wants to talk about the divine, he will think about the divine in terms of light, as you know. Light that is refracted and reflected throughout the orders and ranks of creation. The highest image of this light of the divine is the sun. The sun that is generous, in the sense, as I mean generous in a very peculiar sense, in the sense that it gives itself to all, without any distinction and it depends on us, whether we are going to be able to appreciate that light or not, but the sun is giving itself freely to all.



This is the principle of mercy for Dante. Mirrors are reproducing that light endlessly; the whole of creation is sending back this kind of light, without any loss in itself of the original light. This is the metaphor and the metaphysics of mirror in Dante. The world is therefore, from the point of view of mercy, and not from the point of view of envy, where we do not even see the light. Envy means that we have no knowledge of anything that comes from the outside, but in the world of mercy we have an--we understand this generous giving of the light which comes from God and the heat that goes with it. That's it, so it's a virtue that completely offsets the notion of envy, the idea of God who creates without envy, that's another way of thinking about the generosity of God. That is connected to the light and to the multiplications of the light from mirrors.



Actually this is an image that really reappears in Paradise and we'll come back to this canto, the whole of Paradise organized through this hall, these infinite reflections of God's light.



[end of transcript]

This lecture deals primarily with Purgatory XIX, XXI and XXII. The ambiguity of the imagination discussed in the preceding lecture as the selfsame path to intellectual discovery and disengagement is explored in expressly poetic terms. While the pilgrim's dream of the siren in Purgatory XIX warns of the death-dealing power of aesthetics, the encounter between Statius and Virgil in the cantos that follow points to its life-giving potential by casting poetry as a means of conversion.



Reading assignment:

Dante, Purgatory: XIX, XXI, XXII

Transcript



October 16, 2008



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: We talked the last time--I talked a little about this whole issue of the imagination that Dante places, along with a definition of love, and the--and love is the power that governs, that shapes the moral world of Purgatory. Last time we talked about these two fossae of Canto XVII, the two fossae of the center; it really makes the center kind of ellipses, as it were, between imagination and love. Love is attached to the--it's joined to a theory of free will, because it's by choice--because of our choices that we can be held accountable for the actions that we engage in: loving wrong objects, loving too much or loving too little.



Some of the problems, I think, stem from a certain misunderstanding about the imagination. That Dante should place the imagination at the center of the poem should really not surprise you. He's a poet and he thinks that imagination is indeed the path that he has to take in order to come to any form of knowledge. It's only through the imagination it's not--that does not exclude rationality, but that's the discourse of philosophers, the discourse of theologians if you wish, but he places the imagination as his way. And then from that point of view, he can even challenge some ideas of the superiority, let's say, of rational argument over the imagination. The imagination is the weapon of the poet.



How--with what kind of attributes does he invest the imagination? It's tied to memory. The Canto XVII begins with an apostrophe to the reader's memory. It appears as, in the feminine, imaginativa, the--in the--Dante's silencing the term vis. It has a sort of force, imagination, it's moved by something else. Dante does not decide whether it's the heaven or the stars or comes from inside us, but he has a particular power, a strange power. It comes like a thief in the night, it robs us of any degree of consciousness about the world outside of us and, just as memory dislodges--the description of memory at the beginning of Canto XVII, it's a memory that has an incredible memory as a form of the imagination, as you know.



Memory and the imagination are connected. It's a form of the imagination, but it's a memory that has the power to move up and down, the text evokes the Alpine heights and the depth of the mole. It talks about a form of blindness and yet it creates vision. Memory is a figure of time and then the whole passage is described in terms of space, as if imagination had the power to dislocate us from where we think that we are.



This is the point, and it's not an unusual point for Dante to make, since this is the poetry of exile, the poetry of a man who thinks that he's a stranger while living on earth. A man, without a sense, a clear sense of where his home may be, he is--this is the poetry rooted in the consciousness of homelessness, so the imagination is an extension, an internalized version of this sense of homelessness. It has a power and that power that doesn't seem to be able to be--a power that cannot quite be contained or coerced within definite parameters of conduct.



In fact, this insistence on the imagination, I'm really recapitulating the things that maybe I thought I said and probably I didn't say last time, between, on the one hand, the sin of wrath, which is a form of madness. That is to say, a sin that eclipses the powers of reason, that's anger, and on the other hand, this discourse on love. This is really what I was saying. Dante understands that there is an imagination which cannot quite be held in check, and yet the whole point of the poem I'm talking--whenever I'm talking about the poem, I point out some seemingly insignificant details like, oh look this is a symmetry here between Canto VI of Inferno, Canto VI of Purgatorio, or whatever, to indicate that it is a poem built with a precise principle of order in mind. Not only it has order in its technical execution, it has order also as a moral problem. It's all about ordering the appetites, ordering the will. But at the same time along side with it, and this is the complexity and the beauty of Dante's text, this is another argument that almost questions, makes us--forces us into thinking that there are some elements that seem to be left out of this fabric of order that Dante has woven, or if you like, the metaphor has built--the architecture that he has built.



Let' see how this argument really continues. That's not the end of the story. This is just a stage in his movement of self-knowledge and knowledge of the world. In fact, Canto XVIII, we're now moving into a different moral realm, it's a moral realm where we actually know we are moving toward a so-called, what Dante and medieval theorists of vices call acedia. Acedia is a Latin term, which in English we can describe--we'll describe as a sort of despondency, as a sort of indecisiveness, sluggishness, sloth. That's it, that's the--if you are interested in knowing more about what the Middle Ages thought about this, this scholar Wenzel wrote a book called, Acedia, exactly about the--both in English medieval literature, Dante and other issues.



What more precisely--how can we go on understanding this question of acedia? It's in a sense the parody or the inversion of contemplation. It's tied to a sense of loss of the outside world. Acedia describes the condition of the mind that has found itself indifferent to the object of desire. It really is a crisis of desire. One finds objects that--the sloth, the sluggishness, the indecisiveness of the mind. It is as if the objects of desire were--had lost their consistency, their attractiveness, their luster. You just don't care. It's the problem, the so-called noonday devil, the temptation of the monks, that's why I call it a parody of contemplation. It's the temptation that the monks experienced in their cloisters when they sort of find that the whole idea of turning their minds to the divine is no longer, or provisionally perhaps, is not appealing. It's the loss of appeal of anything outside of oneself and indicates a kind of both intellectual and dreamy sort of condition and that's really what I want to talk about now.



Canto XVIII is the most intellectual of cantos in Purgatory. Dante faces a theoretical issue. He's talking to Virgil, and these theoretical issues of Canto XVIII flow out of the problems that we have had in discussing Canto XVII. As you know, we are talking about imagination and love, and there is an imagination that somehow is vagabond. It's a thief, breaks out of any particular confines; it dislodges us. It takes the ground out of our own certainties about the way we see the world. Remember that the image with which Canto XVII starts, Dante places us in a world which is at the twilight. There's no real light. It's all foggy, and then all of a sudden, we do see something, and it's unclear whether we see something because of the light that comes from within us. Memories, for instance, that's a light we carry within us, confused, as they may be, or some other kind of conscious intuition.



That's really the discourse of the imagination and that dislodged some of us here. That made it a little difficult to try to get a hold of--grasp. Dante has the same problem in Canto XVIII. Canto XVIII begins with a question that he asks of Virgil. You are talking about love, you are talking about this inclination, the whole theory of love in Canto XVII. He says, "Master, my sight," this is Canto XVIII the very beginning, "is so quickened in thy light that I discern clearly all that thy words set forth and explain; and I pray therefore, dear and gentle Father, that thou expound love to me, to which thou reduce every good action and its opposite."



Whatever you have told me in Canto XVII really is not enough. And Virgil goes on explaining the theory--that it's a very philosophical theory, that we have perceptions. Your perception takes from outward reality an impression and unfolds it within you, so it makes the mind turn to it. Whatever the will is bound, that's really what we call pleasure. I'm paraphrasing poorly.



"Thy words and my following. . ." Excuse me, let me just mention another little passage: "Now may be plain," line 35, "Now may be plain to thee how hidden is the truth for those who maintain that every love is in itself praiseworthy. . ." He's attacking--this is the view of the Epicureans who believe that every pleasure, without any particular judgment attached to the object of pleasure, is praiseworthy. Dante says no, we have to exercise some moral judgment. We have to create distinctions. We have to discriminate between the good and the bad love.



". . . perhaps because its matter always seems good, but not every stamp is good, even if it be good wax." I would even go so far as to say that he's really thinking now of his friend Cavalcanti--Guido's Epicurean--you saw him mention in Canto XII by name--Epicurean leanings. The idea--that's the Epicurean ethics, that if pleasure is really the only object really worthy of any pursuit and that's really what we are doing. When we are in pursuit of knowledge or real experiences, then they claim that all of pleasure is good. That's the hedonistic ethics that Dante really renounces or debates.



Then, in fact, Virgil goes on saying: "Thy words and my following wit," this is Dante talking, "have revealed the nature of love to me, but that has made me more full of perplexity; for if love is offered to us from without and if the soul moves with no other feet, it has no merit when it goes straight to crooked."



Now you say that everything is love and the love that I have depends on the experience of images, well in what--how am I going to deserve for choosing well or not choosing well, since at the basis of the imagination, we have perceptions. What I perceive may be looking good to me and does not look good to you, so the issue is displaced from the point of the world of imagination to the world of perception. Virgil will go on explaining a scholastic theory to the point that indeed we incline to the good, but then actually we have within us the faculty of choice.



He says, "In order that to this will every other may be conformed there is innate in you the faculty which counsels and which ought to hold the threshold of assent." He's talking about, once again, free will and he will add, this is what I--this is on line 60 and following, this is all I can tell you from a philosophical point of view. Other issues about the free will will be explained to you by Beatrice when she first comes to you. And so it would seem to make a distinction between the knowledge of Virgil and the knowledge of Beatrice. He said, "As far as reason sees here I can tell thee, beyond that; wait only for Beatrice, for it is a matter of faith," and so on.



There seems to be two ways of understanding this issue. The fact is that Beatrice will never discuss this problem, but in a sense, Beatrice represents the explanation that Dante is looking for, because Beatrice is a kind of love, for Dante, that stands for a visionary form of love, and not just a love that can be reduced to a question of mechanics of physics of perception. That's really what Canto XVIII seems to be doing then. It responds, enlarges, and at the same time brings us back into the very predicament that Canto XVII had posed for us. It seems that Dante is moving, and at the same time, an impasse--another impasse has been reached.



Now, with this in mind, we turn to what he unavoidably has to do, try to translate all of these issues of love, imagination, choice, and from the theoretical into the autobiographical or existential dimension. This is done in the dream, an erotic dream that Dante relates at the beginning of Canto XIX. Before I turn to that canto, I just want to tell you about how Dante understand this. He has one line at the very end of Canto XVIII that I would--the last line of Canto XVIII --that I really want to underline for you, the whole paragraph reads: "Then when the shades were so far parted from us that they could no longer be seen, a new thought arose within me, from which others many and diverse were born; and I rambled so from one to the other, that in my wandering my eyes closed and I changed my musing into dream."



That introduces the dream of Canto XIX, but the line in Italian is really very interesting because it presents the connection between thinking and dreaming. He says, in fact the translation: "My musing," it's correct but it's really--I would have said to make it very clear, my thought. Dante says on line 145, che li occhi per vaghezza ricopersi, e 'l pensamento in sogno trasmutai. There's a kind of link, a sort of sense of the connection between thinking and dreaming that Dante favors dreaming at this point over thinking.



You shouldn't be surprised that Dante's doing this. The Romance of the Rose, a grand medieval epic, is a dream, and tells the story of a dream. The Book of the Duchess--Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess, is the story of a dream. The Vita nuova is full of dreams. Even for those of you who are interested in contemporary literature, fairly contemporary, I'm thinking of Keats' great poem, "Sleep and Poetry." I don't know how many of you have had a chance to read that. Poets love sleeping because sleep introduces the idea of the dream and the possibility of a dream, the possibility of a knowledge which is not willed. I finally have some revelations within me which is not what I would normally have if I were awake, so this is the great privilege that they give to dreams.



Are the Middle Ages really conscious of this dimension? Yes, there is a text by an author called Macrobius, and if you want to know more really, which Macrobius, who writes on The Dream of Scipio, Cicero's figure in the Republic, it's all about--it's an encyclopedia of dreams and based on Artemidorus, but it's distinctions between oracles, fantasies, insomniac, deliriums, dreams and so on. They are very conscious of the sort of power and revelations that can come through dreams.



What is this dream about? It's now definitely in the world of acedia. It's a dream--let me just read this initial--the beginning of Canto XIX. I emphasize that this is now an autobiographical--the highlighting of the autobiographical dimension of all the problems we have been discussing from XVII, above all XVI, XVII, and XVIII. Dante has to translate the theories into a personal--giving them a personal shape and that to investigate the kind of importance that they may have for him.



It starts then with, "In the hour when the day's heat, overcome by the earth and sometimes by Saturn, can no longer temper the cold of the moon, when the geomancers see their Fortuna Major rise in the east before dawn by a path which does not long stay dark for it, there came to me in dream a woman stammering, cross-eyed and crooked on her feet with maimed hands and of sallow hue. I gazed at her, and as the sun revives cold limbs benumbed by the night, so my look gave her a ready tongue, and then in a little time made her quite erect and colored her wan features as love desires. When she had her speech thus set free she began to sing so that it would have been hard for me to turn my mind from her. 'I am,' she sang, 'I am the sweet siren who beguile the sailors in mid-sea, so great delight it is to hear me. I turned Ulysses, eager on his way, to my song and he who dwells with me rarely departs, so wholly I content him.'



Her lips were not yet closed again when a lady, holy and alert, appeared beside me to put her to confusion. 'Oh Virgil, Virgil, who is this?' she said with anger. And he came with his eyes fixed on the honorable one; he seized the other and laid her bare in front, tearing her clothes, and showed me her belly. That awoke me with the stench that came from her. I turned my eyes to the good Master. 'Three times at least I have called thee,' he said, 'rise and come, let us find the opening by which thou enterest."



That's the end of the dream, the account of the dream, and this is also--the journey will continue that seemed to have come to a halt here at night. As you recall, just to give you a sense of Dante's ordered poetic mind, this is the second of three dreams. We didn't really read the first one about--in Canto IX, was the dream of Ganymede. Dante's moving from the anti-Purgatory to Purgatory proper and then it's the--the third one will appear in Canto XXVII, so that really Dante is scanning these three dreams with also a sense of numerical--symbolic numerical precision IX, XVIII, retold in XIX, but takes place during the night and then XXVII. This is the--it's a dream, it's a dream that happens at dawn, just some details, and a dream at dawn has always the value they believed of it being a kind of prophetic dream. It's a dream that really has a sort of a hue, a color of the truth.



It says something about--so if you understand the dream as an allegory say, because it's about a veil. It's about tearing clothes. There is something hidden underneath it all, then it may be this allegory has a truth value. It's not some kind of mere fable or other. Dante starts evoking the planet Saturn which is--we shall see that in--you know that Dante mentions planets and joins them to the various liberal arts. I probably have mentioned this before. So when we will be talking about the moon, Dante is going to discuss grammar. He'll talk about Mars, the planet of war, and there he'll talk about music. Jupiter and justice, Saturn is astronomy, also the planet of contemplation. In this sense, I think that he's hinting that sloth is the obverse side, the parody of contemplation, a different type of self-absorption nonetheless. Not a way of breaking out, the contemplation means breaking out of one's self and reach some kind of--the gates outside of time. Here it's a dream that seems to be--a movement, an inward movement, so it's Saturn.



Then he continues with this language of astronomy and divination who "no longer temper the cold of the moon when the geomancers see the Fortuna Major." This is a process of knowledge, as divination. That's a different type of rational knowledge, divining signs. This is the context in which the dream is set: "rise in the east before dawn by a path which does not long stay dark for it, there came to me in a dream." Now the dream starts.



The first thing that I have to point out to you is that in this--in the dream, the dreamer is an object. The dream comes to him. Clearly, it is not willed, it's not something that he decides or he wants. One is the object of some dreams or apparitions, or signs, images that descend into one's self without one's own self control or dominion over there. Dante seems to place himself in a condition of passivity which is the passivity of sloth. The idea that I am awake and therefore vigilant, and therefore capable of making judgments about what's happening to me, is here, now, for the time being, bracketed.



What is this dream about though? Well it's a dream of a woman, and the Italian text plays--since this is a dream about two women, two modes of being, two choices. It's almost as if he were--he isn't, but you know this is the mythography of Hercules, as they call him, at the crossing road. He had to choose between vice and virtue, but Hercules has an easy time because he's always going to be right: in thinking mythography, if you go to the right then you really have--by going toward virtue, left and right, being dexterous rather than sinister, the idea of the left being bad.



Here we don't have that, here's two women, but the language of the poem distinguishes very carefully between them. One is a femmina, there is materiality and even a kind of animal sense of the word, and when the other woman appears, she's called a donna; donna is the Italian word from domina, the lady is called a holy lady, I guess, "lady holy and alert," etc. She is--this woman, she crystallizes what we would call the aesthetics of the ugly. We're always talking about the beauty and the idea that beauty brings about a kind of revelation of love and the pleasure that goes with beauty. In fact, one can say that love--no?--this is a Platonic way of understanding love has always a hunger for beauty. The conventional way of thinking about aesthetics is to imagine beautiful proportionate forms.



Here, Dante is giving exactly the opposite, an aesthetic of the ugly. But an ugly which is not static and somehow is--experiences metamorphosis. In fact, look what happens, she is "stammering, cross-eyed, and crooked on her feet," she is the anti-Beatrice by--obviously, "with maimed hands and sallow hue."



Now he changes: from the dreamer as an object, the dreamer becomes a subject, "I." You see that, from ". . .came to me. . ." and then, "I gazed at her, and as the soul revives cold limbs benumbed by the night, so my look. . ." His desires transform this image, and from the ugly image that it was, it becomes now instead invested with attributes of attractiveness and "colored her wan features as love desires," as love prompts.



Then this is what--we still don't understand who she is. "When she had her speech thus set free, she began to sing so that it would have been hard for me to turn my mind from her." The first temptation that we know that--the vehicle of the temptation--is the song. This is also, and primarily, a poetic temptation. A certain way of understanding poetry, a kind of even meretricious form of poetry.



What does she say? She brings to center stage the myth of Ulysses, which is by now as you know, is the steady temptation for Dante. It's the point of reference: to what extent is my own journey that I believe is taking place under the aegis of divine providence, to what extent is it a form of transgression? A way of going beyond boundaries, of breaking down all limits, because after all that's what Ulysses did in Canto XXVI. And Dante knows where he has placed him, but he cannot get him out of his mind because Ulysses stands for something powerful. What he stands for is the idea that there is no knowledge worth having which is not connected with transgressions, which is not connected with breaking down all barriers and limitations.



In a way, because Dante doesn't do these things accidentally, when he comes to Canto XXVI of Paradise, he will see Adam, and there is another who is for him, without a doubt, a poet, because he's the name giver. He is the name giver of the world. He is the one who brings the world into being through language. And when Dante meets Adam, there will be some interesting details that we can talk about there, but I can anticipate this for you: Adam is the one who had understood transgression and that transgression though, for Adam, appears as a sort of growth. It's not a fall, for Dante, it's a growth. It's a growth and understanding other types of limitations because we cannot just say that we tear down all limits; we tear down some limits in our experience.



Adam tears down and eats of the fruit of the tree that had been forbidden for him, like a good son. The Father says, don't eat it and he goes and eats it, and thence he eats it, he grows into a human being. He discovers that the world is not for him to be as a child, that he has to have other experiences of death, of maturity, of work, etc. There are ways in which we have to understand this idea of breaking limits in a different way from maybe the way I may have conveyed it to you. In other words, Dante, here, is thinking of Ulysses and anticipates the story of Adam.



The great temptation for Dante is to believe that he too--his journey is a journey that reenacts Ulysses' journey. The siren--that's what she's telling him--what she's telling him is, 'I made Ulysses happy.' It's a lie, because we do know that Ulysses never really stopped off the island of Capri in whose Grotto where the siren, is mythologically said to reside. We do know that he did listen to the song of the siren; he made sure that his companions would not, and he had himself bound. Here it is again, bound to the mast of the ship. There is a transgression and a binding going on at the same time.



As I said--at any rate, she lies about, "I turned Ulysses, eager on his way to my song, and he who dwells with me," so the first--the other lie or the extension of the lie is that the siren is making false promises of happiness to the dreamer. What she's saying is, you stay here with me and I am the end of all that you desire. I am going to give you all the pleasures that you want, and therefore, your journey may very well be over. If you are weary of the road, this is the place where you should stop.



We have another figure that emerges. Clearly, the antagonist of the siren, we don't know who she is, we'll find out very quickly in Canto XXX and XXXI, because the same scene will be re-enacted with the arrival of Beatrice. We imagine that here too, we have force to imagine, that here too she is Beatrice. "Her lips were not yet closed again when a lady holy and alert," a woman in the sense of not femmina, "appeared beside me to put her to confusion. 'O Virgil, Virgil, who is this?' she said with anger" and he came with her.



What is the difference between them, between these two women? They are two different forms of poetry. Now we understand why Dante had to be talking about the imagination all along, because this is really what will introduce him to the stakes in claiming to be a poet. This is what he's been talking about--the actual faculty of himself as a poet, and the cantos that will come, XXI, XXII to XXVI and XXVII constitute the most important segment about ways of understanding literary history, literary tradition, or the place of originality within that particular history and so on. We are going to enter the world of poetry more directly.



So they are two different women; they speak two different voices. One sweet, meretricious and false, but a sweet song; the other one very harsh, who says the journey is not over. One forecloses the journey of--and the quest of Dante. Be like Ulysses, I know that you want to be like Ulysses, you can stay here with me, and I am the end of all your journeys and your quests. The other one is claiming exactly the opposite. The journey has to continue. These two types of songs, the song of the siren is sweet, which has also the stench of death attached to it. The stench of the decomposition of her body, and on the other hand, a journey by this austere voice, the voice of--maybe the voice of love, the voice of harshness, just the language of sweetness is that of love as an ongoing quest. That's what she's saying. Two forms of love, two forms of poetry, two types of women.



The scene, in case you are interested in this--as many of you I'm sure have thought about it--literally are stages. The scene at the beginning of The Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius, which in turn is thinking about the Book X of the Republic by Plato: the idea of the place of love and the place of poetry and philosophy. Dante changes that tradition. This is not just poetry versus philosophy; it's two different types of poetry. Poetry can be also a philosophical poetry. Poetry can be meretricious and poetry can be also the sort of rigorous, severe form of investigation of oneself in the world. Two different types of poetry, two different types of loves, two different types of women.



Which of the two is better? How can we go on deciding that one is better than the other? Is there an objective pattern, an objective criterion, by which we can say Beatrice, is actually better than the siren? Does Dante--is Dante aware of this idea of--yes, and the reason is going to be the following, very simple: the avoidance of death. The siren is the figure that stands for death. Underneath the pleasures of her language, there is a stench that emanates from underneath that allegory. Dante sees the danger of closing and the danger of making the here and now, and the limitations of the here and now, and the limitations of that song the end of his journey. It's really a choice between an open-ended quest and the foreclosure of the siren. This is the only way in which you can objectively believe that there is a hierarchy between these two loves and between these two women.



We move to Canto XXI and XXII, but I'm wondering if I shouldn't take a few questions here about this canto, or any other problems, before we move onto something a little bit more--a little bit different, more classical: the encounter between Statius and Virgil. Let me see if there are some questions now about this phase, these cantos, or would you like to--me to go on and then maybe we can come back to them?



Student: Are we supposed to draw a connection between Casella and anti-Purgatory?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Very good. Say again?



Student: Are we supposed to draw a connection between Casella and the siren?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The question is excellent. Are we supposed to draw some connection between this scene and the scene of Casella in Canto II, above all of Purgatory? I call it excellent, because I agree you are supposed to--and it's the reappearance under different guises of the same temptation. How the aesthetic can become both a way of gathering people around itself. That's the famous story of Casella, the power of the song just collects, gathers, but at the same time it induces us all to forgetfulness of whatever purposes those souls are supposed to entertain and carry out. The difference of course is that it's the same story here now, the difference is not between, let's say, Casella and others with the language of Cato. Here it's more an autobio--directly, we are moved into the consciousness of the pilgrim. We have entered this--as deep as we can into his unconscious mind. This is the moment of what--he comes to an amazing self-revelation.



The story of Casella had the ring of a public discourse: poetry as a public act, gathering a number of people around it. So this is very good. That's--thank you for mentioning that. By the way, I don't know that I--we never probably read it, but if you read the beginning, I think I read it in Italian for Professor Brooks as I know she likes the Provençal song, but the beginning of Canto XVIII also that moment of the nostalgia for the safety of home, the weariness of--the evening song, etc. That represents another version of the same kind of dilemma with which the pilgrim is confronted. Okay, we can come back to some of this.



We move into this segment of the poem: XXI, XXII going through XXIII, XXIV, which really has poetry now as the subject matter. Dante begins with, let's say, the classical tradition. The relationship between an encounter that takes place, wherein they, in the world of avarice and prodigality, the encounter between Statius and Virgil. As you know Statius views himself as a disciple of Virgil, and in many ways he challenges Virgil's ideology, Virgil's thought. Whereas Virgil can go on writing a poem, the Aeneid and the Eclogues, which are about the pastoral world, or the Georgics, this world about the cultivation of the earth, where Virgil appears at his most anti-Orphic. He distinguishes and distances himself from the traditional of Orpheus, the poet of mad love who descends into the depths of Hades and, of course, is waylaid by the mad love for Eurydices--the way of conquering death through the song. He believes that through--by singing he can bend the laws of death and therefore gain immortality. Virgil opposes the world of work, the world of mature--the responsible world of Aeneas, the hero who is so divided against himself, and yet manages to always find his way around in this kind of wriggly, erratic path of his epic.



Statius counters Virgil. Statius writes the Thebaid, he writes another--which he never finishes--another little epic, called the Achilleid, a story about Achilles, but it's only a fragment. He writes the Thebaid, which really goes against those claims of Virgil. He retrieves--makes a conjunction between tragedy and the epic, the world of Jocasta and Oedipus, the monstrosity of that world, the world of Polyneices and the Eteocles, the world of Antigone, cast as a kind of nightmarish world. It's literally the most psychological of these epics, the wars that happen in the mind, and this idea of monstrosity of human fate and human desires.



These are the two worlds that Dante now wants to bring together in this little epyllion, I would call it. "Epyllion" is a Greek word meaning a 'little epic,' that is to say, a transcription of two epic texts gathered into one, into a lyrical form. He has a tough task because what he wants to show is the possibility of harmonizing the two of them and he shows how the two of them really talk as friends, friends across time of course.



Statius lives around the year 70 A.D., Virgil dies in the year 19. And now they are friends because poetry has managed--their poetry has made them--the poetry of Virgil has made them friends and Statius is a sort of classical version of Dante himself. Dante is the disciple of Virgil and so was Statius, so he has to bring them together.



But it's not a question of making them agree, only because they had two different visions, that in and of itself may not be all that difficult. Statius is very skeptical about the Empire, Virgil is not all that skeptical. It's possible to read the Aeneid and see that there is a lot of ambiguity in the way in which he talks about Augustus and the Empire, but he's basically writing the epic that justifies the ideology of the Empire. The real difficulty between them is that Dante is--the real difficulty and challenge for Dante--is that he has to try to understand how Statius has tried--to adjust Statius' vision of monstrosity to some of idea of the sacred. This is the real challenge. This is the difference that Dante has from the classical world.



How do we understand the sacred? In what way is it possible to use Statius, Virgil, as he already did with Cato, who is by the way the hero of Lucan; a third poet of this epic tradition, Virgil, Lucan, Statius--is it possible to see in these texts of Statius the seeds of something good? How can we build anything good out of this vision of heroes and characters who fornicate with their own fantasies? Who cannot really get out of their minds, who just are--discover their own unchanging submission to a force that transcends them to fate. It's really absolutely a different world view from the world of Virgil.



Let me just go on a little bit with XXI, I'll just start talking first of all with--Dante begins with an allusion to this natural thirst, which is this world of--the natural thirst for knowledge. It's really much the world of the Banquet, the world of Aristotle. We have this incredible thirst for knowledge and then this figure called Statius appears. We are also being told here that nature, the natural world is mysteriously shaking. There's an earthquake, because every time that a soul gets liberated from the purgatorial experience of expiation, this purification and expiation, then the mountain trembles and Statius can go on with them up to the Garden of Eden and then Statius reveals himself and he will say around line 60, "And I, who have lain in this pain five hundred years and more," Statius speaking, "felt but now my will free for a better threshold, therefore thou didst feel the earthquake and hear the devout spirits through the mountain render praises to the Lord--soon." The resurrection has taken place.



This is going to be the resurrection of Statius and Virgil. It's Statius, but also Virgil, and their own vision. So he goes on describing himself, "In the time when the good Titus, the emperor," he's evoking the time of the--he's recalling the time of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem at a time when the good Titus, "by help with the King most high avenged," means justice, divine, the mysteries of justice, "the wounds from which pour the blood sold by Judas,' replied the spirit, 'I bore yonder the name that most endures and honors most, famous indeed, but still without faith." Statius a pagan, really born again, this is the born again pagan that appears in this canto.



"So sweet was my spirit of song that Rome drew me," it's an interesting image. It's really speaking of Rome having a kind of power that usually will lead with love, with desire, the pull of desire. Rome brought him to it, to herself, "a Toulousan, to itself and there I was worthy to have my brows adorned with myrtle. Men yonder still speak my name, which is Statius; and I sang of Thebes and then of great Achilles, but fell by the way with the second burden." He could never complete the second text.



Now look at the way he speaks about poetry; he speaks through sparks, as a kind of fire. "The sparks that kindled the fire in me were from the divine flame, the divine flame from which more than a thousand have been lit--I mean the Aeneid"--That's already--poetry now is invested with power. The power to light the fire in the readers and in its followers, "which was in poetry my mother and my nurse; without it I had not weighed a drachm and to have lived yonder, when Virgil lived I would have contented to a sun more than I was due before coming forth from banishment."



There are two metaphors to speak of poetry, one is that of the sparks of fire, and the second one is that of nourishing the inner hunger, mother and nurse. It's nursing--the nursing of its readers so a great acknowledgement of a master, without his knowledge that it is Virgil to whom he is speaking. And then Canto XXI which is another image that may remind you of the story of Casella. Statius reveals--Dante reveals Statius identity, Virgil's identity to Statius, and they try to--the two of them try to embrace--"Already he was bending to embrace," lines 130 and following, "my Teacher's feet; but he said to him, 'Brother do not so, for thou art a shade and a shade thou seest.' And he rising: 'Now thou canst understand the measure of the love that burns in me for thee, when I forget our emptiness and treat shades as solid things."



A mistake that has been made before and a mistake that I think is meant to convey the claims or the illusions of poets to believe that there is some kind of solidity to them, and not just to their poetry, to their works, but a solidity to them that this embrace belies. There's no solidity to them. There is a kind of emptiness. There's a sort of distance between the poets and their works. This is not going to, I think, interfere very much because it's the works, the works of art that we are going to be talking about in Canto XXII.



The two poets now are self--each in acknowledgement of the other and they go on talking about line 10 and following, Virgil asks Statius to explain to him why this moral blight existed in him, why this sin of avarice, and he says--this is the passage: "Love," Canto XXII, lines 12 and following, "Love kindled by virtue always kindles another"--That's the sort of vitality and power of love. It's not self-enclosed; it's one that goes on creating and propagating itself. It has a generosity of its own. It has a kind of charitableness of it's, "if only its flame appear without"--So fire and love seem to be conjoined by this common element, the common element of the power of propagation or self-perpetuation.



"From the hour, therefore, when Juvenal descended among us in the LImbo of Hell and made thy affection known to me my goodwill toward thee was as great as ever held anyone for a person not seen, so that now these stairs will seem short to me. But tell me, and as a friend, forgive me with too much assurance I slacken the rein, and as a friend speak with me know--how could avarice find a place in thy breast along with so much wisdom as by thy zeal thou wast filled with?"



This is a passage of some importance. Because, first of all, the claim of friendship between Virgil--he's moved by the show of friendship on the part of Statius. Let's talk now as friends. Friendship is an ethical virtue as you know, in Aristotle's Ethics and for Cicero, who writes a treatise called On Friendship, which Dante mentions at the beginning of his philosophical text, in the belief that friendship is really the other language the other term for philosophy.



It's the friend and the philosopher that are interchangeable because there is a love--in friendship, there is a love of truth that is the idea. There is some exaggeration on the part of Virgil because there is really--a friendship implies some kind--some degree of equality. You must have--in order to be friends you must have some idea, because in fact it's usually said that tyrants and slaves are not capable of love or friendship, because both--since one is the inversion of the other--both really have a kind of inequality vis-à-vis the other. The slave is, by definition inferior, the tyrant thinks that he's superior so friendship demands that kind if equality.



This is a little bit of exaggeration because there is no equality between Statius. It's a rhetorical exaggeration of Statius and Virgil. Virgil is--acknowledges being superior to Statius. Statius sees himself as a disciple and therefore views Virgil as superior from a poetic point of view; from a theological point of view Statius is superior to Virgil. Statius is going on to Paradise and Virgil is going to go back Limbo. So there is a kind of the push in the direction of wishful thinking maybe on the part of Virgil.



I must also add that Dante has a kind of--some work also to do about--he may be aware that friendship was never really thought of as a Christian virtue. It's a classical and pagan virtue, and because it really confuses--it's the idea a friend is always part of one's soul. It's really earthbound. It's an earthbound experience, so it was always the thought--not Augustine. Augustine who has a friend Alypius and feels responsible for Alypius, but by and large--it was this idea that the friendship could distract the mind from an ascent to higher and superior ends, paradisiac ecstasies and pleasures. Dante has to be aware that there were efforts to Christianize this idea.



Nonetheless, it brings the conversation between them back to the earth and they talk as if they were two friends really meeting in the forum, in the agora, and chatting about their moral failings or their own poetic crafts and visions. How could you find--how could you be so avaricious, when you are so enlightened in so many other ways? That's the question. Statius responds that he's not avaricious and I think that that adds a great deal about their understandings--the misunderstandings of each other--but also their understandings of poetry.



He goes on talking about the fact that he is prodigal all the time. So that is to say that he--you may remember from Canto VII of Inferno, the difference between the avaricious and the sins of prodigality. Prodigality was a violation of the economy of goods by devaluing, by getting rid--devaluing them, not holding onto them. The avaricious overvalues the goods and tries to heap--amass larger quantities of goods, so he goes on really thinking--Statius wants to make it clear for at least 40 lines about the fact that he's--he was prodigal and we have to understand why he would say that. Then in fact he goes on acknowledging, once again, Statius, for his moral conversion. So that's the first thing about what poetry can do.



"Know then that avarice was too far removed from me, and this excess thousands of moons have punished. And had it not been that I corrected my ways when I understood the lines, where as if enraged at human nature, thou didst cry: "To what, O cursed hunger for gold, dost thou not drive the appetite of mortals?' I should be rolling the weights and know the dismal jousts."



What he's saying is that he read a passage in Book III of the Aeneid, the story that we already saw of Polydorus, who had been killed because of--they want to rob him of his gold and Statius reached a moral conversion. There's a lot we can say about these lines. First of all, I think this exemplifies how we actually read and we dismember the integrity of the text. We take out of a book, out of a passage, that which we find relevant to us and he takes some lines, and not only takes some lines from the Book III of the Aeneid, he also alters their meaning.



The original text of Virgil's is exactly the opposite to what--why do you not contain the appetite of mortals or sacred hunger for gold? Which the text translates as 'cursed'--because the word sacred, which Dante is using here, why do you not contain, "O sacred fame of gold" O sacra fame dell'oro. The word "sacred," as you probably know, some of you may know, means two things. It's the most ambiguous term that you--semantically speaking--because it can describe both that which we call the holy, and that which we call the profane. It joins them together: there's no clear-cut distinction between the profanation or blasphemy, on the other hand, or the sense of holiness. I can understand why my translation, Sinclair, my translator, decides to choose the 'cursed' instead of call it 'sacred,' for it's the curse. He's dismembering, he is taking one side over--there's a much more complicated version of the meaning of the word.



So that's one thing, but the poetic text of Virgil has a moral power over and against Virgil's own intentions. We can understand now retrospectively why Dante has to distinguish between poets and their works. We can read the works regardless of the intentions of the authors and we can select or take out of those texts whatever we think that we--however we think that they speak to us and then he goes on describing his poetic growth.



"Now," lines 55, "Now, when thou did sing the cruel arms of the double woe of Jocasta," the double woe is the two children, Eteocles and Polyneices, in the tragic and epic text called the Thebaid, "said the singer of the Bucolics." That's already the opposition. Virgil now appears as the author of a pastoral poem, the Bucolics, where rivalries are always going to be placated. The Bucolics of--the pastoral poems of Virgil are always about rivalry. A rivalry between two shepherds: which of us they ask, is the better singer? Which of us is the better poet? That is always--there's never any tragic outcome. There's some uneasiness, some anxiety between in--running through that kind of debate between the poets, but it's not the rivalry of Polyneices and Eteocles. That's really the difference that Dante is highlighting between them.



And then it continues, ". . . it does not appear by the notes which Clio touches with thee," the Bucolics, and on other hand Clio is the muse of history. So Clio is the muse for history, the world of Statius, "that the faith yet made thee faithful without which well-doing is not enough. If that is so, what sun or what candles dispelled thy darkness, so that thereafter thou didst lift the sails behind the fisherman?"



Now we know that what he's really asking, in a general way, is the relationship between poetry and faith. How could Statius--we know how he reached this moral conversion, now we have to be told somehow, how did he go on finding faith? What is the relationship between the two of them? Can poetry reveal and lead us onto the world of faith or not?



Statius has already--that's really the answer that he will provide: "And the other answered him, 'Thou first directed me to Parnassus," the mountain of poetry. The poetic experience, the poetic apprenticeship, is the preamble to the experience of faith--"to drink in its caves"--a metaphor that picks up the natural thirst of the previous canto, "to drink in its caves and, first, after God enlightens me. Thou didst like him that goes by night and carries the light behind him and does not help himself but makes wise those that follow when thou saidst."



In a moment we will see he said, but the metaphor is that of really--Virgil is a prophetic voice who speaks, but that language he uses like the--a lamp that he carries on his back for the benefit of those who follow, and himself clearly remains in the dark. That's what he said. "The age turns new again; justice comes back and the primal years of men, and a new race descends from heaven."



This is the famous fourth eclogue of Virgil, where Virgil is celebrating the birth of a child, Pollio, and around this birth of a child, he is also talking about the rejuvenation of the world. It's an emblem, Pollio's birth is an emblem for this Pythagorean vision that he has, a vision whereby the world goes through 360,000 years of the Golden Age, the Silver Age, and so on, and then degrades itself and goes right back to where it started. A Pythagorean vision of metamorphosis and circulation of the universe. It's the fourth eclogue.



Interestingly, this also crystallizes that which is the fundamental issue of Virgil's vision. The concern with birth, the concern with the fact of being born, that the fact of being born has within itself the potential to renew the world, to effect the world and change the direction of the world.



And then we know that he will say, and I will stop here, because we are coming to the end of the period: "Through thee I was a poet, through thee Christian; but that thou mayst see better what I outline, I shall set my hand to color it. Already the world was everywhere big," pregnant the Italian says, "with the true faith sown by the messengers. . . " and so on. He's going to talk how the world outside, only buttressed and reinforced the message of faith that he had found in the fourth eclogue. The fourth eclogue is seen as a messianic eclogue, but that line that makes the transition from poetry to faith, "I was a poet through thee, I was a poet, through thee a Christian," I think really makes it necessary for us to linger on it for a little bit.



First of all the line has what we call an anaphora, "Through thee I was a poet, I was a poet through thee Christian." This is the same line that says, per te, the Italian word line 73, per te poeta fui, per te cristiano. The anaphora gives continuity to the movement of the line from poetry to faith, per te. . .per te. Nonetheless, if you read this line carefully in Italian you see that there is also a caesura. You know what I mean by caesura? Falling in the middle, a break, per te, break, per te cristiano. The lines--gives a--has a mobility that seems to promise the transition from poetry to faith, but at the same time technically, it forces you to stop as if there were two discontinuous experiences. You cannot quite go from one world of poetry to the one world of faith. You can go from one world of poetry to one world of faith. That ambiguity of poetry is exactly what they are trying to retrieve.



What did I say here today about this issue of Statius and Virgil? Statius is dealing with the tragedy of birth. Virgil deals with, optimistically, about the history-making quality of the event of birth. That is, at the same time, a desire to establish a sense of what is the sacred? I will try to discuss with you, later, how poetry is now invested with the kind of sacredness, the ambiguous sense of the word about the profane and the holy within it. It's a hybrid, and it's this hybrid that will allow Dante to assimilate Statius' vision to his own understanding of history and the sacred. Let me stop here and see if there are questions. Please.



Student: It seems like it's more common for Dante to be the one to ask the people they meet for their stories. Is this the only place that Virgil is the one who asks the questions or what is the specific event here?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Virgil is the--the question is, it seems that usually it's Dante who interviews the people he meets and--but here in Canto XXI and XXII, it's Virgil and is that the case, and if it's true why would that be the case? The answer is that that's not really true because in the canto of Ulysses, it is he who--it is Virgil who speaks, you remember, to Ulysses. It's Virgil--so it's Virgil and Ulysses. It really has more to do with the figures of the classical world that seem to be, in this case, Virgil seems to be best indicated for Statius as he was for Virgil.



Since you are interested in this aspect of the dramatization of the poem, I could mention to you for instance there are cantos in Inferno, we didn't have a chance to talk about them where the--Virgil would completely abandon--Dante says, well you go here, I don't want to be with you, you go and on your own carry out this introduction without--I'll wait for you here. That happens, for instance, in the canto of fraud and usury. It is as if Dante had something to better understand on his own without Virgil's presence, but usually that is the way in which the style of the representation takes place, who is most apt in the case of the classical figures, the classical poet speaking for a classical character.



Student: I wondered if you could comment a little further on the significance in Canto XIX of what looks like a kind of re-enactment of the Fall of Adam and Eve. It's almost as if this woman even in the--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: In the dream.



Student: The siren--yes, in the dream, when she brings forth this promise of happiness, it's really echoing the promise of Lucifer of this, I will make you like God. Why is this sort of--why is this theme of sort of the Adam theme coming up here in XIX and is there some sort of strand that I'm missing?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The--well--the question is that it says in Canto XIX, in the dream of the siren, there is an echo of the Fall of Adam more than Lucifer, I would say, the Fall of Adam. Why would there be that--if that's true why would there be that echo? My answer is, I didn't catch it. I never caught this echo of Adam there. It's actually the story of the temptation of this woman fish, that's what she is, right? The siren who wants to induce forgetfulness in the pilgrim; it's really a classical figure. I would say that--I sort of resist the--hearing here the figure of--in the figure of Adam because Adam doesn't really talk about falling.



This is a danger for the pilgrim who--he's dramatizing his sense of yielding, surrendering his will to the seduction, the seductive song of the siren. Adam with--this is a story of love. With Adam, the story becomes one of knowledge; it's a little bit different. There may be echoes, I'm not going to be so firm and say no, there is no echo of that but I didn't catch it. I didn't feel the necessity for that, actually, for my argument.



Student: Okay, then maybe I'm answering my own question here, but wouldn't you say that the theme of knowledge and transgression runs through both the dream sequence that Dante has and the story of Adam's Fall? I mean, is there that theme where Ulysses wanted to sort of gain this knowledge, this experience of hearing the siren's song, right and to gain that knowledge he had to sort of transgress. Isn't that what the siren represents? You say he keeps coming back to this theme of Ulysses--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: He does. He mentions the story of Ulysses. He does mention the story of Ulysses.



Student: Is that where the Adam connection really comes in? Because Adam's--ultimately ate the fruit for knowledge.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Yeah, well I indicated that the story of Adam in Canto XXVI retrospectively illuminates what's happening in Canto XXVI of Inferno and that he too experienced--understands knowledge and transgression, that they go hand in hand, and that it's difficult--impossible to separate them and that's the story of Ulysses. Dante does feel that he's--but it's a dangerous temptation for him to believe that he's like Ulysses. Whereas, he has no problem later in--when he understands what the story of Adam is, in thinking, in acknowledging that Adam is the arch poet. We are all reinventing the world, etc.



So I would say that there are three figures here: Ulysses, Adam, and Dante and--but the relation between them is never what one of--full of identification on the part of Dante with either--he comes here approximates them and somehow also pulls away from both. He's not really Adam. He's not the arch poet who names the world, and he's not really Ulysses. That fear that he may be like Ulysses, which is a more dangerous sense that he has, that will continue more openly as he goes on.



The story of Adam is going to be picked up in the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden, of course, that is the idea that we lost a garden but Dante does not want to be in that garden anyway. When he comes to the Garden of Eden, he identifies it with a lot of things, really nostalgia for the mother. He doesn't--he understands that he has to grow up; he has to get out of that fantasy. I don't know if this is--



Student: What confuses me I guess is that the siren here in the dream sequence seems to be wanting to halt Dante's quest, his journey forward for knowledge.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Yes, absolutely.



Student: Yet, with respect to Ulysses, the siren seemed to represent the opposite, in the sense that his interaction with her was something where he was trying to go past the bounds to gain knowledge or gain experience of hearing her. I'm trying to draw the connections in my mind for what is really Dante trying to tell us with this sequence? Why does he go back to this reference to the siren? I mean maybe you could just summarize; I guess maybe it would just help clear it up what she represents to Dante here in Canto XIX versus what she represents to Ulysses?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Good, what does the siren represent? Very briefly, what does the siren represent to Dante and to Ulysses? What is the difference? To Dante, the siren represents the lure of death. He understands that beneath that promises of yield to the here and now and to my voice there is really--there's a nothingness and he's attracted to that nothingness. That's really what it is. For Ulysses, she also represents the extraordinary enchantment of the song that would lead him to death because that's what happens to all those who listen to the siren. Ulysses wants to hear it and bind himself so that does not yield altogether to her call. That's how I can put it. Thank you. We'll see you.



[end of transcript]

Guest lecturer Professor David Lummus discusses Purgatory XXIV-XXVI. On the terraces of gluttony and lust, the pilgrim's encounters with masters of the Italian love lyric give rise to the Comedy's most sustained treatment of poetics. Through Dante's older contemporary Bonagiunta (Purgatory XXIV), the pilgrim distinguishes the poetic style of his youth from that of the courtly love tradition pursued by his interlocutor. In Purgatory XXVI, Dante reinforces his own poetic genealogy through his encounter with Guido Guinizelli, founder of the Sweet New Style of poetry he crafted in his youth. The interpretative key to the language of paternity and filiation that pervades these cantos is found in Purgatory XXV, where Statius' embryological exposition of the divine creation of the soul conveys the divinity of poetic inspiration.



Reading assignment:

Dante, Purgatory: XXIV, XXV, XXVI

Transcript



October 23, 2008



Professor David Lummus: All right. I'm Professor David Lummus and Professor Mazzotta asked me to come in and substitute for him today, since he's traveling and can't be here. So, I guess we'll get started and I just wanted to--since there was a midterm last time, remind you more or less of what he was talking about wherever he left off.



The last lecture, I suppose, was about the relationship between Statius and Virgil. The specifically poetic relationship and the ambiguity that arises in the father/son relationship that's staged between Statius and Virgil. So Statius recognizes the centrality of Virgil for his own poetic career and his own moral development, by saying, "through you I was a poet and through you I was a Christian," but at the same time his poetry challenges that of Virgil. Professor Mazzotta concluded stating that, Statius' poem is about a tragedy--about the tragedy of birth, while Virgil's is about the history-making quality of the event of birth. That the Thebaid challenged Virgil's account of the foundation and of history, but he grew as a poet and converted to Christianity by engaging with Virgil's own ideas of history, specifically with the fourth eclogue. There--there's a misreading, so the generative quality of Virgil's poetry didn't--wasn't intrinsic in the poetry itself, but was based on Statius' particular reading of the text.



Today, we're going to be talking about Cantos XXIV and XXVI specifically, but I'll be saying a few words also about Cantos XXIII and XXV, as a kind of frame to those two canti. In these two cantos--XXIV and XXVI--they continue the meditation and poetic relationships that were going on in XXI and XXII with Statius. Now Professor Mazzotta in his book, Dante, Poet of the Desert, has pointed out that Dante utilizes the figural method of reading history. What about the past pre-figures, the present and the future in a poetic fashion in order to understand the genealogy of poetry--of poets--and in order to place himself in a typological genealogy of poets. In these canti, Dante is engaged in a kind of--in a sustained reflection, Mazzotta says, on literary history and the powers of literature to engender moral conversion, and in probing the inevitable limits of poetic fictions. And there I quoted from his book, Dante, Poet of the Desert.



Now it says Canto XXIV, which you read for today, follows directly on Canto XXIII, with a conversation between Forese Donati and the pilgrim. I want to say a few words about XXIII, especially regarding the relationship between poetry and gluttony. Now, although a number of penitents are mentioned at the beginning of this canto, Dante only speaks to two of them. Forese Donati and Bonagiunta da Lucca, and both of them are poets. The first one is specifically a friend of Dante. Now Forese Donati was in Dante's youth, like I said, a friend and they exchanged a series of vituperative sonnets in which they insulted each other back and forth, and it was filled with language of bodily sensation.



I suppose in this canto, the language of the conversation between Forese and the pilgrim sheds a new--the memory of it causes a bitterness in both Forese and in the pilgrim, and the difference between the rhetoric of the two texts marks a new moral vision in the pilgrim. Before in these sonnets, they berated each other's wives and their vices. In this canto, they recognize each other. They treat each other like brothers. So it's really a reformation of a poetic community that was in some sense distorted by these--six sonnets, three for each poet.



In this canto, the gluttonous are famished and disfigured by hunger and their penitence. Donati's wife is recalled, and she was treated with obscenity in the sonnets, and she is remembered as a stilnovistic kind of woman whose prayers, ironically, have helped Forese arrive at the terrace so quickly. In a way, it converts that kind of gluttonous, bodily poetry into a different kind of moralizing poetry, I suppose; it corrects it. Now I guess the connection--another connection with gluttony is that Forese along with a number of other Italian poets such as Cecco Angiolieri, he was probably the most famous, was a burlesque poet, and this was also known as goliardic poetry, so from gula, Latin for throat, or for gluttony. This oblique connection allows Dante to speak about poetry in this canto of gluttony. The real connection is that it's a worldly type of poetry that doesn't look beyond itself, beyond the concerns of the flesh, I suppose.



I would like to point out at the end of this canto, Dante remembers their ribald literary exchange with bitterness, at lines 115 at the very end, he connects the period of his friendship with Donati with a dilemma back in the dark forest in Canto I. "If thou bring back to mind what thou wast with me and I with thee, the present memory will be grievous still." So he's pointing out that he has a different perspective on that time of his life.



"He that goes before me turned me from that life some days ago. When the sister of him'--and I pointed to the sun--'showed herself round to you. It is he that has led me through the profound night of the truly dead with this true flesh that follows him; his succours have drawn me up thence, climbing and circling the mountain, which straightens you whom the world made crooked."



The mode--or I guess the change that Dante experiences are both Virgil and Beatrice, so he is pointing towards what makes him different from what he was a few days ago. Actually, the exchange with Forese was probably not that long before the composition of the Divine Comedy, or at least, not that long before the fictional date of the Divine Comedy. This, in reality, is a prelude to how he dramatizes the differences between his poetry and that of his father's and brother's, the ones that he meets in XXIV and XXVI.



That's just as a preface, I suppose, to what happens in XXIV where Dante really just juxtaposes his own style of poetry with that of his predecessors, specifically embodied by Bonagiunta da Lucca. It's interesting that Bonagiunta who notices that Dante is different because Bonagiunta da Lucca wrote a poem to Guido Guinizelli, who we will meet in XXVI, criticizing how he had brought the terminology of the university, the terminology of epistemology, and of metaphysics, and of theology into the lyric of love. It's--that's probably one of the reasons why Bonagiunta da Lucca comes out here. Not necessarily that he was important for some specific reason to Dante, but probably because of that--the fact that he came out and noticed this in public of Guinizelli--this change.



I'd like to have a look at--in the text when Bonagiunta da Lucca comes out and addresses Dante. He says at verses 49 through 51: "But tell me if I see here him that brought forth the new rhymes, beginning with "Ladies that have intelligence of love." It's Bonagiunta da Lucca who recognizes Dante and specifically by the first line, the incipit, to the poem that basically makes the center of the Vita nuova, the turning point in the Vita nuova, as you all remember, because in this poem, it marks the transition from a self-centered poetry of love where the poet praises himself obliquely by service to the woman, to the lady whom he loves, and his transition to a poetry of praise that is mingled with metaphysical claims for the lady's value. It's Dante's transition from a courtly lyric to a more philosophical lyric.



Now Dante responds to Bonagiunta with a really beautiful phrase, and he says: "And I said to him: 'I am one who, when love breathes in me, take note, and in that manner which he dictates within, go on to set it forth." Dante is claiming his novelty and at the same time he is saying--he's linking his own writing of poetry to the activity of a scribe. He says, "I take note" when someone--when love dictates. So he's explaining his inspiration. In Italian, the word for 'breath in' is spira, and he dictates within Dante.



Now this inspiration, I think, it needs to be understood in a theological--needs to be understood theologically. We'll go--I'm going to go onto talk about Canto XXV which explains this retrospectively in a moment. Let me say for now that it--that the words noto, 'take note' in Italian, and detta, 'dictate' in Italian, point towards the inspiration as this breathing in, as the Holy Spirit, as a movement of love within the Trinity, and that Dante is explaining how poetic inspiration is really a parallel to the unity of the Trinity. This inspiration comes from within, but it's like someone who dictates from without. In the Monarchia, Dante's political treatise on empire, he describes God as the only dictator, the only person who dictates. We have to understand this description of poetic inspiration as one coming from an internal instantiation of the divine. So there is a connection between this inspiration and the divine.



Now Bonagiunta follows up on this by professing to understand the knot, the knot that kept him and he's like, the Guittone da Arezzo, Jacopo da Lentini, who is the notary, from arriving at that style. The tercet that begins at line 55, he says: "Oh brother," he said, 'now I see the knot that held back the Notary and Guittone, and me short of the sweet new style that I hear; I see well how your pens followed closed behind the dictator which assuredly did not happen with ours, and he that sets himself to examine further sees nothing else between the one style and the other.' And, as if satisfied, he was silent."



Bonagiunta thinks--he has this perspective that Purgatory gives him on his past life and he understands that knot--the nodo is also used to describe the sin of gluttony at the beginning of Canto XXIII. Here again, we have this lack of moral understanding. It's like a moral perspective in life being paid for in the after life, in Purgatory. The poetry that Bonagiunta represents was one that concentrated on worldly beauties and qualities, like I said before. It feigned a service to the lady only to concentrate on the self of the poet and it never really went beyond itself. It was a self-reflexive kind of poetry. In that sense, it could be assimilated with gluttony, in that it absorbed and imitated what came from without offering forth anything, without being generous such as the poetry of Virgil was.



And it's interesting enough Bonagiunta says, "Him that brought forth the new rhyme," so he brought the new rhymes forth, he offered them out. Bonagiunta is able to see the difference between the two styles of poetry at this point, but I think he doesn't recognize the kind of uniqueness that Dante is claiming for himself here, because he says, "That your pens follow close behind the dictator." So he's pluralizing what Dante says only about himself. He says in Italian, I' mi son un che and people have pointed out that this--'I am one who,' is both humble and it's like, 'I am one who among others who do this,' but it's also--it's also pointing out his uniqueness. Others have pointed out that it echoes, line 314 of Exodus, Ego sum qui sum, this is what God says to Moses, "I am who am," that this self-reflexive, mi son un che, is an expression of uniqueness, couched in humble language. Dante is really pointing out that he is doing something unique with his poetry, that perhaps Bonagiunta doesn't really recognize the full extent. He's--if there is a school of the dolcestilnovo, if there is this Sweet New Style which composes a school--like the Sicilian school that preceded it, which I'm sure Professor Mazzotta talked about in relation to the Vita nuova--then Dante is creating something new within that school. That's, I think, what's going on here in those lines.



I suppose what Dante is doing in this canto, is marking an extreme contrast between his own poetry and that of the people who came before him. There is a line that divides these two schools, the Guittone, who is a Tuscan poet who imitated Sicilian poetry, the Sicilians who imitated a Provençal poetry, he's detaching himself from them because of their lack of a moral purpose, I suppose, in their poetry, which Bonagiunta recognizes retrospectively.



Now I just wanted to point out as the--as this conversation comes to an end, Dante describes at tercet 64 through 69, how the penitents depart. He says, "As birds that winter along the Nile sometimes make a troop in the air, then fly with more speed and go in file, so all the people that were there, facing round, quickened their steps being light with both leanness and desire; and as one tired with running lets his companions go on and then walks till the heaving of his chest is so relieved, so Forese let the holy flock pass and come on with me behind. . ."



I just wanted to point out the contrast here; the image of birds probably reminds us of the image of birds in Canto V of the Inferno. They were just--the sinners were described as cranes who were being buffeted about by a tempest. They kept returning to the same spot in a circle, like an eternal return. Here, the same kinds of birds, these love poets, are coming together in a troop and moving along together, and not only are they moving along together, they're moving forward. So there's a progress that's--that opposes the circularity of the storm of birds in Inferno V, and this will come up again also in Canto XXVI.



Now I know we didn't read it for today, Canto XXV of Purgatory, but I think it sheds some light. I'm going to say a few words about it, because I think it sheds some light on what Dante is talking about in relation to inspiration. We talked about that earlier. Now what happens here is Dante asks--Dante is perplexed about how the sinners can be punished with their bodies if they don't have bodies, so he asks this of Statius. The whole canto basically--he asks this of Virgil I guess and Virgil says, it's better if Statius explains it to you. The pretext of it all is, how can this happen? What is the physics of it? What is the biology of the soul basically in the afterlife? What Statius does in explaining this, explains how God engenders the soul, how he creates the soul. In placing the discourse of the generation of the soul and the body between two cantos that are basically all about poetic inspiration, Dante I think is drawing a parallel between divine inspiration, divine creation, and poetic generation, and poetic creation.



Student: Can you say that again?



Professor David Lummus: Okay, he usually has a parallel--he's making a parallel between poetic generation, inspiration from--and poetic inspiration and the divine creation of the soul, the inspiration of the divine in the creation of the soul. I'm going to go on and explain what I mean. I'm just trying to--does that make sense?



Student: Yes.



Professor David Lummus: Okay, all right. I'll slow down a second. Basically he's staging here the relationship between predecessors and new poets, so himself and his past basically. He's explaining how he is born out of the past but is not imitative, and is not--can't be merely reducible to that past. I can read a little bit of this.



It's a bit scholastic I suppose, but it's okay. I can read it all; it might explain it better for you. He says at lines 38--37, 38: "Perfect blood, which is never drunk by the thirsty veins and is left like food thou removest from the table, takes in the heart informing power for all the bodily members, like that which takes its course through the veins to become these. Further digested, it descends where silence is fitter than speech, and thence drops afterwards on another's blood in the natural vessel. There the one mingles with the other, and the one fitted to be the passive and the other, on account of the perfect place from which it springs," that is the heart, "active, and this, so united, begins to operate; first coagulating, then quickening, that to which, for its material, it has given consistency."



Here, I think it gets a little bit more interesting, he says: "The active force having become a soul, like a plant's, but so far different that it is on the way and the other already on the shore, then operates to the point that now it moves and feels, like a sea fungus, and from that goes onto produce organs for the faculties of which it is the seed. Now, my son, develops and spreads the force that is from the heart of the begetter, where nature makes provision for all the members. But how from animal it becomes a child? Thou seest not yet. . . "



I'm going to skip a little bit more to the top of the next page: "Open thy breast to the truth that follows and know that as soon as the articulation of the brain is perfected in the embryo, the first Mover turns to it, rejoicing over such handiwork of nature, and breathes into it a new spirit," he breathes into it just like the inspiration that Dante claimed for his own poetry before, "a spirit full of power, which draws into its own substance that which it finds active there and becomes a single soul that lives and feels, and itself revolves upon itself."



What I think is going on here is that ostensibly--basically, Statius describes the creation of the body--the biological creation of the body, which comes from the mingling of bloods, right? Then after that, how the animal that is created, basically, is given a soul by God but becomes a rational--becomes a human being and the human being--the human here is described--he translates it as a 'child' but the word that's actually used is a fante. Now fante would be basically--it's derived from the Greek word for speech, so a fante would be--one who speaks, so how an animal becomes one who speaks. So humanity is defined in a sense by the fact that we can speak and reason basically. So what happens here, I suppose, is that even though the father is the--generates the body, the soul is directly created by God. So that there's two kinds of individualities I suppose. You have the body and the soul, and the soul is a uniqueness that is directly created and inspired by God.



If you consider this poetically, even though Dante may have been influenced or in a sense created, by the poets that came before him, nonetheless he has his own kind of direct inspiration that separates him from the poets that came before him, at least that's how I understand it. I think it's connected that Dante points out the connection, especially by the word spira, he uses the word spira or inspiration twice. They imitate each other, they parallel each other. The connection between fante, the child who speaks is a direct connection to language, the language of poetry. That's, I think, it explains retrospectively what Dante is claiming in Canto XXIV about his poetic inspiration, this difference between his own poetry and that of his predecessors.



Now Canto XXVI, he passes into the terrace of the lustful. Here he meets his own staged poetic father, Guido Guinizelli. He recognizes his father and his debt to his father, and at the same time, he's recognized as a brother by his father. So his individuality as a poet is recognized--the recognition is staged here. The paternal relationship becomes a fraternal one. What I'm trying to point out with this--the biological embryology is that he can be seen as derivative and different at the same time. So he's the same and he's distinguishable at the same time.



This canto is in sharp contrast to XXIV I think, because Dante wanted to distance himself from those poets in XXIV and here he wants to show a similarity. He's trying to assimilate himself with a certain kind of poetry that was--for which metaphysics, epistemology and theology were all central. So it's a philosophical kind of love poetry. I think he also redeems this love tradition, which in a certain sense, was condemned in Inferno V with Francesca. So this courtly love tradition that was--that caused in a way I--or at least Francesca claimed caused her downfall in saying that 'the Galehault was the book' in Inferno V. Here he redeems it and he purges it and cleanses it.



You can start off by reading the tercet that begins at line 94, whenever Guido Guinizelli identifies himself to the pilgrim, it says: "Such as in the grief of Lycurgus, the two sons became on seeing their mother again, I became, but with more restraint, when I heard speak his own name, the father of me and of others my betters, whoever have used the sweet and graceful rhymes of love, and without hearing or speech, I went on a long way and thought gazing at him and did not for the fire go near him." Dante, I guess, he loses his faculty of speech here, because he's in awe almost like a child before his father. So his behavior imitates his relationship to Guinizelli.



I'll point here as well that one of the main differences, I suppose, between the two poets is symbolized by the casting of the shadow on the fire. His--the reality of his presence there in his body, is what's really--is what the physical aspect that separates him from the others. It stands in for the aspect of his poetry that separates him from the rest of these poets as well.



Since we're talking about poetic genealogy, it's interesting that Dante is--he refers to him as a father but then Guinizelli respond by saying: "Oh brother, he there whom I point out to thee, was a better craftsman of the mother tongue, verses of love and tales of romance he has surpassed them all." In these fifteen, twenty lines Dante is a child before his father and is then equated with his father, by being a brother. So they're put on the same level and they're assigned another father, so the grandfather of them all becomes the father, and this father, I guess, who's not named is Arnaut Daniel. An important poet for Dante in Le Rime Petrose, the 'Stony Rhymes' which Professor Mazzotta mentioned, Dante imitated him in those rhymes. He was a poet famous for his difficulty in reading--it was very, very hard to understand an example of the trobar clus.



In this same paragraph, these same series of tercets, paragraph in the English, again we have the differentiation of the kind of school, I suppose, that Dante is associating himself with and the other school with which he wants to differentiate himself, because he says that like Arnaut is different from the one from Limoges, so he is different from Guittone--Guittone da Arezzo who is named alongside Bonagiunta da Lucca and Jacopo da Lentini. So he's separating himself from--he's aligning himself with the different kind of poetry. He kind of reinforces the kind of genealogy he wants to create for himself.



Now this genealogy too, I guess, has its own consequences in the modern age because the words in Italian for the better craftsmen, il miglior fabbro were the words with which T.S. Eliot dedicated The Wasteland to Ezra Pound, as you probably know. This conversation here really becomes an emblem for happy poetic relationships, I suppose, which you can recognize--you're better at recognizing your forefathers, and at the same time, come out with something that you recognize as new.



Some scholars have pointed out--we didn't--I don't think you concentrated much on Inferno XXIV and XXV, where Dante utilizes a number of metaphors from Ovid and Lucan and he has this--there's this topos called the taciat nunc, be silent now Lucan, be silent now Ovid he says, and he basically steals from their lines without recognizing them, saying that he is surpassing them but at the same time as he's surpassing them, he's using their own poetry to surpass them. People have pointed out that in these canti of the thieves, that Dante is participating in the sin by stealing from Ovid and Lucan and that this kind of poetic relationship is a negative one, that he's stealing the identity of the other.



Well here we have a different kind of understanding about poetic identity. We have one that recognizes the paternity of the father, while at the same time, allows the son to come into his own, and that's coming into his own is, I think, pointed out by Dante the poet whenever he says at--between lines 130 and 140: "Then perhaps to give place to others who were near him, he disappeared through the fire as though the water--as through the water a fish goes to the bottom."



Here the father moves out of his way so that Dante can go on and I guess he can progress; he doesn't get in his way. If Dante recognizes these people, these poets as his predecessors how does he differentiate himself? How, in this canto, does he differentiate himself from them? Then we can look at it through the lens of Canto XXV where the paternal virtue--the generation of the soul granted the paternal virtue. Its place, while simultaneously claimed a direct creation of the soul by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I think Dante's poetic individuality grows out of the artifice, the style that they concentrate on here, the sweet detti d'amore, the sweet sayings of love that he attributes to Guinizelli, so it grows out of the stylistic artifice that these two poets represent are and Guido to form something new, a new kind of speech, a new kind of poetic speech that's imbibed with the divine and guided by theological and moral meaning.



I think we can see this and how these pair of poets are cleansed and how they're represented in this canto. For example, Guinizelli, when he first calls out to Dante before we know who he is, before he's even identified himself, I think it's around line 17 and following, he says, "Oh thou that goest behind the others not from tardiness but perhaps from reverence, answer me who burn with thirst and with fire." Now the line in Italian is e in foco ardo. Now this is a direct quotation of Guinizelli's own poetry in a sonnet which he says, in gran pena e foco ardo, "in great pain and fire I burn." So in foco ardo is basically repeated verbatim. The love poet who's burning for his lady metaphorically in his sonnet is now burning literally in the penitent fire that's purging his sin. I think this punishment shows how the perspective of Purgatory is really modifying--giving us a moral sense to the love poetry that Guinizelli--school of love poetry that Guinizelli belonged to.



Another thing that differentiates them, like I said before, with Dante's shadow showing that he's actually there, and that he's in his body, in the flesh, points to something else, and that is that his lady is actually the beginning--started a chain of grace. That there is a connection that his--not just a metaphysical connection or epistemological connection and value to his lady, but a theological value as well. Like he says at line 58, "I go up hence not to be longer blind; a lady is above who gains grace for me by which I bring my mortal part through your world."



What these poets couldn't recognize in their own lifetime Dante is able to because of his poetry, this bringing together that he does, which is actually the newness in the Sweet New Style, I think, which isn't just metaphysical, but it's theological. To put it in another way, if Guinizelli, Arnaut Daniel, Guido Cavalcanti, who's not mentioned here again, if for these poets the lady was a philosophical or intellectual phantasm I suppose, for Dante she is a real woman who enacted a real change in his life and that caused that chain of grace to descend into his own personal story. His poetry, I think, seeks to close the gap between the metaphysical, theological reality of God and the historical contingent reality of history and Dante's own personal story in that history.



Love poetry for Dante takes on an entirely new meaning here, and I think Guinizelli shows that he understands this difference with a perspective that Purgatory gives him. Towards the end of the canto when he asks Dante to say a Pater noster for him, to Christ whenever he enters heaven, so it's really a conversion I think of love poetry, a purgation of the worldliness of love poetry.



Finally, I want to say--we're going to end a little bit early because I actually have to run to another building to teach right after this--my own class. I want to conclude by saying a few words about Arnaut. It's very peculiar that Dante--this is the only place I believe in the Divine Comedy where another modern romance language is quoted that's not Italian basically. I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure it's the only place. Now Arnaut was famous, like I said, for his obscurity, the extreme difficulty of his poetic expression, and here what does Dante do to him? Even though he quotes him in the original, he didn't really write these lines, these lines are Dante's, but what he does is he makes this difficult hidden poet come out in the open.



To quote him, he says, "So much does your courteous question please me that I neither can nor would conceal myself from you. I am Arnaut who weep and sing as I go. I see with grief past follies and see rejoicing the day I hoped for before me. Now I beg of you by that goodness which guides you to the summit of the stairway to take thought and do time for my pain. Then he hid himself from the fire that refines him."



There's a little bit of a--Dante's playing here with Arnaut's own language. If he was a difficult poet of love, Dante really makes him come out into the open and say what he is saying, so--here also are typical words from the Provençal tradition such as the value--valor, cortes and cantant: they all take on different kinds of meaning. That before the valor, or value of the love poet was not what it is here; it takes on a completely different meaning in Purgatory. He really stages in Arnaut's own words the purification, cleansing, and bringing out into openness of what love poetry should really be, where it should really lead you.



I guess to conclude I wanted to say that in the next canto, you'll see Dante submitting himself to the same kind of purgation as these poets. If these poets are cleansed by this wall of--by this fire that refines them, he will end up passing through a wall of flame in order to get to where he can enter into the terrestrial paradise. So that he is in reality cleansing himself of the same kind of issue, I suppose.



I guess now I can take a few questions if you have any. Hopefully, it wasn't too disjointed--the lecture, but I'm happy to answer any questions you might have, or try to.



Student: In Canto XXIV, Dante refers to Statius as his being more slowly than he would [inaudible], and I know that there's a lot of different critical interpretations of that line, I'm wondering how we can interpret it as sort of looking later to Canto XXV and the idea of the proper father/son issues? Statius sort of by slowing his journey towards God to stay with Virgil going against Dante's idea or does--can we reconcile the two?



Professor David Lummus: I think you can reconcile them. I mean whenever Dante--whenever he meets Guinizelli, he's silent. He doesn't automatically make himself--he doesn't move his father out of the way. Statius and Dante both know that Virgil is not going to be able to go the whole way. They know that he's only going to be able to lead them a certain amount of the trip, of the journey. So I guess--I would interpret it as an act of reverence, just like Dante's silence, whenever he meets Guinizelli is an act of reverence. He doesn't push them out of the way and he doesn't trample them. He's not in a hurry, I suppose. Does that make any sense at all? I think it's--the way you could interpret it Statius is--if you want to see him interpret that as him as slowing his way on the way to God basically, then you could interpret it as an act of reverence to the person who allowed him to actually be there and not in Limbo. That's how I would interpret it, I suppose. That Dante in this--in XXVI, is reverent to his father, so at the same time he is showing how he's moving beyond him by giving a theological meaning to their questionable worldly love poetry. Does that answer your question?



Student: When Dante talks about the inspiration which you've identified as the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is he making love synonymous with the Holy Spirit? And if so, looking back at the Vita nuova, when he personifies love in the masculine I've always sort of thought of--in literature, when you read religious poetry and stuff, the Holy Spirit's often sort of a feminized noun, are those things one and the same to him, love and the Holy Spirit?



Professor David Lummus: I think there that he's thinking of--I think at that point he's thinking of love--I think Thomas Aquinas mentions love as the procession of love, as the movement of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity between the Father and the Son, so that both really are within--participate in the same spirit. So yes I think in that spot, he is really talking about love as the Holy Spirit, as this kind of--or at least as parallel to it. It's ambiguous. He says--he doesn't really say that love is the Holy Spirit does he? He's purposefully ambiguous I think, because love poetry always has that--the possibility of leading you astray, because it's an aesthetic practice. It's dolce; it's sweet. So I think that the--that yes he is talking about love as the Holy Spirit, as this divine love, but he's also talking about--so I guess in reality that there is a connection between the contingent and historical world and the metaphysical world of God, but that he leaves it ambiguous because it can always be misinterpreted and the aesthetic can always lead you back down to the terrestrial realm. Does that make sense?



Student: Why do you think it's--or what do you think is the significance of the fact that the biological discussion of inspiration of God breathing the soul into the infant? The fact that it's handled by Statius and that Dante really highlights that by saying--he has Statius say, if it's Virgil's will that he explains but can't refuse it--what's the significance that says, I want Statius to handle this at his discretion? Because at other times I think Virgil, even though he's not permitted to know God or to go to heaven, can still speak about divine workings. So I don't think it's out of--I mean for me it's not out of Virgil's capacity but I just couldn't understand why he has Statius explain it.



Professor David Lummus: Okay, well I guess if the question really had been about what is the nature of the soul, what is Aristotle saying in the De Anima about--maybe Virgil could have told him about that, but the actual question is what is the nature--how does the soul live in the afterlife? That is an entirely Christian question, that's based on Christian theology, so I think the fact that Virgil defers to Statius there is showing--is connected with the fact that the question is actually about the afterlife and the afterlife is specifically a Christian context that Statius is permitted to know and not Virgil. Does that make sense?



Student: Yeah.



Professor David Lummus: Okay.



Student: Like I said, it is beyond his realm, beyond Virgil's capacity.



Professor David Lummus: Technically, but the fact that he actually asked Virgil first--I don't know, maybe he's saying that it's actually Aristotle, this idea of the immortality of the soul and the after--it's actually there and perhaps Virgil could answer it, but then Virgil defers to Statius because it's a theological question that he's not privy to. Does that--okay. We're going to end a little bit early; I hope that's okay, so I can go change gears here. All right, thank you for your attention and for putting up with me. All right, thank you.



[end of transcript]

This lecture deals with Dante's representation of the Earthly Paradise at the summit of Mount Purgatory. The quest for freedom begun under the aegis of Cato in Purgatory I reaches its denouement at the threshold of Eden, where Virgil proclaims the freedom of the pilgrim's will (Purgatory XXVII). Left with pleasure as his guide, the pilgrim nevertheless falls short of a second Adam in his encounter with Matelda. His lingering susceptibility to earthly delights is underscored at the arrival of Beatrice (Purgatory XXX) whose harsh treatment of the pilgrim is read as a retrospective gloss on the dream of the Siren in Purgatory XIX. By dramatizing his character's failings within the Earthly Paradise, Dante replaces the paradigm of conversion as a once-for-all event with that of an ongoing process to be continued in Paradise under the guidance of Beatrice.



Reading assignment:

Dante, Purgatory: XXX, XXXI, XXXIII

Transcript



October 28, 2008



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: With Canto XXVI, the purgation of the pilgrim is completed. He has been going through the various stages of Purgatory: from pride, as you remember, to the sin of lust and in XXVII, he crosses a wall of fire, so that he can be cleansed completely of all the stains that may be residual on his soul and approach and enter the Garden of Eden.



This is the action that takes place in XXVII and Canto XXVII comes to a close with a passage that I would like to read to you and comment on. It's at the end of Canto XXVII and these are really the last words that Virgil will speak. We will not hear from him again. In fact, from now on, the pilgrim will be entirely on his own. There's no dependency on him. There is a sort of--actually very personal moment now that starts and we'll see the drama that goes with time of--this attainment of self-mastery and Dante goes on dramatizing.



These are the last words that he speaks from lines 130 on, "The temporal fire and the eternal thou hast seen," meaning Purgatory and Hell which lasts forever, "my son, and art come to a part where of myself I discern no further." This is the limitation of Virgil's vision. This is--from now on he will be following--even the geometry, the arrangement of their journey will be completely reversed. Up to now, the pilgrim has been a disciple, therefore, one who follows the vestiges of the teacher. Now the teacher with Statius will be following Virgil. He sees no further. And actually I can anticipate for you the pathos of Virgil's departure--sudden departure--when he, the pilgrim, most wants him and needs him, because Beatrice is approaching and the terror that--with a terror that Beatrice represents for the pilgrim, the pilgrim will turn back and his eyes will never see Virgil again. Virgil has disappeared an instant before he vanishes, an instant before Beatrice arrives, as if there's a hiatus. Dante is dramatizing the hiatus between the two guides and the two particular stages of his own self-knowledge and life.



Let me continue with this, "Take henceforth thy pleasure for guide." What an extraordinary line: "take then henceforth thy pleasure for guide." This is the poem of desire in the sense that what pushes the pilgrim to go on and impels him to this journey of discovery and self-discovery is really desire. Desire is the moving force in him, but now the language changes. Now in a sense a certain--the first part of the journey is over and pleasure can become the guide, the guidance of his own pleasure, what he likes. That is to say, in a sense, it's an adumbration of free will. We'll talk more about the relationship between actually pleasure and happiness, the way Dante will go on dramatizing it and thinking about in Paradise.



"Thou hast come forth from the steep and narrow ways. See the sun that shines on thy brow. See the grass," near the earthly paradise, "See the grass, the flowers, and trees which the ground here brings forth of itself alone." It is as, by Dante, by taking his own pleasure as his guidance, he now has reached an edenic place. Virgil is speaking of the pilgrim as if he were speaking of the ground that thrives until the ground, the land produces spontaneously. Now he's capable at spontaneous action and spontaneous decisions.



"Till their fair eyes come rejoicing which weeping may come--made me come to thee thou mayst sit or go among them." Two details are expressed by these lines: one is Virgil is recapitulating in many ways this first part of the journey, the journey that began in Inferno I and ends here in Purgatorio, in the Garden of Eden. It began in the wilderness and ends in the Garden. This is the first step of--the first stage of the journey. You can now--he remembers, that's how recapitulates "the fair eyes. . . that made me," that begged me to come to your help when you were lost and shipwrecked on the wilderness of Inferno I; so now Virgil is going back to that.



The second element is that this is the exercise: "Now thou mayest sit or go among them." Now this is exactly the major temptation for the pilgrim. Is he going to think that the journey to the Garden of Eden, which is a journey ahead, forward, but a journey back in time? The Garden of Eden is behind all of us and yet it lies ahead of us. The past is really the future. He must decide whether he can go on or sit here. It's a first decision. Is he going to think that the journey is the journey to the complacencies of the Garden, to the beauty and attraction of the Garden? Or is he going to turn, as he actually will--we can say that because we have Paradise, that he writes--into an anti-pastoral poet. That is to say one, a poet who is always questioning the sense of arrival and is always going on to new departures that's really what the--Virgil is telling him. Now this is up to you; you have arrived here; you have arrived there where I am, where Virgil is, or you can even go further.



There's a peculiar language that resonates behind this kind of moral dilemma which is placed in front of the pilgrim's mind. It's called felix culpa, I don't know if you have--those of you who are readers of Milton may know what I'm talking about. Felix culpa, the idea that the fall of man was actually a happy fall, because it allows human beings to even want to go beyond it. That's exactly what is resonating behind this. You may sit and therefore turn into an Adam figure, who is going back to the beauty and innocence which the pilgrim doesn't have really. He has a wisdom now of the Garden or you can go on even further than that.



Then here is the final moment of a circle which now takes over for the Purgatorio itself: "No longer expect word or sign from me." That's exactly--the teaching of Virgil has been completed and then he ends with: "Free, upright and whole is thy will, and it were a fault not to act on its bidding; therefore, over thyself I crown and miter thee."



This is the attainment of the free will so that the whole Purgatorio moves between two poles: the pole of liberty which was Cato's object, the object of his quest through the wilderness of the Libyan desert, and now the attainment of the free will which allows the pilgrim to view it as a condition, not just a point of arrival, but the necessary pre-condition for moral life. You can never really have an autonomous moral life only in the measure in which you think you can have the free will. Now the pilgrim is his own responsibility.



Let me say that once he's under the guidance of Beatrice the issues, especially when it comes to Paradise, there will be moral problems while he is in the Garden of Eden we are going to look at in a moment, but in Paradise aesthetics takes over. It's no longer an ethical problem. Dante refers, you may have heard about recent philosophers who think that life is arranged--or knowledge is arranged--according to stages: the aesthetic, the ethical and then the theological. Dante reverses this, the point that seems to be the most mature is that dealing with the aesthetic one, which others may view as the superficial, the elementary one, the one where we are--perceptions are going to be engaged and then at the time of disengagement even before you can get involved and mature in ethical experiences. Dante changes; there are no ethical dilemmas in Paradise. Once you are in Paradise you can only enjoy and get to know the world. All the problems are intellectual problems, not moral issues.



"So free upright and whole is the will, and it were a fall not to act on its bidding, therefore, over thyself I crown and miter thee." This is a kind of secular coronation ceremony, the crown--the royal and the episcopal--royal and the bishop, which is a way of consecrating. Virgil acts as a kind of lay priest, consecrating the attainment of self-mastery in this moment which could become a moment of self-assertion and yet Dante is very careful in how he navigates all of this.



Now from Canto XXVIII to Canto XXXIII, which is the end of the poem, we come to an area which is another fragment. You already read a kind of segment which I will call the literary segment that--with Professor Lummus whom I'm very grateful to--covered and explained to you and did with you last time. That's a literary segment that goes from XXI to XXVI. Now from XXVIII to XXXIII we have a different segment which is--let's call it a pastoral oasis. It's also the representation of what in classical literature is called locus amoenus. You may have seen adumbrations of this even in Limbo. That's one of them, this lovely spot outside of the world of history where something of relaxation can take place and it's also which Dante combines actually with a biblical hortus, enclosed garden, the Song of Songs, for instance, or the Garden of Eden hortus conclusus.



The interesting thing about Dante's representation of the locus amoenus is it's never really outside of history; it becomes. That's the assumption: you have the garden and you have the city. This is the dual imagination whenever life becomes unbearable in the city you take off and go into a villa in the garden somewhere and find a relief, aesthetic relief from the hustle--the time--of hustle and bustle of the city. Dante combines the two. There's no easy position between them, in the sense that the Garden of Eden where he finds himself, is going to be the place of--a very problematical place, a place where the pilgrim is engaged in a self-confrontation. He experiences some actually terrifying moments in the encounter with Beatrice, so the Garden of Eden is represented in Canto XXVIII and I want to read a few passages.



This is--you see how this representation is carried out, "Eager now to search," I'm reading from XXVIII, lines 1 and following, and I'll go pretty slowly over this: "Eager now to search within and about the divine forest green and dense, which tempered to my eyes the new day, I left the slope without waiting longer, taking the level very slowly over the ground which gave fragrance on every side."



It's the classical--this is--the warehouse of the pastoral tradition is found here, a fragrance; there's a running brook, deep shades, the birds seem to be rivaling human beings, introducing songs; plentitude of the natural order and even the innocence of the natural order, with the exception that Dante comes and though he has been cleansed and gone through the wall of fire to further purify him, he is not the kind of new Adam. He carries with him the stains of experience and the stains of history, so there is desire that acts in him, but let me continue.



"A sweet air that was without change was striking on my brow with the force only of a gentle breeze, by which the fluttering bows all bent freely to the part where the holy mountain throws its first shadow, yet were not so much swayed from their erectness that the little birds in the tops did not still practice all their arts, but, singing, they greeted the morning hours with full gladness among the leaves, which kept such undertone to their rhymes as gathers from branch to branch in the pine wood of the Chiassi shore when Aeolus looses the Sirocco."



The interesting thing which is some kind of--the poignancy of the autobiography and--is that Dante is imagining the Garden of Eden as the pine wood near Ravenna, which has completely disappeared since then, but you can imagine how he would take the morning walks in the pine trees around the city and on the way to the sea. And that, to him, was the garden: this mixture of the ordinary and the great sublime imagination. That's what I'm--I think he wants to convey to us.



And now he continues, and I will ask you a question. I want you to think about what I'm going to ask you, because you're expected to have a shock of recognition in the next three lines, and these are the lines in English. I'll read them in Italian, another little homage to my friend, Professor Brooks:



      Già m'avean trasportato i lenti passi

      dentro alla selva antica tanto, ch'io

      non potea rivedere ond'io mi 'ntrassi

      ed ecco più andar mi tolse un rio,

      che 'nver sinistra con sue picciole onde

      piegava l'erba che 'n sua ripa uscìo.



And in English is: "Already my small steps had brought me so far within the ancient wood that I could not see the place where I had entered, and lo, my going farther was prevented by stream with which its little waves bent leftwards the grass that sprang on its bank."



This is my question, what is this--what do these lines remind you of? They are meant to remind you of something. The very beginning of Inferno. Very good--which means that this is now really a new departure for him, which means that the Garden of Eden is exactly the wilderness that we saw--that we left behind, seen from a different perspective, which means that the supernatural world is the natural world with a different--to a different lens and different perspective.



This is--and is now re-enacting exactly the drama of Inferno I; it's no shipwreck. The mountain has been climbed. Remember that he tried to climb the mountain? The mountain has been climbed. A new departure is going to take place. Here we go then with this idea of the--that's what I mean the anti-pastoral Dante: the poet who dismisses and refuses, and repudiates all the temptations of gardens, all the temptations of premature halting, premature self-enclosure into the fiction of gardens. So this is really the strongest element that I would have to point out about what's happening in Canto XXVIII.



Now what does he see? "All the waters that are purest here would seem to have some defilement in them beside that, which conceals nothing, though it flows quite dark under the perpetual shade, which never lets sun or moon shine there. With feet I stopped and with eyes passed over beyond the streamlet to look at the great variety of fresh flowering boughs, and there appeared to me," and the word, now, is really with a power and force of an apparition, another epiphany of beauty and love to him, "as appears of a sudden a thing that for wonder drives away every other thought, a lady all alone, who went singing and culling flower from flower from which all her way was painted."



This is Matelda, as you have read, the woman who goes dancing, singing, and gathering flowers. A true picture a fascination, aesthetic fascination for him. To give you the sense of how some resonance--and in case you're stilling for a term that--the final paper topic you might want to read--there is a poem--there is a traditional poetry which is really Provençal called pastourelle. The pastourelle was--a big practitioner is Dante here. That's what he's writing. It's the idea of the knight who goes to the woods or the meadow and meets a young shepherdess--gets off--it's very sensual, and woos--off the horse and woos this young woman and usually ends with a kind of pun on the promises of the ecstasies of paradise. So it's an erotic kind of song. The other practitioner of this genre was Dante's own friend, Guido Cavalcanti.



Dante is using the mode and really definitely taking his distance from him. There is--this is a love scene. There's nothing of the overtones of violence--an erotic violence--that Guido Cavalcanti had celebrated in his own version of the pastourelle, a genre which is common to them.



This instead is what he says: "Pray, fair lady, who warmest thyself in love's beam." Now Dante has just come out of the circle of lust. He has been cleansing himself and yet, this is the lingering trace of his history, the lingering trace of his body, and his humanity. Here he goes through the Garden of Eden as a fallen man who is redeemed and not quite redeemed, certainly not in the restored or reinstated into the innocence of the pre-lapsarian garden.



"If I am to believe the looks which are wont to be testimony of the heart,' I said to her, 'may it please thee to come forward to this stream so near that I may hear what thou singest. Thou makest me recall where and what was Proserpina, at the time her mother," Ceres, "lost her and she is praying." That's the first--there is a series of three mythological images, this is the first. I think of you as Proserpina, but it's also a story of Proserpina, as you know. Well it's stated in the text: the story of the young woman who is walking--picking flowers on the plains of Enna in Sicily and then death comes and takes her away. It's a kind of death itself, loving human beings and taking them, that's one myth.



The second one is "a lady turns in the dance with feet close together" and so on, and I skip a few lines: "And I do not believe such light shone from beneath the lids of Venus when, through strange mischance, she was pierced by her son." The second image, I think, it's more telling. It's the story of Venus wounded by the arrows of Cupid and falling in love with Cupid. I think it's more telling because it's Dante's way of casting, without going into psychoanalysis--a psychoanalytical explanation--that Dante is casting the Garden of Eden as also a desire to return to the state of infancy of the child with the mother, only to understand that this is really a fantasy that would lead him nowhere.



And in fact, the third image is that of an erotic image again, but one of distance. "Three paces the river kept us apart; the Hellespont where Xerxes passed, a bridle still on all men's boasts, did bear more hatred from Leander for its swelling waters between Sestos and Abydos, than that from me because it did not open then."



So, this barrier between Matelda and the pilgrim. Between Dante and the fantasy of what the Garden of Eden may be, the mother here is kept. And Dante has to continue. He goes on explain--she goes on explaining what this--how the mechanics, so to say, about the Garden of Eden and then the canto ends in--and I'll look at this from lines 140 and following.



"Those," line 140 and following, "Those who in old times sang of the age of gold and of its happy state, perhaps dreamed on Parnassus of this place; here the human root was innocent, here was lasting spring and every fruit, this is the nectar of which each tells. I turned then right round to my poets and saw that they had heard the last sentence with a smile. Then I brought my eyes back to the fair lady."



From Dante's point of view, the perplexity that he feels, is the perplexity of Virgil and the perplexity of Statius. They know no more than he does; he knows no more than they do. What is the other--the burden of this passage is that the--clearly Dante is alluding to the bucolic quality of this place, but it also suggests that in passing that the ancient--actually, he says that the ancient poets prefigured the Garden of Eden in the fabulous visions of the golden age and the Parnassus. He's establishing a link between the poetic visions and this encounter that he has in the Garden of Eden, both projections of the poetic imagination. So it also means that the Garden of Eden can be like the bucolic fantasy of the poets and Parnassus.



We skip XXIX which is the story of--really the world history here from--it's an allegory that pageant of revelation and I will move to Canto XXX which will take us a little bit of time. This is the canto predictably where--since Beatrice is the one who is linked to the number three, this is the canto where Beatrice will arrive. And surprisingly, for those of you who are lovers of this open or hidden symmetry in the poem, Canto XXX of Paradise is also the canto where Beatrice will disappear. Her residence in the poem lasts for exactly XXXIII cantos. Clearly it's sort of an accident: her name is three times the good; she's in the Vita nuova as linked with three. It's this kind of way of--the arcane significance of her presence in the pilgrim's--in the lover's life.



A canto that describes a double drama, the drama of Virgil's disappearance and the arrival of Beatrice, a change of the guard as it were, in many ways, but you have two different moods. One of elegy for the loss of Virgil and the other one of sacred terror at the arrival of Beatrice. So it begins, he hears singing, line 70: Veni, sponsa de Libano, which, of course, is an echo from the Song of Songs. So the erotics of the previous canto continues now here. The Song of Songs is notoriously one of a sublime love poem. It continues here in Canto XXX in anticipation of the arrival of Beatrice.



"As the blessed shall rise at the last trump, each eager for his tomb, the reclad voice singing Hallelujah, there rose up on the divine chariot at the voice of so great an elder, a hundred ministers and messengers of eternal life, who all cried: 'Benedictus qui venis.'"



This is now an allusion, as maybe your notes will tell you--should tell you--to the greetings of Jesus in the garden when he comes--I'm sorry--to Jerusalem and he says, 'Benedictus qui venit,' which means that Beatrice--it means a number of things. First of all, a typological connection between garden and city which we have already been seeing here. The garden is not opposed to the political, let's say, to the city, it is the history and the garden come together in Dante's imagination. But there is a further typology that Beatrice comes the way Jesus came into history. Beatrice will come into the soul of the lover. So that she is surrounded, she is wrapped in a kind of aura of Christological language and she will become, let's say, grace; the way one can experience grace in the world through this kind of direct love onto oneself, so Latin again.



Then, a third image, and throwing flowers up around, "Manibus o date lilia plenis," another three phrases in Latin. He will go on translating a fourth one. This is a more interesting image because it's taken straight out of the Aeneid--of Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid--so it's already an homage to Virgil who is about to disappear.



Do you see how the dramas here are sort of interwoven? The idea of what the garden is and how is the garden related to oneself and to one's history. The idea of--the arrival and the meaning of Beatrice into the life of the pilgrim and then also the loss of Virgil as a poet and whatever his vision may be. Whatever his vision may be is indicated by these fragments, the fragments refer to the premature death that Virgil celebrates in a very elegiac way in Book VI of the Aeneid where Aeneas has gone down into Hades in order to see the whole of history. This is the descent into the oracles' father and to see Anchises, that it is the future that is going to derive and stem from him. And Anchises will point out to him the shade of a young man who sits on the side, his name is Marcellus, who will die too young and then he will add, "all throw lilies with open hands," the lily being a funereal symbol like the chrysanthemums, for instance, or some such things in some cultures.



It's an image of a premature death which clearly is linked also to Beatrice, but who died in a premature death, but also to Virgil, because it's the anticipation of the loss of Virgil. It's an elegiac way. It is as if Virgil's vision was under the aegis of mortality and finitude, as if Virgil could never really be thought of as saved because his song is a song limited to the world of death.



Let's see how this continues, "I once saw at the beginning of the day the eastern parts all rosy and the rest of the sky clear and beautiful and the sun's face come forth shaded. . . " etc. ". . . a lady appeared to me," this is Beatrice, "girt with olive over a white veil." Look at her elegance. Listen to how he describes the colors, the fashions. "Girt with olive over a white veil, clothed under a green mantle with the color of a living flame. And my spirit," I call that the Italian flag by the way, the way she seems to be the red, white and green, "and my spirit, which now so long had not been overcome with awe, trembling in her presence, without having more knowledge by the eyes, through hidden virtue that came from her, felt old love's great power."



This is a rewriting of the poem of the autobiography of Dante that you remember, reading the Vita nuova. He's experiencing the presence of Beatrice through exactly the kind of effects that she has over him: the courtly love, the sweet new style, the trembling, the inability to speak.



"As soon as the lofty virtue smote on my sight which already had pierced me before I was out of my boyhood, I turned to the left with the confidence of a little child that runs to his mother when he's afraid or in distress, to say to Virgil: 'Not a drop of blood is left in me that does not tremble. I know the marks of the ancient flame."



He's scared and turns to Virgil and is about to say, and will say the famous lines, "I know the marks of the ancient flame," which is a translation of the words Dido will speak when she meets Aeneas in Hades: "I know the marks of the ancient flame," another image of death and mortality taken from the Aeneid. Dante's linking Virgil with that kind of metaphor and that sort of limitation of passion.



"But Virgil had left us bereft of him, Virgil sweetest father, Virgil to whom I gave myself for my salvation, nor did all the ancient mother lost avail my cheeks washed with dew that they should not be stained again with tears."



These are Beatrice's first words: "Dante, because Virgil leaves thee weep not, weep not yet, for thou must weep for another sword.' Like an admiral who goes to poop and prow to see the men that serve on the other ships and to hearten them in their work, so on the left side of the car--when I turned at the sound of my name, which is noted here of necessity--I saw the lady who first appeared to me veiled under the angelic festival direct her eyes on me beyond the stream. Already the veil that fell from her head, and circled with Minerva's leaves, did not let her be plainly seen, royally, still stern in her bearing, she continued like one who while he speaks holds back his hottest words: 'Look at me well; I am, I am indeed Beatrice. How durst thou approach the mountain? Didst thou not know that here man is happy?"



Well a number of things here--Virgil has disappeared. Dante now is alone, so that's what I call the self-confrontation with his past. Who is Beatrice? How am I going to account for my failings to Beatrice? What is she going to expect of me? She's harsh, the harsh language of love, to the point if I may be a little bit too--without really lessening the intensity of this passage, this passage is pretty intense, but I feel that I have to tell you a little--to distract you a little bit for ten seconds. Borges has written about this passage, a beautiful essay on this scene and he says, this is the only time that Dante really made a mistake. Because if Beatrice spoke to me the way he spoke--she spoke to Virgil--to Dante--I'm sorry--I would have said to her, look if that's the way you feel I'm going to go right back and--but Dante won't say that. This is a contemporary visionary like Borges, not Dante.



What we are told is that this is the first, and only, time in the poem that Dante's name is heard. Dante. She will never call him Dante again and he has never been called Dante before. In other words, this the point where the poem, from the epic that it has been, the epic of desire, the epic of hope, the pilgrim, lost the longing and memory, between hope and memory, the poem of justice, now it becomes an autobiography. Now it is his own story. There is a shift in genre: from an epic story: from the loss of Virgil, the epic poet, to an autobiographical focus. Dante, this is you, the specificity and irreducibility of his own experience. Dante, she says, and he will add that his name is here registered out of necessity. And what is the necessity that he has?



What's the necessity about speaking of oneself? Why would one go on speaking of oneself? One speaks of oneself because one wants to be exemplary to others. One believes that what one has experienced is crucial for somebody else's self knowledge, somebody else's experience or one wants to exempt vituperation from his own name. It's--I'm paraphrasing Dante's words, and the way he registers them in this philosophical text that he writes called, the Banquet, where he speaks of--about himself. And he says, there are two people who have spoken about themselves in exemplary ways. One is Augustine in the Confessions, a book that I have asked you repeatedly to read and I have read from, and the other one is Boethius that I have alluded to in The Consolation of Philosophy. The philosopher, who is in jail, seeks to find comfort to the imputations of criminal conduct laid on him, by thinking about philosophy and talking about himself, and whereas, Augustine, of course, is discussing his own conversion. The idea of the necessity is both--Dante is alluding to two autobiographical texts, both of which make it the--talking about oneself indeed, as he calls it, a necessity.



So this now will continue with Canto XXX. The first thing that she will do--Beatrice will do--and we turn to Canto XXXI. There's an account--and Canto XXX continues with the story of his failures when she died as told in the Vita nuova, he went on looking for someone who could replace Beatrice. And now Dante goes on asking--actually indulging in a confession, literally an Augustinian moment, another part of the autobiographical moment and a confessional form and this is--let me just read a few lines here, before we move on.



"Oh thou that art on that side of the sacred river,' she began again, turning against me the point of her speech which even with the edge that seemed sharp to me and continuing without pause, 'say, say if this is true; to such an accusation thy confession must needs be joined.' My faculties were so confounded that my voice began and was spent before it was released from its organs. She forebore a little, then said, 'What thinkest thou?"--A phrase that should remind you--I know that it's too little and I will not too demanding, but it should remind you of the fact that this is Francesca's, this is what Dante was asking Francesca in Canto 5. And now it's Beatrice--the roles are inverted--who is asking Dante to resume as if it were that confession of a failing that Francesca had undergone in Canto V of Inferno.



"What thinkest thou? Answer me, for the sad memories are not yet destroyed in thee by the water.' Confusion and fear mingled together drove forth from my mouth a Yes such that to hear it there was need of sight. As a crossbow shot with too great strain breaks the cord," let me just go on. "After," with line 36, "After heaving a bitter sigh, I had--I had hardly the voice to answer and the lips shaped it with difficulty; weeping, I said: 'Present things with their false pleasure turned my steps as soon as your face was hid."



The--he's alluding, exactly as he did in the Vita nuova, to his change of heart as soon as Beatrice died, and now she continues. "And she: 'Hadst thou kept silence or denied what thou confessest, thy fault would be not less plain, by such a judge as it known, but when from a man's own cheek breaks forth condemnation of his sin, in our court the wheel turns back against the edge. Nevertheless, in order that thou mayst now bear the shame of thy wandering, and another time hearing the Sirens, be stronger, lay aside the sowing of tears, and hearken; so shalt thou hear how my buried flesh should have directed thee the other way. Never did nature or art set before thee beauty so great as the fair members," etc.



The passage is extraordinary because it helps us to gloss retrospectively what was a fairly mysterious allegory in Purgatory. You remember, where Dante meets the siren, or dreams of the siren and then a lady appeared? The siren was an allegory of a temptation, an erotic temptation. Someone who wants to lure the pilgrim and promises happiness. Remember? I'm going to make you happy, you need to go nowhere else and now--and then there was also the appearance of a mysterious woman, an equally mysterious woman who manages to send away the siren. She wakes up the pilgrim and the journey there can continue. As you recall, we are saying, well we don't know who this mysterious woman is, though there are a number of hints. I had read this part of the poem before you had, probably, and it's Beatrice.



Beatrice was a kind of--an allegory of the confrontation of two women, the siren on the one hand, and on the other hand, this unknown, mysterious Beatrice. Now this scene just makes it clear, because what Beatrice says, you have to make a confession in case shame, "Now bear the shame of thy wanderings and another time, hearing the Sirens, be stronger, lay aside the sowing of tears and hearken; so shalt thou hear how my buried flesh," and so on.



She is now glossing the scene of the siren that appeared in Canto XIX, but there is more to it. There is a little phrase that Dante's using, or Beatrice is using for him: "another time," when you hear the siren, which means that the siren is not just the encounter with the siren. It's not just an event that happened in the past. It can happen all over again. "Another time." In other words, it can still happen in the future, which means that Dante's conversion, which is really what this poem has been telling us--especially now that it has reached this kind of autobiographical quality--is not over and done with, that it is a conversion. It has to be understood as an ongoing journey and that the future itself is fraught with temptations, just as much as it was fraught with temptations in the past.



What Dante is changing is the Augustinian idea of a conversion that takes place once and for all and is making--it is replacing that paradigm with a different paradigm, a paradigm of a conversion in its openness to time, with the idea that it is an ongoing process. You have--look what the poetic technique--as Dante is remembering a scene of the past and glossing that, the encounter, the temptation of the siren moved away, dispelled by the arrival of Beatrice. Now Beatrice is talking once again about the siren, "another time," meaning, I know who she was in Canto XIX of--in the dream of Canto XIX--she may come back again.



In other words, once again, this is the anti-pastoral imagination of the poet. Do not believe that you can ever stop on the way. Do not ever believe that there are truths that are going to be unchallenged or untested in time. I think that this is a way of truly casting Dante for what he is; the poet of--open to the power of the future and drawn to the idea that the future is still part of his experience.



By the way, he goes on, which would really takes us--but that's the essential point, "Truly that thou," this is line 55, "thou oughtest, at the first shaft of deceptive things, to have risen up after me who was such no longer. No young girl or other vanity of such brief worth should have bent thy wings downward to await more shots. A young chick waits for two or three, but in vain is the net spread," and so on. This is another, literally, the allusion to the poems that Dante wrote for what he called the pargoletta, the little--the young woman that Beatrice seems to be--remind him of.



Now we come to Canto XXXIII, the end of Purgatory--the end of Purgatory, where I really want to focus on one image and one image in particular, which is the image of a prophecy that Beatrice will make. Beatrice--we are at the end of time--Purgatory, and he goes on--I'm sorry, she goes on promising a deliverer who will come. The argument now is no longer about Dante himself; it's an argument about history. Is there a deliverance for history? Is it possible for the whole human family to go back to a condition that, at least if not the Garden of Eden as such, from the point of view which we can see, at least the towers of the true city, that's the way Dante calls it in the political tract Monarchia. He's talking about a figure that may enter history--that will enter history at the end of time, that's why I stress that dramatically the poem is literally poised at the outer edge of time.



There's not time, when we are going to Paradise once again, so let me tell you what this--and we'll try to explain it for you, lines 30 and following: "And she said to me: 'From fear and shame I would have thee free thyself henceforth, that thou mayst no longer speak like one that dreams. Know that the vessel," she is tough. The way she is attacking him, she will be the teacher from now on, "Know that the vessel the serpent broke was and is not, but let him that has the blame be assured that God's vengeance fears no sop. Not for all the time shall the eagle," probably the eagle of the empire, "be without heir that left its feathers on the car so that it became monster, and then prey; for I see assuredly, and therefore tell of it, stars already near, to give us the time, secure from all check and hindrance, when a five hundred, ten and five, one sent from God, shall slay the thievish woman and the giant who sins with her. And perhaps my dark tale, like Themis and the Sphinx, persuades thee less because, in their fashion, it clouds thy mind; but soon the facts shall be the Naiads that will solve this hard enigma without loss of flocks and corn."



She delivers an enigma--an enigmatic prophecy. Enigma is a word that obviously means mystery, but it's also linked to allegory. You talk about irony, allegory; they're all tropes that grammarians place under the same general subdivision. It's an enigma. It's mysterious. It's not quite clear, and the lack of clarity only adds, I think, to the fear and the speculations of course about what this is. It's a numerical symbol, which he says, it's a five hundred, ten and five. That's the way it's written, five hundred, ten and five: DXV. And you do know that numbers--we have been talking a little bit about this, numbers viewed as containing medieval numerical symbolism views numbers as containing the essence of the secret actually of creation. They would go writing--this is Isidore of Seville, goes on writing, take the number away from things and things will perish, will fall apart.



It's a Pythagorean idea, what keeps all things together is just a sense of--call it musical rhythmic numerical ordering. Of course, there are--a great other number that maybe everybody knows is 666, which is the number of anti-Christ. Dante's writing a five hundred, one, and five--what on earth could it be? Oh the speculations I could--they're hilarious, some of the spec--what they could mean. There are those who believe, well it really refers to the year 1315. We have no reason to believe that is the case, because it's 800, the year of Charlemagne's declaring the Holy Roman Empire and 515 gives you 1315. So Dante's really thinking about an imminent event in his own time. There's nothing in the text that would allow us to see this and allow us to make it credible.



So what is it? Actually, it was found that the way--the best way to describe it is really in--written in DXV in five hundred, ten, and five that this is--the best way to try to make any sense of this prophecy and of course, another hilarious interpretation that I just regale to you for your own temporary relaxation this was immediately--became the D V X. Between 1923 and 1943, this was a prophecy of Mussolini, of all people, who would come and deliver the world. Another ridiculous--of course--interpretation.



But it was found by some very good--by two, simultaneously, it's amazing--by two historians, one actually a historian and one a literary historian, and therefore they took two different views, that in the medieval illustrations, there is a moment--By the way, let me just preamble this, they found it in medieval illustrations of the mass. There's a moment in the mass, where there's a so-called antiphonal prayer, the idea that Christ is coming sacramentally and they have 'it is truly right and just' and in Latin veridignum et justus est, and it's always written like this and they explain V and X, a cross that joins the human and the divine. So that really the prayer, or the enigma of Beatrice, is for the apocalyptic end of time. The time when Christ will return to the earth, the first time he came, first of all, as a human being five, ten and five hundred. The second time he will come first in his divinity so five hundred, ten and five: the divinity and the humanity second, the second element. The two, humanity and divinity join together by the X of the cross. A great discovery, a number of infinite problems that I have. I hope I have--let me--bear with me for a couple of minutes so that I can tell you more about this.



If this is an apocalyptic symbol, that is to say, you understand what we mean by an apocalyptic symbol, apocalyptic prophecy, that for prophecy apocalypse means for visionary coming from the Apocalypse of St. John, and implying that Dante believes in some kind of imminent end of time. History is coming to an end. If he believed in this, and this is to be understood as an apocalyptic symbol of an imminent end of time, this would make Dante what is called a Joachist, and I have to explain to you who this man is.



There's a man by the name of Joachim of Flora who was--and we'll see him in Paradise, Joachim of Flora, who had a theory of history in a kind of tripartite structure, Joachim of Flora. The idea is that history is patterned on the Trinity, so there is an age of the father which roughly goes from creation to the time of the biblical patriarchs. Then there is the age of the son that goes from the time of the incarnation to roughly 1260, his own time. This is Joachim of Flora and then there's in the age of the spirit, that goes from the time of 1260--with thanks to the fraternal orders, all structures and all institutions will disappear and mankind will experience a time of brotherhood and chastity. There will be no marriages, there will be no state, there will be nothing, and I say California is already anticipated and seen by this great figure of Joachim of Flora.



If Dante were a Joachist that would create a number of problems, because what I have just been describing to you was viewed as a most heretical theory of history. Why was it heretical? Because, in effect, Joachim of Flora was, with this theory of an age of the father, the age of the son, and the age of the spirit--was in effect undoing the unity of the Trinity. That is to say, the Trinity is no longer simultaneously together. He's dividing the Trinity into three distinct parts, and no less a great theologian of Dante's own time, and whom Dante will encounter very soon in Paradise, and they are going to discuss Joachim of Flora together, Bonaventure, will go really writing a piece in order to declare Joachim of Flora heretical. So if this a very powerful explanation that Dante's really alluding to the second coming at the end of time, the DXV, when Christ will return to earth to restore the Messianic advent, to restore justice to the world, and it will come first of all in glory of the divinity first and the humanity second, both joined by the cross, the humanity and the divinity together. Then and--if there's not enough--is he an apocalyptic writer?



I doubt that he is an apocalyptic writer, because there's no poet I know, and I think we have given plenty of evidence of this over the last two months, who cares more about the institutions, who believes that the institutions are history. And of course he attacks them in the measuring in which he thinks that they have to be revitalized, refreshed, and improved. You cannot go on attacking the institutions from--without really believing in their vital importance in history. He talks about the Empire, he talks about the Church, he talks about law, he talks about family, etc. They're all institutions that preserve their enduring importance.



If he's not an apocalyptic writer, what is he then? I think that this is an allusion to the coming of--the second coming, but without--removing all of the Joachist paraphernalia that accompanied that prophecy. This is indeed the time. It doesn't refer to the now of history, it refers to a time that nobody can really fathom and nobody can really know. So I'm giving--I have given you a reading of this passage and given you a glimpse of the logical complications that usually accompany what it would seem to be such a neat discovery or a neat glossing of an image.



Of course with this prophecy the poem will come to an end, and the poem comes to an end with Dante, who goes--and I will talk about this image again--who has to be ritually immersed. He will be immersed into two rivers. The river Lethe, the river of forgetfulness and the river Eunoe, the river of good memories. It's a ritual--this is toward the end of Canto XXXIII--that reminds you of the ritual actions at the beginning of Canto I, where Dante washes his face and has to gird his loins with--you remember with the reed that was growing spontaneously on the shore of the sea.



What Dante goes on saying is the two rivers, Lethe and Eunoe, derive--flow out of the same source. And then he says, like two lazy friends, friends who are fond of each other, they go on departing lazily. That's the image that he uses. What is interesting is that he's thinking of memory and forgetfulness, the Lethe and Eunoe, as entailing each other, so that there's no erasure which is not at the same time a memory, that each contains the other and Dante will go--has a lot to say about forgetful memory, especially in the way the poem will be written.



Finally, with a line, the whole poem ends with--the whole of Purgatorio ends with a line that obviously reminds you of the very end Inferno, "From the most holy waters," this is Canto XXXIII, "I came forth again remade, even as new plants," the very language of the beginning of Purgatorio, "renewed with new leaves, pure and ready to mount to the stars." Dante once again now is at the top of Purgatory and he will fly next, like lightening, onto the Moon and we shall see him in this kind of planetary epic, cosmological epic that we'll start on next time.



Now I'm sure you have questions and we are doing okay with timing, so please shoot. Yes.



Student: You mentioned a transition from the ethical in Purgatory to the aesthetic in Paradise. Could you just expand [inaudible]?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Very good question. The question is--that I spoke about in Canto XXX of Purgatorio, I spoke about the transition, formal transition from the structure of the epic with Virgil, the poet of the epic, and then moving onto--in effect I spoke of the autobiographical, first of all where Beatrice refers to--calls Dante by name. So it's his story, Dante, don't cry because Virgil has disappeared, I'm going to give you a chance to cry for other reasons and then goes on into a confession, which is an Augustinian poem.



But also it's true, I mentioned there is a transition to--I mean, I did say that in Paradise is the world of aesthetics where the ethical ordering is liquidated in a certain sense. So the question is, how does this respond to the whole arc of the poem? What kind of--what am I really saying about the whole experience of the poem to make the aesthetic essential for knowledge, if that's the argument? That is true. I really welcome this question because that's the way I'm reading poetry, as if poetry were a way of knowing. I keep saying this, that it's really a way of knowing from that point of view, a philosophical kind of poetry, realizing and keeping in mind that there are always distinctions and ongoing quarrels between poetry and philosophy.



Paradiso is--like any true ethics, this is a general pronouncement, Dante doesn't make it, but it's a kind of premise to what I'll be saying later. Any true ethics can only be successful in the measure in which it stops operating. That's when the ethics is really--you can say that it has done its job as it were. So we enter a world where now is the world of Paradise and Dante goes on representing this world. He'll never forget the earth. I have to qualify that, even in Paradise, he's going to look at the earth. He celebrates the greatest aspects of human life: work, love, things that join--joy--the community together. He will see also the distortions that are going on--where they are the--in the Empire, in the political life or in the life of the Church. Every time that there is a retrospective look, there is a kind of dismay that he will feel.



So there is all of that, but the emphasis is on the world of Paradise: it's about dance, it's about songs, it's about love, it's about stars wooing each other, it's about spectacular mise en scène, the pyrotechnics of--it's about different forms of light. What is this about? Exactly what I call the aesthetic experience; these are all poetic artistic experiences. The first thing we are to keep in mind is Dante really thinks of a theology that is really like poetry: a theology that is like poetry, in the sense that both are part of--or if you wish an even--won't even call it theology. Let me call it--finish that sentence--theology which is like poetry in the sense that it's a playful theology, a way of understanding that the essence of God now can be seen in his comical figuration. A God who is the artist, a God who thinks that this the way in which human beings were supposed--were first created in the Garden of Eden, where we are really in a garden, meant to play, and that's where we are going back too. It's a way of casting the divinity in the most--as beauty, a beauty that also encompasses the good.



Beyond that, beyond this playful or ludic theology, this idea of an aesthetic theology, there is something else that Dante is saying about the proximity between the poetic and the religious. It's not a connection that is usually made because we tend to believe that the poetic is just the world of deceptions, make believe. In fact, it's both, the poetic and the religious, and we can say that even about the philosophical if you wish, they respond to profound impulses within us. They are emotions that we have. You see beauty and you tremble in the presence of beauty, whether it's a human beauty, it's natural beauty, or artistic beauty. Whatever it is that we're encountering there is something that responds in us and the same thing about the idea of awe, and the idea of discovery of sense of the sublime, whenever you have what we call a religious experience. The two are not neatly separated; this is what drives the poet in the journey of Paradise. This is where the actual source of his inspiration, that's the novelty that Dante represents and which probably some Romantic poets much later--I'm talking about the nineteenth century have been trying to restore or grasp, or understand. You do have that in Dante.



Do you have it for instance in the Bible? I dare say you do, because whenever we think about--there are so many courses at Yale that used to be taught, I don't look at the offerings anymore because I think I know them by heart, not for any other reason--but "the Bible as literature." It is great, but the idea, the underlying idea is always that the Bible can only has to be read--novels--that's all right, that's very good but that's not all. To say that, as I did, that the Song of Songs is a fantastic--I said it ten minutes ago, that the Song of Songs is a fantastic love poem. What I'm really saying is that the poetic is already in itself proximate to the religious, so that when we think about the Bible and literature we are already rephrasing another version of this problem which is that of--that Dante presents as the religious and the poetic in Paradise. I hope I've answered your question. Thank you.



[end of transcript]

Professor Mazzotta introduces students to Paradise. The Ptolemaic structure of Dante's cosmos is described along with the arts and sciences associated with its spheres. Beatrice's role as teacher in Dante's cosmological journey is distinguished from that of her successor, St. Bernard of Clairvaux. An introduction to Dante's third and final guide to the Beatific Vision helps situate the poetics of Paradise vis-à-vis the mystical tradition. Professor Mazzotta's introduction to the canticle is followed by a close reading of the first canto. The end of the pilgrim's journey is discussed in light of the two theological modes Dante pulls together in the exordium of Paradise I. The poetic journey staged in the opening tercets is then explored in light of the mythological and Christian figures (Marsyas, St. Paul) Dante claims as his poetic precursors.



Reading assignment:

Dante, Paradise: I, II

Transcript



October 30, 2008



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: We begin with Paradise, which clearly is different from the earthly paradise, two paradises. We went through the earthly paradise, this is--anyway, we begin the third canticle which is called Paradise.



As you read, you'll find that Dante uses a Ptolemaic structure of the cosmos. A Ptolemaic structure means that for him, as for Ptolemy, the earth is at the center of the universe, unmoved, immobile, and there are a number of seven planets that circle around it. The Moon is thought of as a planet, Mercury, then Sun, and then there will be Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Beyond that there is this--the Heaven of a so-called Fixed Stars and beyond that the Primum--the Empyrean, the heaven of fire, from which all motion begins, from which time starts. That's really where the roots of time are found and they stretch out into the finite world; so that we really are in the shadows of the leaves of time, which means that they are always falling and being replaced.



Another thing we have to keep in mind as you go into Paradise is that Dante links the--each of the planets with--I have said this before, I know, but it bears repeating, with one of the liberal arts. And they're respectively, the liberal arts are the seven liberal arts and then there are two more, since there are nine heavens. It begins with grammar in the planet of the Moon and so you have to expect that you will find the language of grammarians, grammar--the Moon and grammar the--a very wide definition of what grammar can be. It includes poetry; it includes history, it even includes some rhetorical tropes.



And then the Heaven of Mercury with dialectics and so you're expecting to find the language of dialectics deployed and it's going to be the--deployed throughout the canto. The Heaven of Venus and rhetoric, that probably is the least surprising, eros and rhetoric. They have an old kinship; they seem to entail each other. Then the Heaven of Mars, the god of war, which here Dante couples with music in the persuasion that music is a harmony made of discordant parts. So that there is this kind of simultaneously a pull and a strife within the Heaven of Mars, so that when music.



Then beyond it there's geometry linked with the temperateness of Jupiter and beyond it astronomy of Saturn. The Heaven of the Fixed Stars is tied--is linked to ethics. Whereas, the Heaven of the Empyrean is really the heaven of metaphysics as Dante will call it and you will see the kind of interesting arguments that Dante will have, because in effect he has changed his mind when writing the philosophical text known as the Banquet, as you know now Il Convivio, he writes it in Italian. He had really claimed that ethics is the first of--and the most important of the arts. It's really the discipline toward which all the art, to which all the other arts are subordinated and toward which they all point. When Dante writes the Paradiso he has changed his mind about that, though he also knows that in many ways you cannot quite separate ethics, whatever he means by ethics, with some theory about how the world is. They really are inseparable and Dante will go on back and forth in re-configuring the relation of those two disciplines.



The other thing that I should mention before we go on, is that much of the Paradiso really is going to come through as a way of--as a teaching. It's already implied that this should be the thrust of Paradiso, by the very idea that there is the disposition of the arts and sciences in--through Paradiso, which means that the journey that Dante will have--this cosmological journey. It's an interplanetary journey. He goes from planet to planet--is already an educational journey, that's how he goes through grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, etc., etc., until he reaches metaphysics or beyond that there will be theology. It's literally an educational journey. This is already understood, also it's already carried out by the focus on the teaching that Beatrice will deliver.



I have to say a couple of things, that Dante's teacher in Paradiso, and this is an innovative, very imaginative and highly unusual move on the part of a poet, is not some kind of abstract matron called Dame Philosophy. It's not some kind of allegory of nature. You do have this kind of allegorical--didactic allegories where nature appears as larger than disheveled woman, wounded, because nature has fallen, teaching the pilgrim of the traveler about the secrets of nature and the wealth of nature. Here is a personal--his girlfriend to be sure, and it's someone who really--who also replaces all the other likely candidates for this teaching which is--would be Aquinas, Boethius, Bonaventure, all figures that he's going to meet.



It's a mistake to believe, however, that, as some great scholars of Dante have said in the past, that Paradiso is really a journey to be Beatrice. That's what they had said. That's not the case because Beatrice will disappear from--she will still be within view up to a point in Paradise her role ends with Canto XXX of Paradiso and from that point on, a mystic by the name of Bernard, a historical figure, Bernard of Clairvaux, will take place.



So this leads me now to a further clarification. There may be the tendency in some of you to view the Paradiso as some kind of account of a mystical experience. You know what I'm saying, that Dante sort of goes beyond his own self, beyond any idea of rational understanding of the world, the surrendering of his own subjectivity to some insight into the whole. This, I don't think that this is what's happening here. Dante will preserve his rationality and his sense of distinction and separation from some kind of cosmological and cosmical hall the very end. There is a way in which Dante will deploy the language of the mystics and I want to give you some evidence of that, because I think it opens up an interesting chapter for your further readings, but it's not--this is not to be read as a kind of transcription of a mystical experience where the text then goes on in some kind of random approximation or random copying of what the mystic saw and becomes ineffable.



Dante uses, occasionally, toward the end the language of ineffability but this is--remains a poetic construction, an imaginative projection into what is a journey into the absolute unknown into a space no other imagination had really traveled and it's those--and have been those who have traveled there but they never really took--came back to tell us. Dante will play with that. His is, to use that language, a kind of--a way of getting into that which had been left inarticulate and silent. It's really largely a battle against the--for a poet, threatening boundaries of silence. Something that threatens him with defeat, he will not be able to speak. And from one point of view that defeat for the Christian would also be of course a victory but Dante is suspended between the two poles.



If I had to define, and I have already given a kind of general definition, what kind of aegis, under which rubric should we try to go on reading this part of the poem, I really think this is really a poem about beauty, in the sense that Dante will try to understand what the beauty is. The beauty is the visibility of--Plotinus says this, it's the visibility of being, he calls it, being life, the whole of life becomes visible only because we have perceptions and images of it so it's--I think that Dante's trying to see that, to explore what is it that lies beyond that which we see. What is this beauty skin deep, as it were, because that's really one of the dangers of focusing on beauty that it's really the surface of things, the appearance of things. And he will go between appearances, images, and the idea that they are essences lying beyond them.



I really have said more or less all I had to say in the mode of an introduction. I immediately get into Canto I. Let me just read Canto I a little bit with--in some detail, "The glory," that's the way it starts, "The glory of Him who moves all things penetrates the universe and shines in one part more and in another less." That's the first tercet, famous first tercet and I will read this in Italian so that you sense how even the rhythm of the poem completely changes.



The rhythm and even the syntactical structure of the poem, because you may recall and I say this knowing that you have already noticed that, that if you read Canto I of Inferno or Canto I of Purgatorio, the two exordiums of the other canticles, you know that the poet is immediately casting himself into the role of the agent. "In the middle of the journey of my life I found myself," that's really the very start of Inferno I, and in Purgatorio too, "To course over a better waters the ship--the boat of my genius now goes and I will sing," you remember? Not so in Paradise.



There is a way in which, immediately, the first tercet, which has a sort of proemial value, seeks to bracket the idea of the self and the idea of the subjectivity. It emphasizes the question of--God becomes the agent here, to say it in a very direct--as directly as he says, "The glory," it's a circumlocution once again, but let me read it in Italian, so that I can give you a sense, as I said, of the new music that he has found. The new sense of the inner harmony that toward which language has to strive.



      La gloria di colui che tutto move

      per l'universo penetra e risplende

      in una parte più e meno altrove.



It's rendered very faithfully by Sinclair. I don't know the other translations but probably it can't deviate from it very much, and I read it in Italian because also--and this is understandable to the eye, if not just to the ear for you, how he's playing with--in line one, "The glory of him who all moves." So God the mover I'll talk about it in--later on, the one who moves all and that all then becomes one in the next line, universe. The all becomes that which is turned into one, that's what etymologically--the universe. It goes on, "Penetrates the universe and shines in one part more and in another less."



Well the tercet casts God--this is about God, as a circumlocution, it is not--it's really a God who is visible through God's effects, as God appears as kind of cause. Now then, if you really understand the effects, it means there is a causality. I don't want to get into--too much into that but you know what I mean, that--simple, you only know the effects, you know the glory, we see the glory which is the light. Glory, it's a semantic--the first thing we have to say, this is a shift, a change in the history of the word. That's what poets do, that poets invent, reinvent language; that's largely what they do. They change the meaning of words. Glory, in the classical time and all the way down to the Renaissance and the Romantic age, glory means fame. It means, it's the child of Clio. It means, it's the power we have to survive, not to have a posthumous life because of whatever noble deeds, heroes may have achieved. That's not what it means here.



Glory means light, of course. It's the light who wants fame, if you wish, but this is the light. Why do we know that? Because light now is linked to two verbs of the "glory of Him who. . . all things," who moves all things, penetrates the universe, and shines. You see there is a metaphor of light that is conveyed here. So the first tercet presents God in a cosmological role which is double: one of motion and one of light, two things. Dante is combining an Aristotelian idea of God as the prime mover, one who imparts motion to all things. And in the second image is that God as the principle of light, a neo-Platonic idea.



He's fusing together two contradictory, apparently contradictory, traditions: light and motion. One is talking in terms of causality and the other one really--I'm not going to go much further than this, the other one in terms of--because light does that, penetrates, shines all over, according to a principle of hierarchy: more and less. There is no uniformity in--with light, and I'll come back to this notion in a moment. One idea casts God as the prime mover, according to the tradition of Aristotelian philosophy, the other one thinks of God as in the mode of light or participation. They are two different theological modes. God participates, is part of creation, the natural world is part of the supernatural world. There is not just a causality that begins all things and then somehow retreats in some sort of invisible and unknown non-space of its soul.



The other item in this first tercet is that of the--that I want to emphasize is the principle of hierarchy. Light shines more and less. I have been hinting at this, that this is really a great problem for Dante in other parts of the poem. You remember "to course over better waters," Dante says in Purgatorio I, and that implies of course that there are bad, good, better, best--that we are in the principle of hierarchy. Differences are very crucial for Dante because they allow us to know things, only through differences, and also the--because these differences--and that's the value of hierarchy. They are still combined in some kind of unified structure. Hierarchy is a structure that unifies all differences according to the principle of degree. More of this a little bit later, as we go on.



Then Dante now, as I said, that he's not a mystic. Subjectivity is not erased. Mystics tend--though they all claim a unique vision, they all end up resembling each other when they talk about the ineffable. And Dante introduces now the subject and he says, "I was in the heaven that most receives His light." That is to say passed in the Empyrean, which is sort of spiritual, he as close to God as he could be, which will also be as far from God as it can be. "I was in the heaven that most receives His light and I saw things which he that descends from it has not the knowledge nor the power to tell again."



No sooner does Dante introduce his subjectivity and his way of knowing out of this intimacy of--and closeness to the beatific vision, then he has also to cast himself as a visionary, has "the knowledge or the power to tell. I saw things," and you will see how Dante goes on refining his eyesight, a little detail that you might really enjoy is that we do know that Dante would use lenses--glasses toward the end of the--had just been invented. There are books written about when were glasses invented, were they invented in Pisa? Were they invented in Padua? There have been wars going on about this claim, but Dante uses glasses, so he really had difficulty--that's the point--in seeing.



All of Paradiso is about the refinement of sight and the refinement of vision. How you are going to be able to attune as it were your eyes to the objects around you. Anyway he casts himself now as a visionary with an internal vision. I'm not casting him as a Homer who is blind, and therefore he sees everything with the inner eye, but he wants to be a visionary poet, and "I saw things which," that is to say one who sees things as a whole. That's the difference between ear, there are great debates between the ear and the eye is that the ear you hear, and you hear always--only from one in a linear way. Things can come from all sides but you can only catch a thing at a time. With the eye you have--the eye is the organ that gives you the chance to--the organ of the contemplatives; it gives you a chance to see totalities.



"I saw things which he that has the sense from it has now the knowledge or the power to tell again and then he explains why. He explains the status of his poetic language. "I saw what is the relationship between language and vision? That's the--if you want to put it in a very abstract way, how are the two related? "For our intellect, drawing near to its desire. . ." The intellect yearns, longs for the objects that it desires. So there is a desire of the mind, a desire--it's not just a desire for the intellectual, "desire, sinks so deep that memory cannot follow it." Very simple, forgetfulness intervenes so that the--he may have intuition, and insight into things, he cannot quite go on recalling.



"Nevertheless, so much of the holy kingdom, as I was able to treasure in my mind shall now be matter of my song." Whatever he's going to tell us is literally a shadow of things he manages to remember. It makes sense that he should not remember because part--one of the paradoxes of this poetic construction is the following, he has a beatific vision. How can he retain in his mind this sight, which is finite, that which is infinite? If not through vestiges and if not through shadows? How can you--how can my memory which is a metaphor of time, by definition, he remembers certain things, but how can I go on remembering and holding that which is without time, which is infinite? So the first paradox of--in the representation of Paradise.



Let me go on with the next one, next paragraph now, Dante turns to god of poets, to Apollo. "O good Apollo, for the last labor make me such a vessel of thy power." He casts himself into a passive mode, a vessel, one who receives. It's the language of restraint. It's a language of holding back. It's in a sense it's really the classical commonplace of asking the muse to breathe through us. "Sing to me o muse," remember? The Iliad, and a variant of the same thing--a variation of the same thing happens in the Odyssey.



"For the last labor make me such a vessel of thy power as thou requirest for the gift of thy loved laurel." What an extraordinary image. He was remembering the story of the god who chases Daphne, the object of his desire, which he cannot really obtain. That's the story--you all know the story in the Metamorphosis. He can only obtain Daphne, which means laurel in Greek, but he only can obtain this young maiden Daphne in the form of a metaphor for the laurel crown. So it's a sort of journey which somehow the object of which becomes--the possession of the object becomes dislocated, not quite what the god himself wanted, but this introduces something else about the Paradiso.



"Thus far, the one peak of Parnassus has sufficed." You may remember this is a recall of the dream of Parnassus in Purgatorio that we saw when Statius and Virgil were flattered into believing that what they had dreamt is actually the simulacrum of the earthly paradise. Thus far, the one peak of Parnassus has sufficed me, but now I have need of both," a language of humility, "entering on the arena that remains."



There's a struggle now. First of all, he had introduced this image of himself as a vessel receptive to the inspiration of Apollo, now the language of even violence "on the arena" where there is sports, where battles are fought, enter into the arena--now entering "on the arena that remains" and now look at this, "Come into my breast and breathe there as when thou drewest Marsyas from the scabbard of his limbs," an echo of the struggle between the poet and the god. He does not want to be like Marsyas because Marsyas, out of presumption--now you understand the language of restraint and withholding--out of presumption, Marsyas had tried to outdo Apollo, and, of course, was defeated by Apollo and flayed by Apollo. Dante does not want to--what this is about the fear in the battle for the description of Paradise, the fear that he may be usurping God's role. The fear that he may be transgressing and violating that which is the sovereign claim of the gods.



So he continues now: "O power divine," so that's one of the images of fear of blasphemy, fear of transgression, and this will continue. Remember the possibility of hubris, in other words. And then it continues, "O power divine, if thou grant me so much of thy self that I may show forth the shadow of the blessed kingdom imprinted in my brain, thou shalt see me come to thy chosen tree," of laurel, "and crown myself then with those leaves of which the theme and thou will make me worthy. So seldom, father, are they gathered for triumph of Caesar or of poet--fault and shame of human wills--that Peneian bow must beget gladness in the glad Delphic god when it makes any long for it. A great flame follows a little spark," etc.



And then, "The lamp of the world"--I'll just give you this--Dante is approaching, he's moving. He thinks he's on earth and he discovers--I will not go on into details--he's in the Heaven--of the Moon. So he describes here, this is the image at the bottom of page 21, line 65 and following: "Beatrice stood with her eyes fixed only on the eternal wheels, and on her I fixed mine withdrawn from above. At her aspect, I was changed within as was Glaucus when he tasted of the herb that made him one among the other gods in the sea."



It's a story of--clearly the pilgrim is moving into another level of experience and a level of being, and he remarks on the transformation that he is undergoing. The emphasis falls--and the distance between--the Ovidian account of Glaucus who believes that he's immortal and jumps into the water of the tasting of some herbs, and Dante himself has indicated by that little preposition 'within.' The transformation occurs in Dante from within himself not in some literal way outside--on the outside.



Then he continues, "The passing beyond the humanity cannot be set forth in words; let the examples suffice, therefore, for him to whom grace reserves the experience." The experience the pilgrim is having is unique and irreducible, and the poem can only be read as an example, as an account of what has happened to him.



Then he continues, "If I was only that part of me which Thou createdst last, Thou knowest, Love that rules the heavens, who with Thy light didst raise me." Your notes, your footnotes will tell you that this is a reference to the Second Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter XII, by Paul, by St. Paul, where he also tells the story of his being rapt to the third heaven. We have then two accounts in Canto I of experiences--one is that--of encounters with the divine. One is that of the profanation by Marsyas and the other one is by St. Paul, who as you recall, Dante casts as one of the possible models for him. He says, when at the beginning he has to set out on a journey, he says, "I'm not Aeneas, I'm not Paul." Now we see how Paul comes into play. Who am I then? That was the whole thrust of the poem.



What happens to Paul? Paul goes to the third heaven and people have a way of--had a way in the Middle Ages especially, so how many heavens are there? The third heaven--what is meant by the third heaven was the third mode of vision. There are levels of vision that they emphasize. There is a literal level, the carnal worldly level. There's an imaginative vision, and then there is the ecstatic vision that Paul had. The thing is, in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, is that Paul went to the third heaven, had the vision of God, the beatific vision, he returned and could not speak about it, because what he saw had to be kept wrapped in silence.



This is now--Dante is between, on the one hand Marsyas and that fear of profanation, and now Paul. It is as if he also is transgressing the teaching of Paul. The whole of Paradise is about limits and the impossibility of establishing clear limits. He will do what Paul himself could not do. Paul kept quiet in the belief that the silence was the proper language of his sublime experience. Dante will go on speaking until it's possible for him to do so--until finally he really has forgotten everything that he has seen. You see how he is casting himself? His own poetic powers, his own subjectivity between two different modalities. He doesn't want to go as presumptuously far as Marsyas did. He does not want to retreat as Paul did.



I really think that I should let you know--;it's a little digression, before we go into the second part of the canto. In Cantos I and II where Dante is really going to face a peculiar issue, the universe I'm in. Is it a material universe? That's the thrust of Canto II. Is this a natural--part of the natural world or not? Of course, he goes on talking about the spots on the Moon, etc., we'll come to that. Here in Canto I, we shall see that he's going to discuss the arrangement of the cosmos. You have to know, I want you to--I want to share with you a couple of paragraphs of a letter that Dante writes to introduce Paradise.



This is what had happened. He lives in Ravenna when he is writing. He's probably in Ravenna by the time he writes the earthly paradise. As you know, he makes references to the Garden of Eden in terms of the park, the pinewood, the wood of pine trees around the city, and we do know that he would live and die in Ravenna. He decides to send the first ten cantos of Paradise to the so-called Cangrande, the great dog of Verona, who had been his patron for a number of years and he introduces those ten cantos that he sends with the letter called, The Letter to Cangrande in Italian. It's the--Dante writes--you know that, this is the tenth letter of a number of letters that he writes.



This is the--let me just read this--it's a kind of glossing. It explains the genre of the poem explains what his models have been, and how it has to be read. Look what he says about this circumlocution here about Paul the Apostle. This is from Paragraph 27. It's not a really long letter but I couldn't read the whole thing without putting you all to sleep.



"The philosopher presents an argument consonant with the above in the first book On Heaven," the philosopher meaning Aristotle, "where he says that a heaven has material more honorable than that of other heavens, beneath it to the extent that it has this more distant than they from the earth." The nobility in the hierarchical structure. The nobility of matter will depend on its proximity to the source of light and life. "To this might be added what the Apostle told the Ephesians concerning Christ, who ascended above all the heavens that he might feel all things. This is the heaven of the Lord's pleasures to which pleasures Ezekiel refers, in accusing Lucifer, 'thou wast the seal of resemblance full of wisdom and perfect and beauty. Thou wast in the pleasure of the Paradise of God.' After having said, in this circumlocution, that he was in the part of Paradise, he continues," meaning, meaning I, himself, "by stating that he saw things which he in this sense cannot relate. And he gives the cause of this saying that the intellect goes so deeply into its desire itself, which is God that the memory cannot follow.



To understand what this means it should be noted that in this life, the human intellect, because of the affinity it has, for the separated intellectual substance with which it shares its nature, reaches such a height of its exaltation, when it is exalted, that upon its return to itself, having transcended the ordinary capacity of men, memory fails. This idea is implied to us by the Apostle addressing the Corinthians," the passage I just read, "where he writes, "I knew a man, whether in the body or out of the body I know not, God knoweth, who was caught up to the third heaven and who heard secret words who it is not granted to man--which it is not granted to man to author. See, when the intellect had passed beyond the bounds of human capacity, in its exhaltation, it could not remember what happened outside these bounds and the same idea is implied to us in Matthew where the three disciples fell down on their faces and told nothing about it afterwards as if they had forgotten.



And it is written in Ezekiel, "I saw and I felt upon my face." But if these passages don't satisfy the skeptical, let them read Richard of St. Victor and his book on contemplation, or Bernard of Clairvaux, in his book on consideration, or Augustine, in his book on the capacity of the soul, and they will be no longer skeptical. Or if they should bark out against the possibility of such exaltation, because the sinfulness of the speaker, they should read Daniel where they would find that even Nebuchadnezzar, by divine permission, saw something which was a warning to sinners and then forgot it. For he who make the Sun to rise upon the good and bad, and reign it upon the just--and the unjust--manifests His Glory to all the living, no matter how evil they are, sometimes mercifully, for the sake of the conversion, sometimes harshly as a punishment and to a greater or less degree according to his will."



The reason why I want to share this passage with you is that it really places with some clarity--it casts, it projects a light of--that makes things clear about the status of the poem. The poem invokes a number of models which are all in the contemplative philosophical tradition. Or again, Dante is not a student of the prophetic tradition, but he makes them agree with the same mode of the visionary. You see, that's what the prophets do, they see in order to speak. If you are readers of the Bible, you probably have heard and you may be right, and if you were to believe, that there really is no necessary link in the Bible between vision--between the mystics, those who have visions and those who are prophets. They are different experiences of two different states, not so for Dante. It may be true in the Bible that they are two--Dante thinks that the two will go together. You have to have vision in order to speak and that's really what the--it helps us understand the sense of poetry with which Dante invokes here at the beginning of Paradiso.



Let me go now, Dante has to go on--tries to find out on lines 90 or so--how, asks the question about what has been happening to him. How has he been moving--he thought he was on Earth and the earthly paradise, now he seems to be on another planet. Line 95: "If I was freed from my perplexity," Beatrice dismisses some fancies of his, "thou makest thyself dull with false fancies, so that thou canst not see as thou wouldst if thou hadst cast them off. You are no longer on earth as you think, but lightening flying from its own place, never ran so fast as thou returnest to thine."



The journey--Dante is traveling so fast, the speed of light, to go from the earthly paradise to the Moon. "If I was freed from my perplexity, by the brief words she smiled to me, I was more entangled in a new one and I said: 'I was content already, resting from a great wonder, but now I wonder how I should be rising above these light substances."



Two or three things, one that I should mention to you and I will never mention them again, but Paradiso is all--unfolds the whole--the narrative economy with the pilgrim experiencing perplexities and doubts, which Beatrice will clarify and in turn those responses go on triggering new doubts. It's really a question of doubts and answers in an unending process of the mind enlarging itself and always filled with wonder, and that's really the language that I want to start emphasizing for you here. How Dante is using this figure of admiration, he calls it, line 97: "I was content. . . resting from a great wonder, now I wonder."



And this--you will see, it continues throughout the beginning of Paradise. What is this wonder? It is, first of all, a definition of the aesthetics of Paradise. Wonder translates the Latin, admiratio, that's the Italian word, in English, 'admiration,' which actually is to be understood, admiratio, the Latin; English, admiration, but for the Middle Ages, it's nothing less than the sublime. If you wanted to translate, the medieval admiratio, or admiration, into an equivalent English--an aesthetic English term would be the 'sublime.' The Pseudo-Dyonisius idea of the sublime, it's not a romantic idea, it's probably--you are led to believe it's an old idea. It's a Greek notion of--indicating the mind that is overwhelmed with the spectacle of things that dwarf the mind. Things that the mind cannot quite comprehend, that's the sublime. They can be the sublime in nature, they can be the sublime in art, they can be other forms of the sublime.



Dante's mode of Paradise is indeed--this is the oscillation of a mind that is opening up, full of doubts, which really now that's where he becomes subjective, critical, and then the experience of the sublime overwhelming him. This idea of the sublime now introduces a picture of the universe the way Beatrice will deliver it.



"She, therefore, after a sigh of pity," I love her I must say, the way she's going to treat Dante like a child at this point, "bent her eyes on me with a look of a mother, a look a mother casts on her delirious child." Delirious in the etymological sense. I don't think that he's really actually crazy delirious, or the word English, the word we use delirium seems to me--simply means 'getting off the furrow.' Lirum, in Latin, means the furrow. Whatever you go off rut, as it were, of some--the furrow that you are tracing then you are delirious, you are going off on your own, in some kind of silly direction.



"And she began. . ." That's the first picture of the universe. We are going to find that this picture is going to be refined in a number of ways, but this is what he can understand now. "All things, whatsoever, have order among themselves--that's the premise in Dante's cosmos. I will just add for you, and she continues, "And this is the form that makes the universe resemble God." This is--so that the universe has a likeness to the divinity. Two things to be said immediately: the word order, in case you don't know, is ordo--means beauty. It's the idea that it's the symmetrical arrangement of proportionate, full of light and clarity, structure of all--of the whole: ordo. Even the word forma, one of it means form, means that there's a shape to things but it translates the Latin pulchritudo, another synonym for beauty.



The picture of the universe that Dante--that Beatrice evokes for Dante is one of beauty, which in turn, implies vision, because beauty is defined as that which is seen gives me pleasure. This is the famous definition of Aquinas that which is seen gives pleasure, that's beauty. It's a sort of subjective idea of beauty. Here of course, Beatrice thinks of an objective order of the world. It's not the fact that I like it only, though Aquinas also gives that explanation of beauty, that which seen, pleases, that implies a self, a taste, a personal taste, a very rich medieval understanding of the aesthetic experience, but there is also an objective idea of the whole universe laid out in order, shape, clarity. These are the number, proportion, clarity; these are the attributes of beauty and this cosmological beauty.



Let me just continue because this line, that the universe resembles God, seems to be such a nice way of thinking about the universe, but if you really think about it, it's really heretical proposition. The universe is like God? What about the evil that there is in the universe? Is it the idea that there is a continuity between God's transcendence and God's imminence, what's he saying? I know that he used to be a little bit like Marsyas and he just doesn't like--he just likes to be a little better than Paul, at least he's going to talk. But now this is really a strange statement and therefore has to be clarified and I think she will.



I talk like this because I have to explain that I just was looking at an old, a great text of--in view of my class today. Last night, I was reading a great text by A.O. Lovejoy, some of you may know him, he was a great--one of the truly great--an inventor, if one can speak this, of the whole idea of the history of ideas in the United States, he used to be a great professor in the 40s, 50s, and early 60s at Johns Hopkins and he wrote a great book, which I still advise people to read, The Great Chain of Being, because that's really the idea. The Great Chain of Being, it's this--what is this great chain of being? It's this virtual metaphor of the continuity between the world of unity and the world of multiplicity and plurality. It implies that we are only--that the universe is--this arrangement, the chain, an invisible chain. It's the idea that reappears in the eighteenth-century English literature Pope, for instance, he uses--I read this in Lovejoy.



The--but it also implies--it's a strange idea as it implies that the value of things, the values of every entity depends on the position one occupies in the various rings of the chain. So that if you are an angel then you're really above human beings who are made of both--who are beastly and angelic at the same time. We have this kind of paradoxical quality of being spiritual and animal at the same time. Then we, according to that idea, though some of you may doubt it, we are better than dogs and dogs are better than stones, and so on. It's in a kind of hierarchy, a system of degrees, and he, Lovejoy, goes on saying, well this is really the moment when Dante has--is adopting the idea of the great chain of being, and this great chain of being makes him really unorthodox. I want to tell you that that's not true because I think we should read more carefully this passage.



This is the beginning here, talking about this resemblance, how the universe resemble God. "Here," Beatrice continues, "the higher creatures see the impress of the Eternal Excellence which is the end for which that system itself is made. In the order I speak of all natures have their bent," we all have our own specific gravity. We're all drawn, we all are drawn by our desires. We go where our desire takes us, our desires, and so there's a kind of natural instinct, the natural movement in this way in which a stone, if you drop it, falls always to the ground naturally, because of its specific gravity and the fire, if you light a candle, the fire will always go up, instinctively. All things move according to their weight, according to their specific weight. It's a spiritual gravity.



Are we like that? Is that really what Dante's saying? He seems--that's what he seems to be saying, "according to their different lots, nearer to the source and farther from it; they move, therefore, to different ports over the great sea of being, each with an instinct given to it to bear it on: this bears fire up towards the Moon," by the way, this is really the passage--Dante's rewriting a passage from Augustine's Confessions, "this is the motive force in mortal creatures, this binds the earth together and makes it one. Not only the creatures that are without intelligence does this bow shoot, but those also who have intellect and love," meaning us. We have intellect and love. Remember the famous great poem from--about "women who have intellect and love"? Now we all have it, she says, "The providence that regulates all this makes forever quiet with its light, the heaven within which turns that of the greatest speed," on top, the Primo Mobile, "and thither now as to a place appointed the power of that bowstring is bearing us which aims at a joyous mark."



"It is true," now, that's the correction to Lovejoy's interpretation, "it is true that, as a shape often does not accord with the art's intention because the material is deaf and unresponsive, so sometimes the creature, having the power, thus impelled, to turn aside another way, deviates from this course, and, as fire may be seen to fall from a cloud," lightening for instance, light does not go always up, light can go also down, "and as fire may be seen to fall from a cloud, so the primal impulse, diverted by false pleasure, is turned to the earth."



In other words, within the description of the order of the cosmos, Beatrice goes on to say that human beings are the odd figures, that we, somehow, have the power to deviate from this pattern of order. That we can undo. We have this paradoxical freedom that makes us either stay within a particular idea of what God may have meant or really for us, or really breach that particular order. Human beings are the absurd elements in this ordered portrait of the universe. That is the whole statement of freedom; so that Dante is removing from a deterministic, that's what would make it into a heretical text, a deterministic idea of what the cosmos then.



"Then she turned her face again to the sky." Let me go--I'll go a little bit quickly on Canto II and so--but I will need a few minutes. Canto II, Dante now is on this fear of the Moon, if you know that, and there will be a discussion on the spots. There's this whole medieval legend: if you look at the Moon, a full Moon you see the dark spots and the legend was that Cain--the medieval legend--that Cain riding away from the knowledge of the murder of his brother had actually, with the help of God, God had removed him from the earth and had taken refuge there, and whatever we see there is just the imprint of Cain.



Dante dismisses this legend and goes on talking about science. She, Beatrice, will have a scientific discourse, and the question is: is this a natural cosmos or not? Do we see shades on the Moon simply because there's a density or not a rarity of matter? Or is it because, therefore, light has a way of going through this matter of the Moon? According to the principle, more or less, the rarity and density? Or is it because there's a different way in which light is distributed? The solution Dante gives, or Beatrice will give, is the second one. We see the shadows on the Moon simply because there is a different source of light.



In other words, the natural cosmos has to be understood in terms of its metaphysics. The physics has only--that can only be understood in terms of metaphysics, but what I want to stress to you is that the natural and the supernatural are always seen by Dante as holding hands together. They are not two separate worlds. They are not two separate dimensions. They are two different ways of looking at the same thing.



Now let's see how he introduces the canto, which I think is important for a number of reasons. Canto II: "O you who in a little bark," the language of humility is suspect at this point, because we know that the sublime is the mode, is the trope that he will use, "O you who in a little bark, you," he's addressing us; he's beginning to address readers, "eager to listen, have followed behind my ship, that singing makes her way, turn back to see your shores again; do not put forth on the deep, for, perhaps losing me, you would be left bewildered. The waters I take were never sailed before."



That's--it gives poignancy to the little bark. It's a little bark that is doing something, so mighty; I'm doing such a magnificent, extraordinary adventure. "The waters I take were never sailed before. Minerva breathes, Apollo pilots me, and the nine Muses show me the Bears."



And then, a restriction of the agents that he has been addressing: "You other few," a kind of reductive apostrophe, the very few here. It's the crème de la crème, he would say of you guys. A very few who really know and are interested in the mysteries in the most esoteric, arcane sciences that he's going to put out here. "You are the few that reached out early," the language actually says, "turn your neck." This is really a poor translation. I don't know what other translators say. "You are the few who turn your neck," because it's the whole idea, another form of presumption.



You may have heard, you may recall, in the Bible about the stiff neck. Of course, the neck is always the emblem of conversion when you want to--for Plato, you reach a conversion you really turn the neck, that's all you do. Not for Dante, Dante you can turn upside down, but in Plato, you turn the neck and you know where the source of light is. The biblical counter to that is there may be the stiff neck, those who do not--who lack humility. Behind this metaphor, there is the whole idea that what makes a human being--that what confers dignity to a human being, is the power that we, among all animals have, to look up at the sky and see and look at the stars and therefore wonder. All other animals are always looking down. We are alone.



Of course, there are other people who believe that what makes human beings--particular dignity to human beings--is something else. Of all of them, as those who said, that we speak of course, but of all of them, the one I really like is that we are capable of laughing. That's the explanation: it's an Aristotelian idea, but it's explanation of comedy. Here, that's the allusion though, you are--the few who could be also implying, like me, do not be too arrogant about this. ". . .who reached out early for angels' bread," knowledge, for knowledge, "by which man here lived but never come from it satisfied, you may indeed put forth your vessel on the salt depths, holding my furrow before the water returns smooth again. Those glorious ones who cross the sea to Colchis were not amazed," once again the language of admiration, the language is sublime; I'll come to this in a moment, "as you shall be when they saw Jason turned ploughman."



Well, the metaphor of the journey by water, to describe now an aerial journey, so an anti--Dante is clearly thinking of that metaphoric compression that we saw in Ulysses. You remember the sailing that became a mad flight, now here it's the flight that becomes a sailing. The notion that he is guiding us, so the sense of his responsibility is turning us back, unlike Ulysses; we dispose of that mythic resonance very quickly. What he's really saying is that the journey we're undertaking, which is the reading of this book, can become extraordinarily dangerous. The reason it's dangerous is because he is traveling over water that leaves no wake behind it. This is the--what I would call the danger of the seafaring. In seafaring, you have no pre-established routes. There is no way, no road, no path that can be there fixed and you can find, so he's inviting us to keep very close to him, but we might be losing him at the same time. The journey by water is not exactly like the journey by land, because there are no pre-established directions marked for us.



Then finally, this allusion to Jason; so he's not like--Ulysses is like the hero of the Argonauts, who has gone looking for the golden fleece. And it's an image that he appears at the end of Paradiso XXXIII, where Dante has the god Neptune from the depth wondering at the extraordinary power of the human imagination, the human will. They wonder at the heroics of Jason. Neptune is without--he can't quite believe what he sees. It's clearly an allusion for what Dante himself is going to do, in seeing God face to face, and then returning to the earth.



What I want to emphasize, and here really I will stop and give you a chance to ask me some questions, the--is that we probably never read--I think we skipped Canto XVIII of Inferno. I think we did, I don't think that I asked you to read it, and I don't presume that you would go and read what I don't ask you to read. You never really did, but in Canto XVIII, Dante--if you go and read Canto XVIII of Inferno, you will find Jason punished among the flatters and the seducers, because he is famous for seducing Hypsiphyle and abandoning her. It's a version of what happened to Theseus and Medea, it's one of the great fixations of Greek--one of the great situations of--repeated situations of a Greek tragedy.



An interesting thing is that Dante now is distinguishing between the ethical judgment of Jason, who is behind in Inferno XVIII, and the imaginative aesthetic value of the adventure itself. Now, is he saying therefore, that the good and the beautiful are really two distinct things? He's warning us about that and that's where I want to pick up the conversation next time when we are going to be talking about the value of images and the ethics of images. Let me finish here now and see if there are some questions which I will try to answer. Please.



Student: Dante has--turning their minds to a bread of angels and then he talks about the image of water and all images and symbols that come in. It seems a little shaky to me in talking about [inaudible], is that you're turning your mind to bread, it's very strange thinking. I was just wondering if you could talk about that symbolism or significance of that, of turning your mind to bread.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The question is about explaining the image of bread in the beginning of Canto II of Paradise, where Dante says, addressing the readers, that they are turning their neck too early to the bread of angels." I have a question for you; in what way do you find it strange?



Student: I just mean--well I have "eyes" instead of "turning your neck, but just talking about the intellect with the bread--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Okay, all right. The--well the bread of angels, so I would see the bread of angels, and the bread of angels is knowledge, so I think that the implied--the transference, the metaphorical reading by Mandelbaum is accurate. I wish it were more literal, but just as I think that--my own translation of course--Sinclair also, it's one of the few times that he deviates from the literal burden, because the literal burden of the metaphor has a number of resonances which I think are valuable, like exactly the stiff neck, the turning of the neck.



In the context like Paradise, where Dante starts out by clearly locating himself within some contradictory possibilities: the possibility of a transgression or the possibility of trespassing, in the case of Paul. So where exactly is he? That image is his--by the image of the turning of the neck early for the bread of angels is also--reverberates with anxieties that he has about his own adventure and his own enterprise. That's--I don't know if this answers your perplexity but--



Student: So the bread of angels is really knowledge and then--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Knowledge, the bread of angels is knowledge. Yeah, that which--the idea--it's the idea that you find in the Banquet, that why do philosophers--well I'm sure that it's literally true that there is nothing better for a great philosophical conversation than a glass of wine, and you sit around and you talk, but it clearly is--it's the food of the mind, the food of knowledge, the taste of knowledge, etc., all those metaphors.



Student: Also can you just kind of [inaudible]?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Yes. Since--that's very good, that's very good, because I think--can that be also grace? Yes, that's very good, because we are here in the world of Paradise and I know that I'm giving a sort of philosophical emphasis, but there is also the--with Paul, there is also the theological--we are dealing with the poetic, more than the philosophical--the poetic and the theological to that. Absolutely, very good, thank you. Other questions? Please.



Student: In the beginning of Canto I when he describes how God sheds more or less più e meno light on different parts, the phrase più e meno is also used in Purgatory to describe different aesthetic perspectives, is Dante trying to bring that in here or is he just talking about the hierarchy of who God chooses to shed light on?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Well good--the question is in line 3 of Paradiso I, Dante uses a phrase, "more and less," talk about the light that shines on creation according to the principle of more or less. Then the concern is that Dante uses this phrase quite often in Canto X of Purgatory, where, in the context of art, there is that phrase about--I call it, approximation. Is Dante joining the two? Does he want us to put the two things together?



Let me answer that. Far be it for me ever to say, no Dante, does not want us to do that. The whole reading, if there is a principle to the way I read, is that the more echoes you can find the better, I think, that we serve--the better we understand the poem and we reserve--I take it to be the intention of the poet. I had never really conjoined the two in my own mind for one simple reason, because here I think it's--Dante's asserting the principle of hierarchy.



I think that in Purgatorio Dante is doing something completely different since the context there is pride, he's really reversing all forms of--what is the measure of the human beings? How do we measure human beings? I could say that this is actually a problem that was here. Every time you have a hierarchy I'm really placing myself in between an order, a rank of different values, and so I can say that that is also happening in Canto I. Frankly, the context will not allow me to go too much beyond this. Yeah, there is a way in which every time I talk of hierarchy I'm talking about a rank ordering, and therefore, the sense of my place it's a little bit removed from the concerns here of--it's there but not the most compelling argument for me.



You may prove me wrong, of course, then I would say this issue appears. We join things together; let's try to keep also each entity in its own specificity, so that we really understand that the--how far his thinking can go with the representation of a scene--then another. I like that, good. I like the fact that you joined, you combined. Yes?



Student: I had a question, who is this audience? Homer, Virgil and later Shakespeare, we know that they are writing or speaking with a wide range of people [inaudible]. But now when we read him in Paradise, I'm so aware of how much one would need to know about philosophy and theology and poetics before you appreciate what he did.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: That's--the question is who on earth could Dante's audience be? We know who the audience of Homer, Virgil can be--or is, but what about the audience, whether someone has to know philosophy, theology, and so on.



My answer is you're right, that we do know roughly about Homer, because after all, there are--there is always the Modicus in the Odyssey who is singing to the audience at court until Ulysses appears and rhapsodes and Homer is one of the rhapsodes, or maybe the one who stitches together the voices of the rhapsodes. That gives us a miniature account of an audience. With Dante it's a little bit more difficult to understand. It's, I think, I can tell you now contemporary poets think that Dante's poem, especially Inferno, ought to be read in the streets like raps odes going on the ancient Greece, they would go from one fair, one marketplace, and the day of the market to another, and gather people together, the feast days of the community, but I can be a little bit more romantic.



I think it's true, but that Dante probably did read some of his cantos when he was in Ravenna or Verona to the--in the evening gathering, the circles of courtiers, but I don't think of Dante as a courtier. He doesn't seem to have the values. He has aristocratic values of the mind of course, but he doesn't seem to share the social problems of the court. I can think of some aspects of Shakespeare being the poet of the court. The poet who would be read by the queen and he wants--he wants the queen to read his text, or the theatre, we know about the theatre.



A part of Paradiso was not known at all to some people--the first ten cantos were sent to the patron who probably gave what today we would call a grant, you apply for a grant. He would give him a gift for the great, extraordinary dedication, and that's what patrons would--the role they would play. I think that Dante--and this is going to be very romantic--à la Benjamin now--I think that Dante writes this kind of poetry at the end for God. I don't think that he could care. I don't think he has an empirical audience in mind. He really means the few. I don't think it's a rhetorical strategy at the end: you few who are going to read that.



And it's too much written--it's written too much in the mode of a quest for God. A prayer, actually it's a moment at one point where language bends into a prayer and--with a language of a longing that goes with prayer, that I really think it's meant for God. I mean it in a very serious way, and it ends with a prayer: the great Canto XXXIII is an extraordinary prayer. That's my answer.



I'm sure that the--I have a dear friend who wants to make a movie about reading Dante in the streets. That's fine, but I'm not sure that that's what Dante thought. I mean I'm really not sure about that. Great question, thank you, we'll see you next time.



[end of transcript]

This lecture deals with Paradise IV, VI and X. At the beginning of Paradise IV, the pilgrim raises two questions to which the remainder of the canto is devoted. The first concerns Piccarda (Paradise III) who was constrained to break her religious vows. The second concerns the arrangement of the souls within the stars. The common thread that emerges from Beatrice's reply is the relationship between intellect and will. Just as Piccarda's fate reveals the limitations of the will, the representation of the souls in Paradise, a condescension to the pilgrim's human faculty, as Beatrice explains, reveal the limitations of the intellect. By dramatizing the limitations of both faculties, Dante underscores their interdependence. In Paradise VI, Dante turns his attention to politics. Through the emperor Justinian's account of Roman history, Dante places the antithetical views of Virgil and Augustine in conversation. Key to understanding Dante's position between these two extremes is the vituperation of contemporary civil strife that follows Justinian's encomium of the Empire. In Paradise X, the pilgrim enters the Heaven of the Sun, where St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure introduce him to two rings of spirits celebrated for their wisdom. The unlikely presence of Solomon and Siger of Brabant among the first of these concentric rings is discussed as a poetic reflection on the boundaries between knowledge and revelation.



Reading assignment:

Dante, Paradise: IV, VI, X

Transcript



November 4, 2008



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: With Canto IV of Paradise, we are now in the Heaven of the Moon, which as you know by now is also the heaven of grammar, and I will show you in what way this is the heaven of grammar.



In Paradiso III, Dante meets two women, the empress Constance, and the irony of the name is a little bit obvious among the inconstant spirits, and Piccarda. Piccarda who also had joined the cloister had taken the name of sister Constance; she too was forced to leave the cloister on account of her brothers, Corso Donati's political maneuvers. He wanted her married to an ally of his. With Canto IV, Dante returns on this issue, which is the issue really of the will. What is the will? How can somebody else's force on me, compel me to do things that I am accountable for? In what way am I accountable for somebody else's imposition of, in this case, his will on me, Dante wants to know what is the will here?



There is another question that forces him to--another problem forces him to raise a question in Canto IV, and the question is Dante's wonder about the souls in the various stars. They are disposed and arranged in the various planets; he sees some souls here on the Moon, so he wonders are we in Plato's paradise? Is this--is Plato right in believing that the souls at death return to the stars, to the place of origin? These are the two questions that he has to raise.



The canto begins with a statement that is an extraordinary--I will try to explain how the two questions are related, in what way they are related, they are not just absolutely arbitrary. There is a sort of link between them. Canto IV begins in a very--with a rather strange formulation about the nature of the will and the freedom of the will. Since that is what Piccarda's situation had forced Dante to raise, what is the will? It's somebody else's will forcing me to do something? Am I still responsible for it? Dante has to clarify what the will is, so he starts with a statement that seems to suggest that the will is inert. This is a poem that the will cannot really make decisions, first of all. The will, given the opportunity to choose between two contradictory objects of desire, can't quite move one way or the other.



You need the intellect, that's the argument that makes the will take--make a decision, will force the will to make a decision. And this is the way he starts, "Between two foods at equal distance and equally tempting a free man would die of hunger before he brought either to his lips--so a lamb would stand between the cravings of two fierce wolves, in equal fear of both." There seems to be a kind of will that joins human beings and animals, such that paralyzes us, the choices paralyze the will, so that maybe when we speak about freedom of the will we are not speaking really about freedom of the will, we're speaking about the freedom of the will in the intellect. It's the intellect that has to be free so that's really the argument.



"So would a hound stand between two does; therefore," this are three images that introduce Dante's own doubts and perplexities. He has two questions; each of them seems more compelling than the other and does not know what to ask first. "So would a hound stand between two does; therefore, if I kept silence, urged equally by my doubts, I neither blame nor commend myself, since it was of necessity. I was silent, but my desire was painted on my face and with it my question, far more warmly than in plain words." Dante is indeed talking about the limitations of the will not that the will is--this is an Averroist position. It's a position of a radical interpretation of Aristotle. That the will is inert, that you always need some kind of-- the power of the intellect to make you decide. The intellect cannot move but the intellect can make the will move so that the statement has to be understood as one of the hierarchy between intellect and will.



The argument now continues. "Beatrice did as did Daniel when he appeased the wrath of Nebuchadnezzar that made him cruelly unjust, and she said: 'I see well how one desire and another draw thee, so that thy eagerness itself binds itself and does not get breath. Thou reasonest: 'If the right will endures, on what ground does another's violence lessen the measure of my desert?'" How can it be that Piccarda, who was forced by somebody else's will, seems to appear in the lowest birth of beatitude? She is on the Moon. Why should she be so undeserving of a closer intimacy to God? That's actually his question. "Also, it gives thee perplexity that the souls seem to return to the stars, in agreement with Plato's teaching. These are the questions that press equally on thy will. First, then, I shall deal with that which has more poison in it."



It's very interesting; first of all, the language of poison that this idea of what is dangerous of the two questions is not the question about the will. The question which is more dangerous is the question that deals with representation. What is the mode of appearance of the souls in heaven and why should representation--do the souls inhabit the stars? Are they showing themselves forth here? It is a make believe that they are here, it's a fiction, it's pyrotechnics if you wish, and once the night is over then the souls return to the proper abode, which or may not be visible to the pilgrim. Is this a theatrical performance, and why if this is a theatrical, and it is, why should that be a question that has more poison in it? What's so dangerous about representation? That's really the argument, as Dante puts it forth, here at the beginning at least. She goes on--first of all let's discuss it and then we'll--as we discuss it we try to understand the question why this is representation such a hard issue.



She says, "Not he of the Seraphim," this is lines--Paradiso IV, lines 28, "that is most made one with God," in the choir of angels, those who are closest to God, "not Moses, Samuel, or whichever John thou wilt--;none," the apostle of the visionary, the seer, "not Mary herself, have their seat another heaven from these spirits that have now appeared to thee." This is the poetics of Paradise, by the way, that we are really confronted with. How do the souls show themselves forth to the pilgrim? What is the mode of Dante's representation in Paradise? "From these spirits that have now appeared--nor for their being have more years or fewer, but all make fair the first circle and hold sweet life in different measure as they feel more and less the eternal breath. These," what you are seeing here on the Moon, "have shown themselves here, not that this sphere is allotted to them, but in sign of the heavenly rank that is least exalted." They have--they enjoy a lower degree of beatitude than the other souls so they just appear here for your benefit.



In other words, the whole of Paradise, the representation of Paradise if fictional and once the pilgrim disappears so will the souls vanish. They will return into the bosom of Abraham according to biblical accounts. "It is necessary," now Dante explains why the need for this allegorization, this allegorical language, allegorical representation. "It is necessary to speak thus to your faculty, since only from sense perception does it grasp, that which it then makes fit for the intellect." The whole of Paradise is literally an accommodation of varieties, of realities that far exceed the powers of our mind and now its condescension. The souls condescend to show themselves down to us, so Dante first of all, has been talking about the limitations of the will, now he's talking about the limitations of the intellect, so these are the two issues that join intellectually speaking in Canto IV, and each seems to need the other and be made stronger in the light of the other.



Dante goes on explaining this mode of representation, which he says is not only true for Paradise, but it's true for Scripture, it's true for all the iconography of the churches, and that's what he says, it's necessary to speak, "For this reason Scripture condescends," in the literal sense of the word, the etymological sense, it comes down to us. It accommodates itself to our limited faculties, "condescends to your capacity and attributes hands and feet to God, having another meaning," that's the definition of an allegory. The Bible indeed speaks of the hand of God; it's an anthropomorphic trope, God has no feet and has no hand, but it means it's something else. It means that power of God or the majesty of God, the feet of God, etc. In other words, there is a language of representation even in the Bible that in many ways authorizes Dante's own juice of the presentation. Is this clear so far? Good, there's no real difficulty of this issue.



And then it continues, "For this reason," it says that, "and Holy Church," that's what happens in the Bible when we talk about the feet of God, we read about the feet of God, "Holy Church represents to you with human aspect," angels that have no human form, "Gabriel and Michael and the other who made Tobit whole again." Now the distinction between the metaphor, the platonic metaphor, and the biblical allegory. "What Timaeus argues about the souls is not like that which we see here; for what he says, he seems to hold for truth," that's already one basic difference. It seems that what for the Bible is a metaphor becomes true in the context of Timaeus. "He says," Plato says, "the soul returns to its own star, from which he believes it to have been separated when nature gave it for a form." He literalizes the idea of the souls returning--returned to the stars, "but perhaps his view is other than his words express and may have a meaning not to be despised. If he means to return to these wheels of the honour and the blame of their influence," if by returning to the stars he seems to imply that at the fall of the souls, the souls go through the various stains of the planets and then they return to the planets from which they originated, "his bow perhaps strikes on a certain truth. This principle, ill-understood, once he misled almost the whole world, so that it went astray, naming them Jupiter, and Mercury, and Mars," etc.



Dante's--then Beatrice says--let me just continue, "'The other doubt," this is the language of doubts; intellectual doubts which are always part of truth for Dante. It's the truth that generates doubt because the mind is exactly the way he described the will; both are restless, both need nourishment, constant nourishment, so these are intellectual doubts. "The other doubt that troubles thee has less poison," he repeats this idea, less danger. He hasn't said yet why the world of representation is dangerous. And actually, he leaves it at this; "because its mischief could not lead thee away from me. That our justice appears unjust in the eyes of mortals is evidence of faith." We'll go back and we'll go in a moment.



But let me stay with the first question that Beatrice has resolved for the pilgrim and for us. She's distinguishing between the theology, the biblical theology and let's call it the philosophical allegory; biblical allegory and philosophical allegory. The language of metaphor in the Bible and the language of metaphor, truth in Plato. Dante himself clearly is here legitimizing his own use of metaphor. The whole poem is indeed a metaphorical journey whereby Dante is both simultaneously biblical and also philosophical. He's finding and trying to decide on the common ground, the metaphorical language that the Bible and Plato will use, and therefore himself.



Why is representation so dangerous? That it has so much poison in it and Beatrice twice goes back to that image, and I think that the answer is this. That representation has the power to cancel or erase the world of references which it represents. Representation has the power to make appearances the only reality, simulacra, the only reality that we manage to see. It literally covers, it eclipses all references; that's what makes representation so dangerous. It has a--we are by virtue of the representation, we end up in a kind of quandary in the predicament of believing that that's all that there is. That which is visible is the only real thing, and invest--the appearance invest that simulacrum with the sort of value that it normally does not have, because it actually--it points normally that doesn't have--because it points for Dante to essences behind it. We have seen here the souls, the souls are all--this is not the real home for the spirits, the real home is somewhere else.



We may make the mistake Dante made of believing that these souls actually live on the Moon, and therefore, that we are in a platonic other world, in another world where the souls go back to it. The journey of Dante is the journey between images and testing of what these images may mean, finding out whether behind these images there is some kind of substance, some kind of reality. Dante literally moves between the two worlds and things, images, or representations and in appearances and the world of essences, and tries to join the two of them. So you understand why representation is the key issue here.



Let me also add that this discourse of allegory justifies and gives you an idea why Dante has been--that this is the heaven of grammar, since the allegorical discourse is a grammatical issue. Remember that I have been talking about each planet seems to deploy--well, one of the liberal arts, but this is the reason why we can connect grammar and the Moon.



The other problem that Dante raises in Canto IV is the question of the will and he--that's an easier issue because he just goes on distinguishing between what we call a conditional will: the will--what we will whenever we are beset by circumstances that force on us some resolutions and then absolute will: the absolute will of the martyrs of those who are, for instance, who are unwavering, unfaltering in the confrontation with particular experiences. The souls of this--of Piccarda and Costanza, they were really exercising their own conditional will, not their absolute will, so it's an interesting distinction and we leave it at that.



We move now instead to the heaven of Canto VI, the heaven of dialectics, of Mercury. Why Mercury is the--why should he be the god, this is the planet Mercury but the god tied with dialectics or logic, which are really not exactly the same thing, but Dante does use them interchangeably. Hermes is of course, the god known as the psychopomp, the one who brings--do you know that part of mythology? The god who brings messages to the realm of shades, the realm of the dead that carries the souls to Hades, that's one of the ideas of the resonances of Mercury. Now there is also others, the Mercury is the god who--the bearer of laws, the bearer of messages of the gods to human beings, the bearer of laws, the god of the marketplace though it doesn't seem to have much impact, a particular resonance of the myth to this canto.



This is the logic--what is the dialectics? What are we to understand by dialectics? It's one of the arts of the trivium and it is the art of by which--by means of which, which provides really a method, that's the way it's defined. It provides a method to distinguish between truth and falsehoods, so it's--let's see how this is going to be present. Interestingly enough, Dante is really talking about laws here, and actually here he meets the great theorist, the Emperor Justinian who is responsible and who is usually acknowledged as the one who favored the real organization of Roman law in Byzantium, which is where he lived. Dante not only meets Justinian but he also tells the story of Rome, so it's a canto about history. The idea is what's the rationality of Roman history, is there a rationality to it? If dialectics is also the science of the power to distinguish between falsehood and truths, it's also a rational discipline, the discipline that follows the rule of reason by means of which one can go on making those distinctions.



So the question becomes, what is the rationality of the Roman Empire? What kind of justice was there in it so laws, and the same word logos, seems to be ruling the unfolding of this canto. It begins with the story of Constantine who we have met before for the famous--as accountable for the donation of Constantine that you may know. It's the famous alienation of imperial property to the Church for Constantine's token of gratitude to the Pope, Sylvester, who had cured him of leprosy and this gave rise to a famous, much debated donation, which Dante dismisses, Dante views as nothing less transgressive, nothing less tragic and disruptive of the order of the world then for instance Adam's sin. It's really the same cosmic proportion because it mixes together the sacred and the profane. It makes the Pope a temporal ruler and that is the ultimate degradation of the moral authority, the exercise of moral authority from Dante's viewpoint.



So, this is the illusion to the donation, but the illusion to the donation here is taken into--the reference to Constantine has a slightly different sense. "After Constantine," he says, "turned back the eagle against the course of heaven where it had followed behind him of old that took Lavinia to wife, for two hundred years or more the bird of God," the eagle, the emblem of the Empire, "remained on the bounds of Europe, near the mountains from which it first came forth; and there ruled the world under the shadow of the sacred wings, passing from hand to hand, and, so changing, came into mine. I was Caesar," the imperial title, the imperial persona has disappeared and now he appears as "I am Justinian." Here, once again, the use of that shift of verbs from the past to the present, "And now, I am in the eternal life, I am myself a Justinian, "who, by will of the Primal Love which moves me, removed from the laws what was superfluous and" and then made the distinction." This is really a definition of dialectics. Made the distinction between what was "superfluous and vain" and what was essential.



Let me give a gloss on this first paragraph, the allusion is to Constantine's moving, that's the other sense, not only the donation, but moving the seat of the empire from Rome to the east, Byzantium. This is seen as the violation of a metaphor of history, a paradigm of history, which was called translatio imperii. What is this? What does it mean? It's the idea of, you know in the Middle Ages they speak of translation, all the time the translation of studies, translation of the empire. The idea that the whole of history follows a pattern, a movement from east to west, and therefore, the duration of history is patterned on the movement of the Sun from east to west and with the idea that when the empire reaches the most western point, the western most point of the map that's going to be also the end of history. It's the end of the day, the sunset, and the end of history.



Constantine, by turning back this translation, this movement, that's what it means, a transport, a transfer of the Empire actually delays the apocalyptic denuma, the end of time and the end of the day, and for Dante this is a major violation of the economy of history. It begins with this idea of a violation, a tragic violation of history brought about by Constantine. The allusion of course is--the other illusion is to Aeneas with whom the Empire had started after the fall of Troy had started to go westward and then Constantine reverses all of this. You understand, by the way, this is--I mean, this as on Election Day; I really should mention this, that the whole idea of manifest destiny is really based on this principle of the translatio imperii, because the Empire moves westward all the time. We are now, therefore, in the proper compass of history, so to speak. So, Constantine, with the Lavinia who went backwards, Lavinia wife of Aeneas.



I must also indicate to you, and this would become--if case you are still looking for a topic, this is one of the first times that Dante starts using this geographical coordinates, the geographical description of Europe. He has really not done that neither in Inferno nor in Purgatorio, but now Europe becomes an increased concern of his. Whatever historical information they have of it and it's--this is the Europe at the east and Dante will be talking about the borders of Europe in the west. There is a kind of idea of a Europe that has--he's asking what kind of messages can come from Europe which is still valid, legitimate today. These are the sort of incredible questions that he will ask and distinguishes between Rome and Europe, in the sense that Rome, he will say, in a political tract that he writes, that the history of Rome is different from the history of Europe, 1320 he writes this kind of thing; 1318 maybe he writes this tract.



The emblem for Europe's--for Rome's distinctiveness is to be found in Aeneas' experience of marrying three wives. He marries Creusa, as we'll hear from the Aeneid; he marries Dido, though it's a marriage of convenience so to speak but it's a marriage, and then he marries Lavinia. Dante goes on to explain the three wives he marries are one from Asia, one from Africa, and one from Europe, so that Aeneas' whole experience, whole history encompasses what at the time was thought of as universality, the three known continents in a way of which only Europe, Europe is only a part, so keep that in mind. I will talk more about this metaphor as it appears. Now this is the context of Europe, so Justinian and the reference to his reorganization of the Roman code known as the Justinian Code and then now we have a history of the Empire. From the emperor we have what seems to be a celebration of the Roman Empire, this is Canto VI, therefore like Canto VI of Inferno and Canto VI of Purgatorio, the focus is political; it's not just the city or Italy now, it's the whole Empire.



But what begins as a celebration of the empire in effect turns out to be a critique of the ideology of the Empire, the mythological reading that we can find in Augustine's Confessions. Dante follows two models here and they are two models that are contradictory with each other and in this representation of Canto VI we have the Virgilian model of the Roman Empire, which is really a celebration of its origins with Aeneas, with Pallas, the whole account told in the Aeneid and with the vision of what is to come. But then there is, around the fifth century, A.D. Augustine writes in The City of God, a fierce critique of the Empire. The Empire has fallen, the claims by the time Augustine writes, the claims of the eternity of the Empire turn out to be Apollo, and to Augustine the Empire is nothing less than another one of--another episode in a long history of predatory politics of imperial possessions and violence. The Roman Empire as an empire is no better than all the other empires that have long been--have long vanished and vanquished so this is the--these are the two models that Dante's evoking.



In fact, the very language, just to give you an idea, at one point Dante will say, "Thou knowest," lines 35 and following, "that it made its stay," the eagle, the story is told through the vicissitudes of this emblem, of the symbolic emblem, the eagle, "for three hundred years or more, til at the last, still for its sake, the three," the razi, you may know a little bit of Roman History, the Curiazi, who fight it out with a duel between the three brothers and the other three brothers. "The three fought with the three, and thou knowest what it did under seven kings," the story of the seven kings, "from the wrongs of the Sabine women to the woe of Lucrece, conquering the neighbour peoples round about." These are all phrases that come straight out of Augustine's City of God. They are used as cases of exemplifying the libido of power of Rome. There are erotic stories, stories of erotic violence; Lucretia, who has been raped, and the story of the Sabine women who have been kidnapped by the bands of Romulus and Remus, and they are the outlaws. There is this idea that the Empire was born in the condition of outlaws.



Dante is using the perspective of Augustine because Augustine had used these examples to them, the Empire, and its own aberrant policies. At the same time, all the rest is really Virgilian; this is the moment when Virgil and Augustine really disagree from each other. Why does Dante do this? What is this--what is the reason for bringing together two contradictory sources of historical thought? What's the idea of poetic mythology of Rome? Is he in favor of the Empire or is he against the Empire? Is he with Augustine or is he with--actually with Virgil? One thing is clear, that Augustine who loves Virgil, of course, decides that this is--that the Empire is an aberrant reality in his own history. It's already falling apart and he has no use for this. In his theological vision, the question that he raises is, what do I care who governs me, provided this is he that they do not make me sin. The reality is an internalized reality. The reality is the one which is in the interior life of all of us and what are empires, if not great thefts? He will go on dismissing all of this, he a Roman citizen at the end, at the twilight of the Empire, sixth century or so.



What is--where does Dante stand in between them? He continues. I have an answer I hope. He continues for now; he doesn't tell us yet, "Thou knowest what it did when borne by the illustrious Romans against Brennus… It brought low the pride of the Arabs, who behind Hannibal passed the Alpine crags from which, Po, thou fallest. Under it, as youths Scipio and Pompey triumphed… Then near the time," etc., this will continue into the violation of the Rubicon by Caesar and it--then it goes on with Charlemagne, line 95 and following and now let me just read the passage, the last passage. "Now thou canst judge of such men as I accused before, and of their offenses, which are the cause of all your ills; the one opposes to the public standard the yellow lilies and the other claims," lilies of France, "and the other claims it for a party, so that it is hard to see which offends the more. Let the Ghibellines," the canto all of a sudden becomes evocative; seems to turn into a replica of Inferno VI of the Civil War between Guelfs and Ghibellines. It starts as a celebration, an encomium of the Empire and its role in history, in this westward movement toward an apocalyptic conclusion.



Now all of a sudden it goes back to, "Let the Ghibellines carry on their arts under another standard, for of this he's always a bad follower who serves it from justice; and let not this new Charles strike at it with his Guelfs, but let him fear its claws which have torn the hide from a greater lion. Many a time ere now have the children wept for the father's fault, and let him not think God will change arms for his lilies." What is this? It starts with the Empire, ends up with the civil war, and the civil war is really the perspective from which Dante can take this double view on the history of the Empire, where Dante can really stand up to the stance of Augustine and the stance of Virgil. What he really seems to be saying I think is this, yes Augustine you are right, that the Empire is really a negative force--has been a negative force in history and that the reality is, as you say, an internalized reality of our own peace and the kind of internal will that we can--we manage to placate.



At the same time, he says to Virgil but you're also right in your valorization of the Empire because the Empire has brought about some order and laws into the world. That's the argument, and yet, against Augustine he says, if there were no laws and there were no laws of the Empire, then there would be no way of sheltering each and every unrest in case of a civil war. What makes the argument for the necessity of the Empire is the reality of the civil war which really demands the presence of a transcendent institution that will manage to contain the violence of human beings. You can see he agrees with Augustine and disagrees with Augustine. He agrees with Virgil and disagrees with Virgil. Virgil leaves no room for the internal, the inner experiences of Christians. On the other hand, Augustine leaves no room for the necessity of an outside structure that could order the appetites of human beings.



The canto though comes to an end with a little bit of an autobiographical poetry, an autobiographical picture. This is now the emperor who praises a counselor, a counselor who has fallen into disgrace. "'Within the same pearl shines too the light of Romeo," Romeo Villeneuve, a Provencal courtier, who had the role of exactly being a counselor for the prince, "whose great and noble work was ill rewarded; but the Provencals who wrought against him do not have the laugh, and indeed he takes an ill road who makes of another's well-doing a wrong to himself. Raymond Berenger had four daughters, each of them a queen, and Romeo, a man of low birth and a stranger, did this for him. And when crafty tongues moved him to call to account this just man, who rendered him seven and five for ten, Romeo left there poor and old; and if the world knew the heart he had, begging his bread by morsels, much as it praises him would praise him more.'"



It is an oblique representation of Dante himself, who has to end up begging in poverty for a morsel, as he says, out of the selfishness of the political powers. The other final question that I think underlies this whole canto that has to be raised is, what is the relationship between dialectics and this representation of history? Why should Dante connect the two? Why in the heaven of logic, let's say, does he have to talk about history? I think that the idea is that history itself, I think that he's--this is an encomium that ends up being not quite a mitigated encomium. It's also a critique of the Empire, that there is a reason within the Empire and yet this reason doesn't quite justify all that the Empire perpetrated in history.



I think from this perspective Dante is also forcing on us some perplexities about the nature of logic as an instrument of power, as one that could justify all possible powers. So there is also a critique of dialectics as much as there is a critique of history. We skip altogether, because I think it's a little bit more evident, and you can, if you read on your own, you can see Canto VIII and IX, the canto of rhetoric and the rhetoric and love they are very, IX especially, very clear.



We move instead to the Heaven of the Sun, she's a little bit--X, XI and XII are--I don't know that I'll be able to finish all of Canto X but I want to start the discussion. We are in the Heaven of the Sun, which is the heaven of arithmetic, numbers and here Dante goes on talking about one model of the Trinity that I will describe to you in a moment. Dante encounters the wise spirits, the spirits of--in fact we are going to see very soon there are two wheels of saints, two garlands, represented as two garlands of old men who hold themselves by the hand, dancing around the Sun. It is the dance of wisdom, if you wish.



You can call it--you can also refer to it as a kind of reorganization of the encyclopedia. You may remember that I used this metaphor at the beginning of the course, this idea that the Divine Comedy tries to re-propose a new circle of knowledge, a way in which things can really be known and the encyclopedia means the journey, education, as in a circle because the mind moves around through the various arts and sciences, that's how you learn. You return to what you already knew from a different viewpoint and you see things, things are new. But it's the Heaven of the Sun.



Let me just go on a little bit with the canto and then we'll try to bring out some of the issues of Canto X. "Looking on His Son with the Love, which the One and the Other eternally breathe forth, the primal and ineffable Power made with such order all that revolves in mind or space, that he who contemplates it cannot but taste of Him." He begins with a Trinitarian representation, the Father, the Son, joined together by the breath of love. That was the idea of the Trinity, which is a unity; that's the paradoxes of arithmetic, of this theological arithmetic, as an image of fecundity. God is being an image of love, is generative of itself, within His own unity. Then Dante turns to us, and that's the last time I believe that he turns to us readers, and he tells us to be stargazers. That's all. That's all he's saying.



"Lift up thine eyes with me then, reader, to the lofty wheels, directing them on that part where the one motion strikes the other, and from that point take thy pleasure in the art of the Master, who so loves it in His heart that His eye never leaves it. See how from there the circle branches obliquely that bears the planets to satisfy the world which calls for them." He directs our eyes to an intersection of the ecliptic, the cosmic equator, and the ecliptic, the ecliptic being a term that describes the diurnal and annual movement of the Sun. Where they meet, that crossing, that directs our eyes there, "if their track were not aslant," etc. "Stay now, reader, on thy bench, thinking over this of which thou hast the foretaste, and thou shalt have much delight before thou art weary; I have set before thee, now feed thyself, for the theme of which I am made the scribes bends to itself all my care."



Why does Dante think of the Trinity in the Heaven of the Sun? This is the simple question that we should ask; I have a passage that I want to read to you. It's taken from--I think this is the--it's taken from the pseudo Dionysius, you may have heard of--whom Dante will mention, he's a mystic. He writes on the divine names, he writes about how the mystical hierarchy and this will be explained to you a little bit of the--what is Dante's, at this point, semi-mystical theology, semi-mystical idea of the Trinity, this idea that knowledge has to be love. He begins with an idea of the Trinity bound by love and that knowledge has to be love. Let me read this passage and maybe we can go from there. I call it a solar theology. That is to say, a theology of the Sun, not about the Sun but solar; the theology has to be understood as the life of the Sun itself.



Let me read this passage, "Think," this is from 693B of the divine names and following, "Think of how it is with our sun. It exercises no rational process, no act of choice, and yet by the very fact of its existence it gives light to whatever is able to partake of its light in its own way. So it is with the Dood," a classical comparison here of course of the Sun with the good in the republic of Protinus in the Aeneid and so on. "So it is with the Good. Existing far above the sun, an archetype far superior to its dull image, it sends the rays of its undivided goodness to everything with the capacity, such as this may be, to receive it… Such beings owe the presence and their uneclipsed and undiminished lives to these rays… They abide in the goodness of God and draw from it the foundation of what they are, their coherence, their vigilance, their home. Their longing for the Good makes them what they are and confers on them their well-being. Shaped by what they yearn for, they exemplify goodness, and as the Law of God requires of them, they share with those below them the good gifts which have come their way."



I call it a solar theology in the sense that Dante is the--I think, thinking of theology as--or God, or the Trinity as a given, as a fountain, not the Aristotelian or mystic or Augustinian idea of causality. We think of God as the one who imparts a cause or a motion to things, or a beginning and then you have a teliology, you have effect. The idea of the Trinity here is one of an inexhaustible source that keeps giving and it gives to all and we're all part of this gift. This is the idea. I think that Dante is getting this, what I call the solar theology, from a mystical text called the pseudo Dionysius, again not that he is a mystic, but he indeed appears as one who behind is the rationalist façade of his thinking, he's aware of depths and other ways of thinking which are not those of the rational route.



Let me just go from and describe even more here what happens with this Canto X. Now Dante goes on seeing these two garlands of saints and this is--let me read; he meets Aquinas and let me read from this passage where he, Aquinas, will go on giving and naming the first encyclopedic, this movement of sages, lines 100 and following where he says, "I was of the lambs of the holy flock that Dominic leads on the path where there is good fattening if they do not stray; he that is next beside me on the right was my brother and master, Albert of Cologne, and I am Thomas Aquinas. If thou wouldst be thus informed of all the rest, fall after my words with thine eyes, going round the blessed wreath. That next flame comes from the smile of Gratian, who served," canon law and civil law, "the one and the other court so well that it gives pleasure in Paradise; the other who next adorns our choire was that Peter, who like the poor widow, offered his treasure to Holy Church. The fifth light, which is the most beautiful among us, breathes from such a love that all the world below hungers for news of it; within it is the lofty mind to which was given wisdom so deep that, if truth be true, there never arose a second of such vision."



It's Solomon described through a circumlocution as the fifth light, and the fifth light because in numerical symbolism five stands for the natural number, which is to say, that Dante casts very difficult proposition, Solomon as being naturally perfect, having a kind of perfection of intellect. It's a dangerous proposition. In fact, Dante will go on--Aquinas will go on in Canto XIV, look let me just explain what I said before because it's not quite true because the virtue of--the intellectual virtue of Solomon consists in the fact that he knew what to ask for when he had to govern his people. He was the perfect king because he knew what to ask. You understand why this would be a dangerous idea? If you believe that there is a perfection of the intellect within the natural imminence, fear, order, where we live then it means that there's no need for Revelation. There is no need for intermediaries, no need for Redemption. If nature, the natural intellect, is capable of ascending as it has claimed here for Solomon, then the whole apparatus will collapse.



Dante will not believe it and Aquinas will go back as dramatically, actually in Canto XIII saying, let me just explain myself, "Beside it is the light of the candle which below in the flesh was farthest," this is Augustine and then, "the body from which he was driven lies below in Cieldauro," this is Boethius, "and he came from martyrdom and exile to this peace. See, flaming beyond, the glowing breath of Isidore, of Bede, and of Richard [of St. Victor] who in contemplation was more than man," line 132, then read this line because I think it's a little bit more interesting in the Italian than it is in English, "in contemplation was more than man," "d'Isidoro, di Beda e di Riccardo, che a considerar fu più che vero." The word Dante uses is not contemplation, it's consideration, and it's a key word for Dante whose consideration means the etymologies that of moving with the stars. That is if the mind is at its most perfect when it imitates the circulation and circularity of the stars; consider, it's also like desire by the way. "This one from whom thy look returns to me is the light of a spirit to whom, in his grave thoughts, dealt seemed slow in coming; it is the eternal light of Siger, who, lecturing in the Street of Straw, demonstrated invidious truths."



The last one that Aquinas points out in this circulation of wise spirits is one of a so-called heretic by the name of Siger of Brabant, who was an Averroist and was condemned for his Averroism. Whatever knowledge and whatever canonized knowledge we may have, for Dante it includes figures who have been judged unworthy of knowledge or heretical or wrong and now they are retrieved. The idea of knowledge is one that keeps changing. The idea of the canor of knowledge keeps always expanding and including voices that had been rejected.



Let me tell you more about this representation of Siger of Brabant. You understand he's an Averroist and we do know, how does Dante go about--just saying he's here, how does he go about justifying his salvation? Canto X, from this point of view, is retrospectively one that sheds light on Canto X of Inferno, where we also saw, you remember, the Averroists and the Epicureans, Guido Cavalcanti, those who believed that the mind, that love and knowledge never interact with each other, that the mind goes--rationality is darkened and dimmed by the infusions of passions, remember, and that the mind is one that receives ideas from the outside, or that notion of both the inertia of the will and the divisions within the mind itself. Dante now is correcting some of those views.



So let's look a little bit at these metaphors in Canto X. "This one from whom thy look returns to me is the light of a spirit to whom, in his grave thoughts, death seemed slow in coming." He was killed, by the way, by a madman and Dante writes a sonnet about him in around 1281 or so. "It is the eternal life of Siger," so we know that he's saved, "who lecturing in the Street of Straw, demonstrated invidious truths." Dante gives the address of this man. He lectured, a word that has a certain value in the university language, a university lexicon of the time. Lecturing is an activity that implies glossing, just as is the glosseta of Aristotle, but he tells us where he lived, in the Street of Straw in Paris, a street that now is called by the way, the Rue de Voir, but is now called the Rue Dante, knowing that clearly the Parisians are mindful of this passage. Dante is placing Siger on the road, on the way, he's giving us his address but he is telling us that his thinking takes place while he is on the road.



You all know that philosophy is always understanding itself as a journey, a method, an exodus, Parmenides, or a quietness of things about the five ways to reach the ultimate truths about God. Dante is a philosopher, is on the way to theological certainty, theological truth and theological knowledge and he "demonstrated invidious truths." The Italian is sillogizzò, made syllogisms out of, demonstrated, rationally demonstrated invidious truths. What are these invidious truths? Invidious truths, I'm not sure that all the translators would agree. Invidious truths have to be understood etymologically. This is the canto where Isidore of Seville is presently--Isidore of Seville being the arch etymologist of the Middle Ages and Dante is showing how he too we can play with etymologies.



Isidore of Seville is the one who believed that whole of knowledge, all we know, the compass of all knowledge can really be arrived at through etymologizing language. Language, the etymon of language, the origin of words will give us an access to the nature of reality, so language becomes a way of knowing the world. Dante indulges in the same activity calling the truth that Siger pursued "invidious," which etymologically means those things, those truths that cannot be demonstrated, those truths that cannot be seen. Philosophy appears as an art of speculation that takes us on the way to a truth that it cannot quite have access to.



What are these truths that Siger of Brabant sought access to? The immortality of the soul, there is no way he would have known or even discovered that. Aristotle is very doubtful about the individual immortality of the soul and the treatise of the soul. He tried to consider--to view--to decide about the origin of the world. Siger believed that the universe is another one of those indemonstrable believes, that the universe is eternal and this is an argument that saw medieval thinkers and theologians engaged in, Averroism on the one side and Aquinas who maintains that philosophically you really can believe and show that the universe is really, is eternal. But out of faith you can go on believing in creation, that things have a beginning, but if you don't think that things have a beginning, then there's never a possibility of allowing for giving some ground and rooting the idea of your freedom, your innovations, the possibilities things can be different from you from what they were before and so on.



The reason why Dante rescues Siger of Brabant is a way for him to be ultimately thinking and making a statement that whatever we believe that is knowledge, it's never definite and it's always--we are literally on the way and rethinking it and making it all the time an object of our own self-critique. This is not the only place where Dante is rethinking himself. Very soon around the notion of the Trinity, Bonaventure will have to change his mind about a man, a figure that I have mentioned before, Joachim Flora, in the next canto. The idea with a Joachistic interpretation of history, so he will--we are going to have to have Canto XI balancing off Canto X. Then it ends, the canto ends, "Then, like a clock," what an extraordinary image, an image of time now, but what I have to say is that you probably do not know that clocks, mechanical clocks, the way we still see them were a recent technological invention in the late thirteenth century which Dante is absorbing here.



"Then, like a clock that calls us at the hour when the bride of God rises to sing matins to the Bridegroom that he may love her, when one part draws or drives another, sounding the chime with notes so sweet that the well-ordered spirit swells with love, so I saw the glorious wheel move and render voice to voice with harmony and sweetness that cannot be known but there where joy becomes eternal." Dante is describing these songs of the eternal--of the blessed souls in erotic terms, so that what seems to be a canto of pure knowledge ultimately becomes a love song too and this is the whole trajectory of Canto X.



Let me stop here and see if there some questions about these three cantos which I'll be glad to answer. They are a little bit abstract but I think that they respond to genuinely interesting and historical problems at least.



The question of allegory at the beginning--let me just give you a kind of quick resume of what we said. In Canto IV you have two issues, you have the issue of allegory and the issue of the will where Dante goes on explaining the mode of representation in Paradise as a mode of accommodation to our limited faculty and he thinks that this is really the mode of representation throughout the Bible, the iconography of the Church, the poem, etc., which is a way therefore of talking about allegory in a slightly different form from the way he spoke of it in, as you remember what I spoke of it, but he was allowing us to do that in Canto IX of Inferno where we had been talking about the allegory of poets, allegory of theologians. Now there is no question that I think that there is no intrinsic difference between the two modes. Remember that I used to talk about the allegory of theologians as being an allegory where the literal level is true and the allegory of poets as one in which the literal level is a fiction. Now I'm saying that both of them for Dante have a kind of metaphorical basis and the relationship between the metaphor and truth is, of course, it's certainly the language of a very similitude, if not absolutely the truth.



Then the two--the other issue about the will, the limitations of the will, the conditional and absolute will. When we come to Canto VI of Paradise Dante shifts gears altogether and talks about history, and the framework of the Empire. Is it providential, I call it what is the rationality of the Empire, but the real issue is, is there such a thing as a providentality of the Empire, which he had maintained in--elsewhere in the poem and certainly in the text of Monarchia. Dante concludes now, seems to have to explain, give an apology for his belief in the Empire by agreeing with and siding with Virgil, but at the same time giving a critique of the Empire and acknowledging Augustine, but manages to criticize both. Both Augustine and--for different reasons and Virgil had not seen the whole truth; Virgil can go on into unabashed loudatio, laudatory statements about the Empire. Augustine can go on damning the Empire but Augustine does not understand that if within the context of the civil war where the realities where Corso can turn against his sister Piccarda, where the Guelfs can go against the Ghibellines, where your own brother can be your enemy, that's really what it's about.



Then you do need some kind of law. You read an outside world, an outside institution that can guarantee and protect yourself. The claim that salvation is only in the interiority of the soul, which is Augustine's claim, is not really sufficient for someone who is--as Dante was involved in the public's fear and the public life. I think that these are the two most important moments. In Canto X Dante is moving beyond the--it's a poetic break that takes place. He literally moves us beyond the sunlight, the daylight of the ordinary natural daylight moving into a world now which is his own and Dante starts raising the issue of knowledge, as if to say that a new knowledge, a new way of thinking now is necessary.



Once you move beyond the ordinary boundaries of the universe you got to have--you start asking yourself what kind of knowledge do I need here. He's rethinking therefore the whole relationship between truth or knowledge and error, heresies and knowledge, the canonical certainties that Aquinas would have who now makes significantly enough a mistake about the fate of Solomon and Siger of Brabant, so that seems to be the argument that is running in these cantos. He is forcing on us a different way of thinking and that different way of thinking begins with a redefinition of nothing less than the Trinity. The idea of causality, not the idea of efficiency, causa efficiens, that's the way God is defined by Aquinas, that's the way that Augustine defines--he writes a treatise on the Trinity with the idea of God as causality.



Dante adds -- doesn't exclude the others; it would be inconceivable that something as imponderable as the Trinity could just have one formula to account for it, but he adds onto it that first definition of the Trinity as a unity of love and a unity of fecundity which I think is a mystical definition. The idea of God, the idea of creation is one of participation of the creatures, the idea of God as being the source, the inexhaustible source of light and not just efficiency and not just etiology, movement, etc., and we shall see the implications of this. Yes.



Student: I was just wondering why is it such a problem for Dante to imagine like a perfect natural intellect in Solomon, because isn't it sort of Inferno and Purgatorio sort of a perfection of the will through Virgil's intellect and Virgil's reason, and so why is it a dangerous proposition to say that a man could have a perfect intellect?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The question, a very good question, is why does Dante find it so difficult to acknowledge the perfection of Solomon's intellect, when after all, in Inferno and Purgatorio, we have had some accounts of how the will is moved by the intellect and perfected by the intellect. Am I paraphrasing your--actually repeating what you said I think, but accurately? It's a very good question; it's really a complicated problem.



In fact, I think that what you have to keep in mind how Dante talks about Solomon as a people on Earth are so anxious--this was one of the most incredibly debated--is he saved? Is Solomon saved? Because he's the wisest, that's what the Bible tells us, he's the wisest, and we believe the Bible--the Middle Ages argument. We believe in the Bible so he's the wisest, but he was also known as being the most lecherous of kings, so big solution for Dante, forget about that, he's really the wisest so he's saved, so that solves that particular issue of the relationship between love and knowledge and I think that's a crucial point in--for the way you are stating the issue because you are stating how in Inferno and Purgatorio you have the will directed and reorganized by the intellect, so you see there must be some kind of relationship between will and intellect. Dante here says, the will was really was a little bit--was chaotic, was disordered will, so we have only to judge him in terms of this majestic intellect that he has. In fact, he was the most perfect of figures since Adam was created in the Garden. That's the first thing.



But now let me come to the crux of the matter here. If you believe that he had intellect which was absolutely perfect, perfect intellect, then what you're really saying and this is the context of knowledge, a mathesis as the Greek's call it, the mathesis, the word mathematics it comes from that. If you believe that then you're really saying that philosophy is the way to come to the truth. You see what I'm saying? If philosophy is the way to come to the truth, you don't really need theology or you really have to start thinking of theology as some kind of vulgar poet or some vulgar philosophizing, as some kind of the poetry for the masses, for instance, a kind of elitarian, elite-like, view that keeps creeping up into--in the ways of thinking about theology and philosophy and if you believe that, that philosophy is the mode.



In fact, now we have a correction of the philosophers immediately after with the presence of Siger because of course--see the ambivalence Siger is justified and saved because his mind was a searching mind. He's on the road, he's a true philosopher he--it's the method. I was describing logic as a method that the Greek word that means "way." It's the root, the philosopher of the root, philosophy is on the way out of their odyssey, the odyssey of the soul, that's really--we call it--Dante says exodus, it's an exodus clearly countering the idea of the philosophical root.



There's another story, another way of looking at journeys, he's certainly involved in a journey, a journey of the heart and a journey of the mind at the same time. Once you go on, Siger is on--there is--there was no perfection. He tried to demonstrate and look at the paradox invidious, that is to say, truths that cannot be seen. I appear to the etymology of invidious. Many translations and they say unwelcome truths. I don't know what kind of translations, actually I like my Sinclair who says "invidious truths," but many others translate that word invidious as unwelcome or the truths that made him be scorned and hated by others because the jealousy of philosophers is a little bit in the background. He lost his life, he was killed because of that, but instead he is in pursuit of truths which is the aim of philosophy of all investigations, but philosophical investigations, but cannot be demonstrated, that cannot be seen so there is a limitation of the philosophical road of the road of philosophy.



Indirectly, the limitation of Solomon's perfect claim of--he never claimed that he had a perfect intellect. In fact, Aquinas who realizes what he has said, he says no, no, no the wisdom of Solomon has to be viewed in his prudence for asking God that he be given the absolute knowledge in the government of his people, so it's a limited form of knowledge but that was perfect. It's--maybe it strikes you as sophistry but I enjoy that. Thank you so much.



[end of transcript]

Professor Mazzotta continues his discussion of the Heaven of the Sun (Paradise X-IV), where the earthly disputes between the Franciscan and Dominican orders give way to mutual praise. The tribute St. Thomas pays to the founder of the Franciscan order (Paradise XI) is repaid by St. Bonaventure through his homage to St. Dominic (Paradise XII). The chiasmic structure of these cantos is reinforced by the presence of Nathan and Joachim of Flora, the counterweights to Solomon and Siger, among the second ring of sages. Special attention is then paid to the lives St. Francis and St. Dominic presented in Paradise XI and XII, where the former's marriage to Lady Poverty finds its poetic counterpart in the latter's marriage to theology. The critique of the world and its values shared by these religious founders is explored in light of the "ludic theology" that pervades these cantos.



Reading assignment:

Dante, Paradise: XI, XII

Transcript



November 6, 2008



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Last time we got into Canto X and I began with the Heaven of the Sun, and I began with the description of--Dante begins, we went over the phases of the canto. On the one hand the description of the Trinity of the inner life of the Trinity as a life of love, the breath and the father-- love, the sun, the father bound by the breath of love as it were. Then Dante moves onto a description of the spectacle of the whole--this heaven and of this fragment of the cosmos by turning to us readers twice, asking us to look up. It is that by looking up we can see the givenness of creation, the fact that this has been given; it's a gift to us. It's also a way of--if it's a gift, if there's an economy, a feel economy in the cosmos, it's a divine economy, it also means that somehow we cannot really claim to own it. That seems to be a natural consequence of something being a gift does not imply, does not entail necessarily ownership of this gift; it has been given and therefore we are invited to have an aesthetic admiration of it.



This kind of--this scene of the divine, even a kind of feel drama, a divine drama, a spectacle that unfolds ends--folds throughout the cosmos, ends with a description of the encyclopedia as I was describing it to you. That is to say with Aquinas who recounts the names and mentions one after the other, the twelve representatives of various disciplines. We talked a little bit about Solomon and the scandal that his inclusion here caused in Dante's own time, since Dante is responding to a real crisis about unknowledge of the ultimate fate of Solomon, the wisest of all men. Was he saved or not on account of his weaknesses in terms of his, well his lechery?



Then the canto focuses on--ends really with Siger of Brabant who was a logician, a philosopher and Dante describes him really on the way to knowledge. He was a heretic, he was viewed of as a heretic. Dante dismisses that whole charge, and in many ways he represents therefore knowledge as--or the circle of knowledge as one made of contradictory voices, where those who had been blaming Siger of Brabant, such as Aquinas himself, now retract their positions; so the whole process of getting to know the world is one of errors and it's one of retractions.



There are some interesting details that I could even--I think that I should even mention to you as we approach XI and XII. Siger is described as he's absorbed in his grave thoughts. In Italian it is gravi pensieri, the word pensiero is, in English, is pensive. I think that that is such a remarkable word because it really means "to think" in Latin, and they always exploit this resonance of the verb--means to be at an impasse, to be suspended literally, so he's suspended in thoughts as if the thoughts could not quite make him reach the threshold of the knowledge he wanted. At any rate, that's the way Canto X--that's the economy of Canto X.



I want to--since there are three cantos that go together to really--I ask you to turn to the end of Canto XII where Bonaventure, who is a Franciscan, you probably know what is meant by that. The Franciscan is one of the orders of Francis, just as Aquinas is Dominican. The Franciscans are those who believe in the priority of will and love in the act of knowledge. The Dominicans or neo-Aristotelians like Aquinas believe in the priority of the intellect in the apprehension of the world. The Dominicans were founded with the explicit mandate to teach in the universities where heresies they thought abounded and therefore they had to extirpate, block off the routes of heresies. The Franciscans were going to be witnessing in the world, and both orders are shaped by a belief in poverty that we have to examine a little bit. We have to understand what it means.



At any rate, Bonaventure is a Franciscan and by the end of Canto XII, after he has been chronicling the life of Dominic. This is sort of another case of extraordinary openness of, in Dante's view, of these characters in the sense that the Franciscans and Dominicans were really at odds with each other, both in terms of their theologies and their premises, intellectual premises above all. Here, Dante has a Franciscan tell the life of Dominic just as earlier in Canto XI a Dominican, Aquinas, tells the life of Francis. The two cantos are controlled by what we call a chiasmus that's--this is a chiasmus from the Greek word "chi," a chiasmus, right? You have an intersection of voices, a sort of--a sense of the interdependence of the two perspectives.



I will say a little bit more about Bonaventure after I read this paragraph. This paragraph here, the last paragraph in Canto XII, lines 130 and following, sort of functions as a counterweight to the description of the encyclopedia that Aquinas had given at the end of Canto X and ending with Siger of Brabant so let me just see who the people are here. "I am the living soul of Bonaventura of Bagnorea, who in great offices ever put last the left-hand care. Here are Illuminato and Augustine, who were among the first barefoot Poor Brothers that in the cord made themselves God's friends." Then a theorist of medieval encyclopedias, Hugh of St. Victor, a Parisian friar who really wrote the so called Didascalicon, which is a text about what is--what are the stages of education? How does the mind come to the knowledge of God starting from the small elements in the outside life, the material world, then the interior lights, etc., before reaching the--God's supreme light?



Then is here with them Peter the bookworm, Peter the Spaniard, another theorist of medieval logic who shines below in twelve books, then Nathan the prophet--I'll come back to this name, the prophet Nathan. He is known, to those who know, as being David's bad conscience, or good conscience, the one who is pricking him to think about himself. Nathan, the prophet sensor counselor of the King, a little bit more about him in a while and Chrysostom, the Metropolitan, meaning that guy with the golden mouth. Language here is the flower of eloquence is what he possesses. And Anselm, another theologian who writes about the reasons for the incarnations, famous texts about why did God become a man and then Donatus "who deigned to set his hand to the first art; grammar. So you see you have the whole array, the whole wide spectrum of what we call the encyclopedia. Logic, eloquence, grammar, Donatus is a Roman grammarian, and then Rabanus a historian, "and beside me shines the Calabrian Abbot Joachim, who was endowed with a spirit of prophecy. The glowing courtesy and well-judged language of Brother Thomas have moved me to celebrate so great a paladin, and with me have moved this company." Bonaventure ends with the tip of the hat in the direction of Aquinas whose example he has followed. An example, once again, of a dialogue and openness between the two orders and the two members of different orders and yet--and somehow interdependent with each other.



Now the presence of Abbot Joachim is another counterweight to Siger of Brabant in Canto X. He too, Joachim, whom you have met because I sort of mentioned his name to you in discussing the prophecy-- glossing the prophecy of the DXV in Purgatorio XXXIII. You remember where I tried to explain it; there seems to be a kind of apocalyptic meaning to that prophecy, the numerical enigma, an enigmatic prophecy about the coming of Christ at the end of time, who will come and therefore the prophecy of the consummation of history, and the consummation of time, the DXV, the 500, 10, and 5 as that is called. And I said that the joachistic interpretation of that emblem, of that symbol seemed to me to be accurate. I really meant, it really sort of introduces the idea of the end of time, however, I rejected--I asked you to also reject the implications of that prophecy.



The joachistic prophecy--it was viewed as heretical for a number of important reasons. It expresses a sort of impatience about history. That is to say it really believes, first of all, in the imminent and closure of history, the end is close at hand, and this is a kind of--the end of history implies the coming into being of a utopia, a utopia of the spirit, the third age of the spirit, when finally all institutions, all barriers are shattered and torn down. This is a kind of--this is really what--from Dante's point of view would be wrong with a joachistic utopian impulse. The idea that it always begs for a closure of what we can never really fathom, which is the world of historical occurrences, but another reason why he was viewed as heretical by exactly Bonaventure, it was Bonaventure who asked that his views be damned and now he is sort of writing a palinode. Dante allows him to make amends for the previous condemnation.



Bonaventure found objectionable the ideas of Joachim of Flora because Joachim de facto is dissolving the whole notion of the unity of the Trinitarian life. He theorizes an idea of history, a tripartite idea of history according to the three persons of the Trinity: the age of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He believes there was once, in biblical times, there was the age of the Father, God was understood as the Father. Then we enter the age of the Son, brotherhoods of all, and now the spiritual age of the Holy Spirit. De facto really means that the three ways--the three manifestations, this kind of complex way of understanding a unity from different viewpoints is actually dissolved.



It becomes separate, each person of the Trinity becomes a separate entity, and that view from--for Bonaventure was heretical, he condemns it, now he acknowledges that he actually was Abbot Joachim who was endowed with a spiritual prophecy. It is something only prophetic, in other words, what seemed to here heresy, an intellectual question of thoughts and opinions now appears as some divination about things to come, not specified any further. Retrospectively, it's Dante himself who is legitimizing Joachim and therefore also legitimizing his own position in Canto XXXIII of Purgatorio. Dante shares the view of the apocalyptic denuma of history, however, he refuses, he rejects the idea that it's possible to establish a date for such an occurrence. Joachim appears now as a visionary among them.



The other figure that I would like to say something about is Nathan the prophet for a very simple reason, because Nathan as you probably know--because it's very strange, why would Dante include Nathan a prophet among--there's Joachim of Flora who is prophetic, but why include Nathan among these wise spirits? I mean, he could have chosen so many others. He could have chosen those who actually have written and whose works are canonical in the Bible. He doesn't. He chooses Nathan and the idea is, I think, a little bit of an autobiographical, a pun about Dante himself, because Nathan, the word Nathan means "he who gives." In other words, Dante saw in the name of Nathan his own name, and it pleases him, that's what Dante means, he who gives. Nathan becomes a kind of mask for Dante himself. It is as if he were saying, had I another life or a posthumous life in the heavenly apotheosis that's where I probably would like--that's where I probably will end up, certainly that's what I would like to be, so in Nathan there is a mask for himself.



Now why--what is this so peculiar about this encyclopedic ordering of the arts and the sciences? It doesn't really differ very much from Aquinas, but it's interesting that it's Bonaventure who articulates, who voices this kind of--who celebrates all these names and all these arts because Bonaventure is himself a theorist of the encyclopedia very much as Hugh of St. Victor, but he has one crucial reflection at the beginning of his encyclopedia. He says that the activity of knowing and learning is like going up and down a ladder. You might say, if you read that metaphor, you might say well that's an extraordinary metaphor but it's the metaphor of the ladder of Jacob in the Bible, which is where he probably found it. The ladder of Plato, that's where this idea that we ascend, the mind ascends when we learn something, when we get educated the mind goes up and it actually can go down.



The interesting thing about Bonaventure is that he goes on saying that as in a ladder the lowest rung are always more important than the higher ones, because without those no one of us would be capable to climb up the ladder, so the lowest, the lowly forms of knowledge, grammar--the external lights of the senses you see distinguishes--his is a theory of knowledge as a proliferation of lights, as a universe of lights, internal, external lights, internal lights, the lights of the senses, the lights that come to us from books and the light of God and so on. So we are always going to be enlightened in our process, but as we are enlightened the lowest lights are, first of all, self-sufficient. There are those who may not be capable of ascending much higher in the--along the ladder than the first few rungs. There is already a self-sufficient knowledge that they can acquire. The arts of--to him the arts of poetry that's the lowest rung and yet that is its own self sufficiency and then you can go up the ladder and really learn more--but the interesting thing about the ladder is that there is no sense, though it establishes a hierarchy, in that hierarchy the lower elements are as crucial as the higher elements, because without the lower rungs you never really can go up to the end.



So this is another image then of the--finally let me just say with the Joachim, the inclusion of Joachim, here we are getting into the erasure of strict barriers, strict boundaries between what is heretical and what is canonical. I think this is the sort of openness, Dante's openness that somehow reverberates with the lesson of Francis and Dominic, and therefore now, let me turn to those two cantos. Keep in mind then as we read Canto XI, we are again--I repeat in the Heaven of the Sun and I don't know that the passage that I read to you from the pseudo Dionysus last time about the divine names where the pseudo Dionysus goes on talking about why is the metaphor of the sun such a fundamental image for the divine generosity.



This is as an image of the sun that always gives of itself without ever asking anything back so it's an activity of purely--pure generosity and I think that's a Franciscan image of--also of poverty to which I will talk about in a moment. The Canto XI, I repeat, ends with the extraordinary encomium of Siger of Brabant; by a counterpoint Canto XI has an apostrophe against logical, legal forms of knowledge. The kind of knowledge that tries to define the world in formulas and so Dante begins--this is Dante speaking on his own--in his own voice, "Oh insensate care of mortals, how vain are the reasonings that make thee beat thy wings in downward flight! One was going after law, another after the Aphorisms, one following the priesthood and another seeking to rule by force or craft, one set on robbery and another on affairs of state, one labouring in the toils of fleshly delights, and another given up to idleness; while I, set free from all these things, was high in heaven with Beatrice, received thus gloriously."



I think it's an interesting counterpoint between these icons of power that derive from the study of low and logic, and then on the other hand, this--Dante's own self reference to himself as free from all of these concerns. I think this idea of freedom will be the dominant theme of Canto XI. Who--it continues then, "When each had come back to the point of the circle where it was before," the two wheels of dancing old men, holding their hands around the sun, which is a metaphorical sun--so that the universe is not even-- is not heliocentric. Dante's universe--they're going to move now beyond the sun, "is stopped like a candle on its stand." And then there is a little prayer here and the introduction of the two, Dominic and Francis, lines 30 and following: "The Providence that rules the world with that counsel in which every created site is vanquished before it reaches the bottom- in order that the bride of Him who, with loud cries, wedded her with His sacred blood should go to her Beloved secure in herself and faithfuller to Him- ordained for her behoof two princes to be her guides on this side and that. The one was all seraphic in ardour," and that's Francis, "the other, for wisdom, was on earth a splendour of cherubic light. I shall tell of the one, since to praise one, whichever we take, is to speak of both; for the labours where to one end."



That's really the formula that seals the sense of the interdependence of intellect and will of love and knowledge and of the two voices. Now this is the--what we call a hagiography or a legend, the life of a saint, a saint's life of Francis, which is told by Aquinas, by the Dominican Aquinas. What we are told is, first of all--"Between the Topino and the water that falls from the hill chosen by the blessed Ubaldo hangs a fertile slope of the lofty mountain from which Perugia feels cold and heat at Porta Sole, and behind it Nocera and Gualdo grieve under a heavy yoke." It's an extraordinarily localized representation of Francis' origin. It's a topography, he was born as you know in Assisi, but it's almost as if he were just placing him in a specific place, near the gate that leads--on the road to Perugia; very precise and it's called Porta Sole, more about this in a moment.



"From this slope, where it most breaks its steepness, a sun," now we go from the toponymic, the name of a place, the gate of the sun---to a metaphor for Francis as the sun. He is the sun, so we are in the Heaven of the Sun and now Dante invests Francis with all the attributes of this solarity, this continuous, steady giving of oneself as the sun does in the Neo-platonic imagery, the mystical neo-Platonic imagery of the pseudo Dionysus. A sun rose on the world as this does sometimes from the Ganges. As soon as we--Dante has mentioned the specific place for Francis' birth, then the coordinates of--the geographic coordinates completely change. We go from the specific and local to literally the global, the world of the Ganges, the Orient, something a little vaster. As if the sun, Francis really acts between the concrete and local, and the widest possible reference.



"Therefore let him who makes mention of that place not say Ascesi," which means I rise, but it's punning with Assisi, "for he would say too little, but Orient, if he would name it rightly." It's an extraordinary image and two astronomical terms, the sun and the Orient for Francis. Francis appears as--not just as the sun does, as one who can--and I'm playing with the text here a little bit but not much--one who orients us, one who is supposed to orient and re-orient us is born in Assisi and yet disappears as if it were the East. What were his--What Dante is implying, I think, is that for those who go on the face of the earth and lose their ways then Francis becomes one who can tell them how to find their way back wherever they are going. For those who do not know their way at all, have never known the way, they are capable of discovering it.



He is providing this light, so what is this light that he provides? What kind of light does he bring out? "He was not yet far from his rising," the metaphorics of the sun continues, "when he began to make the earth feel some strengthening from his mighty influence; for," and now he gives the story of Francis' life. Before I go there I just want to tell you that Dante--and I brought a translation of a poem that Dante knew that Francis is an extraordinary--is a great poet. He's actually--we consider him the first poet in Italian, in the Italian language. I Just want to read a few stanzas from the so called Canticle of Brother Sun so that you can see how Dante's own metaphorics derive straight out of this Franciscan vision, Franciscan spirituality.



He begins, "Most high," it's a prayer, a Canticle of Brother Sun, "all powerful good Lord! Yours are the praises, the glory, the honor, and all blessing. To you alone most high do they belong, and no man is worthy to mention your name. Praise be you my Lord with all your creatures, especially Brother Sun who is the day and through whom you give us light, and it's beautiful and radiant with great splendor and bears a likeness of you most High One. Praise be you my Lord through Sister Moon and the stars. In heaven you formed them clear and precious and beautiful, praised be you my Lord through Brother Wind."



He goes through all the four elements and part of the suggestiveness of this poem is that it's a song of praise to God, clearly enough, but it is also--we never know if Francis is thinking of these elements: the sun, the moon, the wind, the water, death itself--as the medium through whom he can praise, or the cause on account of which he should praise, or the other agents; the Italian is very ambiguous. "Por," for those of you who may know a little French or a little Spanish, for, by, through, this is--so there's a kind of extraordinarily choir and orchestration. The other thing that I should mention is that finally we can understand the rhetoric of praise that is running through this poem, but we also saw as describing the rhetoric of praise in Dante's Vita nuova when he finds out that the best way of writing about Beatrice is really to write praise poems, not actually--which he distinguishes from flattery but praise poems, the poems of praise means in many ways rejecting all sense of ownership.



Realizing that not--the fact that one may know, the world doesn't mean that one owns it and also it means that not knowing Beatrice is not just a cover to wish to own her, so the praise is as disinterested and as free a mode of acknowledgement of Beatrice herself. Let's see how this continues, this whole poetic vision of Francis continues with Canto XI. Dante goes on giving us the life of Francis and he catches Francis in what is--in what I would call using the language of anthropology really, a liminal stage. You know what I mean by the liminal stage? The world liminal comes from--it's the Latin threshold or comes from the Latin for limit, there are two words, in many ways very contradictory, but it has the power liman is one thing meaning threshold, but also the word might also be limit, so the threshold may be a limit and the threshold may also be an opportunity to cross, a way of going over. I call it--Dante doesn't use here; he does use the word limit several times, not in this context. Dante places Francis in a liminal position that is to say, between and betweest two different orders.



On the one hand the world, and on the other hand, some kind of utopian idea that we never--which would be the order that he goes on to institute or some general vision about what the world ought to be. He places Francis in between neither part of the world, nor part of this final utopia and let's see what he does in this liminal position. That's where he catches him and look at these lines here, "Still a youth," this is the biography of Francis modeled on a number of biographies that existed at the time. "For still a youth he ran into strife with his father, for a lady to whom as to death not willingly unlocks the door," which is an extraordinarily difficult line to translate. The Italian really could be read to say unlocks the door of pleasure. "And before his spiritual court," and now he uses a Latin phrase, which is a legal formula and has the value of a legal formula, coram patre, that is to say he marries this woman, we don't know who she is yet, in the presence of his own father, thus giving legitimacy to his act, the act of marriage.



"Coram patre he was joined to her and thenceforth loved her better every day. She, bereft of her first husband," Christ, "despised and obscure eleven hundred years and more, remained without a suitor till he came; nor did it avail when men heard that he who put all the world in fear found her unmoved, with Amyclas, at the sound of his voice; nor did it avail her to have such courage and constancy that, where Mary stayed below, she mounted on the cross with Christ. But, lest I proceed too darkly, take now Francis and Poverty for these lovers in all I have said. Their harmony and happy looks moved men to love and wonder and sweet contemplation and led them to holy thoughts, so that the venerable Bernard first went barefoot and ran after that great peace and, running, thought himself too slow. Oh wealth unknown and fruitful good!"



There is clearly a reversal, Francis marries poverty, and yet to have that marriage of Poverty we have to understand what--in a moment what that is. A lot of wealth, a lot of riches can be produced, a clear turning of whatever intentions he may have had and the consequences of that act of his. What is this representation of Francis? It's, I think, in this liminal position, Francis is shown as he is turning upside down all the values that the world holds dear. He wants to marry nothing. Poverty, to marry Poverty is to marry nothing. You marry to be--you want to--you yoked yourself, you embrace owning nothing, but that marriage or that union appears as a sacramental act so he is making fun, he is parodying marriage. Just let me be a bit more--because I don't want to imply at all any blasphemy here, but he's parodying even the sacrament of marriage, he is marrying nothing.



It's not a legal person, some age in Poverty, it's just an idealization or an allegory for nothing, but that is conducted, that ceremony, is conducted as if it were a sacramental act. Not only a sacramental act, he's parodying the law, because he's marrying Poverty in the presence of his own father. He undress--he divests himself of all the clothes, which in the Middle Ages, as much as now, always stands for some form of symbolic status. The way you dress according to the job you want, they usually say, right? That is to say--what I mean to say is that dresses, clothes are part of a social set of values which Francis is flouting and parodying. We have--we are in the presence of the parody of legal language, sacramental language, even the language of love. At one point, the language of sexuality, the idea of marrying Poverty to--does not--I changed the translation of the phrase the way Sinclair, because it's a little bit torturous even in Italian, the way Sinclair has it--he says "none willingly unlocks the door," that unwillingly is the door of pleasure. Even sexuality, which is certainly a value of the world, Francis will turn around.



This is a radical critique of the value system of the world. Call it a prophetic mode of abandoning the idols of the world in favor of some kind of utopia or unexpected or really not clarified, not very well described vision of how the world ought to be, but this is--he rejects all of this so "She, bereft of her first husband"--"coram patre he was joined to her, and thenceforth loved her better every day. She, bereft of her first husband, despised and obscure eleven hundred years and more, remained without a suitor till he came; nor did it avail when men heard that he who put all the world in fear found her unmoved, with Amyclas, at the sound of his voice; nor did it avail her to have such courage and constancy that, where Mary stayed below, she," Poverty, "mounted on the cross with Christ." She does something even better than what Mary does, "But lest I proceed too darkly, take now Francis and Poverty for these lovers in all I have said."



"Their harmony and happy looks," this is another parody of the language of the amorous discourse of medieval love poetry. They go on--he just--it's a dalliance with nothing, so they have now finally an inclusion of an extraordinary non-value because that's what poverty is, something that questions all values and it's a Franciscan idea of poverty. What do they mean by that? What did Francis mean by this, by this idea of poverty, what is this poverty?



First of all, you know that this subject became part of an extensive iconographic representation. One can think of the Giotto frescos, the cycles of, Franciscan cycles in Assisi, but all over Tuscany and Umbria. It's not only unique to Dante's understanding, and Dante's insight, it's a sort of representation and fascination with Francis. Another little detail that I should tell you is that Francis, in Italian, is Franciscos, meaning that he is French, and there was the--like Francesca, the other Francesca, the other one who also understood a lot about love, but lost her way in Canto V. It really means free, the word in English, you have the word "frank" which in many ways carries over the resonance of the Latin word Franciscos.



Francis, true to his name, is now as being poor is absolutely free, there's no bondage to anything. There's nothing that holds him to anything in the world, so this is one important, let's call it ethical extension of poverty. What did they mean? What did the other Franciscans, like Bonaventure, who was there listening to what Aquinas may say about the founder of his order, what did they understand by that? Remember we talked about--Dante certainly seems to have stressed the idea of poverty being poverty in a very material bodily way, corporeal, physical. In this sense, I call it prophetic in the sense that, as you know, what distinguishes the biblical prophets from other prophets is that they usually choose to bear on their flesh the signs that they utter against the world. If they want to speak about this infidelity of Israel they would marry a prostitute. If they want to denounce the dissidence, heresies, and lacerations within the body politic of Israel they would even go on cutting off an arm of theirs to dramatize on the flesh this idea of--these prophetic pronouncements that we're making.



This is part of what Francis then is doing here, and this idea that he's living--Poverty it's not just an allegory as an allegorical representation, it is something lived in the flesh; the literal and the allegorical are now compressed, but there's more, what did--what does, for instance, Bonaventure think of what poverty is? Dante, I repeat, thinks about the material idea of poverty, so a way of opposing avarice, a way of opposing prodigality, attachment or contempt for the values. We have seen all of that before, but poverty to them also means poverty of language. Francis, the first one to--I've articulated, even that poem of his; repetitive, the same simple formulaic expressions, praise be omnipotent it said, Oh Lord it said, repeated, it's a poverty of language, the poverty of our thoughts, that which Dante at the beginning of Canto XI has been calling the "defective."



Remember that is the word that I did not stress when we were, "insensate care of mortals, how vain are the reasonings." How "defective" the Italian original says how "defective," I hope some translators pick up "defective" and make it and say that it's "defective" in the idea that they are lacking, that they have nothing of their own, so that retrospectively you can understand what I'm talking about that we cannot own the world, that this--the world is a world of gifts that the economies--an economy of giving, constant giving, because the more you give and the less you have of yourself, the more you are free and the more productive your own acts can become as were the case of Francis.



This is not all that Dante will do with Francis this is now--there is one little reference that I want to mention. This is around lines 102 or so, Francis will go on trying to have this--to receive a seal of approval from the popes about the fraternity, the order, the confraternity, whatever--that he organized "When the company of Poor Brothers increased behind him whose wondrous life were better sung in heaven's glory, the holy purpose of this chief shepherd was encircled with a second crown by the Eternal Spirit through Honorius." Honorius agrees--the Pope Honorius agrees to recognize this new order. Now listen to this, that's really the point that I want to stop on for a while. "And when in thirst for martyrdom, he had preached Christ and them that followed Him in the proud presence of the Sultan, and, finding the people unripe for conversion and not being willing to remain for no purpose, he had returned to the harvest of the Italian fields, then, on the rough crag between Tiber and Arno, he received from Christ the last seal, which his members bore for two years."



He's alluding to the famous story of the stigmata that Francis received; the body becomes a sign. What I was trying to explain with the reference to the Hebrew prophets who dramatize their--and legitimize the validity of the message by an inscription of that message on the literal--the physicality of their own flesh and it's--let's leave at that. The point though, that Dante is making, this is the story of the stigmata, but it's also the story of Francis who tries to go and preach to the Sultan. He fails on having the theological argument and the two--the Sultan and Francis depart, each along his way--on his way and that's it. It's a story of--that can be understood apparently as a failure of Francis' message. At the same time, it is an extraordinary hermeneutical term that has taken place in Dante's thinking. We have had, and we will have, celebrations of the crusades.



Now we have a story of an encounter between Christians and Muslims in terms of peaceful language, peaceful speech, where the two exponents, or--two of the exponents of the particular beliefs can come together and encounter, and they can discuss. The Sultan says no, for him we are not ripe, and for--the Sultan probably says, well I don't think you know what you are talking about and they leave. This is an extraordinary change in the dissemination of violence that had been at the center of so much theological discourse and here Dante seems to be opting and following Francis on a different route. This is, I think, an important change in the consciousness, the historic understanding of the relationship between Christians and Muslims and their interpretations of the crusade.



There is a further detail that I want to mention here. The detail is this detail about two geographic coordinates in this canto. Now we have just read about Francis' trip to Egypt and the Sultan. A little earlier Dante gives the--refers to the birthplace of Francis by talking about the Ganges. In other words Dante has--is aware that there is a European world that we talked about last time, but there are two other coordinates. One, a Hindu world of the Ganges and we shall see what the means for him, and the other one is the Muslim world of the Sultan. He's acknowledging in many ways that which is--we probably may not be entirely familiar with this problem. He's acknowledging that which the--someone like Bonaventure had been discussing.



In 1273, Bonaventure, the man that we shall see in the next canto, traveled to Paris to give a number of lectures at the University of Paris, he will die a year later in 1274, and they are called Conferences. A number of conferences in which he just debates the question of the relationship between what he calls these three cultures: Hindu, the Christian, and the Muslim, and tries to see in what way they can be harmonized. He connects, it's Bonaventure, connects the Hindu religion with joachism, in the sense that the Joachim of the third age, not complicated at all, you remember that Joachim has this paradigm of history according to a tripartite structure: the age of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The third age, which is his own age, the age when Bonaventure lives, when Dante lives, is the age of the Spirit implies the elimination of all institutions.



The idea that the Spirit now is everywhere and there is no need for any hierarchy or any order. Bonaventure says this is exactly the world of the Hindus who believe that God is everywhere, and then he goes on talking about he, Bonaventure, talks about the Muslims for whose theologies are a theology of an impassable distance between God--a transcendence that nothing can really bridge between a God who remains invisible and the world of every man here. Of course for him, the mediation between the two is given by Christianity because with the idea of--there is a transcendence and at the same time an imminence of God in the transcendence of God. Dante is, I think, echoing this text and these problems in the canto of Francis, so he places Francis between the Ganges and Egypt, and places him as the one who is carving a new space, the space that he calls that of poverty meaning freedom, meaning the will, meaning the way of love as a way of coming to the knowledge of God.



Then I would like to move on to, very briefly, to Canto XII. Briefly, not because I am not--I'm insensitive to what Dante will do with Dominic in Canto XII, we really haven't got time, but I want to mention to you a number of things. How the encounter with Bonaventure--I'm sorry the encounter with the description of Dominic told by Bonaventure really rewrites the previous canto. There, in the previous canto of Francis where the marriage, parodic, kind of anarchic idea of the valuelessness of all the worldly values. Here now, we have a different wedding, a different marriage between Dominic and faith; between knowledge and theology if you want to put it at a very generic and general level. Here too, there is the--let me just go over with lines 45, "In that part," that's the description of the legend of Dominic, the life of Dominic, "In that part where sweet Zephyr rises to open the new leaves in which Europe," once again see how Dante's--there is a kind of continental imagination here, the Asia, Africa, and Europe, the three continents "in which Europe sees herself reclad, not far from the beating of the waves behind which the sun, after his long flight, sometimes hides himself from all men, lies favoured Calahorra."



You'll love this detail; I know that--I can tell by the way the eyes of some of you smile when I point this thing. Dante is talking about the birthplace of Dominic and places that--which is where it was, in the western part of Spain, there were the sun sets. Dominic becomes the counter to Francis; he was born where the sun rises and now Dominic is within where the sun sets. So between the two of them the whole movement of the sun, the translatio, the translation of faith, not the translation of empires, not the translation of culture, the translation of faith seems to be encompassed between the two of them. That which will make you smile is that Dante mentions, and you can check, Francis' birth in the East where the sun rises at line 50 of Canto XI, and he mentions the setting sun of Dominic in line 52 of Canto XII, as if there is a kind of--this is a kind of little touch, I think it's--I find it a very amusing touch between them. To account for the difference in proximity between the two, as if this movement also has a kind of--the movement of the sun from east to west on account of them has its own quickness, its own rhythm.



"In it was born the loving liegeman of the Christian faith, the holy athlete, gracious to his own and pitiless to enemies; and his mind, as soon as it was created, was so full of living power that in his mother's womb it made her prophetic. When the espousals between him and the faith were completed at the holy font," here there is another marriage ceremony that counters the previous marriage ceremony of Canto XI. I want to draw your attention to the use of these playful images, the athletes of faith, the liegemen. In the previous canto, we had Francis, who I said, parodies all the values of the world. He is called--and that has really become a formula to describe both Francis--unless Dominic though, they are the so-called--I'll give it to you in Latin and translate it. In English we would call them the "clowns of the lord," lociulatories; they are the clowns, lociulatories domini. The "clowns of the Lord," that is to say they are playing, they are playing at the world; they play with the world. They bring in what we would call a perspective of play in the world. They are making fun of the world, they are challenging the values of the world and in this sense they bring out that which becomes the most impressive aspect of their theology, which is that of a playful theology. We'll talk more about this.



The notion that God plays, that creation itself is a spectacle, I call it a "theodrama," the idea that God is not--it doesn't deprive the Divinity of its seriousness but makes that seriousness part of the world of joy. That's the whole--the aesthetics, the new aesthetics that Francis manages to release, and Dominic manages also to release, this kind of playful idea of the world, a comedy. I tried to explain to you from the very first day when we got together how complicated it was for me, at the time, to explain why Dante calls his text a comedy because this is so sublime. It seems to be--he's talking about how the ordinary and plain man of the year, around the year 1300, manages to have the most sublime of experiences. And this idea--of course this is about the happy ending because comedies are always the genre of happy endings. It is about the low level of experiences, about the vulgar language that Dante uses, but the real and substantial reason for Dante calling his poem a comedy, and for the readers using the attribute of divine, was exactly--is exactly that; a way of responding to this sense of the joyful quality of creation, that's the point.



For all the seriousness--for all the horror that we have been witnessing through Hell and Purgatory, joy seems to be, that we're told which Dante is moving. Not a tragic vision because once you play of--once you think of play you can no longer have the tragic vision because you understand that the tragic vision is part of something larger. It is part--it is vicissitudes, comedies, and tragedies, elegies are all linked to the wheel of fortune in medieval iconography, so you keep going around but they're all part of something really larger, which is this playful theology, this theologia ludic that he has been encompassing, that he has been preparing for us. Let me just go on with a few more details here, a couple of minutes and then--this relationship now of--the other issue that really and retrospectively, the other issue that Dante is raising, let me just talk about this.



In the canto of Dominic, much more than he did in the canto of Francis, this is really a unique moment. It is a representation in terms of language. It is as if whatever orthodoxy Dominic stands for, because that's why the Dominicans--the Dominicans were the intellectual arm of the Church; they were, as I said, founded with a specific purpose of entering the universities and debating the various points of view. They were the Aristotelians, they were the poets, they were traditionally the troublemakers of--they were the figures, the philosophers and so on; especially in Paris, that's the university. There was a--there is an idea of orthodoxy with Dominic and yet, here the whole representation takes place in terms of language. Let me give you a couple of examples around lines 80, "Many a time his nurse found him silent and awake on the ground," this is part of this lodatio, this encomium now of Dominic, "as if he said 'For this am I come'. O father of him, Felice," Felix, "indeed! O mother of him, Giovanna indeed, if, interpreted, it means what they say!"



Dante is playing with etymologies here, the father is really happy; there is a relationship between the name and his state of mind. And the mother is, meaning the one who is full of grace Giovanna, the one who comes before is also, if you interpret it properly. That is to say, orthodoxy or heresy, being its flip side, right? Heresy and orthodoxy; we could have been talking about Siger of Brabant's heresy, we've been talking about Joachim's heresy, here appears as a question of language, as a question of an order that is above all a grammatical order, and therefore, it means a kind of correction or has a kind of ambiguity that you always assume, and you always presume, to be present within the order of language.



Anything, in fact retrospectively I can say to you, that even the schisms of Inferno, where we saw the poet Bertrand de Born, you remember that horrifying picture of the poet who holds in his own hand like a lamp his own head and goes on talking to Virgil and Dante. Or, in that same canto, there was the presence of Mohammed whose body seemed to be completely lacerated. Even the schisms are questions of language, are questions--Dante understands them as issues of language. Which does not--which only means this, to talk about language, I repeat, they are part of the imponderable quality of language, the ambiguities of language, the force of language, and the power of language. That's what I can tell you about these cantos; and let me stop here and see if there are questions that I would most gladly hear, if not answer but--please.



Student: Would Dante have faced any threat from the Church for placing Joachim in Paradise as someone who--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The question is would Dante have faced some censorship, probably, from the Church authorities for placing Joachim in Paradise? Actually no, not at all, because the formula he uses--here comes the Calabrian Abbot Joachim endowed with the gift of prophecy more or less, that's the translation. It translates a Latin formula, the spiritu prophetico totato, which was already used. He had been--Joachim had already been exempted of the censure of his thoughts that Bonaventure had voiced, and in the mass, in honor of Joachim they would use that formula. So he's actually using a canonical formula, a church formula for his own, for Joachim's own--never happened, he's not a saint, never was a saint, but what Dante probably--that's what he did is he should be canonized. No, but the answer is--;and that's the reason why he could not have faced any reprimands. Yes.



Student: You were talking about--with St. Francis and sort of how Poverty and St. Francis as a form of freedom. When he weds freedom he's--or sorry, when he weds Poverty he becomes more free, can we link that to--or how can we link that, is my question, to Dante's--his own poverty and exile; is that meant to be linked? Are we supposed to be thinking about Dante having to depend on, I guess, the charity of others?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Good question, the question is, I was talking about Poverty as being a state of freedom in the canto of Francis. Are we supposed to also associate Dante's own fate of poor, exile, beggar that he was during his exile in that description. That's the question. I would say yes, of course, the--Poverty I hope I explained means several things for Dante. Bonaventure will go on thinking about poverty of language, poverty of philosophy, etc., but all of them understand poverty in a very literal way, but all of them understand one thing that this kind of poverty is really a description of the human condition to begin with. We are all poor, that's the primary sense. We are all born defective and in need, whatever needs were, some of us go on being needy, and we are, all our lives, so this is a general understanding of the idea of poverty.



Then there is a sort of--the other side of this, and the other side is that it's actually a blessing because it's the state of freedom. If this is really very much like what you expect to the philosophical freedom, you know, without any cares. Even Horace--I don't want to have wealth and it's not worrying about having the cares about how the stock market is doing today or not doing, so I want to be completely free of that and it's a state of freedom. Is Dante also thinking about himself? Does it have a consolatory note for him to believe that after all I'm not alone? Yes, I would say that that's the case. In his own life Dante, unlike Petrarch who really died--a poet who follows a few years after Dante, he really died one of the wealthiest men of his time by virtue of being a poet, a writer, and so on, Dante never got to that point.



Student: I mean, I'm wondering if we should take it literally as sort of feelings about Poverty or is it more like an idea like a sort of poetic escape into a perspective I guess that he had gotten in the perspective of Poverty.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Should we take it literally or just as a poetic way of speaking? I think that I answered that by saying--but I think you're asking something else maybe, and then I'll get to that since you are. I think I'm saying that this was really the reality of his life. A stand such as that is bound to appear maybe, well, you know, you need a little bit of comfort and consolation, and so you say it's a poverty but it really has the chrism of Francis' spirituality. I'm not trying to diminish Dante's convictions. What I think you're really asking is, I don't know you're really asking, I don't know, but I know what you are asking--but there is another side to your question. Are you asking me whether or not he was a Franciscan, for instance, is that what you're asking?



Because if you are that would be a very good question in the sense that there were a lot of ideas. We don't have any evidence, but a lot of ideas that he became a member of the third order of the Franciscans, a lay order of the Franciscans, so that he practiced therefore, truly, literally in his own life, that which Francis himself had practiced and preached so maybe that's what--probably if you weren't asking that maybe you should have been asking that and I would have been--I would have said that. Other questions or--we have a few minutes so--yes.



Student: Is the story of the Sultan--supposed to revise our view of Dante's relation--Dante's view of Islam that we took away from the Inferno, from the encounter with Mohammad.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: That's a very good question. Is the view of Francis going to the Sultan supposed--is it meant to revise the view that we may have formed of Dante's attitude toward Islam reading Inferno XXVIII? I think so. My answer is that I--that's why I was stressing this, that there is a sort of a radical turning that takes place in Francis, operates a change in the way that Christians and the Muslims can go on thinking of their encounter. It's no longer through armies, if it's through peaceful discourse. From this point of view, Francis carries on a tradition that started with Peter the Venerable, there were a few other theologians who had a kind of view that was not through wars that this kind of dialogue could take place, if war is a form of dialogue, I'm not sure of course.



Dante acknowledges that in Francis, and I think that he dramatizes it, just as he is dramatizing the sense of the awareness, which was very central to Bonaventure, of the relationship of the three, to him, the three religions: the Hindus, the Christians, and the Muslims. And retrospectively, it forced me to now say things about schism that I did not say when we were reading Canto XXVIII, that schism--we have a presence there of, you remember, all forms of schism; the religious schism with a friar who decides who is really a joachist, by the way, Dolcino. There was the poet who, by the power of his words, Bertrand de Born, the Provencal poet divides father from son, the king from the son, and therefore breaks the unity of the body politic, the idea that the king's two bodies and the famous formula of the book of the great historian [inaudible] so that he broke that kind of unity. There is then an allusion to a story from Lucan, one of the soldiers Curio, who broke away from Pompeii and he had, from Caesar, and he had his own tongue cut off. It's clear that schism is to be understood linguistically.



I am not revising my view but now I can tell you what I always thought was underlying the representation of even Islam, which means that even the interpretation of Mohammed in XXVIII, horrifying though as it is, it really appears as if Mohammed was the one who was doubling the existing unity--that's it, through the power of speech, that's the view. It's a horrifying representation, that does not take anything away from that, but clearly you see that the--Dante's understanding of these issues is a little bit more nuanced than it may at first sight appear. When we come later in the Heaven of Justice, and before we get to Heaven of Justice, Dante goes on talking about the warriors and he begins with Joshua, the hero who brings about the destruction of Jericho etc. By the end he also mentions the crusaders, so there is a kind of ambiguity that I would say that he still values what he thinks is the heroic life.



Nonetheless, after I say this, let me just state another point about Dante. That's true, that clearly he's talking from a Christina standpoint, there's no question about this. But the underlying spirituality of Dante is what I call the "spirituality of the desert." Dante's truly the "poet of the desert" in the sense that in the desert you have modes of a quest that where everyone is really going, because wherever we are going, we are always going to the absolute. Whatever journey we may take it's always the same journey and so the spirituality of the quest is sort of--I won't say overhauls, but at least tempers this idea of Dante being so strict and firm in this universe of degrees and distinctions that he sets up. I don't know if I clarified this for you, okay. Thank you so much.



[end of transcript]

This lecture focuses on the cantos of Cacciaguida (Paradise XV-XVII). The pilgrim's encounter with his great-great grandfather brings to the fore the relationship between history, self and exile. Through his ancestor's mythology of their native Florence, Dante is shown to move from one historiographic mode to another, from the grandeur of epic to the localism of medieval chronicles. Underlying both is the understanding of history in terms of genealogy reinforced and reproved by Dante's mythic references to fathers and sons, from Aeneas and Anchises to Phaeton and Apollo to Hippolytus and Theseus. The classical and medieval idea of the self's relation to history in terms of the spatial continuity these genealogies provide is unsettled by Cacciaguida's prophecy of Dante's exile. The very premise of the poem's composition, exile is redeemed as an alternative means of reentering the world of history.



Reading assignment:

Dante, Paradise: XV, XVI, XVII

Transcript



November 11, 2008



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Last time we looked at the cantos of the sun, which is the canto of arithmetic and so--and we discussed actually the variety of philosophical strengths, theological and philosophical ideas that compose Dante's circle of knowledge, this encyclopedic compass or what's worth knowing.



Today, we move into the Heaven of Mars, which is as you know, the god of war, the name of the planet, and it's the heaven of music. Dante links Mars and music because harmony, out of the belief that harmony is the meeting point or the result of discordant elements, a kind of concordia, a concord, an attuning of hearts reached through discordant elements. The discordant elements can be different sounds; it can be the passions within us that need tempering and so on. This canto is--can be read prophetably and you can do some of this on your own in conjunction -- I will allude to it in passing -- in conjunction with canto, for instance, XV of Hell; within XV, XVI, and XVII of Paradise. You could read it; XV was the encounter with Dante's own ancestor Cacciaguida, and so inevitably the reference to Brunetto Lantini literally imposes itself on us, it compels us, we are compelled to draw parallels and see differences between the two ancestors who claim, make different claims on this descendant -- intellectual and dynastic descendant -- who is Dante himself.



You could also look at it from other, many other points of view. The point of view, for instance, of the other references to war and the kind of the clashing sounds throughout Inferno that Dante produces. If I were to give a title to my remarks today, which I really don't because I think it's the variety of suggestions coming from a canto takes over the desire to be too schematic and thematic, but if I were to give a title today I think it's really very encompassing, I would call it "Self and History." These seem to the most--the strongest questions that Dante raises. They're not--the terms, the question self and history--the relationship between the two may be new to us here, but we certainly have been talking about history before. The last time we did was in the discussion of Canto VI of Paradise, where Dante gives -- in the Heaven of Mercury -- Dante gives this overall history of Rome, its humble beginnings and then the deconstruction of the empire and the crisis of the empire. So that's really one thing that you know.



The issue of self in itself is something we have been discussing ever since we started the Vita nuova, with the idea of a lyrical self, of a self who removes himself, as you recall. That's what we mean by a lyrical self, removes oneself from the world of history, the contingencies of time, the viscous realities of the city, and takes shelter in the chamber of his imagination in the world of his ideas, his dreams, and memories, and there he constructs his own self. That was the point of the Vita nuova.



When we began reading the Divine Comedy I insisted on the autobiographical focus with which at least the Divine Comedy begins. This is his story, this is his unique experience, the pilgrim's own--Dante's own unique experience and that seems to have come to an end with Purgatorio XXX when finally the novel of the self is sealed. As you remember, with the mentioning of the name Dante, then a new phase begins in Dante's construction, which is more educational, more speculative, which is really the world of Paradise.



But so, we talk about self and history in a way that maybe Dante's never quite coupled the two terms before; he does so in Canto XV, XVI, and XVII of Paradise. This is really the double focus around which everything moves. Let me give you--I will give you a reading of the various details, but let me give you an idea of what I have in mind first of all and the way of thinking about this issue. I want to draw your attention to the presence of some mythic, mythological figures that Dante--whom Dante is evoking and they are very different among themselves, but they're all--it's a way of reflecting on Dante's own idea of selfhood, Dante's own relationship to an ancestor, his own private history, who in turn has had a very complex and for Dante nobling relationship to history. He is a crusader; he fought in the Second Crusade of 1149 under the Emperor Conrad; he is proud of this belonging to the crusader, to fight as a crusader. A version of the relationship one has or thinks one has with history, both Cacciaguida's and Dante's own relationship to his grandfather.



Let me tell you first of all these mythic figures and then we'll talk about them. Dante is--beginning with Canto XV I will just remark in passing, I will not--I will leave it to you do more diligently than we could do it here. The presence of musical metaphors, which is not surprising, in the Heaven of the Music, "Gracious will, into which--" this is the beginning of Canto XV, "Rightly-breathing love, always resolves itself, as does cupidity into an ill-will, imposed silence on that sweet lyre." This is the--The soul becomes a kind of musical instrument, the sweet lyre and stilled the sacred strings which the right hand of heaven tightens and relaxes and so on." Then this, "And the gem," at one point, this is line 20, "And the gem did not leave its ribbon, but ran across by the radial strip and seemed fire behind alabaster. With such affection did Anchises' shade reached out, if we may trust our greatest muse, when in Elysium he knew his son," and then in Latin, a quotation, "O sanguis meus, o superinfusa gratia Dei, sicut tibi cui bis unquam coeli janua reclusa?" To whom has this privilege ever been given of having the gates of heaven open to him twice, "the light spoke thus." So this is the first mythical reference.



We are really--we could just say, well Dante of course at the very beginning of Inferno makes a reference to Paul and Aeneas disavowing any strict connection with them. You remember when he resists the call to this huge risky enterprise of going through hell that comes to him from Virgil. He says, I'm not Aeneas, I'm not Paul, why should I do what you are calling me to perform and Aeneas is the one who had visited Hades to meet the shade of his father, Anchises, now recalled here, and of course Paul is the who had been taken wrapped to the third heaven, meaning a third mode of vision that allowed him to--and kept quiet about it, to see God face to face. Anchises, the encounter between Anchises and Aeneas here, stands for a sort of relationship of Aeneas that Aeneas has with history. Aeneas goes to Hades in order to find out what the purposes are for his journeying from Troy toward an unknown land and he discovers--it's a way of Anchises discovers that he--from his own father the presage, the prophetic if you wish announcement of what it is for him to be part of history.



Somehow a definition of self, that's what you find with Anchises and the Aeneid, can be understood as that. The sense that one--how does one belong in history? One belongs in history as part of a providential pattern as the idea that this was a destined empire that he, Anchises, has to found, and a new history would start, so that he confirms his attachment to the dead father and yet he starts now as the point of beginning for a new history. This is one way of understanding an epic, the epic account, a myth of one's own self belonging in the world of history. This is mythical. We move on, and it's really a big--sort of a reversal of this. I will come back into Canto XVI; Dante gives a chronicle of the City of Florence. That is to say, first of all, he's making problematical to us the idea of where are we to understand this as self? This is--it's not clear what we are to understand as a self. In the Vita nuova the self is this nexus of memories, fantasies, and a will to write poetry. In that sense the text constitutes oneself, into a self. I am myself; I'm the author of this text. This becomes a point of reference and this is what I am. The image and poetry that I give of myself gives you an idea of who I am. It doubles me, it perpetuates me, it's a poetic version of self, but we don't know yet what are we to take as a self.



Anchises has a different understanding of himself. I am who I am only because I belong to a larger pattern of history. This larger pattern of history is going to be me as a founder, a founder of a new way of looking at the world, the founder of Rome and he gets the message from his own father. In Canto XVI, and I will not go into this as I'm pursuing the theme of the mythic references, Dante goes on really thinking about writing a chronicle as I will say in the City of Florence. One, Florence is famous for its chroniclers, the beginning of the Middle Ages, and so is history then the other problematical notion to be understood as the loco, events, or is to be understood the way Anchises understands it, as a myth that somehow has a sort of paradigmatic value and which can regulate and also arrange. We can go on arranging our lives according to the demands of that myth. Dante will not answer this question directly here, but he does talk about all the Florentine families and talks about them in an elegiac manner. That is to say they're all decayed, they're all finished and extinct, so whatever value this history may have it's an elegiac commemoration of the past. Cacciaguida, by the way, is very elated at the idea that the son, the grandson, the descendant wants to find out about the past.



We move then into Canto XVII, where I think we find something about this whole issue about history and the self. It begins in a peculiar manner, look at the beginning of Canto XVII, the reference is really--it's a long periphrastic construction, a long turn of phrase to--for the pilgrim to describe himself in terms of Phaeton, the famous figure as you know, from the classical myth who challenges Apollo. We saw him in the corresponding Canto XVII of Inferno. There was an illusion there to Phaeton so a little touch of the symmetry of cantos but that's really secondary at this point. Look at what the scripture is, "Like him who came to Clemente, to be reassured about that which he had against himself." The Disowning, first of all, is the story of the uncertainty of Phaeton's descendents, that his father was Apollo, so he reassured himself, "Him who still makes fathers weary with their sons." This is in the Canto of Cacciaguida. What is the real relationship? That's what that is asking. That I have to this noble heroic figure of whom I'm proud, but what is the actual relationship that joins me to them?



"Such was I and such I was perceived to be both by Beatrice and by the holy lamb that had changed its place for me before." He's happy that--he seems to reaffirm this genealogical line so history now becomes no longer a chronicle, becomes now a genealogy. Can we establish some certainties that we belong into a genealogical line? Can that really account for us and for who we are? This is the issue that Dante's raising. The figure of Phaeton is a tragic figure because it introduces the possibility of, and Dante says this, that's what makes fathers weary of their sons all the time. The idea that the son wants to outdo the father, wants to go beyond the father, and the idea of tragic transgression that it can exist and therefore breach that line of continuity between--inter generations, across the generations. That's one of the myths.



The other one is much more tragic than before. Canto XVII, as you know, goes on discussing among other things the--let me read the passage. I think Dante says it much more sparingly, that is to say without--to my despair--he says it much better than anybody else can, "Contingency," this is line 36, "Contingency, which does not extend beyond the volume of your material world is all depicted in Eternal Vision." This is another way, still another way of understanding history. That there is a contingency that the world of contingency can be subsumed within a larger transcendent paradigm, that seems to be the order of necessity. The contingent world is linked to the volume where all things are present in the eternal vision. Yet, that's not man's derive necessity anymore than does a ship that dropped--is there some autonomy to contingency or things determined by the order of necessity downstream from the icing which is mirrored. "From thence as sweet harmony," last time I mentioned it musical language, musical lexicon abounds here, "comes from an organ to the ear, comes to my sight the time that is in store for thee."



I enjoy very much the implicit connection between time and music. Music becoming the metaphor that makes audible time itself. Time is constitutive of music of course but it really makes it--it's an acoustic translation of the silent arrow of time and now this is the other, the third mythological reference, Anchises, the tragic of Anchises who recognizes himself in the history and in the break, in the continuity with his father and in the break with Troy from his father, from Troy and the beginning of a new, let's say, history. Phaeton, who turns against his father and burns the heavens in doing so, that is the famous metamorphosis of the origin of the Milky Way. As you know, the Milky Way was understood as the scorched heavens, a cosmological disaster that was happening on account of the rivalry between father and son, and now the third is Hippolytus, Hippolytus, the Ephedra, the story of Ephedra and I have to tell you. "As Hippolytus was driven from Athens on account of his cruel and perfidious stepmother, so must thou be driven from Florence."



This is Cacciaguida who announces the exile as the fatality that is hovering over Dante and for which he has to prepare himself and exile--you see what it implies also a sort of necessary detachment from one's family, one's country, one's whole--all the possible lines that tend to join us and limit us too. Dante is not quite Anchises, he's not out to establish an empire, he's not like the Phaeton, he does not want to overdo, at least literally the father, and now let's see who is Hippolytus, "As Hippolytus was driven from Athens on account of his cruel and perfidious stepmother," Phaedra, "so must thou be driven from Florence. This is determined, nay is already contrived," look at the difference between determine and contrived, and the conjunction between the order of eternal, the eternal destinies and the contrivance, the order of contingency, the maneuvers, infernal maneuvers against the pilgrim, "and will soon be accomplished by him who meditates it in the place where Christ is bought and sold all day. The blame, in the common cry, shall follow the injured side, as always, but the vengeance shall be testimony to the truth that dispenses it. Thou," that's the announcement of the exile, "Thou shalt leave everything loved most dearly, and this is the shaft which the bow of exile shoots first. Thou shalt prove how salt is the taste of another man's bread and how hard is the way up and down another man's salary--another man's stairs."



Excuse me. Here there is a terrible mistake that Sinclair makes because Dante is very careful, line 60 he writes, lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale, which means going down and up and your translator--my translator here has it the other way around because he's following a logic which is--we'll call it naturalistic logic. You go to the palace of the duke, you go up, you climb the stairs, and then you come down after you have been begging for some charity and then you have taken your morsel of bread, then you can go down. But that's not what Dante says. He says you first go down and then you go up, and I hesitate to gloss it for you because I think it's a little bit clear the kind of thing he means that for him to go up is really a descent, was lowering himself. It's a little bit of--it would seem to be a descent into pride--into humility but at the same time because he's reversing the natural order, the ordinary order of the action; it's really an ascent into pride. For me to go up here is--it's like going down and I'm really degrading myself. It's a very interesting line, acknowledgement of a sense of gratitude, a sense of the spiritual ascent being inevitably at first a descent into the self, and then becoming an ascent. It's really--turns the whole thing around, was up and down, another man's stairs and "that which shall weigh heaviest on thy shoulder is the wicked and senseless company with which thou shall fall into that valley, which shall become wholly ungrateful, quite mad and furious against thee."



The story of Hippolytus is the story of the stepmother, to go back to this idea of self, is the story of a stepmother who is trying to seduce Hippolytus; she's married to Theseus, and he runs away. The family becoming the destructive--the form of the destructive desires within that family forces him to go away, run away and dies. You wonder why Dante is taking on and thinking of this tragic figure to compare himself too as an exile, he had this potentially destructive and tragic consequences that are happening to Hippolytus, and at any rate, we have three great images by which Dante is thinking about what is the self and how is the self to be determined. How does the self enter the world of history? What examples did he give? Can we talk about any of the examples in the past?



I think that this is really the extraordinary--the burden actually of a text that I have been talking about in the past and it's the Confessions of St. Augustine. That text is about the question of how the self is related to history and Dante disagrees with Augustine. For Augustine, the self is one that takes refuge in the interiority of oneself and goes on. At the time of the conversion he can now rejoin history and that is thought--to Dante clearly, a way of entering history.



The other motif that you can have is the motif of the--the other model you have is the model of Cacciaguida who goes onto a self-sacrifice of himself for the benefit of a larger cause. The cause of the Christian crusade in Jerusalem; then there is the Aeneid that represents the idea of how the self enters the world of history, its political activity and Dante really sort of rejects all of them. This prophesy of exile with which Canto XVII ends gives an entirely different twist to the self's relationship to history. I--inevitably I will belong in history. There is no other way, Dante says, for the self to exist if not by measuring oneself with the historical, the pressures of historical realities, but my own relationship to it is not that--or that of belonging as Aeneas does into the world of history with feeling that I am--the political world is going to be my way out of this maze. It's not going to be the one like Phaeton and it's not going to be the one represented by Hippolytus. It's the exilic self; an idea of a self is an art of dislocation from the world of history.



But then how are we to understand this dislocation? Is dislocation a way of actually removing oneself altogether? Or just saying that I'm out of place, just saying that I'm out of time and somehow I have a relationship to history which is maybe polemical, maybe arguably constructive and if so what is the way? I think that we have to reread now the three cantos in some detail and we come up with an answer. You see then what this--what the issues here are. Let me start with Canto XV and see what Dante is specifically doing above and beyond this overall pattern that he's putting forth in canto--in the various cantos. You will see how in Canto XV the--let's go back to Canto XV and you will see that the relationship to Cacciaguida is also played etymologically. How often Dante's punning with the metaphor of wings; in Italian it's ali, Alighieri, Aligher, that was the name, the bearers of wings so the--for instance line 52, "I speak of thee, thanks to her who clad thee with wings for the lofty flight," or a little later on line 70, "I turned to Beatrice, and she heard before I spoke and smiled to me, a sign that made the wings grow on my will," and later line 80 many, many times. He stops after the third time. "For the reason that is plain to you, are not equally feathered in their wings," etc.



The first thing that they do though with the exchange--in the encounter with Cacciaguida is focus on the City of Florence of old, an invocation of the golden age, a certain golden age where a kind of utopian construction. These are the lines, "Florence," page--line--Canto XV lines 94-97 and following, "Florence, within her ancient circle, from which she still takes tierce and nones," these are the times of the day rung by the bells of the nearby church, "abode in peace, sober and chased. She had no bracelet, no tiara, no embroidered gowns, no girdle that should be seen more than the wearer. Nor yet did the daughter at her birth put the father in fear, for age and dowry did not part from the due measure on the one side and the other. She had no houses empty of family, nor had Sardanapalus yet come there to show what could be done in the chamber." This is a kind of inferno--evocations, so these are--you are really thinking of Cleopatra in Canto V, you are thinking of Semiramis, all these figures of the chaos of the appetites and they are being recalled now in this context "Not yet did your Uccellatoio" and so on, and goes on talking about Cacciaguida's own birth.



Let me focus a little bit on this--the metaphors of the--of Florence. First of all, Florence is evoked within a closed circle of self sufficiency called "within her ancient circle." The circularity of the city also implies a kind of plentitude and a sort of boundary. Dante does not have an idea of an expanding city, just he enjoys the--projects this idea of a city held within its own perimeter, "from which she still takes tierce and nones," the language of space and the language of time follows, as if everything could be measured and everything could be interrelated. One is interrelated with the other. Then this language of--Florence is a woman, sober, chaste, abode in peace, sober and chaste, implying that here at least he believes and it's lingering in him the memory of the famous idea of the so called body politic that you have heard. The idea of the organic structure of the city as made of interdependent parts just as space and time indicate the interdependent coordinates within which the life of the city can be recalled.



Now--this is followed in turn by a sequence of Anaphorus, all in the negatives, "she had no bracelet, no tiara," this is the city, dressed like a woman." Dante--you know that one way of thinking about cosmetics is also to think of it--they used to think of cosmetics as bad rhetoric, perverse forms of seduction by means of which one could disfigure the natural continents and beauty of the human form. So Dante goes on in a sense by repeating these negatives, literally dispossessing, literally stripping the woman of all the superfluities, all these complications and bring the city back to its own simplicity, its original chastity and simplicity--let me just see this passage, "She had no tiara, no embroidered gowns, no girdle, not yet did the daughter at her birth put the father in fear, as she had no houses empty," etc. This is the golden age.



Does Dante really believe though in this myth of the golden age? This is what we call--there is a rhetorical phrase for this sort of move. Praising the bygone times, it's the so-called laudatio, that means praise of the past, which is more of a rhetorical strategy to denounce the imperfections of today. In effect, Dante has a radically polemical view of the utopian spirit. This idea of a perfection that--or the claim of a perfection that we push back into the past because it's no longer with us, but we want to fantasize about and nonetheless he is still--he preserves it because utopia can become a kind of normative idea by means of which we can alter the configuration of our own contingencies, our own history. It may--utopias don't exist, they may even be dangerous some people can claim. A lot of interesting figures in the history of ideas claim that utopias are dangerous constructions because they ferment illusions about who we are, and yet they become for Dante necessary because we--in the light of those ideas we can go on altering what we perceive as the degradations of our own times.



Of course this myth of the golden age of Florence of the past literally disintegrates when seen in contrast with the reality of Dante's life as an exile which is going to await him in the future. That is going to be--so it's exile as the realistic perspective of his being in history. He makes a virtue of it. It's not a suffering as we are going to see, I'm just--let me just continue with my thought. He doesn't see that as a punishment, it induces suffering, but it becomes a virtue and we shall see why it becomes a virtue. In effect, it will become a paradigm in which we can all recognize ourselves.



In Canto XVI this myth of--there's also this golden age of Florence, there's this illusion that it abode in peace, they lived in peace, whenever I hear the language of peace I do hear, I do overhear the echo of Jerusalem, the city of peace, and that's what makes it interesting, so it's a typology of another city, a golden--the great time, the golden age of the past is a kind of--what the prophets would always recall as the peace time of Jerusalem that they had--that the Jews themselves had lost and kept on commemorating in the history. What makes this conjunction very strong is that--to me is that in Canto XVI Dante goes on, first of all, talking about this at the chronicles. What is a chronicle? How does the chronicle change history? The chronicle reduces--it's a mode of historiography, a different mode of historiography.



The place where you can find these modalities of history is really Boethius, who writes the Consolation of Philosophy, at the center of which he figures the Wheel of Fortune. You remember the Wheel of Fortune; there's this blindfolded woman who revolves, who rotates this wheel, and which means that we who are always on the shifting curve of the wheel will be up and down, so that a kind of historiography that derives from this Boethian insight is that of writing the lives of families that ascend and descend. Note, the other mode of historiography, should be the historiography of the fall of empires, for instance, Augustine. So there are two historiographic models. The one that you--available in the City of God, we are really told about the fall of the Persian Empire, the fall of the Roman Empire in a few pages, kind of given sort of in a much more detailed way, but this is really the idea.



On the other hand, Dante goes to another historiographic model which is that of chronicle. The idea that history is reducible to the events, the local events and circumstances of one's own life. He recalls all the families to the joy of the grandfather who is--you can understand the pleasure of memory. He shuttles back and forth between, in memory, between one item and the other, recalling everything and Dante soon discovers that he does not quite belong, that that kind of history does not really account for who he is and who he wants to be above all, and that somehow his definition of self will depend on a certain idea of the future and not of the past. I am trying to go back to this idea of who the self is and what is history, and how are we to understand history.



Here, to continue with the notion of Jerusalem, which I have not--which I bracketed a little bit and gave you a little digression on history, Dante goes on talking about a language, turn to Canto XVI line 50 please where he again talks about--it's all about Florence. "All who were there at the time between Mars and the Baptist," the mythology of Florence, cities, not only you recount stories of families, you have to recount stories of the predominant, the sovereignty of mythologies that control our own self understanding. We tend to understand ourselves in the light of presiding myths, of imaginative myths above us, so there's Mars who's the god of Florence before the Baptist, John the Baptist replaced him. This is the account about the shifting mythology of the city, "Mars the Baptist able to bear arms was a fifth of the number now living," this is really an accounting, a chronicler's precision and accounting of Florentine local history. "But the citizenship, which is now mixed with Campi and Certaldo and Figline," and so on.



That language of mixture which later becomes confusion and Dante will call it a confusion when he has to give a diagnosis at the top of page--line 67. Dante has to give a--goes into a diagnosis of the crisis of the city, "The mixture of peoples was ever the beginning of the city's ills, as food in excess is of the body's." Once again the connection between--he's talking about the malaise of the city by the connection between body and cities. Cities grow and decay and get sick because of what he calls the confusion. First of all he called the mixture, en confusio, is the other name for Babylon. When you have to etymologize Babylon into the romance languages and in English, it's confusion, so that the two myths of the city that Dante has in mind is Jerusalem for Florence and then Babylon for Florence of today. The two myths of the cities are not antithetical; they are both possible within the same body politic. Florence can look like Jerusalem or it can look like Babylon according to the way the moral life of the city is lived out.



This is something that Dante will preserve, but it really implies that the city, the political world is one which one has to shape all the time, that you cannot--there is no definite metaphor or emblem to define a particular city. A city can change its very identity, it can become like--it can be like a Jerusalem as it was in the old or it can be like Babylon now. The city involves us, we are involved in the city's history in the way of making it according to our own aspirations, our own ideas; we share in the shaping and construction of the city. This is no longer the perspective of the chronicler, it's the perspective of Dante as the poet; so it's a critique of the inadequacy of the chronicle's view of what history could be.



Now we go back to Canto XVII where once again and I'm going to--I will not go up to our--you remember it comes to Phaeton and a rivalry with the father. Dante's saying if I don't belong to the city and I--and city and families go on decaying and disappearing what is the true relationship that I have to this man who is actually directing me, and unveiling for me that which the future--that which I have to expect from the future. These are the kind of questions that he's very carefully raising, so we go back to the famous description of Dante's exile where we describe here, "Thou shalt leave everything loved most dearly," lines 55, "loved most dearly, and this is the shaft which the bow, the bow of exile shoots first." The condition, the harshness of exile could not be crystallized in sharpest terms. The severance, the separation of self from family as apparently as a punishment at this point. "Thou shalt prove how salt is the taste of another man's bread."



Those who think that here Dante is finding a little bit mildly comical relief in remembering the fact that in Florence they do not use salt in their bread, but anywhere else around we have a frequent flyer to Italy who knows very well this little history, but I don't think that it's all that comical. I think it's the bread, it's the most sacramental of foods that he's talking about and then we shall see how he picks up the idea of bread in a moment. It's just not a metaphor there, "Thou shall--and how hard is the way up and down another man's stairs. And that which shall weigh heaviest on thy shoulder is the wicked and senseless company." The word picks up the metaphor of the bread because company means, and that which--it simply means the sharing of bread with others, so bread is truly sacramental in the sense that it adjoins and brings about the unity of the body of the body politic.



What Dante's saying is that it's a reflection on his own life, a literal reflection of his own life. He went into exile as you know in the year 1302, and for a number of years he went on at least two or three years, plotting along the side of his other fellow exiles the return to Florence and the destruction of the enemies who had banished them. Really a plot of revenge in order to restore what they saw as justice. Dante very quickly understood that this was the way to absolute destruction, so he just from then on moves like a shabby derelict. He represents himself limping at the beginning of Inferno and that is really the way we can--we are asked by him to imagine him as he goes when he's talking about exile. We are not talking about living in some kind of isolated splendor in some court or other. It literally means going from place to place begging, so this is punishment for him, and yet, let's see what happens, "With which thou shalt fall into that valley which shall become wholly ungrateful, quite mad and furious against thee."



He is an exile to the exiles. Both the Guelfs and Ghibellines distrust him and take their distance from him, "but before long they, not thou shall have the brows red for this. Of their brutish folly their doings shall give proof, so that it shall be to thine honour to have made a party by thyself." What an extraordinary line to be absolutely on your own, "a party to thyself." This should make you--should give you some perplexity, to say the least, because you may remember that the Divine Comedy begins with the representation of the so called neutral angels, and those neutral angels were angels who wanted to be neither with God nor against God, but they want to be by themselves. You remember how I pointed that out to you, that for Dante this was the most despicable of conditions and choices, though it seems to be non-choice. One is really choosing anyway, even when we are not choosing we are choosing and he is; he was separating that to him it's despicable not to take sides, to sit on the fence, and now he seems to attribute that very condition to himself.



But to you it will be to your honor to be a party to thyself, and not only--we did not read it, but those of you who were so taken with the poem, you can go and read Canto VIII of Paradise, where Dante will ask one question he--to the soul that he meets he says, is it right for a man in the city to be a citizen? Yes, he says, and I don't even want to ask why; it's so clear that has--it needs no justification, no explanation, you have to be part of the--belong to the world where you are, and yet now he takes the other side. He has to be by himself. What does it mean to be by himself? Is that a kind of neutrality he's imagining? Is that--it's really the condition of exile I think that he's really describing the destitution, the loneliness, the severance of the self from others, but even that can become a condition that triggers a new form of relationship.



The exile is still part of the community and let's see how he is thinking of this. I don't want to--this is his--this is now the specific prophecy of what's in store for the exiled. I think it retrieves, in this sense I mean that Dante's bringing about a transformation of the idea of exile from what seemed to be a punishment into a virtue. There is such a thing as a virtue of exile. The language with which Dante presents the world to come for him, the future, this is his future, it's not the past, history then is understood as above all futurity. We are here oriented to the future, the only real time that we have, we don't have it yet, but we can--it's the time of one's projects, it's the time in which one can really define oneself. I'm not really my past so there is--I have some contact with the past, my memories and my memories can tell you--me where I'm going but then a catastrophe occurs.



The need to sever yourself from anything that you know, and you love most dearly -- family, city, loyalties, your habits, your bread -- all of these details here are given and this is what he finds. "Thy first refuge, and inn," the inn as those of you who read, it's an interesting metaphor in the medieval literature. Those of you who read Chaucer, is there anybody here who reads Chaucer? The Canterbury Tales, of course, it's the story of pilgrims and the inn becomes the station--the temporary dwelling of people who are on the road and always moving. It's really one of the most welcome images in the medieval imagination, the inn, the provisional comforts for the night that the inn offers.



Anyway, "'Thy first refuge and inn thou shalt find in the courtesy of the great Lombard," this is the gentleman of Verona, the one gentleman of Verona who houses him and hosted him for a while, "who bears on the ladder the sacred bird, and he will hold thee in so gracious regard that, of doing and asking between you two, that shall be first which with others come after. With him thou shalt see one who at his birth so took the impress of this mighty star that his deeds will be renowned. The people have not yet taken note of him, because of his youth, for these wheels have circled about him only nine years; but before the Gascon deceives the noble Henry sparks of his heroism shall appear in his disregard both of wealth and toil, and his munificence shall yet be known so that his enemies cannot keep silence about it. Look to him and to his benefits. Through him there shall be altered fortune for many, rich changing state with beggars. And thou shalt bear this written in thy mind about him and shalt not tell it,'--and he told things which shall be incredible to those that witness them. Then he added: 'Son, these are the glosses on what was told thee," in Inferno XV of course. Remember when Brunetto says, "This is the prophecy of your future exile but it will be glossed for you by somebody else." He doesn't even mention who, Dante goes on thinking that it's going to be Beatrice; it turns out to be his father, his ancestor. "These are the snares that are hid behind a few revolving years; yet I would not have thee envious of thy fellow-citizens, for thy life shall far outlast the punishment of the perfidies.'"



The exile can turn into a virtue and the language here that accompanies this prediction is the language of the ethics of exile. That the exile brings about and needs in order to be bearable and tolerable, the hospitality. These are the great, the courtesy, the hospitality, the language of gratitude, the giving, so it's a new ethics is going to be described in--from the perspective of this exilic experience of Dante. Then Dante concludes, which I think it seals what I have been saying, "'I see well my father," this is line 113 and following, 110 and following, "'I see well, my father, how time spurs towards me to deal me such a blow as falls most heavily on him that is most heedless; it is well, therefore, that I arm me with foresight,'" that's another virtue of exile. The word translates, of course, prudence.



Prudence is the human counterpart of providence. It's the same etymology, a seeing in advance, trying to not predict but forestall the arrows and flings that come our way, "so that if the dearest place is taken from me, I may not lose the others by my songs. Down through the world of endless bitterness, and on the mountain from whose fair summit the eyes of my Lady lifted me, and after, through the heavens from light to light, I have learned that which, if I tell again, will taste for many of bitter herbs; and if I am a timid friend to truth I fear to lose my life among those who will call these times ancient. ' The light within which was smiling the treasure," and then of the reference to Brunetto who wrote the Treasure of course. "I had found there first became ablaze like a golden mirror in the sun, then replied: 'Conscience dark with its own or another's shame will indeed feel thy words to be harsh; but none the less put away every falsehood and make plain all thy vision--and then let them scratch where is the itch. For if thy voice is grievous at first taste, it will afterwards leave vital nourishment when it is digested. This cry of thine shall do as does the wind, which strikes most on the highest summits; and that is no small ground of honour. For that reason have been shown to thee, in these wheels, on the mountain, and in the woeful valley, only souls that are known to fame; because the mind of one who hears will not pause or fix its faith for an example that has its roots unknown or hidden or for other proof that it not manifest.'"



What he hears, and the decision that Dante will take as a palliative at least, or a remedy to his exile is writing. The writing of the poem becomes the act by which he is an exilic--as an exile can go on in his dislocation, his utter dislocation from the city, from family, from his habits, can go on actually relating himself to a more writing. The work is the way in which the self enters history and can shape history. It's not Aeneas, it's not Phaeton, it's not going to be the Hippolytus, it's not even Cacciaguida's own account of his own grandiloquent connection with the world of history, a way in which Dante's self enters history is through this idea of poetry--of a writing that is now also described in terms of food, as you can see here first of all, with the bitter herbs and now the voices gives us the first taste that will afterwards leave vital nourishment when it is digested, etc. Words--first of all, let me just clear the air here.



No one of you has these misconceptions about poetic language that somehow it's some sort of faint symbol divorced from reality. Dante goes beyond this idea of the relationship of language to representation. That was the problem of the chronicles and they gave fairly faithful accounts and he can give fairly faithful accounts. That's the mode of a certain historiography. What Dante's saying is that words are things in themselves, that words are food that change, and being things they have a kind of solidity and have a sort of truth value in and of themselves. This is really the biblical language that resurfaces, son of man, eat the book, you remember these lines from Ezekiel? This is exactly the kind of language that is returning here, and which Dante bends, the sort of language to define himself in a relationship to his future project of writing the poem and that project of writing the poem is his way of establishing his place literally in--which is a utopian place in history.



I say utopian because it doesn't have to be understood in any local sense. I do not belong to the city only because I occupy a particular place in the city. It is the act of writing poetry, that's really what matters. What I'm referring to is also, and here I am, a sort of correction, very mild correction of the classical idea which is also a medieval--survives in medieval times the idea that the self is decided, the value of the self is decided by the place one occupies within the economy of the city. Dante says that's not the way it works. I am the project of writing my poetry and through poetry, which is written in exile, and therefore it's a poetry of exile I can re-enter the world of history. The world of history accusing history and talking as a man who has been touched by the vision of what justice ought to be, so this is really the remarks that I think I can make about these Cantos XV, XVI, and XVII and I welcome questions if you have any. I'm sure you do. Yes.



Student: Would I be right in seeing some biblical references within the lines between 70 and 100, the mention of the star, the birth, the inn. Is that some sort of a Savior?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: This is line 17, the question is would she be right in seeing biblical antecedents, context for the lines with--that go from line 70 you say, the first refuge and inn. No, and I "shalt find in the courtesy of the great Lombard." That may be a crystalogical or a crystal mimetic language behind these sort of references. That would be even more--it would be truer even--would be made more compelling in light of Cacciaguida's own self representation in crystalogical terms, both in Canto XV and--in Canto XVI actually he talks to himself as if he were a Boethian philosopher. Dante uses the same phrase about the death of Cacciaguida that he had used for Boethius in Paradiso XV, venni dal martiro a questa pace, that he had used for Boethius. But the language is a crystalogical language.



The only difference is that if there is any crystalogical resonance here it very quickly fades because Dante's really discussing himself as an exile with this--and he understands exile as the real condition of himself but also of human beings. I will go on so far as to say, in order to connect your theological perspective and what I have been saying about the self in history is that exile is also the root of one's religious consciousness. We have--those of us who have a religious conscious, and I think we all do, just as we have an aesthetic sense we all do, that religious conscious comes always out of the sense or the feeling even better, better than the sense, the feeling that we are not where we should be. That we are somehow not where we should both in terms of time and in terms of space, that we are dislocated. And this exile, this exilic imagination then shapes also the theological language of Dante and accounts for his persuasion that exile defines the human condition. It's not just an empirical--it is his empirical experience. That is to say, it relates to him but he understands that it's really--we're all engaged in this kind of--I'll talk about this later.



By the way, I'm forcing my hand because the text does not really allow me to do that, but when he discusses hope, the most extraordinary of all virtues, the most deceptive maybe of all virtues, there healing's hope and exile in a very clear way and I'll reserve that as a surprise for whatever next week or--yeah next week. Please.



Student: You mentioned Augustine's confessions earlier, and talking about the different conceptions of how the self relates to the city, and you said Dante didn't agree with Augustine. I didn't catch everything you were saying about Augustine's view of the self. Can you just review?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The question is about--I was discussing modalities of this relationship between the self and history at the beginning of my remarks. One of them obviously was--I mentioned-- let me just give a little resume of this. I mentioned Cacciaguida himself who has a kind of special understanding of history and that defines him, his taking part in the crusades. The other one is with which Dante begins is Aeneas who is a model for Augustine, as you know. I'm answering your question now. The Confessions of Augustine are constructed as nothing less than what we call--what I call the Aeneid of the heart. That is to say, he goes from Carthage, he has his Didos; you remember when he leaves Carthage to go to Rome, and the Dido doesn't--he doesn't just abandon them but he describes as they hold on to his garment, etc. Then he goes to Rome, so it's really a pattern on an epic, on the Virgilian epic of the Aeneid.



But Augustine is very different from Aeneas. He doesn't go to Rome to found an empire. He's a professor of rhetoric, he teaches, he's a teacher, a professor of rhetoric and he comes to understand himself. Actually the great moment, the great revelation for him, there are two moments of great revelation to him, which we really never talked about. One, which he's in Ostia, a little town on the--by the sea outside of Rome and he said, he saw this mother at the window and they share in a kind of mystical vision. He describes this ecstasy that they have while they look outside, and then she's about to die. That is a decisive moment in--clearly in his life and his understanding of himself. The other one comes in the Garden in Milan when he hears voices that tell him to--that he understands in his own way. It's an idea of a self which is--which understands the self as a death of the old man and the birth of a new man. This is the old Adam and the new Adam. The Christian idea of conversion, St. Paul's command, you have to let the old man die so that the new man can come into being. That's the understanding of the self.



Now Dante of course, when I say he doesn't agree with it, of course he's not Aeneas, he did say that. He's not Paul; he did say that; there are those who say well he's ironic. I don't see where the irony is. He's not Aeneas and he's not Paul; he uses them to relate, to coordinate himself to them and now he's using a number of other mythical figures. What is one's own relationship to genealogy? What is one's own relationship to the chronicles? What is one's own relationship to mythical empires? You understand what I'm saying? The idea of self that he is going to have is not really Augustine's; it's that of the man first of all who can belong to the history of the world by writing the poem. He lives and he understands the fundamental quality of the exilic experience of human beings, that's not Augustine, that's really what I meant. No disrespect for Augustine only different--a different experience. Yes.



Student: I'm still thinking about the brief reference to the crusades that Cacciaguida makes at the end of the Canto XV and the presence of sectarian violence, and I wonder if that--if Dante has some idea about that that connects to his idea of the empire as staving off the political violence of civil war or what would Dante suggest as a [inaudible] because we saw St. Francis last week who spoke peacefully with the Sultan of faith.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: This is an extraordinary question. The question is by the way the--how do I explain Cacciaguida's reference to the crusade, very brief reference to the crusade, and how does that connect with what we have been talking about sectarian violence in the Canto of Dominic for instance in Canto XII and whether Dante is using this as a ploy to explain, just the way he does with the violence within the city to justify the necessity of the Empire, which he does or is this--or does he really have an idea of the peaceful language of Francis?



Accurate--you asked a lot of questions and really, really, really impressive. After all she's an Italian major, what do you expect? She has--she better impress me--you did, you did. We'll talk more about Dante's preparing Canto XVIII, XIX, and XX is really about--it starts with what is a heroic life and how are we to understand the heroic life. There's a reference there also to crusades, and the question of the crusades, the relationship of justice and Christian ideas of justice to Muslims and Hindus will come to the forefront there. So I really ask you to wait for that for next time because--



However, I can answer one question immediately, which is really implied by what you are saying more than asked directly. Yes, Dante is a peace poet. I would say that with full confidence, though we know Dante was so polemical, kicks shades, is angry, fights, and there's always competing visions in relation to the tradition and others, but he's--Fundamentally, you have to establish, you would say, differences; not really renounce your differences, but actually make those differences the orchestration, the musical orchestration that is going on in Cantos XV, XVI, and XVII. This is the heaven of music. This discordance, discourses, are part of a sovereign and transcendent order, but he is a peace poet which is truly scandalous because most poets, except for Isaia, for instance who is a peace poet--prophet, a prophet of peace, with a vision of peace; Dante really has an irenic vision.



Most poets write about victories, about wars, about armistices, truces, epic; the epics in England or in Italy, it's all about the clashes of armies, etc. Not Dante, so that's really the direct answer I can give to your question. Then you raise another issue which I find a little bit--I would not want to go there but I owe it to you to give an answer. Well, what about the peaceful language of Francis? That seems to be such a great idea because heresy and schisms and the question--the relationship between Christians and Muslims has always been one of wars, so heresy and war, schism and war, so we can say that Dante seems to be so radical in renouncing war and says, look it's possible to harmonize relationship or at least confront our differences with using a peace language.



However, things are not as simple as that and that's why I only mention it but I will not go into that. We haven't got time for that. It's really a thought I am a little developing, I must admit. The heresy is a question of language. It's not just a question of wars. So, there are wars that go on in language and therefore they re-propose the very differences and stubborn divisions of understanding that qualify and describe both the schisms and the heresies. So, to say "peaceful language," it sounds also like another way of--another route into potential descent and tragedy, you see. But I am not going to go anymore than give you as a kind of suspicion that I have about my own claim that Dante is a peace poet. We'll talk though about the crusades next time. And may be I have time for another question may be and a very short answer. Anybody? See you next time.



[end of transcript]

In this lecture, Professor Mazzotta examines Paradise XVIII-XIX and XXI-XXII. In Paradise XVIII, Dante enters the Heaven of Jupiter, where the souls of righteous rulers assume the form of an eagle, the emblem of the Roman Empire. The Eagle's outcry against the wickedness of Christian kings leads Dante to probe the boundaries of divine justice by looking beyond the confines of Christian Europe. By contrasting the political with the moral boundaries that distinguish one culture from another, Dante opens up the Christian economy of redemption to medieval notions of alterity. In Paradise XXI, Dante moves from the exemplars of the active life to the contemplative spirits of the Heaven of Saturn, Peter Damian and St. Benedict. The question of perspective through which the theme of justice was explored resurfaces to distinguish between the visionary claims of the contemplative and mystical traditions. As Dante ascends to the Heaven of the Fixed Stars, catching sight of the earth below (Paradise XXII), his own visionary claims are distinguished by an awareness of his place in history.



Reading assignment:

Dante, Paradise: XVIII, XIX, XXI, XXII

Transcript



November 13, 2008



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: I realize that as we read from assignment to assignment, and partly because we read in a very selective way, I know there are a lot of gaps in our readings. I never really have tried to share with you the idea that there is a line, a narrative line, a conceptual line running through the poem. The cantos are not discrete units, poetic units, without much relationship where the links are to be found symmetrically maybe with cantos far apart from the cantos that we are reading. I think that there is a continuity going through many of them. There is no doubt, for instance, between Cantos XV, XVI, and XVII of Paradise we read last time and Cantos XVII, XVIII, and XIX there is actually a thematic expansion of some of the issues that Dante raises in the Heaven of Mars.



To begin with, Dante in Canto XVIII is still in the Heaven of Mars and he meets and he lists--I know that I did not--the number does not appear in your syllabus, but just bear with me so that I can go on with these ideas. He just lists the number of warriors, souls who are figures, heroic figures, the heroic life very much like Cacciaguida himself who appears as one of the blessed, from lines 40 and following of Canto XVIII. He mentions, he sees and he mentions Joshua, biblical figures Joshua and Judas Maccabaeus and then he goes on mentioning medieval figures.



Charlemagne was clearly--he's justifying retrospectively the whole issue of the crusades to which Cacciaguida took part, and which can really be brought back to Charlemagne's experience in France and in Spain against the Muslims. He mentions and lists Charlemagne and of course his paladin the great, the so called, the Achilles-like invulnerable Roland, who however, dies at Roncevaux which is the site of the war between Muslims and Christians and he dies because of the hubris that characterizes his life, the hubris of not wanting to blow the bugle, that it would be heard by Charlemagne and Charlemagne could have come to his rescue. As I have probably said before, that became in the Western imagination a most traumatic experience. A traumatic experience because it showed that the myth of invincibility of the Christian--of Christian Europe was simply that, an illusion to be turned into rubble by the invading and victorious Christian armies.



Then he goes on mentioning the figures of the second crusade, 1109 the Godfrey of Bouillon and a figure--a Normand who defeated actually the Muslims in Sicily, the Guiscard, Robert Guiscard, and brought about in the early ninth century--in the late ninth century; after about 75 years the Muslims were there the expulsion of the Muslims from Sicily. A clear, thematic thread between the previous cantos and this canto is the question of what is a heroic life. The heroic life can even involve a defeat, as in the case of Roland. It implies, however, a heroic life clearly, though there is a typology that runs from Joshua's defeat of and seizure of Jericho. This is the great epic biblical story to Guiscard, contemporary history, almost contemporary history. For Dante it implies really a division, it implies a heroic life which is--it implies the power to establish and live for a cause which is going to be--for Dante it's a just cause but it's a cause that brings about divisions so it's not--a heroic figure is not necessarily a figure that would unify and cut across barriers and divisions. On the contrary, Dante is indicating that there's a possible heroic life onto a giving of oneself to a cause much larger than oneself. We could just leave it at that and we will come back to this issue in a moment. What I would stress--in a few minutes.



What I would stress though about this particular scene is that Dante is really aware of divisions, aware of the need even to separate what is mine from what is not mine, what is ours from what is not ours so it would seem--he seems to be perpetuating a myth that's--or an idea that some might find even objectionable that indeed this separation is dangerous and it's in itself caused by war and a cause of wars. This is the objection to this problem. It's not the only time that Dante is establishing divisions, when I have been talking over the past few weeks about, for instance, divisions and boundaries that Dante establishes even when talking about continents. You remember in Canto VI of Paradise when there's the story of the eagle of the Roman Empire Dante goes on talking about the periphery of Europe where the Justinian and the bird of the empire had nestled; the eastern part of the empire. That was the periphery of Europe and we have been talking about the whole how in Canto XII of Paradise meeting Dominic, St. Dominic, Dante talks about the western part of Europe. He goes out of the way to mention this idea so there are always divisions that always buries.



He seems to believe that Rome and the history of Rome really escapes this logic of separation. In effect, this I know that I mentioned to you, in Monarchia, the political track that he writes, he does stress the fact that Aeneas is really a Roman and not; for instance, he cannot really be thought of as an Asian, which he was, nor can he be thought of as a European, and he stresses the fact that he has a kind of some--there is a sort of universalizing history in him, a universalizing impulse in the measure in which he married three women from three different continents, Creusa from Asia, Dido from Africa, and Lavinia from Europe. He does distinguish between a kind--a sort of--the history that transcends barriers but also an idea which is really heroic here of a history that manages--what keeps barriers, that these are people who fought at the crusades. These are the--many of them such as Joshua and Judah Maccabaeus, but Charlemagne, not of the crusades but against a Muslim named Roland, but Godfrey of Bouillon and so on. We'll see what the consequences of this may be.



Now another conceptual thread, I'm really going around two or three--I think I'm keeping two or three themes in my head now. Another conceptual thread between XVII and the remaining part of XVIII, XIX and XX which is the Heaven of Jupiter, is the question of a very abstract question that Dante asks. What is a place? That was the underlying problem in XV, XVI, and XVII. In XV Dante tries to determine whether his history could be reduced to the boundaries of his own native town and decides that that was no longer possible for him to conceive.



The famous chronicles, he tries to figure out where exactly he can be in the history of--in the midst of Florence itself and decides that he is an exile. That was the final prophecy of Cacciaguida. Exiled is a word that means--it's a Latin word, in Italian or in English, it comes "being out of one's own soil." That's what the meaning is so that in the Middle Ages they never really thought of exile as just a spiritual condition. That is to say I feel dislocated, I am--my personal existential predicament is that of feeling that I'm out of it, that I don't belong, or that kind of--that was not the conventional understanding. Dante changes this meaning of exile in making it into a spiritual condition. It's the condition of--it's the pre-condition for his writing poetry to begin with, so that poetry and exile seem to be going together.



In XVIII, the real issue that he raises is what is a place? I am an exile, I do not belong anywhere, what is--how do we understand here and how do we understand there? What does it mean? What are these terms? At any rate, he starts and enters now into canto with the remaining part of Canto XVIII, he enters into the Heaven of Jupiter. A heaven of white light which he links with geometry. You know what geometry is? A science, very complex science, it encompasses--what it means is the measurement of the Earth, it's the whole Earth that anyone can measure with medieval geometry. It means--it implies the presence of perspective within it, with the idea that geometry is what regulates the idea of space and the arrangement of space it implies altimetry, it implies the measurement of the depths and so on.



It is, as you know, traditionally linked to ethics. It has a profound intimate linkage with ethics for the simple reason--well, when Dante discusses justice; for instance, in cantos--in Inferno he distinguishes between distributive justice. Remember Inferno VII, the god is fortuna who manages to distribute with some idea of impenetrable occult, equity a cold justice the goods of the Earth, though she's blindfolded and moves the wheel around so there can be some kind of uniform--If you are up you are not going to be up all the time, you may be down, etc., and if you are down you eventually--if you are on the shifty curve of fortune you are going to be up. It's a sort of arithmetical notion of equity. If you have--sometimes you have five then you lose three and you get to have two, whoever have one will get two, etc.



The other form of justice was also geometric justice which Dante describes in the so called rule of the counterpart, counter passion, in the contrapasso in Inferno XXVIII when he has to establish the relationship between crime and punishment. It could not be an even one, one and one; you cannot pluck someone's eye because someone has plucked your eye, that's not necessarily justice. You cannot cut someone's arm off because you have perpetrated that crime or kill because you just have been killed, there should be some kind of proportionality, is the argument. The idea is that geometry is always part, geometry in fact is related to ethics simply because its extension always implies a point which is the beginning of a geometric reflection, always implies the existence of other points; it establishes relations therefore. That's the language.



In this canto Dante discusses primarily justice. What is justice? That's the idea that runs through this. The other thing that you have to be--as you read these cantos, and I hope you read them with care, and I will not say much about it, is that he deploys--Dante deploys the language of geometry. Now you know that this is a technique of his. If he were dealing with arithmetic he would do music, he would do that, but I just want to give you a few examples of these issues.



For instance, just let me open here and the notion of God, the geometer, he will go on talking for instance, this is in Canto XIX, anywhere really, line 90. Look at this, "The Primal Will, which in itself is good, from itself, the Supreme Good, never was moved; whatever accords with it is in that measure just;" the language of measure, "no created good draws it to itself, but it, raying forth"; "ray," which in Italian is both radius, it's the ray of the sunlight but also the radius of a circle, "creates that good. As the stork circles," there it goes, even the very shapes, "circles over the nest," and then a little bit further down, "Wheeling, it sang, then spoke," wheeling again a circular motion and this continues--literally continues throughout.



I want to find for you the image of the compass that I thought was in Canto XIX. It's not, we'll get to that, we'll find it. There are a number of these geometrical terms. However, the most important thing here in Canto XIX is that as soon as he enters the heaven of geometry now we encounter in Canto XVIII, we come across a plane, a divine spectacle, it's a sort of--the heavens are a sacred theatre where God will go on speaking to human beings by using to us on Earth--by using the souls of the blessed. This is the passage, "I saw," Canto XVIII line 70 and following, "I saw in that torch of Jove the sparkling of the love that was there, trace out our speech to my eyes; and as birds risen from a river-bank, as if rejoicing together over their pasture, make of themselves, now a round flock," that's a geometric image for you, "now another shape, so within the lights holy creatures were singing as they flew and made themselves, in the figures they formed, now D, now I, now L. First, singing, they moved to their own notes; then, becoming one of these shapes, they paused for a little and were silent."



Within the heaven of geometry, even the letters of the alphabet draw geometrical lines, the semi-circle of D, the two--the perpendicular line of the L, and the perpendicular line of the I, we are--we really discover that the beauty of geometry underlies the rigor of the alphabet so to speak, but more importantly, we discover that these souls that dispose themselves in letters are really God's way of speaking to us. The language that Dante--that God uses is the language of human beings. We are the syllables, we are the letters disposed in order to convey this--whatever God's message may be. "They showed themselves, then, in five times seven vowels and consonants, and I noted them severally, and what they seemed to me to mean. DILIGITE IUSTITIAM." They spell out a line taken from the book--a verse from the Book of Wisdom; love, justice, diligite iustitiam, you who judge the Earth. That's another reference to the actual ultimate measurement of geometry, the Earth. That's the meaning of geometry, the measuring of the Earth, so geography in a certain way is part of the world of geometry.



Then Dante goes on describing a metamorphosis, how "in the M of the fifth word they kept their order, so that Jupiter seemed there silver pricked out with gold; and I saw other lights descend on the very summit of the M and settle there, singing, I think, of the good that draws them to itself. Then, as when burning logs are struck rise innumerable sparks, from which the foolish are accustomed to make auguries, so more than a thousand lights appeared to rise again from there and to mount, some much, some little, as the Sun that kindles them appointed; and when each had settled in its place," etc.



I know that some of you are working on the aesthetics of colors; I would point out this scene to you and the complications of color. The white of Jupiter, the gold of the letters, the red of the flames, there is a kind of chromatic--a deployment of chromatic elements within this grand spectacle. Dante is indicating directly and indirectly this chromatic symbolism, so this is what we--the way the heavens speak to us on Earth and to the--and the rulers of the Earth and then Dante goes on in the next Canto XIX, wondering what is this idea of justice. What does it mean?



He'll ask, Canto XIX, line 28, "I know well that though the Divine Justice is mirrored in another realm of heaven yours apprehends it without a veil. You know with what intentness I am prepared to listen, you know what is that doubt which is old a fast in me." He's hungry; Dante's hungry to know what Divine Justice is. What we hear is the bird, the eagle goes on saying, "He that turned His compass," that's God, that's the geometer, an image that clearly echoes two biblical texts. One is of Job 38, a famous passage, some of you may know. Dante returns to it repeatedly. "Where were you when I drew the boundaries of the Earth," that's the geometrical, the matrix so to speak, of this metaphor of God the geometer. And the other one is in the Book of Wisdom that goes on talking about, "I was there with him and I was His delight when He was drawing the circle around the deep." Those are two biblical passages that insist on this-- both the geometric and then aesthetic. A theatre, the idea that through the shapes of the world are really the representations of this perfection of God's geometry.



They are two metaphors that Dante goes on deploying but let's see what the substance of the argument now is. "He that turned his compass," we understand why he uses the word compass and the image of the compass, that's clear. "Not remain in infinite excess," that's to me another geometrical language though the two words are slightly redundant because excess means something which is measure or less. The language of measure, the language of accounting, and the language of limits is set against this idea of something not finite, something that escapes the logic of geometry, the logic of measurement, an infinite and excess. In fact, I find the phrase deliberately redundant, it's not only infinite but it's also excessive idea of the infinite to drive the point home; "and manifest, could not make His Power to be so impressed on that whole universe."



Even the word universe is--as much as a poetic term we speak of verse in poetry and I wonder how many of you have ever wondered whether that stuff--that word comes from? It comes from geometry because it implies a turning. You come to the end of the line and you turn, and you draw a geometrical figure, and so does the universe. It's one turning, it's the sphere, you can have hemispheres but the two hemispheres make the universe. These are all, as you see--I hope you enjoy them as I enjoy them telling you about this. "And, in proof of this, the first proud spirit," Lucifer, now that's geometry of the soul, the first proud spirit who was--as you know Dante connects pride and geometry or perspective, as we said before. "The first proud spirit, who was in the highest of all creatures, fair and ripe," what a great adjective. Lucifer falls unripe because grace implies ripeness. The idea that you are ripe when you have been touched by grace, ripeness is all one could say using another--referring to another text, not by Dante.



"Through not waiting for light," that's Lucifer, "from which it is plain that every lesser nature is too scant a vessel for that good which has no limit and measures," I'm not going indicate that anymore, "itself by itself. Thus our vision, which must needs be one of the rays of the Mind of which all things are full, cannot by its nature be of such power that it should not perceive its origin to be far beyond all that appears to it. Therefore," and that seems to be the essence, the brunt of the argument, "the sight that is granted to your world penetrates within the Eternal Justice as the eye into the sea; for though from the shore it sees the bottom, in the open sea it does not, and yet the bottom is there but the depth conceals it."



The idea that we can see justice only when we have a very superficial, we see just as we see the bottom of the sea when we are near the shore, only when we have a superficial understanding of--do we see the bottom otherwise we don't. God's justice is as imponderable and unfathomable as the sea floor can be out in--away from the shore. "There is no light there but that which comes from the clear," and so on and the changes--then Dante complicates the issue a little bit and he really asks where is the justice. Is justice limited to a place, to a continent, to the economy of Christian Europe, and how is it related to other places?



We have a notion of what nowadays we call alterity; you must have heard that term, "the other," the idea of the other. In the Middle Ages, by the way, it was not alien to this thought of the other. I can give you a few titles of Aquinas writing a track against the errors of the Greeks; that's a sense of idleness. Establishing, that is to say differences, or Aquinas writing a suma against the Gentiles, the pagans who usually--who actually were the philosophers of the time. Those who do not have excess or exceed or want to exceed to Revelations. They have an idea of otherness and the idea of otherness is always that of acknowledging that particular difference.



I do not see, at this point yet, any substantial deviation on the part of Dante from the myth and the examples of the heroic life. The examples of the heroic life are those who literally establish boundaries, who within those boundaries manage to live according to the fullness of their virtues. That's the heroic life and that's really the boundary that he establishes. Now Dante asks what is that boundary. I understand that Divine Justice is impenetrable but then he asks this extraordinary question, what is a place? This was a--a man is born at the bank of the Indus, line 72, I think this is the most complex and the most extraordinary question in the whole of the Divine Comedy from the point of the awareness of let's say alterity.



"A man is born on the bank of Indus," Asia, "and none is there to speak, or read, or write of Christ, and all his desires and doings are good so far as human reason sees, without sin in life or speech. He dies unbaptized and without faith. Where is this justice that condemns him? Where is his fault if he does not believe? Now, who art thou that wouldst sit upon the bench and judge a thousand miles away," more geometry here, more space, more distance comes to be not only one of depth, now one of huge distances in space "with a site short of a span." The span, by the way, it's a great--it's a measurement, a geometric term too. That's the span, the distance that goes from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger. This is technically Italian, spanna and the English is span, it comes from it.



"Assuredly, for him that would reason it out with me, if the Scriptures were not set over you there would be abundant room for question," and then he goes on talking and as the storks circle, and Dante's clearly circling of--himself over these issues and we have a return to Europe, the whole of Europe now appears. The whole of canto's [line] 100 until the end; let me just read this passage where, the eagle, the Roman symbol, Dante goes out of the way to say, "When these shining fires of the Holy Ghost had paused, still in the sign that made the Romans reverend to the world, it began again," with allusions therefore to the Romans as if to--as a kind of idea, Rome to Dante has become an idea, an idea of universality. "To this kingdom none ever rose who did not believe in Christ, either before or after He was nailed to the tree. But note, many cry Christ, Christ ! who shall be far less near to Him at the Judgment than such as know not Christ, and such Christians."



The Ethiopians, Africa is being mentioned, "shall condemn when the two companies are parted… What can the Persians," Asia once again, the three continents are going to be--there are divisions of belief now and these divisions of belief seem to lose all consistency because you may be a European and there is a moral alterity within Europe. Alterity is not just a question of geographic disposition. It's not part of the economy; someone who is a Persian is other me; it is, but there is in terms of the moral life, clearly there is an alterity within Europe.



In fact Dante does not--he starts with a Kingdom of Prague, lines 118, "Albert… by which the Kingdom [of Prague] shall be made desolate," and then to France, then shall be the seen the misery brought on this." Count all the countries; by the way, he seems to know the history of, "on the Seine from the debasement of the currency by him that shall die from the charge of a boar. There shall be seen the pride that makes men thirst and so maddens the Scot, and the Englishman that neither can keep within his bounds." There is a history of violence that transgresses also boundaries, and that can be violence, and I will give you a little story about that. "It will show the wantonness and soft living of him of Spain, and of him of Bohemia who never knew worth nor sought it. It will show for the Cripple of Jerusalem his goodness marked with an I, while an M will mark the opposite. It will show the avarice and cowardice of him that holds the island of the fire," Sicily, "where Anchises ended his long life; and to make plain his insignificance his records shall be in contractions that will note much in little space; and manifest to all shall be the foul deeds of his uncle and his brother, by whom a lineage so illustrious and two crowns have been dishonoured; and he of Portugal and he of Norway shall be known there, and he of Russia," meaning literally Russia, "who to his own hurt has been the coin of Venice. 'Oh happy Hungary," the irony is heavy, "if she no longer let herself be wronged! And happy Navarre, if she arm herself with the mountains that surround her! And, for earnest of this, all men shall know that Nicosia and Famagosta lament and complain of their own beast, which keeps its place beside the rest.'"



The whole of Europe, this is now the history of Europe, in a way that Dante has given the history of the empire, Roman Empire, but this is the history of Europe and a history of desolation and moral dereliction. These are the terms of--what is here and what is there? What is within an economy of redemption? What is not out of the economy of redemption? This is exactly the question that Dante asks and the answer is that we do not know. We do not know how this salvation is going to work out. No one can claim, therefore, to decide what exact moral boundaries can exist between a place and another. That seems to be the idea that he tempers therefore the notion, on the one hand, the idea of boundaries and on the other hand, there is also this notion that boundaries are political but they are not nor can they be thought of as being moral boundaries; so he distinguishes the two issues. What is his answer? What is he trying to say?



Before I try to tell you about this, let me tell you about a little text that has nothing to do with the Middle Ages, but I'm sure you know the text. It's that little story that Herodotus, who is a great Greek historian, tells this story in the Histories, in the year before the Greeks are getting ready to invade Egypt, going to Egypt. He really writes the story to warn them about what the dangers that they might be surprised by or the dangers wherever you go across boundaries that--and violate boundaries. It's really an argument in favor of boundaries.



And he tells the story of a king, the King of Egypt, Calloderus, I think his name is who was, who not a very sharp man, a very bright man, not only was he not a very bright man, he also had a very beautiful wife and he was so taken with the beauty of his wife that he wanted everybody to know about it but he can't tell everybody; but he tells his advisor and his advisor was a very prudent man, says, "sire, your majesty I don't want to know, I believe you, don't tell me more about this." "But you've got to know, you've got to hear me, because you know not only you got hear me I want you to see the naked beauty of my wife. It's beyond belief and I want you to see it because human beings tend to trust their eyes more than what they hear, more than their ears." We don't really believe what we hear, but what we see is direct and we want to have access to it.



The counselor very prudently says, "no sire, this is really too much trouble, I cannot disobey you but you are forcing me to really insist that--I believe you completely, you can go on telling me about her beauty, I don't want to see it." "No, I'm arranging this" and he contrives a little plot. The wife has to go bathing in a room next to the bedroom. He, the King, leaves the door ajar, open for her to come in the bedroom door, and so while she's away he allows the counselor to hide in the shadows of the room, in a little corner.



The queen comes in, undresses, the counselor sees her naked and very quickly walks out, hoping silently and hoping not to have been seen. The morning after the queen was a sharp queen calls him into her office and says, "I saw you, tell me what you were doing there." The counselor has no choice but saying, "your majesty the king, your husband, asked me to come in there." The queen says, "I imagined that that's really what happened but at this point one of you two is one too much--too many. One of you--either you kill the king or you kill yourself. The idea that I have been ashamed and been seen naked by two men is unbearable to me." And the counselor does what I'm sure all of you would do, he became the king.



By the way, Herodotus goes on even saying, that he lived a very undistinguished life; it was not a big deal, but he's warning, Herodotus is really warning us to understand that there is always a limit to--that we have to set up and protect between what we say me, or mine, I, and what I say you, this is the language that Dante uses at the beginning of Canto XX. They say "I and mine" when they mean "we and our"; this is a very thin line that has to be observed.



The king, of course, just to finish that little story, the king was a fool, he had no prudence, he had no sense of the difference between the private life and the public needs. He had no idea that there are things that you keep to yourself and you don't share with others. One can go on complicating the problem but the issue is that he understood limits. You are going on into another man's country you have to act as if you don't have to go too deep into it, and you don't have to try to violate its--a country's a woman's nakedness meaning the essential--the private sense of oneself.



I do not know that Dante would really agree with Herodotus in these cantos, but what he has been doing is literally setting up a needed cultural difference. Somehow there is a--they exist, cultural differences, and at the same time allow for a kind of moral circulation of ideas. Let me put in general medieval terms to tell you what I think he has been doing because the argument--when he makes this argument a man is born on the river of the Indus, he does not know anything about Christian faith and baptism, dies, why should he be condemned, etc. He has been living decorously and rationally, why should he be not saved? That's the question he asks.



What he is taking on there would seem to be what we call, in medieval terms, a Pelagian, a Pelagian stance. You know now, I think I have said before, but let me just repeat this, Pelagian is an adjective that comes from the name of a British monk of the--roughly the time of St. Augustine, the fifth century Pelagius, who really maintained that by the exercise of--through works, through good works human beings, living according to principles of nature, human beings can be saved. It would seem almost that Dante's taking that position to--a position by the way which he probably even held in the philosophical text called the Banquet. That was one of--it's one of either--I don't agree with that but it's--there seems to be such an emphasis on the ability of human beings to live rationally that the demands of grace and the demands of faith are somewhat bracketed and a little dim. Nonetheless, I think that they are there, only that he is talking as a philosopher.



The issue is this--that Dante here is asking for a conversation between philosophy and theology, within reason and faith. In the sense that, he really understands that philosophy without theology ends up in a sort of labyrinth of its own constructions and may lose the way. In theology, without philosophy, may end up in mere opinion which has no validity at all on--for people who believe in the power of reason. Now, to connect it with the previous cantos, I think that Dante has been literally extending this whole problem about what exile is. An exile, which does not mean the random movement, but always a kind of--a sense of the problematical qualities of a place in the world and the relationship that we have with ourselves and our own ideas.



I know that this is starting to get--that I--it has taken me away from the other cantos but let me just read XXI and the cantos and I just want to turn very briefly--I don't think that XXI and XXII which are cantos where Dante meets. It's the Sphere of Saturn, which as you know, is the heaven of contemplation. The word Saturn--the myth of Saturn is the myth of time devouring everything that it engenders that's what--remember that time is the first cannibal of history, eating up what it produces. This is the minutes that are just taken in. It's--the name seems to come from the saturation of time. Dante is coming to--this is the last planet and it's also the heaven of astronomy, so he's forcing on us the idea of contemplation. Here he finds the contemplatives and among them there is the soul of a founder by the name of Benedict. The first from the contemplative order.



The word contemplation really implies two things if you ask "what is a contemplation" because there is always a debate as to whether Dante is a mystic, or he's not a mystic, I think that if there is anything that he has it's--he's a contemplative in the true sense of the word. The word contemplation translates the Greek theory which is really the turning of the mind toward the essentials; theory, a contemplation. The word comes from templum, contemplation which is, as you know, the Latin word for temple, but also from the Latin word for tempus, they are the same word. The word for temple and the word for time have the same origin, and they both come from the Greek word called temno, the Greek work is temno, which means "to cut." Saturn, time, with a side cuts; the contemplatives are those who cut a space of time and privilege it, or a space in place, and cut it off from the flow of history and the flow of profane place and make it the sort of ground for turning the minds to the consideration of higher things.



This is the point that Dante is driving. He is going to discuss the degeneracy of the order but I want to really end with you and I really meant to talk about this final image at the end of Canto XXII where Dante now--has really reached the periphery of the planetary system; now he will go into the stars, the heaven of the fixed stars. We have a little bit of time so I can go slow here. Lines--Canto XXII, lines, let's say 126; this is Beatrice speaking, "'Thou art so near to the final blessedness,' Beatrice began, 'that thou must have thine eyes clear and keen." That's--Dante's--he will deploy this language of visionariness, and the language of visionariness will start with the emphasis on purifying one's and refining one's own eyes and one's physical eyesight.



"Therefore, before you go farther into it, look down." Beatrice, it's one of the two invitations by Beatrice now to turn back--to turn the eyes back and have a contemplation, and Dante will contemplate so to speak the Earth, not up where the heavens turn. "Therefore, before you go farther into it to look down and see how much of the universe I've already put beneath thy feet, so that with all fulness of joy thy heart may present itself to the triumphal host that comes rejoicing through this rounded ether.' With my sight," Dante now is engaged in this retrospective glance down to the Earth, "I returned through every one of the seven spheres, and I saw this globe such that I smiled," our Earth, "at its paltry semblance."



The perspective is that of space. I wouldn't call it infinite space but a vast distance of space. I don't call it infinite space because Dante's notion of the universe is not that it's infinite. Dante has the notion of the universe as a bounded but vast connect--vast enclave. It's really like a book, that's the image that he uses. "And that judgment which holds it for least, I approve as best, and he whose thought is on the other things may rightly be called just. I saw Latonia's daughter," the Moon, "growing, without that shadow for which I once believed her to be rare or dense; thy son's aspect, Hyperion, I endured there, and I saw how Maia and Dione move in their circles," meaning Mercury, "near him; from thence appeared to me the tempering of Jove, between his father and his son, and from thence the changes were clear to me which they make in their positions; and all seven showed me what is their magnitude and what their speed, and at what distance their stations."



We have an astronomy here, the heaven of astronomy, but we have an astronomy which is indicated mythically, and not only mythically but also through a process of affiliation; it's the daughter of Latonia, the son of Hyperion, a process of affiliation, it's really as if the universe itself has followed the logic of generation of production as being--producing and reproducing itself and then he continues, Dante goes back to looking at the Earth. "All seven showed to me what is the magnitude and what their speed, and at what distances their stations. The little threshing-floor that makes us so fierce all appeared to me from hills to river-mouths, while I was wheeling with the eternal Twins. Then to the fair eyes I turned my eyes again."



I want to draw your attention to line 151, where Dante says, "The little threshing-floor that makes us so fierce all appeared to me, l'aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci." "Ci fa," look at that line, look at it, "to me from little hills, to little mountains while I was wheeling with the eternal Twins." Dante, in many ways has now-- that's part of his view of astronomy. He's giving his horoscope indirectly here. This idea of the Twins being the sign under which he was born, it doesn't really imply any astrological lapse on his part, it's now that he can be free and he has determined the limitations of--astrological determinations he can go on alluding to his birth sign. I want to draw--I just want to draw the attention to this whole point about the "ci" where Dante says "the little threshing-floor that makes us so fierce," because for all its distance, Dante says, distance as it can be--for all the distance which is implied by this poetic fiction, he's distant from the Earth as he ever was. This pronoun, ci, us, the pronoun strains to have it both ways; on the one hand Dante asserts distance, the claim of a perspective of eternity on the world and--but he does not, that's the other way, he does not want to surrender his place in time and in history.



He is part of us so at the end of all this great gyration through the universe, Dante again claims and reclaims for himself a place with us in the world of history and the world of time. The synthesis of the two, the claim of eternity and the sense of contingency of the self in time is the ultimate goal of the poem, and the ultimate goal of the journey. That for Dante will be, as we shall see maybe next week, the very vision of the incarnation. The two--the idea where these two, this structure, the immutable structure of history and the process of time will come together.



Let me stop here and see if there are questions that I would--about some of these issues that I raised that I would welcome them, please.



The passage, by the way, may be we should even--the passage about where Dante talks about his own horoscope was given a little bit earlier, line 112 of Canto XXII, where Dante says, "O glorious stars, O light pregnant with mighty power, from which I acknowledge all my genius, whatever it be, with you was born and with you hidden, he that is the father of each mortal life when I first tasted the Tuscan air; and after, when grace was granted me to enter into the high wheel that bears you round, your region was assigned to me. To you my soul now sighs devoutly that it may gain strength for the hard task that draws it to itself."



This is the--Dante abolishes the differences between astronomy and astrology. From this point of view he belongs fully to his time where there is no intrinsic--we think of them as astrologists, of superstition, and astronomy is the science that was not the case for Dante. Another little detail since I'm introducing the question of visionariness now in cantos--with the contemplation. Let me just mention this initial image to give you an idea of how Dante proceeds. The initial image at Canto XXI of--the very beginning of Canto XXI, Dante is in the sphere of Saturn where the contemplatives are and he sees the ladder, the ladder of ascent but before we get there this is the passage, "Already my eyes were fixed on the face of my Lady, and within my mind, which was withdrawn from every other thought; and she did not smile, but 'Were I to smile' she began to me, 'thou wouldst become like Semele when she was turned to ashes; for my beauty, which thou hast seen kindle more the higher we climb by the stairs of the eternal palace, is so shining that if it were not tempered thy mortal powers in its blaze would be as a branch split by a thunderbolt. We have risen to the seventh splendour, which beneath the breast of the burning Lion rays down now mingled with its power. Set thy mind behind thine eyes and make of them mirrors to the shape which in this mirror will appear to thee.'"



This is an extraordinary image, the image of the myth of Semele, the young woman who fell in love with God. That would seem to be, of course, an extraordinary spiritual story. Ovid tells it as a very carnal story, she wants to love Jupiter, and Jupiter will agree to love Semele back on one condition, that she never ask the god to show himself forth for what he is. She has to accept his--the god's disguises. A variant, if you wish, of what later will appear with Apuleius, the idea of Eros and Psyche, you remember the love of--the relationship with the mind and love. Love does not want to be seen for what it is, and always Simulacra and deceptive figures to cover its essence. This is the same thing that he's asking, that Dante's recalling, and of course what happens in Ovid is that Semele, in love, and because of love, love impels curiosity, she wants Jupiter to show himself forth for what he is, mindless of the danger that Jupiter had predicted this would befall--and the danger of the death that would befall her. In fact, he shows himself and she cannot bear the extraordinary beauty of the god and gets destroyed and turned into ashes.



That's the myth that Dante is recalling, so that the inevitable question for us is, why would Dante recall this story here at the beginning of the cantos on contemplation. The answer that I could give you is that Dante does so because he's aware of the dangers of visionary claims. This is--if you read the Bible, for instance, you do know that there is a tradition in the Bible among the Jews to turn their back, for instance, to even the passing of what is viewed as holy, to be the Holy Arc, or they cover themselves in--because of the wisdom or the tradition of not seeing, or never trying to have mixed the profane and the sacred, that of the sense of the danger that would befall the--those who are in the space of--the profane space, they were outside of the sanctuary.



Dante is making this--or Beatrice is telling him that he has to endure the limitations of his human nature, and that his human nature, the trait of his mortality which is that of seeing through images and through ubiquitous cannot yet be given up. He does this as he enters the heaven of the contemplatives, who they themselves were longing and desiring to see God, but accepted this longing as the sign of God's presence and gift to them. This is an extraordinary passage in terms of what Dante thinks of contemplation and clearly the danger of thinking of contemplation as the condition that would allow and bring about the vision of God. Such a vision, Dante is saying, is not going to be possible while we are here on Earth.



This is the--a number of ambiguities about this problem and then we could also mention why Benedict--why is Benedict here? The figure that appears in Canto XXII as the example of--first of all he is the founder, as I said, of the life of contemplation, but a life of contemplation that appears as the danger of contemplation; of course, Dante goes on talking about the decadence of the contemplative order, which is by the way, quite true and what--that which occasions historically the foundation of the mendicant orders. Those Franciscans and Dominicans whom we already have encountered who want to be part of the world and roam around in the world, but the danger of the contemplation though is that they can bypass and drive a wedge between the contemplative life and the active life.



The ideal of Benedict has been betrayed because what he wants is an action and a life of action, the life of contemplative prayer, so that's one of the causes of the degeneracy that Dante pursues. With that we enter the world of--now where Dante returns and this is what we are going to do next time to what I call basic words. Somehow the whole compass of knowledge, the whole idea of geography and spiritual geography, the whole idea of how--of what triggers the writing of a poem, that has been taken care of, or at least Dante seems to have been phasing and delivering to us his particular understanding of these problems.



Now the question is, with all of this in mind, what is the meaning of the basic words we use, and the basic words we use, and that's what we are going to talk about next time, are going to be love, hope, and faith, what we call the three theological virtues. They are basic words because there is no such a thing as a life without trust, or the difficulties of the life without trust. There is no possibility of a life without hope and certainly that which for Dante remains the biggest mystery of all; there is never the possibility of thinking about a life or without love. It becomes a mystery because he can define the other two words; he never-- he escapes the responsibly of defining love. It is as if that were really the biggest mystery throughout the Divine Comedy and in his experience. Let me see if there are some questions now that I have thrown a lot--put a lot of chestnuts on the fire as we say so let's--yes.



Student: In one of your earlier lectures you were talking about the whole comedy that it was a physical journey and in hell we could see that was--he emphasized his weight and the Earth and smells of things and so forth, and now that we're in Paradise it's more vision and light, and color, and is he trying to characterize God or God's relation to Earth somehow by contrasting them that way?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The question is that in the previous lectures I discussed--would talk of hell as the place where the smells, the concrete particulars of the Earth would be mentioned and it would be part of Dante's warehouse in the representation of hell. Now that we are talking--we are entering the world of Paradise, we have been discussing Paradise, Dante seems to separate himself from the aesthetics, the sensual aspects of hell and talk more--which is still sensual though, colors, light, colors and visionariness. Then the question becomes does this mean that Dante is clearly finding a distinction between Earth and Heaven that this is really the--am I rephrasing it accurately?



Student: Yes. Is he trying to--I mean, because clearly it's not that he's trying to separate God from physical reality because what we see and colors are still very physical descriptions so what is the distinction between them?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Yeah well I--the answer would be this, that in Paradise you do have a lot of what we call earthly experiences, that's the only way he can really understand anything about Paradise. There are dances, there are songs, you do have--there are games that they play. You do have the language of playfulness in the forms of simulations. Simulation is very--it's a form of game, it's a reduction of the world to unseriousness, the game, the play, and in the form of the degradation of, the noble idea of play because play is--see these things are all very ambivalent.



We are dealing with the same reality only seen from different perspective, and I mention play because Paradise is all about play, it's about playing, about the dance of the stars, about the spectacle, the theatre which he just--Dante has just seen a little performance put out for him. Can you imagine the dance of the stars that go on? It's like seeing the spectacle of the Olympics in China; they go on with distribution of shapes and forms, that is play, it's aesthetics so I don't--there is no difference there between the two. I don't see a difference there.



Of course that has nothing to do, whatever he is seeing in Paradise, has really nothing to do with the understanding of the divinity. I am not even--I haven't decided yet, not for any reason but because there may not really be time and I could--I wouldn't be doing justice to the difficulty of the problem. I haven't decided whether to discuss the whole--the cosmology of Paradise, of the universe that appears in Canto XXIX of Paradise where Dante goes on talking about two universes, for instance, so there is the physical universe that somehow he has traversed only to understand that when he goes there, there is another universe which is completely spiritual and it's not the platonic idea of an inverted--you know Plato has this idea of an inverted cosmos, but we are in the world which is really the projection, a projection, an unreal projection, projection meaning a shadow of the real cosmos.



It's not really that there are two adjacent cosmos, both very real and that's the--where we live and where we don't live; beyond that as really a speck of sand he says. There is a light that clearly is the light from which whole or creation emanates, so God remains forever a transcendent. What Dante does see at the end is he sees this image in--his own image in the plural, our image, which to me implies the idea that as Christians read the whole notion of Genesis is that in--since we are shaped in God's image there is our image in God. There is a human component in God, so that's all he sees; he sees maybe the incarnation but it's--all of that is all wrapped in a kind of extraordinary and deliberate fogginess of representation.



The paradise that he describes is not the paradise of sensual delights, of the Qu'ran for instance, but there's a lot of game and play and--the stars, the amorous discourse of paradise engages and involves even the stars. They go on wooing each other, it's as if literally the whole cosmos is involved in this extraordinary dance of love that keeps it together, makes it cohere as opposed to say Lucretius' idea of an anarchic universe forever on the verge of falling apart. These are the real models of the cosmos. Let's call it Lucretius and Virgil, Epicurus and Plato, this is Dante and heavy, the heavy traditionalist, it's very heavy the tradition of materialism. The spiritual tradition is very small in comparison to the heaviness of the physical, of the scholars of physics who want to see the cosmos in physical terms. But Dante opposes it and somehow he finds a kind of--that's what the universe--that's what keeps the universe together is really love and that's what we're going to find out. That I will read, the rest I don't know. Other questions? Please.



Student: When Beatrice is wanting Dante not to look directly at her face because he might become like Semele and just turn to ashes, do you think Dante is trying to elude back to Medusa and the danger of just looking directly into the face of something so powerful and being reduced to something that isn't human? I was reading that and she said, "Set thy mind behind thine eyes and make of them mirrors to the shape which in this mirror will appear to thee," as if like the mirror, so the mirror is like the eyes like the intermediary just like the shield that is the intermediary for maybe Medusa.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Very good. The question--let me just recall the question. The image of Beatrice as Semele, whose smile could potentially destroy the lover, the pilgrim who were to look at her face; the question is, is that supposed to be a sort of, let's call it palinodic variant, a version of the scene of Medusa in Inferno IX, who threatened also, in that case the pilgrim, with petrification, with a turning into stone, the intellect would petrify, that's really the allegory and there of course in the canto of Medusa there was always the shield, the shield of poetry, the shield of Perseus, and the answer is yes absolutely, this is exactly what is happening. I think that this is--if you are thinking as I think you are of writing about--are you thinking of writing--no. About Medusa? No.



Student: I was just [inaudible].



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Okay, well if you're thinking about writing about Medusa I think that you are absolutely--you would--the two scenes you would be absolutely correct. The story of Medusa is--what is interesting--the story of Medusa is the story of--we could view it--we viewed it, as you remember, the temptation of looking at the past, a way of Orpheus, a turning--Dante who casts himself as Orpheus, Orpheus, you know, who is told not to look back and yet Orpheus stands for a sort of impatience, a kind of skepticism about the injunction, the fear that Eurydice may not really be following him, he turns and loses her, some modern mythographers even see that look. I'm thinking about a man by the name of Blanchaux, he really wanted to lose Eurydice because he saw--because this way he could write poetry, so that poetry can become the perpetual voice of absence.



Dante does not go that far but it's clear that it's time to--a poetic experience of his own. The interesting thing about what you are saying and we could go into that maybe in a conversation later because it's--it would take me too far, is that this enigmatic--the double face of Beatrice comes to the fore here that she has--she was confronting the siren and threatens against the siren and now she also appears as the sorcery and danger of beauty. Beauty that is that which was--the language here is beauty, beauty which can--which we hunger after and yet it's that which can destroy us and this seems to me to be--I put that in the consciousness of Dante's--of the contemplatives that Dante represents, this doubleness that you're wrong to see and yet you may not have to--you are better off in not seeing, but it's true that it appears also with the ambiguity of beauty and the beauty of Beatrice that it would be true. Yes.



Student: So if the mirror is sort of like the intermediary just like the shield, what role does vision and the eyes play in mediating between what you see in the world and the mind that it protects?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Well Dante will--is now slowly preparing for this final vision and it's going to have intermediate stages. When he will see, at the end he will see not God; he will see his own image within the beatific vision. This is how far he will go, not only that, he will go also--there is an eclipse of the inner eye of memory. Memory is thought of as being the inner eye of the imagination, that's the classical definition of memory. That too will be completely eclipsed, he will forget, so that at the end of all of these experiences we are ending up with forgetfulness with a fall from that vision. I don't know that I'm answering exactly your question but I don't know that I--I haven't understood what you really want to know, what you're really asking so--



Student: I guess I'm just asking more about the role of vision like it makes more sense--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Vision-- okay.



Student: Yeah, just like I'm--is the eye supposed to be an intermediary or a protection of the mind to let you think or--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The eye--what is the eye, is it the intermediary or an extension of the mind? That's really what the eye is, but the vision that he will have is not going to be a physical vision. It cannot be a physical vision; it has to be a spiritual vision and so there are the limitations of the eye. Let me leave it at that. Okay, thank you, see you next time.



[end of transcript]

This lecture covers Paradise XXIV-XXVI. In the Heaven of the Fixed Stars, Dante is examined on the three theological virtues by the apostles associated with each: St. Peter with faith (Paradise XXIV), St. James with hope (Paradise XXV), and St. John with love (Paradise XXVI). While mastering these virtues is irrelevant to the elect, it is crucial to the message of reform the pilgrim-turned-poet will relay on his return home. Dante's scholastic profession of faith before St. Peter (Paradise XXIV) is read testament to the complication of faith and reason. The second of the theological virtues is discussed in light of the classical disparagement of hope as a form of self-deception and its redemption by the biblical tradition through the story of Exodus, the archetype of Dante's journey. The pilgrim's three-part examination continues in Paradise XXVI under the auspices of St. John, where love, the greatest of the virtues is distinguished by its elusiveness. The emphasis on love's resistance to formal definition sets the stage for the pilgrim's encounter with Adam, who sheds light on the linguistic consequences of the Fall.



Reading assignment:

Dante, Paradise: XXIV, XXV, XXVI

Transcript



November 18, 2008



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Today we are going to look at the three cantos in the eighth sphere of Dante's cosmos; we are beyond the planets, beyond all this so called eighth sphere, or the Heaven of the Fixed Stars. Before we get to, which will be next week--next time, the Empyrean, the heaven of light and fire but now we are in the heaven of the fixed stars and Dante discusses the three theological virtues. The three theological virtues, unlike--they are so called to distinguish them from the cardinal virtues that Christians share with the classical tradition, namely the fortitude, prudence, and justice, etc.



These are the virtues that deal with the understanding of the divine; they open up this horizon of speculations about the language of God, the way God speaks to us, theology in this sense, the way in which we speak about God, theology, the logos. In theology there's the word logos and the way God speaks to us, so it's the place in paradise where Dante will focus on the meaning of what I call--it's not my phrase, "basic words," the words which are foundations of the way in which we come out to discover who we are; they are words that we use, the words that we many not even know exactly what they mean and yet Dante will try to define them, they are, I repeat faith, hope and charity.



The three virtues that Dante will--in this, using Paul's letter to the Hebrews where he accounts or gives a definition at least of faith and hope, but they are words--they are terms that always implicate each other. You cannot go explaining faith without really talking about hope. You cannot go on talking about hope without explaining faith, and both of them are recapitulated and come together, gather within the question of--within the virtue of charity and the virtue of love. They are words that--they are very mysterious in many ways but there are degrees of understanding all of them.



The three examiners, because Dante will go through the equivalent of a university examination, a medieval Bachelor's degree, that's the term comes to us from the universities, medieval universities, the Bachelor. Dante is a bachelor who presents himself to the teacher, the teacher is testing him, and he will give an answer according to textbooks. Authentic--where the authentic--the departed of one's own beliefs, one's own hopes, and one's own charity are gathered.



The three teachers are going to be three Apostles who are known as Peter for faith, St. Peter for faith and that makes sense because Peter himself, the name stands for the cornerstone on which the edifice of Christian belief is built; the second one is going to be for the virtue of hope is going to be James, known as the Galician because--why him; it would seem to be less obvious than the other two because he among of all the Apostles is the one whose death was recorded in the Acts of the Apostles and so he lived in a certain expectation of a life to come, so he would seem to be the real figure of hopefulness of some idea of--some way of expecting a future and the life of eternity. The virtue of charity instead, is examined by John, the Apostle, to distinguish him from the seer, the writer of the Apocalypse. So it's the three Apostles Peter, James, and John.



Are there ways in which we could--I could give you some summary ways of trying to understand some of these virtues. One thing that I would ask you to look through when you have time to go into detail of these texts, it seems to me that all the three cantos deal, or have as a kind of what I would call under text, the subtext of them, something running through but sometimes even visible but not all the time visible, is the question of exile. Dante is retrieving the language of exile as if these virtues are clearly virtues that don't concern at all the blessed in heaven; they can only concern us here in time. The blessed in heaven certainly do not need faith, or hope, or they don't really need to know about what love may be; either they have it or they wouldn't be there so this is--but it's the language of exile is running through these three issues just as the language of time, so the connection between time and exile probably needs not much explanation, much glossing. We are in time, we are fallen, and it's only in the language of the fall that it's possible to think about exile.



The other element running through this is really the question of, very visible, especially in Canto XXVI, the actual question of language itself. What is the language of God? What are the names of God? Dante asks that question. Are we talking about an entity with a name, and if so, you know the whole debate about the so-called tetragrammaton, the four letters that are supposedly that name God. That's what the word means, the four letters. Are they known or is God just an effable? Is there some--Is He some kind of reality we can never even hope to name or are we going to be related and connected to this idea, this knowledge of God by analogical discourse. These are positions, the mystical position that denies even our knowledge of the name of God, the analogical position put forth by Aquinas, for instance, that we really talk about God analogically and know the qualities we attribute to God only they're not real by what we may know in our own lives. Dante asks this question about what is the language of God? What are the names of God and how do we get to know God?



The first virtue then is the virtue of faith. There are many ways literally--I call it a basic word because it's really a basic word because it founds us. It's a stone, Peter asks for the foundation of all this poetic edifice of the Divine Comedy. I would like you to think about this--the actual--when we get into the text, there is actual apostrophe at the beginning of Canto XXIV of, "'O fellowship elect to the great supper of the blessed Lamb, who feeds you so that your desire is ever satisfied, since by God's grace this man has foretaste of that which falls from your table, before death appoints his time, give heed to his measureless craving and bedew him with some drops; you drink always from the fountain whence comes that on which his mind is set.'" He wants to know--what I do--what I would like to stress is the presence of this actual metaphor of a banquet. It is as if Dante is--clearly we're dealing with two metaphors here; one which is exilic, the manna in the desert, the falling of this dew on the exiles, the wanderers, the Jewish wanderers in the desert, and the other one is the eschatological banquet.



It is as if any debate about faith has to be placed within a communal context. This is not going to be the professional faith the way you may have it, let's say in 1550 roughly. I'm really alluding to, as a contrast, just to make you understand the case, the great debate between two figures of the Renaissance called Erasmus and Luther. They debated, at length, about the question of whether or not how a text written about a century earlier, around 1440, a text by Valla, a great humanist who wrote about the free will in the defense of the free will--on free will. He--they were--it was unclear to them what Valla really meant so they go on debating; the text in called On Free Will.



Erasmus maintains that Valla really had defended the existence of free will. Free will, which is a gift of God, it's something that has been given to us and therefore we really have to come to know God through the acknowledgement of his authority because the freedom that we are talking--that he is talking about, he thinks Valla is talking about, actually comes from him, and so by the free will we come to know and come to choose also the existence of the divinity.



Luther had very radical ideas about the question of freedom. There was not such a thing he would argue as free will, and actually the world, the universe is a universe of absolute faith, and faith is freedom and it's given to us by freedom because it releases us from all obligations, it frees us from all constraints, it just makes us understand that our own relationship to the Creator is without any other intermediary forces of the world. It's a radical, theological claim of freedom, and faith together. It's very possible; many people, just to extend this argument, there are many poets and thinkers who go on changing his scenario and believe that, for instance, freedom is actually the source of not faith but faithlessness. That the idea of--one's own faithlessness may come, as a denial of God, may come from the assertion of one's self and the assertion of one's own total freedom. But this is--I'm giving you this to exemplify the nature of the debates and the force of the debates.



Dante insists--so removes the question of faith from one of radical subjectivity or radical faith, aware that there may be some kind--some flip side to it, that faith and lack of faith really both depend, if you reduce them to subjectivity, one can go on sliding into one of the two options very easily. Dante focuses on, with this first image, on the question of the communal experience, the banquet. That to me is part of the shared world, this eschatological banquet, where they're all the--the vision where, at the end of time, but the allusion is also to the manna where these various figures are--the community comes together and then Dante goes on really focusing on the individuality, on the private professional faith, it's really about him.



The interesting thing that I want to point out is Beatrice's words to Peter, around lines 30, she goes on appealing to him to go on to examining, but she does so in a peculiar way. Let me read this passage, "And she," lines 32, "'O eternal light of the great soul with whom our Lord left the keys," this is very canonical, it's part of the hagiography, the account of the iconographic representation of Peter with the two keys, "which He brought down of this wondrous joy, test this man on points light and grave as thou seest good regarding the faith by which thou walkedst on the sea." This is an allusion recorded in the Gospel of Peter walking out of an act of faith, walking on water, because Jesus asks him and tells him so.



The strange thing about this reference is that Peter did not want to walk on water. It is the moment of, let me call it the crisis of faith, the moment where Peter had no faith and in fact Jesus calls him, "Oh man of little faith why don't you walk," and then I guess feeling that he's teetering on the brink of the abyss you can imagine, really see soaring over the waves, finally does manage to go on. This is a poignant moment because clearly Dante's emphasizing that there are degrees of faith and that the so-called crisis of faith must not be seen as denials of faith. On the contrary, that somehow there is a sort of dialectical movement between a profession of faith and doubts about owning and that's the--owning this gift, of having this gift of faith. This is one of the strange moments and it's in the light of this strange fluctuation between faith and experience of not faith that I think that what happens later has to--the wait has to be understood, and then whether he loves rightly and rightly hopes, and believes, here are the three--three of the language--the three theological virtues all come together.



"Is not hid from thee, since thou hast seen it there," and so on and then Dante uses both the language of the university, academic life, as if this were really an academic test. We'll come back to this issue in a moment. Just as the bachelor--that's the--the Bachelor of Arts, the baccalaureatus, as we call it arms himself so there are two. There is the weapon of knowledge, the academic, knowledge as a force, knowledge as a weapon, "just as the bachelor arms himself and does not speak to the master," magister, "submits the question--for argument, not for settlement." These issues are issues that always need the open-endedness of argumentation and not that of a settling of the point. "I armed myself with all my reasons while she was speaking, to be ready for such a questioner and for such a profession. 'Speak, good Christian, declare thyself.'"



This is a knowledge that makes him visible, "declare thyself," but a knowledge that does not keep him hidden, sort of brings him into existence, makes him visible to us. What is faith and that's the question that he--that Peter asks. And the answer is, "'May the grace which grants it to me to make my confession to the Chief Centurion,' I began, 'give me right utterance for my thoughts.' And I went on: 'As the truthful pen,'" an allusionist to Paul, a questioning an authority, and the word authority, as you know, is that which is--what do we mean by authentic and authorities are key words, the word is auctoritas. It means that comes which is worthy of faith. The teacher is not necessarily worthy of faith. You can question the opinions of the teacher and reject the question of the--there's a distinction between the master and the author. The one--or the authority, the one who is an author is one who is worthy of belief, worthy of faith, so he quotes Paul, so this is a canonical answer, "'As the truthful pen of thy dear brother," Paul, "wrote of it with thee, father, put Rome on the good path, faith is the substance," literally the foundation, that which lies under all the things.



The ground of all things, substance of things hoped for, so faith--if you want to understand faith we ought to probably go and read about hope, things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. This I take to be its quiddity, quiddity and medieval--part of the medieval lexicon meaning its constitutive essence, its specificity. Now if you thought that in the Middle Ages that we'll go on talking about faith, the famous formulation of faith comes from Tertullian who says, "I believe because it is absurd," so that faith becomes the consequence of, the extension of, the absurdity of all things. Because the claim made on what one believes has in itself the idea of going--being beyond reason, absurd in that sense would be beyond reason. That's one of the ways in which faith is defined. It really means that faith exceeds the law of reason; it means that faith can never really quite be an object of knowledge. Dante does not pursue that line. He tries to make faith a reason co-extensive. This is the sense of the--I've got to qualify the term co-extensive, and I will in a moment, because obviously they are not, but they are--they belong together.



This is the sense of the whole metaphorical pattern of the university context. That is to say, you can know something about belief, knowledge and faith really belong together, they implicate each other. They are not the same thing because if you really could know everything of what you belief then there is no reason why you should belief, that which faith becomes necessary--a necessity only because they are-- it's a way of acknowledging limitations of what one knows. But linking knowledge and faith is not just simply a way of saying that reason can know some of the content of what Dante believes, that there is a reasonableness to what one believes, that's all true. To say that reason and faith go together, there are certain claims about the reasonableness of what one believes. It really means, I think, at a deeper level, that faith itself is a mode of knowledge. That it is a mode of knowledge exactly the way you have the knowledge of philosophy though its modalities are going to be different, because philosophy submits to the rules of the rationality, but faith opens your eyes and it's a way of showing you something about the world that the reason alone cannot do.



The binding of the two metaphors, that's what I meant co-extensive but not identical. I didn't mean they're identical; the joining of philosophy and theology, reason and faith, makes and projects faith as a way of knowing. It makes you see the world in different ways then if you were trying to look at the world in the light of natural reason and from the point of view of rationality. So this seems to be the argument and I set the terms against, let's say, a modern subjective idea of freedom, freedom of faith as freedom, that frees you from all, and you are only accountable to the Creator, or faith as a mode of responding to the absurdity around oneself, which is really the language of Tertullian and this scholastic argument that Aquinas, of knowledge and faith really needing to be together.



Then the examination goes on and I want to talk about 70, "'Thou thinkest right," this is the beginning, the top of the page Canto XXIV, line 68, "Then I heard: 'Thou thinkest rightly if thou understandest well why he placed it among the substances and after among the evidences.' And I then: 'The deep things that so richly manifest themselves to me here are so hidden from men's eyes below that there their existence lies in belief alone." Now, it's the distinction, this is a cesura between belief and what we are--the evidence of things not seen, the paradox remains, so there are things visible here in the heaven of the fixed stars and not available to those of us who are in time and in the fallen world. "On which is based the lofty hope; and therefore it takes the character of substance. And from this belief we must reason, without seeing more; therefore it holds the character of evidence." This is a gloss on the medieval theological lexicon that Dante has been deploying.



"Then I heard: 'If all that is acquired below for doctrine were thus understood, there would be no room left for sophist's wit.' This breathed from the kindled love; and it continued," I want you to pay attention to this metaphor, for I wish you had--we're really sitting around the table where I could ask you to speculate about the presence of the coming metaphor. "If all that is acquired below for doctrine," I am sorry. "'Now the alloy and the weight of this money have been well examined; but tell me if thou hast it in thy purse.'" All of a sudden the question of money and the question of faith--faith is literally given as said to be money. Do you have this coin in your purse? "I therefore: 'I have indeed, so bright and round that of its mintage I am in no doubt.' Then there came from the depth of the light that was shining there: 'This precious jewel,'" that's one reason why the metaphor of money is used for--clearly for faith. It's a precious jewel on which every virtue rests, "whence did it come to thee?"



And the language is going to be--it's from the plenteous reign of the Holy Spirit and the new parchments and so on, but that metaphor of money as faith really sort of has a way of lingering on in our minds. What is the connection? One connection, I repeat, is to indicate the preciousness of the faith one holds. It is really as rare maybe and it's valuable as rare, beautiful jewels can be. That's one thing, but clearly there is more, because the word money which Dante uses in Italian, moneta, is the same word becomes a character in an English epic, moneta comes from the Latin form meneo, the word money as you know comes from--meaning a warning, it's an advice, it's a warning, a warning about its mintage, it's part of the language of--we have the word admonishment that comes from it. It admonishes that it's not a counterfeit, that it is really pure, so that's another way of referring to the purity of this faith, the preciousness before, now the purity of this faith, the authenticity of it so to speak.



Another trait of money is that money has--it's that which establishes the value--it circulates first of all, has the power of circulating, that's not said by the text but it's implied by the metaphor. It is as if faith has that power, has that virtue that puts everything into motion, and therefore questions and establishes, that's what makes it a basic word. It establishes, it's the substance that establishes the values of all the things that are around us. Fourth, I cannot really get past my mind that Dante wants us to think about this kind of the resonance of prophenation that is in the language of money and link it with really this purity of faith. It is as if there is--the distinction is really never quite between prophenation and the purity of faith and that somehow the world of faith comes out of the world of prophenation. That it belongs to the world of time, it can be profane and yet it still manages to put things into circulation. It's really the ambiguity of money, the ambiguity of the metaphor of money; I think sheds a lot of light on this virtue that Dante has been examining. He has been examined about it but he has been--he is examining it for us.



Let me go and see how--whether we can see more about this virtue by looking at the question of hope that comes immediately after with the examination by St. James. I begin to tell you here just a little story that--it's not really an unusual story, but as you probably know, the Greeks never thought of hope as a virtue. There's a reference to hope in--as being one of Pandora's--being one of the entities available in Pandora's Box. You know about Pandora's Box, which was opened and all the evils of the world came out of Pandora's Box, save for one, hope. It's a statement, it's a view that all is--that really casts hope as clearly, some kind of evil or a delusion, and in fact, for the Greeks the idea of hope is always a term that implies the delusion of exiles. It's really what befalls an exile, someone who loses one's land and what is left for him to do nothing but hope. It's the radical illusion; it's a kind of hope against hope. I have nothing more to do; it's a self-deception, that's really what it is.



Dante does not follow that route for hope, and in effect, I think that he finds in the Bible the idea that--or a kind of a new--a different horizon for the rethinking, the way in which hope can be viewed. Hope, first of all, is literally a virtue of time. More so faith--the language of the clock, you must have noticed in Canto XXIV introducing the world of hope. I did not want to talk about it because I know that I'll be talking about it now. Hope is as much of faith a virtue of time, because it's a virtue not only of time; it's a virtue specifically of the future. It tells me whenever--if I have hope--I can't really hope about the past, it would be--it would fly against all sense, against all logic. I hope yesterday it didn't rain; it doesn't make sense does it? I mean it's--but I can hope that tomorrow it won't snow. I can have that hope which would be a silly hope, but it's a hope nonetheless because it's a virtue of time in the future. It's a way of experiencing time in the future, that's one thing that Dante is doing, linking therefore hope and temporality.



But it's not only a virtue of time; it's the most realistic of virtues. Normally, we think, and the Greeks would sort of give us a cause to pause, that if you really hope it's because you are really desperate. You hope because they have no rational reason, no realistic reason to believe that things are going to go the way you wish they went for you, so you go on hoping. Dante says no, hope is the most realistic of virtues because it tells me that nothing is really ever over. That's what makes it realistic. The negation of hope, the opposite of hope would be despair. Dante, you remember, is the scene for Dante, is the scene that we find in canto--we never read it, and now retrospectively I can tell you that you should go and read it, Canto VIII of Inferno, and even in Canto IX, the encounter with the Medusa is that fear of despair, that idea of being petrified. The Medusa can turn you into a stone; that is to say, that you are imprisoned and you remain caught either in your standpoint or in that particular reality that you have or the idea of yourself as you like to--as you think you have been, and the idea of the past. Dante says, no hope is a virtue of the future; it's a virtue that can even change the past.



In that sense, it's effective on the past, though it's--because it tells us that the past may not be what we thought it was. Whatever disaster you may have had, whatever disappointment you may have had in the past, that disappointment may contain seeds that really will reappear in the future, and maybe a preparing a future that will surprise you. This is a different understanding of time that Dante presents. It's an understanding of time that once again Dante links with two moments of his which is--in that sense it's really not different from faith, it fulfills faith, it unveils the element of faith. You cannot really go on hoping about something like that unless you have some--an act of faith. Dante goes on explaining it in existential terms and tying it to his own hope of returning to his homeland, his own native city, and the larger pattern of exile. I want to examine that with you.



The poem begins with a subjunctive; Canto XXV begins with an optative, what we call, "I wish" that things were going that way. "If it ever come to pass," contingency, the word is contingency in Italian, it uses the Latinism because we don't really use that in that sense, but I'll read in Italian even if Margaret--I wish she were here se mai contingua, that's a Latinism, if ever I were to--contingent, if it ever happened in that sense, "that the sacred poem," "poema sacro," "if it ever come to pass the sacred poem," and the sacred means--remember that Dante uses the word "sacred" always in a double sense. A sacred, he's not investigate with some kind of magic, idolatress power because for Dante the sacred is never reducible or localizable, that's a verb, in one object or in one particular place. He means it ambiguously as that which contains the profane and the sacred within it, hell and heaven, the scriptures of heaven and hell.



"The sacred poem to which both heaven and earth have set their hand," it's an incredible moment of prophetic self-awareness. I am writing but I know that without God I would not be able to be writing this poem, "that it has made me lean for many years," writing now. I'm sorry that I'm giving you this kind of simple paraphrase of it, but the ascesis of writing, writing is a--do you understand what I mean? Writing is an ascetic labor of the soul, it makes me lean as if he were undergoing fasting, the rituals of the commitment to a particular labor, so I call it the ascetic labor of the soul; "should overcome the cruelty that bars me from the fair sheepfold." If I could ever go back home, but he called back home Florence, in the canto of hope where he's an exile, and the city is described in passive terms.



The metaphor of the city as a sheepfold, the Passover language, the language you expect to have in the Eclogues of Virgil, the pastoral tradition. The idyllic world, that's what we mean by the pastoral tradition. If there ever were some peace, some idyllic circumstances in that city, and you can continue, "where I slept as a lamb," here he continues with the pastoral language, "an enemy to the wolves that make war on it, with another voice now, and other fleece I shall return a poet, and to the font of my baptism take the laurel crown; for there I entered into the faith that makes souls known to God, and after, because of it, Peter thus encircled my brow." Dante is still in the circle of hope and the heaven of hope, and yet now he's really thinking about the last ceremony of Peter on him who blesses him three times. It is as if literally faith, and hope are now converging, the two virtues come together.



What is Dante saying though here in this proem, at the beginning of this canto? He's casting his hometown Florence in the pastoral language, as a sheepfold, and they know he's alluding to a Messianic time where--when if it were just--when the peace were restored, when the factions, the wolves, the Guelfs, the pun of wolves and Guelfs, that's very clear that's what etymologically the word Guelfs comes from, from wolves and the lambs will lie together, almost a kind of impossible time, a Messianic time, when finally peace will be restored. He goes on adding that he would be acknowledged, that's part of his hope, he will be acknowledged, there will be--at that time he would acknowledged as a poet on the font of his baptism, which as you know he refers to the Baptistery of St. John, where we do have records that he actually was christened.



That's simple language, but you have to ask yourselves, why would Dante talk? Why would he use this particular metaphor? The baptism is clearly the place where a community is constituted, then the baptismal font has that value. Not only has that value, it's actually the same baptismal font that Dante had--you remember there had been a prophenation of it in canto--described in Canto XIX of Hell where Dante says that he broke one of those Guelfs, which we try to understand in figurative terms since it would be inconceivable that Dante would be capable of breaking it. He says he began to rescue someone who was dying.



What is a baptismal font? For those of you who have no inkling of what this is it's the--what we call the sacramental, the typological, if you really--more textual and historical about that sacrament, that ceremony, re-enactment of Exodus. When a child is baptized, he is literally said--he's told actually that he is once again re-enacting the crossing of Exodus. To me this is extraordinary, that Dante says that he would be now acknowledged and be given the laurel of the poet on the baptismal font. The question you have to ask yourselves is, no doubt, is, Dante's asking how does a poet come home? He imagines a triumph at the baptismal font, is there a home--what is the homecoming of poets? That's the hope, hope for a homecoming where everybody will be at peace and there will be a feast, a festive mood and he was going to be welcomed back and he would hailed and acknowledged as a poet, a great fantasy of every--of the winner's return. That's literally what he is saying.



Yet, he's using this language of a baptismal font which is the language of Exodus. It is as if he were saying that the poet can only come home in order to tell his community that I have to get out again. That all of them will have to do exactly what's happening to him, that the exile that has been--with which he has been punished, and which has befallen him, is really the message that his poetry can only give to the community from which he has been exiled. He is convoking the whole community around the baptismal font, which is the figure of exile, to tell them this is really where we belong -- in exile, in the language of spiritual exile, a language in which clearly implies some kind of re-making of oneself, re-thinking of oneself.



Now, with this in mind, Dante goes on seeing the barren for whom below they visit Galicia, an allusion to Santiago, and then she herself will go on. I want to--before we read the passage I want to give you this, "And that compassionate one," line 50 that Beatrice's presentation of Dante to St. James. "And that compassionate one who directed the feathers of my wings," a flight of the soul, the name of the family Alighieri, "to so high a flight anticipated my reply: 'The Church Militant,'" this is Beatrice, "'has not a child more full of hope, as is written in the Sun that irradiates all our host; therefore is it granted him to come from Egypt to Jerusalem, that he may see it before his warfare is accomplished. The other two points about which thou didst ask--not for enlightenment, but for him to report how dear this virtue is to thee--I leave to himself; for they will not be hard for him, nor occasion for boasting," and then like a pupil once again taking this language of school, the school child.



The main thing about this self--this presentation by Beatrice is that Dante's journey is glossed through one figure, one figure that I have been telling you ever since we started this course, these classes in September through the figure of Exodus. Dante's journey here is literally described as a journey from Egypt to Jerusalem, which is the master plot of the Hebrews' exile from the bondage to the story of freedom and exile becomes really the--that of exile is the figure of--the master figure of the poem. Dante then therefore is linking now exile and hope, and I think I already have indicated to you that this idea of writing as writing in the mode of exile is also the--it's not to be seen in a subjective way only relating to him, or the pre-condition to his own poetry but involves the whole of history.



History has to be seen from the standpoint of exile, so there's at the top of page 363, line 69, "'Hope' I said," again, "is a sure expectation of future glory," as is the openness to time as futurity, "and it springs from divine grace and precedent merit. This light comes to me from many stars, but he first distilled it in my heart who was the sovereign singer of the Sovereign Lord," David, who to Dante is the greatest of poets.



Now we move on from here now to the last virtue, the last virtue of love. It is--there is a progression faith, hope, and charity, it is as if only--you have to know these virtues before the beatific vision can even be possible to you. You have to understand what it is that they do to you and they produce in you. We come to love, however, we are--we would be looking for a definition of it as at least in a formula, in a kind of a citational formula given and available in Canto XXIV and XXV, we would be looking for it in vain. There's no definition of love, and it's clear to me, it's clear to you, I take that Dante really thinks that this is "the word."



Love is the key word that seems to escape all possible definitions, which we know around us, in a variety of ways, we understand it and yet we cannot quite confine it and define it, and that to define it would really literally be a way of reducing its impact and reducing its value. It's such a basic word that Dante says that the only word that is really left, imaginary, etymologizing in this treatise on language that he writes, this treatises on the De vulgari eloquentia, he says that the word love is the only residual term from the past that means that language is a way of--like food, the banquet, the beginning of Canto XXIV, is a way of gathering us and bringing us together, so love and food, food is given as a metaphor at the beginning, now love that escapes any particular definition and yet it's the culmination of all these theological virtues.



What Dante does see and he has--I really want to turn to this scene at the end of Canto XXVI, Dante meets Adam. It's the confrontation with the beginning, it's the confrontation with the arch poet, because Adam is the one who names the world, and therefore brings it into existence; that's really what we mean by poet and that's what we're expecting of poets to do, since this is the meeting, the encounter with him, lines 90 and following, Dante addresses him, "O fruit," though the word really is apple, "O fruit that alone wast brought forth ripe." What on earth does he mean? That's a strange way of addressing someone, "oh fruit alone wast brought forth ripe."



There were a lot of theological debates as to ripeness is an element of grace, a description of grace for Dante. If you're not ripe, when you are ripe when you have received and been touched by grace. The argument was, Adam created in a natural state, or was he already created in a state of grace? How long was he in the earthly paradise before he fell? If he was in a state of grace why could he--why did he fall? If he was in a state of grace why could he commit this sin of transgression? Is it a transgression that he commits by eating of the fruit of the tree? Dante implies that he was in a state of grace, ripe, refers to him as ripeness, the idea of "fruit that alone was brought forth ripe." "O ancient father of whom every bride is daughter, and daughter-in-law," this is the very language that Dante will deploy in Paradiso XXXIII for the prayer to the Virgin and being the daughter of her son--the question of the divinity and humanity of Christ. "As humbly as I may I besiege thee to speak with me. Thou seest my wish, and to hear thee sooner I do not tell it."



Let me just skip a few lines and see the answer that Adam will give, line 115 and following, "Know then, my son, that not the tasting of the tree in itself was the cause of so long exile," so even Adam, the fall was in a state of exile, exile from the garden, falling into the wilderness where he had to transform the wilderness into a garden, so that the work would be the way in which he could regain that which he had lost, the garden, "but solely the trespass beyond the mark." I'll come back to this. "In the place from which thy Lady sent Virgil," in Limbo, "I longed for this assembly during four thousand, three hundred and two revolutions of the sun." He's clearly thinking about the harrowing of hell by Christ so that added now years to the four thousand he counts. "I saw it return to all the lights on its track nine hundred and thirty times while I lived on earth. The tongue I spoke was all extinct before Nimrod," we saw him as the founder, the giant, it's a residue of gigantomachy, the classical idea of the giants fighting the gods, Nimrod who builds the Tower of Babel, so the debate between them hinges on language.



Language is the key now and retrospectively we really come to understand the language of theology, the question of what is the--what are the properties of theological language and what are the properties beyond that of all words? That's the argument. "I spoke with… Nimrod's race gave their mind to the unaccomplishable task," the building of the Tower of Babel that would not be finished, "for no product whatever of reason--since human choice is renewed with the course of heaven--can last forever. It is a work of nature that man should speak, but whether in this way or that nature then leaves you to follow your own pleasure. Before I descended to the anguish of Hell the Supreme Good from whom comes the joy that swathes me was named I on earth." "I" in Italian, not "I" in the sense of the subject; I don't think that that's what Dante meant. "And later he was called El;" Dante's using two Hebrew words, what he takes them to be Hebrew words for the name of God. God was called "I" first and then he was called "El." In fact, this is--one of my students suggested to me that if you read them backwards they really spell out the word Eli which would be a word that we would acknowledge maybe nowadays as being the word for an appeal to God, I and he was called El, "and that is fitting, for the usage of mortals is like a leaf on a branch, which goes and another comes. On the mountain that rises highest from the sea I lived, pure, then guilty from the first hour to that following the sixth, where the sun changes quadrant," and that's the end of this encounter.



Let me focus on this question of the language that Dante's really with--encounter with Nimrod explicitly highlights. Adam changes Dante--through Adam is changing the account he had given in the De vulgari eloquentia, which is a story about the origin of words, of language, and where he had claimed that Hebrew persists; Adam's language unchanged through history because it was inconceivable, he adds there, that Jesus would be using a language other than the primal language and not the corrupt language of human beings. Now the story changes, actually Adam's language has suffered alterations already in the Garden, where the names of God keep changing. This, I think, is the key.



This is the whole question of theology then, the names of God, the way we speak about God. God was called "I," and then he was called "El," there is no proper name for God. We only have words or languages that keep changing according to our own historical circumstances, and Dante goes on changing his own paradigmatic account about the status of the sacred language. He says there is no such a thing as a persistent sacred language in history. What comes out is that language is the mark of our own distance from the divine, that we are--and the language that we use is a part of our own exilic circumstances and exilic predicament, and therefore all the language of theology that Dante has been describing is part of this exilic longing of human beings.



This is the story from XXIV, XXV, and XXVI. Dante uses theology and examination of theology only to place us back on the world--on this world where we go on hoping, believing, and loving, realizing that these are all mysterious terms, without which, however, that's another meaning of the word for--the resonance of money, without which we--where we know faith is a form of trust without which you cannot really be functioning together. Where we have hope as the realization of faith, and where we have love as that which is--we are always longing for and somehow the meaning of which is mysteriously escaping us. These are, I think, the three fundamental issues that Dante is discussing and let me take some questions.



Student: You passed over briefly this statement of Adam that his transgression was not in the act of testamentary but in crossing a boundary. I wonder if you could unpack that a little more because it seems to me not--it seems to me a bit of a controversial statement first of all because the command was "do not eat from the tree," so for Dante to say this, it seems like he's--there's something very specific that he wants to get across in this idea of boundary, maybe if you could elucidate that for me a little further.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The question is, a question that I really welcome, and I was hoping someone would ask. The question is that I did not--I read from, I did not really explain the Adam statement when he says that his sin was not in the tasting of the tree but in the trespassing of the limit, the mark, and therefore it seems that there is some issue of boundaries here and would I care to reply--try to give a response to that.



Yeah, I could give a response on a number of levels. First of all, I would remind you that this is Canto XXVI of Paradise, and Canto XXVI of Paradise is symmetrically connected with the other two Cantos XXVI, the canto of Ulysses who also trespasses the boundaries, who is a metaphysician of sorts, who is dealing with space and who himself--there is really nowhere on earth he is really going; he doesn't know; he's trying to go somewhere but doesn't really know that. They are connected--and then Canto XXVI of Purgatory dealing with love in its perverted form of Guinizelli, of the poets and Caesar, so that's one of the connections.



Another connection is that these are three cantos where Dante is using foreign languages. There's a deliberate connection there in the Canto of XXVI of Inferno. You may remember that Virgil goes out of the way to speak--be the one who is the interlocutor of Ulysses and supposedly to speak Greek, in Canto XXVI of Purgatory, Dante uses the Provencal language of Arnault Daniel who now starts speaking in Provencal, and then now we are using--Dante's using the foreign language, Hebrew, the names of God, so it's--that's one connection, so there are a lot of other, of these connections.



In the case of Adam, who makes that distinction, to come specifically to your point, who makes the distinction between the tasting of the fruit and it was not that he tasted the fruit, but that he trespassed the mark. That seems to be--you're right, that was a very controversial subject, because indeed that was the command given to Adam, "Thou shall not taste of the fruit of this tree," and Dante presents Adam who instead goes out to do that. It's clear that he thinks that the tasting of the tree was not--he's saying that that was not his sin. That's Dante's take on it. It's not the tasting of the tree that was the sin; the sin was that he abolished all boundaries. I read that--I'm restating the--changing slightly so I'm giving a paraphrase of what has been--what seems to be the issue here. It's clear that Dante thinks that Adam's act of eating of the tree was good, and Adam's act of the eating of the tree was actually the discovery of a knowledge that had--that managed to elevate him and that was good.



From this point of view this is--there seems to be a contrast between Ulysses' form of knowledge and Adam's form of knowledge. Ulysses' form of knowledge is that he literally is--does not go, doesn't even know where he is going, that's part of the problem, in purely metaphysical terms. He had no directions, it was a gratuitous quest. In the case of Adam, getting to know of the fruit of the tree was not an issue. In fact, Dante says, that maybe real knowledge is always going to be tied to an act of making discoveries, making even transgressions. What was the problem is that there had been a loss of boundaries that he lost. How are we to understand the loss of boundary? It was the kind of knowledge that made Adam realize that he could be divine; that was his problem. As soon as you--the imposition of the boundary, God's imposition of--or establishment of the boundary between the human and the divine was also a way of letting Adam know--I'm not going to read this as if it were a kind of atheistical statement at all, it's letting Adam know that he had to be aware that he was not divine, that he was a human being. What he, Adam, wanted to do was grow in knowledge and discover that he could also be divine. Do you understand what I'm saying? That is the issue.



For him to fall then would be a way of re-establishing that boundary and realize that he is a human being and not divine. It's a growth in self-knowledge. If you really know that you--if you really know who you are, you are really--you have grown. Do you see what I'm saying? Dante's changing the sense of what the fall of man is, and the fall of man is not the fall in the growth of knowledge but that growth of knowledge that leads you to erasing the boundary, to believe that you are by virtue of that knowledge that you have gained, that you are now divine. This is really--the whole poem is trying to convey to us is that this is a steady temptation that human beings seem to have and we can't--we need to be reminded, and when we hear it from God himself we don't quite believe it, and then we have to grow into that recognition of boundaries between ourselves and something that we aspire to but we are not it yet.



Good question, but I had anticipated this answer, I must say, in a number of ways talking about Adam in the past. I hope that you don't remember because more or less I said the same thing--I don't know that I mentioned before. One might wonder, just to go back to that issue, one might wonder, does Dante really make it clear that he's really not Adam but he still thinks that he is Ulysses at this point? One thing that he understands that he is--the canto before he acknowledges King David as the supreme--and he did earlier, the supreme poet, he's really placing himself in David's Psalms are the lyrical recapitulations of and glossing of Exodus. That's really where he now I think is trying to move that he's more--he cannot be like Ulysses, he knows he's not--he does not want to be, he cannot be Adam, that's the kind of model he's trying to regain for himself. Okay, maybe you see the connection with where we said a little earlier with what I--the response I gave to your question. Yes.



Student: I'm just going off of Dante's theological beliefs. In Canto XXIV he talks about his belief in the Trinity and I was wondering if you could just explain that further, because he seems to be saying both that the Trinity are three separate entities and the unity. I know there was controversy and different factions of different--different factions in Christianity believe different things about the Trinity and so I was wondering what Dante believed.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Well, Dante has a number of references throughout Paradise to the Trinity. One of them actually, a very significant one, that we never talked about was in Canto XXV of Purgatory where Dante thinks that the way we human beings understand--can understand it--one of the ways which we can understand the Trinity is to think about the structure of the mind: memory, intelligence, and will because there are three but part of one thing, and three functions. Or, in Canto XXIV, of Purgatorio that Professor Lummus, I'm sure explained to you, is that the--if you want to understand Dante there seems to imply when he talks about, I am one when he declares his own poetic practice and one who when loved and dictates inside me, I go on using my language and so on.



One way, in which the Trinity was explained, they would say, think about speaking to make it existentially compelling and concrete. When you speak, you have an idea in your mind, otherwise it's babble. You have an idea in your mind, you emit a sound, but to emit the sound you need the breath, and you cannot have the sound without the breath, and you cannot have the sound without the idea, so that speaking encompasses this three-fold components of one. The Trinity is always connected to one. Then in Canto X of Paradise, you remember, we spent some time there, having this idea of the love of the Father, and the Son, and the breath of love that joins them, they go on gazing together, this idea of the fecundity or this idea of the Trinity as source, or Dante who thinks about God in the form of the Mover, but he does go into that and yet he understands that that's not the effective theology he wants to think of God as the Prime Mover, to think as the efficient cause, it makes God as such a mechanic or a clockmaker or something, one of these images of God who imparts order and recedes from creation. That's really not Dante's idea. He wants to think of a divinity that is partaking of creation's love.



Dante's idea of the Trinity--so he has many, many--he tests all of these paradigms. I don't think that he ever excludes one. He does not really agree with the reading of Joachim of Flora who thought that the Trinity was the unity of--that Trinity could be dissolved into three separate beings, so that's no longer a unity. To have a unity you got to have all three clearly present, that's what Dante believes. A unity with a kind of--is it a prismatic unity let me call it, that's why. Dante would say, we all have some recognition of the Trinity, whether it's God and the Word of God being the Qu'ran from eternally or God and the Word of God being the Christ, etc. We all have the word made flesh, we all have some kind of idea of the Trinity, where one acknowledges God as a Father, or as a Spirit, ways in which we can understand this thing we call, I don't mean irreverently, we call God. That's the response to what you asked. Please.



Student: From what you said in answer to the other question, it seems like you were saying that if Dante takes the fall it's good enough because it leads to self-knowledge. Dante thinks the fall is good because it leads to more self-knowledge. I understand how it's different from--Adam is different from Ulysses in that he is trying to go somewhere, like he's trying to become more like God and that's good because it's a definite end, but it still seems that if the means of trying to achieve that end is wrong. If he's trying to become more like God by, like grasping instead of--like we've been talking a lot about how the--and that's real essential and if he's choosing the wrong way to get to his end, if that changes the end itself so that he's not even really--Adam's not even like having the proper end in his search for knowledge either. If it changes because he's going about it in the wrong way and just how that kind of reflects on whether the fall--whether Dante thinks the fall itself feels like it's good and is actually leading to something else, if that's clear.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: No, it's very clear. The question is--the earlier question, of course, was about what Dante thinks about the Trinity. Now the question is going back to the point of Adam, and my suggestion that the fall is good, and because ultimately Adam seems to be really wanting to reach God and I made a contrast to Ulysses and the limitation of Ulysses' quest is that he really does not know--he's driven by curiosity. That's what I meant which we will talk about, this evil curiosity. But if the movement toward the good is bad, because after all, Adam does choose to trespass the boundaries, why should that really be thought as good? Is that--that was the question really?



Well, let me just restate this issue. The problem with Adam--I'm sorry, first of all, with Ulysses I call it now the curiosity, which as you know, eventually will become good in the Renaissance, scientific curiosity, that's the good thing. In fact, I have a young colleague who is writing a thesis about curiosity--a book about curiosity. She has written a thesis about curiosity linking it with women's curiosity, it's a very interesting thesis to say that women are really smarter than men because they are--they have been attacked for being curious, so she has found Renaissance texts were--some written by women who go on making that kind of claim. I think it's a great idea.



How did Dante understand curiosity? How do the Fathers of the Church understand curiosity? Why is it bad? Because that is the trait of Adam, because curiosity has a particular quality about it, it's something that continues this whole understanding, and especially with curiosity I'm going to give you, well in to the eighteenth century. The curiosity is bad because it uses up; curiosity has a sort of restlessness within it. I am curious of a particular object, I observe it and I move onto something else. I literally consume, I use up a particular object and devalue it in that process, that's really what made it so bad.



Ulysses, who goes from one thing to another and is always open, fascinating figure of the Renaissance spirit of discovery, but that's really what undoes this element almost of desire, a kind of--a figure of--I don't want to make--I'm using this to badmouth Ulysses, but a figure of this way of thinking of the curiosity of Ulysses is really the don Juan who goes from one woman to another in an endless movement of curiosity and knowledge, that he's driven by knowledge to get to know certain particular situations and people.



Adam, to go back to the question of Adam, I'm only giving you Dante's reading. Dante's reading--he distinguishes very carefully between the testing, the tasting of the fruit and the trespassing of the mark. The trespassing of the mark meant you cannot really violate the boundaries that I want to place between you and myself, because once you get to know yourself for what you are you may get to know me, that's what the part of the violation of boundaries. You may get to know me for what I am, so it's a wall that protects both the essence of the divinity and the specific quality of the human that is at stake. Adam eats, which means that he wants to grow in knowledge, and Dante says, that's not the issue. That was not a problem that I want to grow in knowledge.



The consequence of that growth in knowledge was the trespassing--actually very well be the cause, the trespassing of the boundary. Had he really grown, that's really an acceptable aim; you have to grow in knowledge. I'm willing to say about Adam exactly the things that you may recall I said about the scene of pride when we discussed Canto X, XI and XII. It's good that you have this love of excellence and love of the growth of your own mind. The consequence of it or the flip side of this quest for more knowledge is the violation of boundaries and that has to be re-established. The fall of man is only a re-establishment of the boundaries; it's not a way of mortifying the quest for knowledge. I'm restating what I--different terms--slightly different terms what I said before, but I think that's really a crucial distinction and I would ask you to try to think--I see a difference between the two situations. I hope you--I have time for another--no we don't. See you next time.



[end of transcript]

This lecture focuses on Paradise XXVII-XXIX. St. Peter's invective against the papacy from the Heaven of the Fixed Stars is juxtaposed with Dante's portrayal of its contemporary incumbent, Boniface VIII, in the corresponding canto of Inferno. Recalls of infernal characters proliferate as the pilgrim ascends with Beatrice into the primum mobile. Bid to look back on the world below, Dante perceives the mad track of his uneasy archetype, Ulysses. Dante's remembrance of this tragic shipwreck at the very boundary of time and space gains interest in light of his allusion to Francesca at the outset of Paradise XXIX. These resonances of intellectual and erotic transgression reinforce the convergence of cosmology and creation Dante assigns to the heaven of metaphysics.



Reading assignment:

Dante, Paradise: XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX

Transcript



November 20, 2008



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: We're going to look at XXVII, XXVIII and XXIX today of Paradise, three cantos that, really, I think, Dante constructs together and where Dante puts forth this theory of creation and cosmology which are not quite the same thing. A theory of Beatrice that's explaining the shape of the cosmos, it's very difficult in these three cantos. It's done in such a way that they are two different things, it would seem, creation and a physical description of the cosmos which we call cosmology and they are because Dante's dealing with two forms of the universe, a spiritual one and a physical one. Now we're going to show all of this as we go over the three cantos. I would like to argue that in effect they are not quite the same thing but not really all that distinct. There is a very tedious line separating the two of them.



Where are we first of all in space? We are somewhere in space, Dante has gone past now, the heaven of the fixed stars, with the examination of the three words, the three terms, the foundations of things that we experience as trust, or we experience as existential hope, or a love that if you combine it is always--implies always--not in Canto XXVI but in possibilities of betrayal, uncertainty, so it combines both faith and hope in a very problematical way. Canto XXVII Dante continues with--in the afterglow of the fixed stars, and the canto just to give you an idea about what formally is happening here, the first part of the canto really looks back formerly at Canto XXVII of Inferno. There is clearly a parallel between the two cantos. Here Dante--you remember what he does, he meets St. Peter actually who has been examining him but now after the examination of the three theological virtues he goes on in a prophetic denunciation, he denounces the collusion between his place, he says "my place," it's the papacy, the place instituted by--because of him he's the Peter, he's the stone, and his successors.



That's the way it says, so the canto literally looks backwards and a parallel with--you may have a number of parallels with Inferno XIX where Dante meets, you remember, the popes who are turned upside down and the flames--the kind of--the parody of the Pentecostal fires out on the plants of their feet, but this is more clearly a reference to Canto XXVII of Inferno, where this is the very beginning, this is--there is a hymn Canto XXVII, "Glory be to the Father, the Son, etc.," and then lines 40 and following we have this great attack, "It was not our meaning," line 45, "that on the right hand of our successors should sit one part of Christ's people and the other on the left; nor that the keys which were committed to me should become the device on a standard for warfare on the baptized; nor that I should be the figure on a seal for sold and lying favours, for which I often redden and flash with fire." This is the fire of prophecy without a doubt, but it's also, retrospectively, a reference to the attack against Boniface, who in Canto XXVII of Inferno, is shown as he is in colluding with the Guido da Montefeltro. You remember, so there is a clear--it's a clear symmetry between the two cantos.



I will hasten to add that Canto XXVII is also--has a kind of chiastic structure because at one point, just to give you this is a formal description of what's happening here, a little later after this outburst by Peter, Beatrice and the pilgrim move onto the next heaven, which is around line 75 and following. The next heaven is the so-called crystalline heaven which is still material. He's at the boundary of the material universe. It's still material but it's very, exactly crystal-like; it's a very thin materiality, almost but not quite spiritual. It's also called the primum mobile because it's here; this is the technical term that they give. It's here, in this heaven, that we have problems of origins, the origin of time, the origin of space. Dante goes on giving this--Beatrice goes on giving this cosmological description of the universe in material terms.



Here, to continue with the formal, the issue of form now, at one point Beatrice says, "wait look behind you so that you can have an idea, you can measure the enormous distance you have traveled from the Earth." He's at the boundary of the material cosmos. You might say, well he's at the edge of the cosmos; he's going to fall off. That was always one of the objections about the idea of the finiteness of the cosmos. Believe it or not in the seventeenth century they would never really fall off because the universe is a sphere, so the only place he has to go to is back, there's no literally edge, every point is the edge and every point is in a continuous spherical curve. Anyway, from the point of view, he's arriving there so she says, look back and what does he see, and this is the line, "From the time when I had," this is XXVII, line 75, "From the time when I had looked before I saw that I had moved through the whole arc," that's the language of this sphere, an arc, circle, an arc just gives you an idea of sphericity, "from the middle to the end of the first clime, so that I saw on the one hand, beyond Cadiz, the mad track of Ulysses."



He pinpoints that little place where Ulysses trespassed the boundaries of the world--of the Euclidian space he had--for which he has been damned in Canto XXVI of Inferno. This is what we call a chiasmus, in other words XXVI and XXVII--we do see that XXVI that are an allusion to Ulysses and Adam. We talked about these figures and here in XXVII of Hell, there is Boniface and then in Paradise XXVII there is this, and there is also a kind of--this is Ulysses so there's a sort of chiastic structure; XXVII of Paradise refers to really VI of Paradise and refers also to XXVII of Inferno and XXVI of Inferno. The question is, why does Dante pinpoint once again Ulysses? He sees at the west the point which Ulysses had trespassed and he calls it the mad track, "the mad track of Ulysses." Clearly, Ulysses is still part of this fascination that--it exerts an incredible fascination on the imagination of the poet and the pilgrim. Am I like Ulysses or am I going to be lost now like Ulysses, but at the same time, it's a way of hinting at how much he has exceeded Ulysses' adventure. Ulysses only went past the Pillars of Hercules; he, Dante, is now at the outer most boundary of the visible physical universe, so there's a way in which there is a little bit of detachment and yet a constant fascination.



We tried to explain why he is so fascinated with Ulysses. At the other end he also sees, "and on the other nearly to the shore where Europa made herself a sweet burden," this is really the eastern part of the known world, Europe, the rape of Europe by Jupiter so that we really have an erotic transgression and an intellectual transgression, as if the two are now once again are involved in this--in Dante's vision as if he's now coming to the point where knowledge and desire really have to coincide. He's coming to the point where the beautiful and the good are one, at the point where all of the great countries and distinctions that we have been pursuing all along nearly have to go on converging.



Let me continue with this idea. This is--before I go on with what happens in the canto. Dante then moves into the primum mobile, which is the place where I continue with this. He goes on line 100, they go into "the swiftest part of heaven," that's the primum mobile. All motion begins from here. Dante is moving from what would seem to be an ethical--the ethical scene, the denunciation, Peter's denunciation of the abuses within the Church. That's done in a prophetic tone but also from a tone of ethical, the ethical language. He goes into the so-called primum mobile which actually is the heaven of metaphysics. I have been telling you about the grammar, rhetoric, music, geometry, this is what we call the heaven of metaphysics and you know what that is, right? You understand what metaphysics means? Dante refers to it as they did refer to it, Aristotle refers to as the first philosophy. They called it first because it reigns--it rules supreme among all the arts and all the sciences. It's the most important of the sciences. It's the point of arrival of all the sciences and it's called first philosophy because it explains also questions of origins, and you see the language of origins here, the origin of time, the origin of space, creation itself, the beginning of the world, causes, foundations, these are the--this is the great Rome that metaphysics discusses.



Dante, the interesting thing is that in the Middle Ages, and Dante has to connect it with physics. Physics is as--metaphysics really go hand in hand, one tries to give the explanation of the physical world, and metaphysics the theoretical, general rules. In fact, and this you probably--I should mention this. There are people who believe that metaphysics was not a term that really indicated anything really different, completely different from the knowledge that physics provides. They would say that was--metaphysics was called metaphysics because it--the book was placed on the shelf a little bit after the book on physics. You see what I mean? It was really more a way of defining the place of the book on the library so to speak, probably, but it was known as that, but it's probably more of a fiction than anything else. The fact is that there is such a science for Dante that deals with causes, origins, beginnings, time, etc.



One of the things that here we have it's that Dante--that Beatrice starts describing line 100, "'The nature of the universe," here she placed the cosmologies, "which holds the center still and moves all else around it, begins here,'" so this is already the beginning, literally the language of beginnings. Here begins motion. Dante stands at the boundary of the physical universe and now she gives and explanation of this. She just said he's at the boundary, "And this heaven has no other where," place, "but the Divine Mind." The real beginning, the real universe is in God's mind, so he distinguishes two worlds, the physical world we see and the spiritual world, which is in God's mind. In a way, and just to make it very simple, Dante is journeying into the mind of God.



There is one man who had written a text, Bonaventure, whom you have seen--whom you have met before and he wrote this book called The Itinerary of The Mind into God. This is a way of trying to explore, to enter, mystically enter, the mind of God. Dante doesn't do it in a mystical way. He tries to understand what's beyond the physical world. To give a description of this universe this is the term that keeps reappearing in the next three cantos. "Light and love enclose it in a circle, as it does the others, and of the girding He that girds it is the soul Intelligence." This primum mobile, it really is a kind of curve that wraps up all the other heavens. We have seen--this is the ninth heaven, all the other heavens have been--are enwrapped within it, but it's not only a boundary; Dante views it as also the beginning, the threshold for the spiritual universe. It's both the boundary of the physical world and it's always also the--so it goes like this, this is the Earth, and growing, and then we come to the ninth this becomes at the same time a kind of convex and concave semi circle. I have, believe it or not, a shape of what I think is Dante's cosmos and here it is. This is--I'm going to pass it around.



This is a shell but it's actually really made and found. This would be the--pass it around here and then I'll explain--they're all spirals really like the--since Dante thinks of the cosmos as a book and we would call it a cosmobook, that's a neology that I coin here, a kind of cosmobook. The book in the shape of a cosmos, it's really a parchment rolled up within itself. You know what parchments are in medieval and classical ideas of the production, the material production of books? We have the ancient parchments which are all rolled up like--the term is around a stick and then held together by a ring, that's really the shape.



It's a sort of a production of books that in the history of the book is later replaced around the fourth century A.D. by the so called codex which we have for instance even in the Beinecke. A codex has--it's made of quartos, it's made of folios and divided like a book today made of--it would have quartos or folios. If you go and see the Shakespeare's--the folios of Shakespeare in the Elizabethan Club, for instance, if they let you go in or you belong there, take a look and see what the codex really is. Dante seems to be combining the two forms. Anyway, you have an idea here of what the shape that I'm trying to describe to you is. They are a kind of, if you wish, they are spirals, one following the other, and next to it there is going to be a spiritual universe, another universe which we'll come to in a moment.



This is the first description that she's giving. The idea of the sphericity of space, that's one thing, the space is spherical and has as the primum mobile as a boundary and now we have--Beatrice goes on explaining, "Its motion is not determined by another's," this is line 112, "but from it the rest have their measures." Everything begins here. This is the physical beginning of the universe which we inhabit, "even as ten from the half and the fifth." In other words, it's as sure as it is that two plus five make ten and "how time should have its roots in that vessel and in the others its leaves, may not be plain to thee." Even time begins here; time is understood then by Dante.



Do you see what the--there is a kind of a tree growing from a part, the part of eternity. He does not understand time in a linear way, there was a beginning and an end, and it's not the wheel of time or the wheel of becoming. You may have heard this, have you heard this description about the wheel of becoming in which this is a platonic idea of time, where all things are contained? Dante thinks of the tree, of time as a tree, the roots of which are in the pot of eternity and the foliages are in--reach us--reach into our own world. We are in the shadow of the tree of time. We only see leaves that will fall because this idea of the dispersion and the falling of time, the passing of time, so this is the definition of what happens in XXVII. She continues after a while with this--about once again the language of covetousness and moral language about what happens in the world and we move on to Canto XXVIII. Let me tell you I have not forgotten that we ought to talk about Ulysses in a little while.



Now it continues with, XXVIII deals with the angelic hierarchy. We are now still in the primum mobile but Dante starts seeing into the other universe, the spiritual universe. He sees a universe which is adjacent to the physical universe with--inhabited by angels. The corresponding part that you have the nine planets, the seven planets plus the fixed stars and the crystalline heaven, and now you have the nine orders of angels, and Beatrice will go on describing the three triads of angels; angels, archangels, thrones, this is the language that comes from the Bible, the Old Testament comes from Babylonian, apparently in Persian sources, apocalyptic sources and would not seem to be really terribly different from that tradition. Here, we have also another; this whole description of the angelic order continues, line 12 let me just focus on this a bit, "And when I turned again and mine were met by what appears in that revolving sphere to one that looks intently on its circling, I saw a point," distance, so we are at the boundary of the universe; another universe emerges into view and Dante only sees "a point which radiated a light so keen that the eye in which it burns must close for its piercing power."



Once again, a series of revolving spheres, this universe is not the projection of the other universe; they are separate and adjacent. They are two hemispheres and this is what happens in Canto XXVIII and we go to Canto XXIX, and I ask you to see how the whole argument continues. Beatrice has been explaining breathlessly the whole question of angelic hierarchy, and by the end of Canto XXVIII he sees--she even mentions that the order--actually it's Dante here who mentions that the order--his ordering of angels, the hierarchy, is very different from the one of the pseudo Dionysius, line 130 where he says, "These orders all gaze above and so prevail below that all are drawn and all draw to God. And Dionysius set himself with such zeal to contemplate," this is the pseudo Dionysius who had written about the angelic hierarchy, and Dante goes on to say that he differs from him, that he just--his idea of angels is a little different from his and Pope Gregory's. A statement of his own intellectual independence, both in terms of the theologian and in terms of an ecclesiastical authority.



And then Beatrice finishes the description of this hierarchy, meaning the sacred order, that's what the Greek word means, the sacred order of angelic intelligences. Their function is to impart motion to the spheres; their function is to move between the divinity and human beings, they are the messengers, they keep the spiritual entities and they keep moving between God and human beings and then we go to Canto XXIX where now the language of cosmology, about the order of the cosmos becomes creation, and I want to show this to you.



However, this shift to the language of creation is conducted in an extraordinarily interesting way. Dante wants to say that Beatrice has been talking nonstop about--with probably a touch of playfulness about the angelic orders, and then she moves almost like, without catching her breath, talking about creation, Canto XXIX. But look how this shift from the order of angels to the order of creation is described. This is the beginning of Canto XXIX, "When the two children of Latona, covered by the Ram and by the Scales, both at once make a belt of the horizon, as long as from the moment when the zenith holds them balanced till the one and the other, changing hemispheres, are unbalanced from that girdle, for so long, have face illumined with a smile, Beatrice kept silence, looking fixedly at the point that had overcome me." What an extraordinary image. Let's read it again so we make sure that we understand it because I'm not sure that it's very clear, though I think it's--I can make it clear but let's look at this again. "When the two children of Latona," meaning the Sun and the Moon, that's really what he's saying. He has to describe the fact that Beatrice seems not to have kept quiet that she went endlessly from one thing to another, that's what I call the playfulness of Dante's thinking.



He's saying that there was, this is the image that he uses, is when the children of Latona, Apollo and Diana, you know that, the Sun and the Moon. We're in the universe of--though Dante is using mythical language, look at the language first of all. The two children of Latona, myth; "Covered by the Ram and the Scales," science, "Both at once make a belt of the horizon," an Arabic word meaning the boundary of the heavens, so science, scientific language. "As long as from that moment when the zenith," scientific language. The mixture and balancing of science and myth, but also a way of talking about the--a balance that is as vanishing and as fleeting as it could ever be, that's the point. That there was silence but he could almost not even tell that there was a break in Beatrice's speech. This is what he is saying, when the two children of Latona, the Sun or Apollo and the Moon, Diana, along the horizon, they seem to be aligned together and they are held together by the zenith. This is the zenith, the highest point as opposed to the nadir, right?



This is the balance that he's describing. They are kept in a balance here, in a rare equilibrium, when they appear, seemed to be aligned together and that balance and equilibrium is quickly disappearing. What is he saying? He's saying that she almost didn't stop speaking and then she began, then she goes on with the theory of creation. "I tell, not ask, what you wouldst hear; for I have seen it there where every ubi and every quando is centred," place, I have seen at a point where place, space, and time coincide. "Not to gain any good for Himself, which cannot be, but that His splendour, shining back, might say," I stay, "Subsisto--in His eternity, beyond time, beyond every other bound, as it pleased Him, the Eternal Love revealed Himself in new loves." I have to correct my good friend, dear old friend Sinclair, because actually Dante does not say that. He says that love, the eternal love, actually the language which he uses I don't know--I hope your other translations--those of you who use other translations are luckier, "opened itself in new loves," opened itself. I take this to be a sexual language as it can be found, a new love engendered, opened itself into new loves.



Then it in fact continues, "Nor, before, did He lie as it were inert; for until God's moving upon these waters there was no 'before' or 'after.'" Before God's creation the language is biblical, from Genesis, there was no before or nor after. In the physics, this is an allusion to Aristotle's physics, where Aristotle has to define time; he says it's the measure, we speak of time when there is a before and an after, because this is really what time is. The measure of motion in regard to a before and an after; Dante says that before this time of creation there was no such thing. It could not be distinguished before in terms of time, there was no such a thing as before and after, and then he goes on just to continue with this sexual metaphor, "Form and matter, united and separate, came into being that had no defect, like three arrows from a three-stringed bow."



The question of creation as a coming together of form and matter is here described as a conjunction. It's the language of creation takes place as an act of love, that's the first thing Beatrice's saying. Creation comes through as passion, a love passion, it's an opening up in--love opening up in new loves. It's as physical, the language of creation, as it could ever be in terms of the natural, the language of natural production and reproduction. This is the context of what she is saying, before and after. It is as if to have a creation, creation is that which introduces the possibility of distinguishing between a before and an after, introduces a difference, that's what the language of Beatrice is.



Let me go back to the image with which we started. Dante is wondering whether or not there was any break in Beatrice's speech. He says if there was a break, it was so fleeting as happens with whenever the Sun and the Moon along the line of the horizon are going to be--are aligned together and this is if they are balanced and are held together by the zenith above.



That is such a fleeting moment in the alignment of the stars. Why this metaphor? Not only he's saying that but I think there is also an allusion to Francesca here in Canto V. Did you catch it? Where he says, "for so long her face illumined with a smile, Beatrice kept silence," she just kept on talking, "looking fixedly at the point that had overcome me." The point that had overcome me is clearly an allusion to--not only a point was that that overcame us, Francesca says in Canto V. That's all, so there's an illusion to Francesca. The question that I have to answer that I raised with you is why is Dante mentioning these two infernal figures and framing his discussion on cosmology of creation, first of all by talking about Ulysses and now talking about, or alluding to, not even mentioning, but alluding to Francesca. Why this one who wants to transgress and trespass the boundaries of the world in order to know, the other one who transgresses the norms of what is allowed because of love.



Knowledge and love somehow come into play but they are in the Inferno version. What is he saying though with this image? Why has he talked about Francesca, the Sun and the Moon align briefly, what do you think he's saying? It's not a rhetorical question; let me just--why do you think he would use this kind of language? Immediately, after Beatrice goes on explaining the creation of the world and the distinction between a before and an after. Why this metaphor? Why this long paragraph? This image here, anybody? I think that Dante's asking right here, is it possible to localize a break and he's saying it is as when we speak that things seem to be continuous and just as in every syllable between a sound and another there is always an interval so there was in the language of Beatrice, and that's what to him is the idea of creation.



It seems to be--there is--the opposite of creation would be the eternity of the world, something which would be the universe is eternal; it has no beginning and no identifiable break. How can you tell? If the universe is eternal you have no differences inside it. Dante wants to say it seems to be a continuous--the universe seems to have a continuous extension. Without time a kind of eternity, it goes on and on, and yet it's as when we speak that you can identify the break, there was however minute there was a break between Beatrice's exposition about the angelic orders and now the exposition that she goes into about the--about creation. Why then, the other two metaphors, now it's time to answer that question, why talking through Ulysses and Francesca? Why evoke those two images?



I wish we could--I have to keep that hanging awhile so it can become a little bit more compelling what I'm going to tell you. With it order, "And as a ray shines," Beatrice is continuing with form and matter, united and separate, this is conjoined and pure, pure and conjoined. She says, "as a ray shines into glass or amber or crystal so that from its coming to its completeness there is no interval, so the threefold creation flashed into being from its Lord all at once without distinction in its beginning. With it, order was created and ordained for the spirits, and these were the summit of the universe in whom was produced pure act; pure potency," and so on." The idea is that there is a universe of creation, the universe of creation which seems to be very much like the physical world, it's described in physical terms, the terms of the Moon and sexuality, the cosmological language and scientific terms, and yet there is some kind of difference that is introduced. Without creation we would not have differences, we would not even have origins that is the language. Now, why those two figures? Why Ulysses and Francesca?



Ulysses, I think that what Dante is doing, finally is allowing us to see what the world of Inferno has to be seen as. The world of Inferno that we only saw as a world of rejected, as a world of evil and horror, all of a sudden is now retrieved as the best exemplar of what we may come to know of the spiritual world. It is almost an imaginative redemption that Dante goes into about the actual idea of hell. He's implying, and that could become in many ways heretical, but I hope to show you that it is not, that the universe as it goes back--as one goes back to the beginnings, clearly the journey to the beginnings has to be seen as redemption of order has been falling away. Let me just say it in a slightly less tortuous way. There can be no redemption unless it implies that the whole of evil is overcome and destroyed, so that even the world of hell now appears all of a sudden as part of what we get to know about the ultimate structure of the universe. This seems to me to be the real lesson, the underlying and powerful message that Dante is sending through these three cantos in the heaven of metaphysics.



Let me stop here before I move into the next canto, Canto XXX and see if there are--let me take the questions now before we go on to the next canto. I could go back maybe and try to redo what I have been saying because it's--but let me see if there are some questions and then we can do that, please.



Student: Are you suggesting [inaudible] of the entire world creation is redeemable including those [inaudible]?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: He never says that. Let me be very, very clear. He never says it anywhere. There is never an indication thematically, there is everything else that I have said I could find counterparts in a thematic, thematized, in the sense that it becomes part of a conscious articulation on the part of her; he knows and he thematizes, he makes it a theme clear, he never says that. But there are two implications though that I'm drawing on in order to be able to make that kind of statement. The first is the very idea of the cosmos as a sphere, and the idea of the cosmos as a sphere, it really means that wherever you are going and you are going toward God, then you are going back to the beginning, everything else can go back to the beginning because that's the form, the shape of the cosmos. I'm drawing out the implication about this understanding of the universe.



The other reason is that there is such a thing as a redemption and Dante's--we didn't read the canto, Canto VII of Paradise is focused on redemption, a new beginning, that's what redemption means. Redemption means that the cosmos can go back to its beginning and be restored in its original form. If this is true, it could very well be that from the point of view of the poem, Lucifer is always going to be stuck in his ice forever. There's no hint that he can move even. Francesca is always moving around in vicious circles, remembering and then lost in the labyrinth of time. To her, she literally moves in time; memory--cannot think about the past without being moved by it and must move constantly around it. Ulysses gets lost who knows where, there is nowhere for him, he has no sense of a place, even from this point of view I can go on understanding that in a canto where a place matters, Ulysses never had a sense of belonging anywhere, that's the utter dislocation and a kind of--he doesn't have a family that holds him back, the children, the kingdom, Ithaca, anything, he just goes on moving.



That is the overt sense of the poem, but there is this theology of redemption, and I'm wondering whether theology of redemption does not entail necessarily that there is a return to the beginning. Before I go on though with restatements of this--I want to ask you to--because I think it's one of the--a technique that Dante uses which is really extraordinary, can you go to the beginning of canto--the famous image of Latona when the two children of Latona--beginning of Canto XXIX, I really would like to ask you to look at the Italian a little bit. I'm not going to read it, I'm not going to ask you to read, I'm only going to ask you to look, I won't read it though. At the first word, quando right? You all see that, and look at line--that's really the proem, what we call rhetorically the prosthesis of the canto, the beginning of the canto, the introduction of the canto.



Go to line 12, the last word, quando. Go to the first--back to the first line, the last word in that line, Latona. He says, "of Latona." The first two letters "la" go back to canto--to line 12, the first two letters "la," draw this--that's a chiasmus, draw the lines together, and they will meet exactly at the word hemisphere, emisfero, that's the center. That's the--hemisphere means that they are--it's half--hemi--the Greek is the two half spheres, the universe is two half spheres composing one. I think Dante's placing us at a cosmic crossroads. He is locating us, he's telling us where we are first of all, but he's also telling us that this universe has a kind of very occult and very secret laws. The poem has these secret laws that regulate it.



I'm really arguing then that there is this subtext that is if a radical redemptive theology would only entail the absolute purification of evil, so that the universe will have to really go back to this kind of Pythagorean purity, but without the phases and descents. These are--you know what I mean all of you, this Pythagorean idea that the life of the universe stretches for 360,000 years. Did you ever hear about that? 360,000 years which are really like the days of the year, the 365 I think we have; 360,000 years. Every 360, 000 years the universe rotates and goes back to its point of origin and then it--decadence starts again, the age of gold, the age of silver, the age of iron, the age of paper we would call it now. It goes back to its origin, that's not the way Dante understands the movement of the cosmos, but he does understand the--he does present this redemptive event that makes the universe return to its pristine purity, that's why I made that statement. Any other points before I go back because I really think I should say all of what I said before. Any other questions so I can help clarify these various points? Yes.



Student: What is the redemptive event?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: I'm sorry.



Student: What is the redemptive event?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: The incarnation. The incarnation is the redemptive event that allows--it means what is the redemptive event? The incarnation, I call it redemptive event that would make the--a new creation, a new Adam has come into the world and that new Adam, through the sacrifice, his sacrifice through the gift God gave--allowed the incarnation because human beings on their own would not be capable. That's the theology of redemption. Human beings on their own would not be able to save and redeem themselves so that an intervention from God, through his son, was made inevitable in order to reconstruct and in order to bring out and produce that original order of the cosmos. If that is true, and it is true, and you only have to look at everywhere in the poem, but Canto VII of Paradise, that's really where it is an annunciation of this whole theory in the terms of--for those of you who are, Anselm, etc., then that implies that there must be some kind of general remaking of the world.



That's what I think the idea--but nonetheless this should not obscure the fact that there is a kind of a paired juxtaposition between the physical description of the world and the spiritual description of the world. There are two hemispheres and yet they are connected; the spiritual, the creation, the experience of creation is really the way of positing a distinctionary difference into the universe--into the theory that the world is eternal. They are two conceptions that, operative in the Middle Ages, and they are really represented by--one is by Aquinas who is a theologian but he is also a philosopher, and in fact, he could be called as the writer who wants to make a philosophical theology. He argues, he's known for the famous Suma; he wrote a track called Suma Against the Gentiles, not the Suma of Theology but Summa Contra Gentiles where he argues that the eternity of the world, the theory of the eternity of the world, that is to say there is no creation, he says could be philosophically demonstrated. It could also be philosophically repudiated.



Philosophy can argue one side of it, and he goes on arguing that there is no way of thinking of--the usual questions, who created the Creator? That kind of--the oldest, these objections. However, there is a view of creation which is allowed and it's possible on account of faith, but it also allows for the thought of freedom, origins, beginnings, etc. Bonaventure picks up some of these ideas, the ideas debated in Paris in the thirteenth century around 1270 in Paris. Both of them are teachers at the university. Bonaventure says no, this is untenable, the idea of the eternity of the world. It is absolutely untenable, because if the world were eternal then we really would have no way of--no real succession of generations, there would be endless people who have been living before us, there's no evidence for this, it would be endless forms of--he holds, and he upholds the idea of creation.



Dante intervenes into this debate and says, that it is effectively the physical world and the spiritual world are really one continuous, they're one complimentary to the other, and yet there is a difference between them, and the difference between them is the difference that he can find in Beatrice's speech, that little point of time, that little intrusion of time that distinguishes between one sound and another sound. The spiritual universe originates in the world of nature as a natural production and reproduction, all of God's love and the physical world in exactly the same way. There is a kind of symmetry. This is not Plato's inverted universe. The physical world is not Plato's inverted world, it's adjacent to it. It is as if Dante discovers that there are more dimensions to the world that we see than what medieval cosmologists, or classical cosmologists had imagined.



Interestingly enough, and I don't say this is a proof for any of what I have said at all, but there's a famous nineteenth-century mathematician by the name of Riemann, a German mathematician. I don't know how many of you studied history of science, he was--he's known among other things for having been the mathematics professor of Einstein. Well he went on with a team of his students studying these cantos of the Divine Comedy to find evidence that in fact Dante had already a theory of fourth dimension, that there is the universe that we see and then there is another universe. It is almost as if the folds of books, the folds of the parchments are exactly giving an idea--that's Riemann's, not me, an idea about what the actual structure of the universe may be. Having said this, don't forget to turn back to me my shell, the emblem of what I take very good--thank you. Let me see if there are some questions because I--we can go on now talking about some of these issues. Please.



Student: I'm still not quite clear as to how in reference to Ulysses and Francesca in these cantos relate Beatrice's description of the universe and redemption back to Inferno and how the redemption of the universe necessarily implicates including Inferno as well as--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Excellent question and I really welcome your skepticism. The question is about how exactly do the figures of Ulysses and Francesca shed light on what's happening here? Is it really tenable that Dante's implying that those--that the sinners are going to be redeemed, saved? More or less that's--



Student: Yeah and why? Why they're brought up--how they fit into that explanation?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Good, I figure that's a crucial issue. It's interesting that Dante should look at Ulysses and bring up the image of Ulysses in Canto XXVII. I find it interesting in that--and Dante, one can say, Dante is really unlike Ulysses. Now he probably realizes how different he is from Ulysses because Ulysses went to--he's implying how risky his own enterprise may be which we have seen before. Ulysses was brought up in this journey in canto--with the meeting with the dream of a siren was--happened even before indirectly many of the--in some other cases XXVI, in Canto I of Inferno even, and maybe we could just stop there and say well, Dante's still--that's a kind of retrospective fascination. He's looking back and pinpointing that tragic moment because--he calls it the mad track of Ulysses, the madness implies that he--this man had violated the limits, own limits, including the limits of reason in his rational pursuit, philosophical investigation of the world, the scientific--he wants to go into the--unpeopled world to have experience, that's the key word for him and yet that madness implies that he had been delirious, had been going off the track. Dante maybe that too, but maybe not, maybe I'm really a little safer now, I'm in the hands of Beatrice, she's guiding me, a way of trusting Beatrice so we could say that that is all true and therefore I could even see an element of relief on the part of Dante, we would even catch that. The relief is that his own adventure diminishes the epic, the Greek epic hero, he really did very little, he just went beyond the Pillars of Hercules.



That's all, we could stop there. It happens though, retrospectively, we can see the story of Ulysses as also the story of a metaphysician. Dante is in the heaven of metaphysics, in what way is he in the place of--what does metaphysics deal with? It deals with place, deals with time, and then we can understand why Ulysses in Canto XXVI, he seems to be going from place to place is the metaphor that distinguishes Ulysses. Then Dante says, he's a failed metaphysician, but we understand that he really was going to the absolute, he really was trying to go where I'm going and there is nothing else. We stop there. We go to Beatrice, Dante meets--is talking to--is listening to Beatrice in Canto XXIX and he's trying to figure out if it's possible to think of a beginning. How do things--you have the eternity of forms and you have the eternity of matter, it's very difficult to know how you could really distinguish anything that was before from what goes after, there is no such a thing as a before and an after.



He tries to localize time, that's really the problem. To localize time he says that he really--Beatrice looked and reminded him of the point--there was a point of joy that overcame him. Maybe he's alluding, because the language is that of Francesca, so why Francesca? Let me just explain it at one point, maybe he's alluding to a kiss the two of them--that he remembers. It's sort of very spiritualized the context; Dante's never vulgar, maybe he's just alluding to a kiss they had been exchanging, or maybe the will, the desire, the longing to have a kiss now, exchange a kiss with her. One thing is clear, that he's thinking of Francesca as also a kind of metaphysician because that's what we are. What is the metaphysics of Francesca? Metaphysics of desire, first of all, a desire that--what does it mean the metaphysics of desire? Desire by its own definition is metaphysical in the sense that it's always moving beyond the objects it gains because it burns up the various objects. Today I want this book, then I want another book, and then I want the car, and then I want the library, etc., that's the infinite movement of desire which is what we call metaphysics of desire, so she's a metaphysician.



Not only she's as metaphysician, she lives in time, so she's a complimentary figure to Ulysses. Ulysses is, you remember, is [inaudible] Cauta, I left behind me Seville and then I, etc., etc. Now, Francesca instead says how difficult it is to remember the joys of the past. I remember I was reading, that day I began reading, that day I stopped reading, only a point was that that overcame at that point of time, a point of the book, etc. Maybe Dante's really saying she too is another failed metaphysician. They would like to be where I am now, both Francesca and Ulysses, so we are bringing them to the place where Dante is. Now, they are looking for the same thing he is having now, a conjunction of time and eternity, space and time, ubi and quando, to see the point where all things cohere. That's exactly where he is looking. How do I make things cohere?



Of course it's possible to think--one way of thinking of Paradise and the joy of the blessed is to go on thinking that my joy--suppose that I were saved, a very unlikely proposition. My joy, it's possible to argue, is increased by--it's sadistic, the view of those who are suffering, mercifully, I am saying that to me it's the most improbable form of beatitude but it's likely that seeing someone downtrodden and punished right like that, could be that Dante is saying, how lucky I am that I'm neither like Ulysses nor like really Francesca. I don't think that that's Dante though. He's talking about cosmology and creation, the order of everything, how this order is an order of love and now he's coming to know this order of love, because now knowledge is love and love is knowledge. I think that by the allusion to them he's also saying that here on earth you can grant me that, that's what I said before, and I think that I'm not pushing it to the point of unbelievability.



The whole argument becomes unbelievable, I can stay here and say, well now--what he's really saying is that I am here and I see how things go here, but I know that sinful people on Earth, those of us who live in the shadows of time, this tree and we're under the leaves of time, then I know that in a sinful way they were trying to do and know what I now have come to do and know. I could stop here and say well we're all happy, there's no argument, I think that that makes logical sense. I can push it to the point of absurdity, to say look maybe if this is true, he's also saying not only that they in a shadowy way, in a dim way, were anticipating the real happiness in the sinful modes, the sinners, but that maybe they too if you move out of this text--as you know this is not said in the text that they too will be--are going to be taken and placed into the bosom of Abraham where all the blessed dwell. Maybe too this is--is it my wishful thinking? I grant you, it's probably wishful thinking but I do have the theology of redemption behind me that stands as uttered by Dante in Canto VII of Paradise. I restated the whole thing in two minutes, that's not bad. Thank you. Other questions before we go back to--please.



Student: Can you comment on the presence of Francesca, also in light of this sexual language that comes out?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Yes, can I comment about Francesca in the fact that there is--the creation is given in sexual terms. That this is love that opens itself--opens itself to new loves and so on. I cannot help but play a little bit of an etymological game too, by the way, because this is the world of origins and I don't want to lose you. I know there is only one class but I don't want to lose you. Of course the only--the way in which Dante's conveying all these senses is by playing with the etymologies, because etymology is the science of the origin of words, so let me give you only one. I corrected my good friend Sinclair, inseparable from me, I mean, I'm never going to betray him, but I have to correct him because he says "revealed," that's what he means. The eternal love revealed itself a new love. He is missing the whole sexual language which is exactly the reason, thank you. That's exactly the reason why I think that Francesca too can arguably be saved, that's exactly the reason.



The term he uses is aperse, from the Italian, in Italian we call it aprire, very close to in English we have the word April, by the way, as an opening of spring. Just to give you a sense of etymology, it comes from aperire Latin which really means to generate, to bring to light, as a woman brings a birth to light and life. That's really the word, that's the meaning of the word, so it's as sexual and as productive as it can be. Before I go back though to your question about how is Dante going to--what Dante is saying is that creation is the sexual process, the sexual experience, which is exactly what Francesca also did, breaking the law undoubtedly. She is in hell, is she going to be in hell? Are we going to understand that there is a possible continuity between what she did in a physical sense and what Dante is doing in a spiritual sense?



This is the whole point of the discussion on cosmology and creation. That there is some kind of continuity between the two modes; not quite the same thing; of course, creation is a different order of experience. There is a very thin line, it's like a little breath of--breath that Francesca can release at sea--or Beatrice who goes on talking endlessly. She too, that's the difference between the two, so between the language of sexuality, of physicality in Inferno, and the language of spirituality here in Paradise, the line that is continuing between them and there is a little difference but there is also a possibility of a continuity, that's really exactly the argument that I would make about that.



Let me though tell you more, in a historical way, so that if you don't agree with what I said so be it, don't worry. I don't agree with it completely on my own but I think that this--that's a radical reading of the notion of cosmology and creation in Dante. Let me tell you something else historically. Where is Dante taking these ideas from? Whenever you read commentaries on Dante, and I hope that some of you will go on reading and reading also scholars, thank you, critics--I see that nodding is just--my heart it just gladdens when I see that. They all tell you--and I indicated that too that Dante is some kind of an Aristotelian and I was talking about metaphysics, how Aristotle calls it first philosophy, Aristotelian terms. They never tell you where the actual sources of Dante are. The sources of Dante about cosmology and cosmography are really neo-platonic. The idea of creation, especially one text that I have to mention, this guy who writes the Cosmographia called a twelfth-century man Bernard Sylvester, a Frenchman, Bernard Sylvester who writes Cosmographia, twelfth century known as the author of School of Chartres.



By the way this text were available to Dante, we have a text of this man, Cosmographia, one copy only because a Florentine, later--he had it in Florence, by the name of Boccaccio, some of you know very well, he copied it down and transmitted to us. We know his handwriting because we have his texts so we know, this is 1340, Dante of course wrote about 1302, but clearly that text was available then. In this text, Bernard gives an idea of creation and cosmological ideas, physical ideas. They had been reading the Timaeus in France and they were always surprised and wondering what is the difference, how can we go on having Plato say one thing about creation and Genesis saying something else? How are we going to connect these two forms, these two sources of tradition and authority? They argue, he goes on talking about the idea of a pre-existing world of matter. The natural world and a malignant materiality and how this malignant materiality is subdued into shape, and the subduing into shape is always sexual language.



Matura is that which produces, generates, this is the text that I believe stands behind Dante's physical explanation of a universe which is physical, but at the same time it is not just physical. It is also a theory of creation and it's the theory of creation that has unpredictable possibilities. This tells you that things can be renewed. If you stay within the bound--you see how he criticizes the physical conception of the world. If you stay within those boundaries you can't expect anything other than what you already have. You cannot expect anymore evil or any less evil than what you already experience. The only idea, the way in which human beings can think about renewal, can think about change or freedom, or origins is only within the context of creation.



That's exactly Dante's argument and that's the profound justification for the distinction between one order of experience and a different order of experience. But if this is true, and it is true for Dante, then I have to take also seriously this idea of--this central event of redemption, which now we understand what he takes that to mean: the moment, the experience of the incarnation. This is exactly--it follows--if he has to--if he believes that there is such a thing as--and he does--creation then he has to believe that there is also the idea of recreation, a second creation because the first creation clearly didn't work out all that well so there is this other possibility. Please.



Student: I have the sense that in these lines at the beginning of XXIX that we've been talking about, that Dante is very aware of being on theological thin ice or skating close to the danger line, but the idea is the divine love spills over out into a created world so that it can be reflected back, endured, and loved in return in the way that Paolo and Francesca loved each other. That's not far from the thought that before creation God has everything but is still a little lonely and that suggests a kind of imperfection, or at least incompleteness, but how can God be incomplete? Dante begins this passage by saying, not to acquire new goodness for himself; this is the [inaudible] translation, which cannot be.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: That's perfect.



Student: That he wants to announce before he offers his neo-platonic vision of the relationship of--that God had to creation. He wants to signal his orthodoxy to doubters who might hear in this something which is less than perfectly Christian because it comes close to the idea of a needy God or a God who in the way that every lover needs something, and other to love in return, is in a predicament and creation is the solution to the predicament that God is in before the world was made.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Okay, the question is that--well, the question is more of a comment by the maestro here. The comment is that Dante at the beginning of Canto XXIX seems to be on a theologically risky, on thin ice, I am quoting, because the notion of a God who--that Dante is really trying to save his skin, as it were, by claiming a kind of theological orthodoxy when he actually knows that the very notion of creation whereby God opens up into new loves, it seems to imply that before creation God was a lonely guy looking for a partner, some kind of Adam, Adam in the garden replaces all that. That's really the question.



I think that's a very interesting idea, of course, but I have to--I will respond not entirely in a funny way, but I hope it will come out as funny. It's really the question that St. Augustine asks in the Confessions. There are always those people who wonder, because that's really what the question is, what did God do before creation? St. Augustine responds: he was busy preparing hell to people like you who ask these kinds of questions, and think--that's it. The more seriously idea is that indeed creation implies, I mean that's a response that I would offer, creation implies a beginning but this creation has been going on forever and that the idea of the Trinitarian God is really a response to this problem you have. You obviously are, I think, it's not obvious but you--to me it's not obvious I think that you are appealing to a different theological paradigm of where the unity of God can be the loneliness of God. The Christian reading of that unity is that there is always a productive, an internal life of love that always goes on producing itself. On that note of theological grandeur, I thank you and I say thank you, we'll see you. Have a good Thanksgiving.



[end of transcript]

Professor Mazzotta lectures on the final cantos of Paradise (XXX-XXXIII). The pilgrim's journey through the physical world comes to an end with his ascent into the Empyrean, a heaven of pure light beyond time and space. Beatrice welcomes Dante into the Heavenly Jerusalem, where the elect are assembled in a celestial rose. By describing the Empyrean as both a garden and a city, Dante recalls the poles of his own pilgrimage while dissolving the classical divide between urbs and rus, between civic life and pastoral retreat. Beatrice's invective against the enemies of empire from the spiritual realm of the celestial rose attests to the strength of Dante's political vision throughout his journey into God. Dante's concern with the harmony of oppositions as he approaches the beatific vision is crystallized in the prayer to the Virgin Mary offered by St. Bernard, Dante's third and final guide. In his account of the vision that follows, the end of Dante's pilgrimage and the measure of its success converge in the poet's admission of defeat in describing the face of God.



Reading assignment:

Dante, Paradise: XXX, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII

Transcript



December 2, 2008



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: You may recall that last time we went over the shape of Dante's cosmos, remember. And the point there, one of the points was to show that the context of Dante's experience, the way he moves, the tale he's telling about this extraordinary experience he has, is really the whole cosmos. It's not just one's own town, one's own place and so on, it really takes place within the cosmos and we saw how Dante describes that cosmos. He describes it in terms of a physical and a metaphysical principle. That is to say, all the materiality and the spirituality of two hemispheres all placed in one. The Empyrean is the threshold and the limit of the physical cosmos and the way of entering into the spiritual cosmos.



The challenge he has as a poet is that to show the relationship between the finite and the infinite, the way that they are really disjointed and at the same time they are not. The finite universe can only be part of the infinite universe and so he describes how the infinite enters the finite and the finite enters the infinite. This is heart of the cantos of metaphysics which we all call--which we can call the cantos of physics and metaphysics at the same time.



Now, Dante moves straight into the Empyrean, he was in the--you remember into the primo mobile or the crystalline heaven, before that he was in the Heaven of the Fixed Stars XXV, XXVI, XXVII then he moved into the crystalline; now he is into the Empyrean. This is the end of the race for him; it's the end of the journey. The question will be how he is going to say farewell to Beatrice. There will be a change of the guard. Beatrice--the role of Beatrice as a guide will stop, will end with Canto XXX of Paradise, quite appropriately; it's suitable; she is the woman tied with the number 30. She appeared in Canto XXX of Purgatorio, stays on the stage of the poem for thirty three cantos and now she's going to actually disappear. He'll realize that she has disappeared in Canto XXXI.



But there's a change of the guard because Dante moves from Beatrice to a contemplative, a historical figure all the time, almost all the time with Dante, Bernard of Clairvaux, who was a famous monk of--French monk who stands for--he has written treatises on contemplation and mystical visions. So appropriately, he's the one who will usher and pray the Virgin Mary that she may in turn pray her son, it's a chain of mediations so that the beatific vision may be granted to Dante. That's going to happen with Canto XXX and we are going to find out the difficulties that Dante has in both seeing, but above all, in recalling and recollecting. The poem will end up with being a sort of registering the defeat, the unavoidable defeat of memory and importance of forgetfulness.



We are going to find in Canto XXXIII a sort of further twist to the metaphor of--you remember in Canto XXXIII of Purgatorio that I mentioned to you what has happening. Dante will go on being immersed ritually into the River Lethe and then into River Eunoe. There are two rivers, one the river of forgetfulness, the one the river of memory, of good memory and Dante goes on saying that they really came--he was at the point where the two streams were really originating from the same source. It as if memory and forgetfulness--first of all, I equate it with water there in Canto XXXIII of Purgatorio implying the lability, the water has that quality of flowing, the fluidity, the ability of both memory and forgetfulness.



The most important thing is that they originated from the same place. It is as if Dante were already preparing what will move now front stage in Paradiso XXXIII, namely the notion of a forgetful memory, and the importance of forgetful memory, you have to forget and you have to remember and somehow the two are going to be brought together. It's not a mystical proposition that he advances; it's actually the way of justifying his poem and we'll come to that in some detail in--when we come to Canto XXXIII.



What I would emphasize, though, to move now to Canto XXX, Dante's entering into the Heavenly Jerusalem which is a garden and it's a city. It will be described as such, you will see in--well, let's turn right now to these images--this is really Canto XXX line--a sequence of images lines 32--I'm sorry 110 and following, page 437, "I saw," line 112, "I saw, rising above the light all around in more than a thousand tiers, as many of us as have returned there above." The Heavenly Jerusalem is first of all described as a theatre and we ought to really think about it for a moment, a theatre. "And if the lowest rank," that's the image of theatre where you have in an auditorium today, tiers, "encloses within it so great a light, what is the expense of this rose in its farthest petals?"



The second image is that it's described--to describe this--the Heavenly Jerusalem is the rose, a white rose, a mystical rose. I can tell you immediately that Dante is using the image that this is-- it derives straight out of thirteenth-century French poem called, The Romance of the Rose, which Dante had translated as a young man into a sequence of sonnets, part of his experimenting with poetic forms. But it's also--it's deeply altered because The Romance of the Rose, which is an extraordinary satirical poem, it's a compendium of all knowledge, it really has--it deals with--it's a story of--about nature and about reason. The connections between reason and nature but it's also a story with a sexual theme.



Dante is clearly taking that language of The Romance of the Rose and literally spiritualizing, reversing it. The resonances of the original poem are still there so that you are forced to think of the Heavenly Jerusalem as also having some kind of materiality within it, so you cannot just say, well I'm taking that image, placing it in a different context, and hope that the original, the residues, the traces of that original image are going to be completely faced. It's part of the strategy of, once again hinting, intimating that spirituality and materiality now are still going to be converging here. That's the archaeology, let's say, of this image of the rose.



This continues, next paragraph, "Into the yellow of the eternal rose, which expends and rises in ranks, and exhales odours of praise to the Sun that makes perpetual spring, Beatrice drew me, as one who is silent and fain would speak, and she said: 'Behold how great is the assembly of the white robes!'" This is a procession, a theatrical performance of sorts, the whole of paradise is a theatrical performance, and whenever we think of theatre--now, let me just reflect a little bit on this image. Whenever we think of a theatre, we understand that it implies the reduction of the world to a spectacle, that's what a theatre is. The world is something to be seen, it's also an optical phenomenon, or a case, to put it in another way, which really does not do any violence on the text, a question of the representation. The world is a representation implying that I become the spectator. I am--it's their representation for me, I can really watch this world, and see it in its whole totality just as Dante is seeing the whole of the universe, now he can see the whole totality of the blessed. This is the whole of the Heavenly Jerusalem where all the blessed will be sitting, enjoying, acting, and spectating at the same time.



Two or three things that I want to say here; on the one hand, the theatre is an image of multiple perspectives, that's what a theatre implies. You are sitting there, I'm standing here, multiple perspectives but Dante wants to say that he's enjoying an overall perspective, what we call a perspective of the whole. He can see the whole of reality. He sees the whole expanse of the horizon of the world. In other words, whatever he's saying about himself, it partakes of and it belongs to the totality of the world. He's not seeing something isolated or disconnected with the rest of the world. This is, to him, what legitimizes a claim to be a visionary poet. To be truly a visionary poet, you have to be able to see the whole of a reality, not just like Narcissus your own image, not like someone who is bound to one's own perspective, one's own self. He sees the whole of the world and that's really what I think is the claim or the implications of the image of the theatre.



The text, I think need some glossing, "Behold how great is the assembly of the white robes." A sense of the magnitude of the spectacle; then, "See our city, how great it is, its circuit." It has been described a littler earlier as--in terms of a rose and a garden, and now it's a city, that's an interesting shift in Dante's poem. It's an interesting shift for a number of reasons because the whole poem now appears as literally a journey from the wilderness, not to the garden, but to a city or to a garden which is a city. It is a way of encompassing the whole movement of the poem within these two figures. This is--it is as if the whole impulse behind this experience of Dante is a reintegration into what is it he implies. The place where many other people are as if--I not only seeing the world as a whole, I want to be part of this whole, and the way of being part of this whole is this political poem. This city, heavenly city to be sure, but it has--the idea of city always implies some human contact, some human idea of what we call usually the polis, the political reality.



Let me just add something else which is interesting in terms of Dante's imagination. We have a compression of images from the pastoral tradition. The garden and the idea of city, and we do know that when you read pastoral literature you really have, usually have this juxtaposition, it's called, between the urbs which you know is--the term's for the urban now for the city from the rus, the rustic, a division between gardens and cities. This is the economy on which pastoral literature, eclogues, bucolic, ideals, idyllic literature is usually based on, on this divergence between the two modes of the imagination. I live in the city and then I want to go down into the villa. I want to go down to the country; it's as if there were two--a kind of--almost a hint of a schizophrenic existence that you have with Roman and Greek poetry.



What Dante's doing is literally shattering that distance between the two modes. In an eschatological perspective, in a perspective which is at the end, city and garden come together. It is literally a change, both in the idea of the city and in the idea of the garden. They are not two divergent modes of the imaginatio; they really cohere within one. You see what the point is. The point is that no matter what Dante is touching with his imagination, all the oppositions, all systems of contrarieties, of contrary forms, he tries to always bring them together in a kind of concordance, discordant made concordant again, which is the idea of music. A kind of a harmonization of all these oppositions and everything that he has--we so far have been seeing.



But now there is a further image which sort of complicates the problem. "'See our seats so filled that few souls are now wanting there.'" This is a kind of line which is really strange because it's implying that for all of us late comers there is no room, there is not even standing room there for us--the places have all been taken, almost all been taken. Very few, the implication is, are going to be saved. Then one can make this claim, it follows, because he really believes that this is a kind of--that he has what we can an apocalyptic vision. That the end of the world is near, therefore, he can say only a few seats are available, or which is really the way I think, because I don't think that Dante really has an apocalyptic vision. That is to say, what I mean by an apocalyptic vision, apocalypse means visionary, he is a visionary, apocalyptic means, implies the imminence of the ending of history.



I don't think that he has that idea at all. A man who keeps thinking as he does about the renewal or the corruption of institutions, the hope that some intervention will come from other human beings or from--of history, a king for instance, or an intervention from the world of grace, cannot really have a sense of the imminent consummation of history. You see what I mean? You wouldn't be worried so much about renewing the institutions. This line is to--can be taken to mean, and I think has to be taken to mean, is that scene from the perspective of eternity as he is really there are a few seats. You see what I'm saying? If you see it in terms of the totality of time then they are not--a lot of time has been--has already passed by.



Then he will continue--a haunting image I think that sort of gives all this talk of this--my reflections on city, whether Dante has an apocalyptic imagination or not an apocalyptic imagination, look at how this absence, "And in that great chair on which thy eyes are held by the crown that is already set over it," an empty seat, it's taken, a crown is on it, a king is going to be sitting, that's what I call a haunting image of royal absence and royal presence because you'll see in a moment what it is. "Before thou shalt sup at these nuptials shall rest the soul, which shall be imperial below, of lofty Henry." This is the emperor who actually died in 1313 whom Dante was hoping would come down to Italy from the Holy Roman Empire; come down to Italy to set Italy straight. That is to say, to placate the violence between the cities, the whole history of Italian communes, but he had died prematurely and he's expected in heaven.



You see there is a way in which the king, the emperor is beatified, his seat in heaven is going to be assured, and yet implying that somehow the violence in history is going to be, for the time being, continued and prolonged, so a political interest, a political--the keeping, the holding on to Dante's own fantasies of political renewals that gives therefore the sort of--that tempers all views that Dante may have, an apocalyptic imagination. "The blind greed that bewitches you has made you like the infant," etc., and then Dante goes on, the other great problem.



The canto ends with a final denunciation about Simon Magus and the reference to Inferno XIX. Dante's at the height of the universe, he can't forget Simon Magus, Inferno XIX, and Boniface XVIII, "gets his dues, and shall make him of Anagni go," Boniface XVIII, "deeper still." Remember how they were punished being upside down in the ditches, and the flames of fire, Pentecostal flames of fire, on the soles of their feet, this is the way they have been twisting around, turning around the gift of prophecy.



Let me just go onto Canto XXXI; it's really a farewell to Beatrice, and I thought that we expected so much her arrival in Canto XXX of Purgatorio; we should see how the farewell takes place. Canto XXXI, lines 40 and following, page 449, "I who had come to the divine from the human," this is Dante speaking for himself, "to the eternal from time, and from Florence to a people just and sane, with what amazement must I have been filled! Truly between that and the joy I was content to hear nothing and to remain silent. And like a pilgrim who is refreshed in the temple of his vow as he looks around and hopes sometime to tell of it again, so, taking my way up through the living light, I carried my eyes through the ranks, now up, now down," he looks around to see whom he sees and he actually will go on listing the number of blessed, the women and men that he sees. "I carried my eyes through the ranks, now up, now down and now looking round again. I saw faces, persuasive to charity," used to charity, "adorned with Another's light, and with their own smiles."



These blessed are blessed because they are--there's some other in them. They are themselves and there is another in them too, "and with their own smiles, and every movement graced with dignity. Already my glance had taken in the whole general form of Paradise," what I called earlier, the vision of the whole, the totality that he manages to--gazes at. "But had not yet dwelt on any part of it, and I turned with new-kindled eagerness to question my Lady of things in which my mind was in suspense."



We have now a revision, a rehashing, if you wish, of the scene of Virgil's disappearance when Beatrice is just about to come. Dante saw all stricken by and seized by tremor at the approaching of Beatrice that he turns around to try to see and get comfort from Virgil and Virgil had vanished. We have now a kind of variant of that same vanishing act. "One thing I intended, and another encountered me: I thought to see Beatrice, and I saw an old man," Bernard of Clairvaux, the great enemy of the so-called of the philosophers, but I don't want to get into that. "clothed like that glorious company. His eyes and his cheeks were suffused with a gracious gladness, and his aspect was of such kindness as befits a tender father. And 'Where is she?' I said in haste; and he replied: 'To end thy longing Beatrice sent me from my place; and if thou look up to the third circle from the highest tier thou shall see her again, in the throne her merits have assigned to her.' Without answering, I lifted up my eyes and saw her where she made for herself a crown, reflecting from her the eternal beams. From the highest region where it thunders no mortal eye is so far, were it lost in the depth of the sea, was my sight there from Beatrice; but to me it made no difference, for her image came down to me undimmed by aught between. 'O Lady," here he goes on now, "in whom my hope has its strength and who didst bear for my salvation to leave thy footprints in Hell, of all the things that I have seen I acknowledge the grace and the virtue to be from that power and from thy goodness. It is thou who hast drawn me from bondage into liberty." The great theme of liberty that we have been discussing, especially in Purgatory found also--it's sealed here in the presence of Beatrice, etc.



This is now--he turns to the faithful Bernard. You may remember that Canto XXIX ended with Beatrice very worried that Dante has been expounding. Remember Canto XXVIII, XXIX there had been the exposition about angels, the exposition about creation, creation as an act of God's love, the ordering and the new ranks of angelic--the angelic choir. Then Beatrice gets very upset because the whole issue seemed to be to her a way of thinking more about the appearance of things rather than the truth of things. You remember that she attacks the human beings on Earth; they do nothing else than go after false appearances. We are swayed by false appearances so that the question was, what does she mean that the truth is? She was saying let's get back to some--let's bring some kind of sense of the real back into play in all of this, some sense of the truth value what we are saying back into this representation. That was the way Canto XXIX stopped, with Beatrice suspicious of appearances.



Dante now gets into Canto XXX and XXXI and goes back to the question of appearances, and says to Beatrice that the appearance is exactly what--the image is exactly what he has preserved, that he is going to preserve of her. Two things, therefore, have to be followed from this. Are you with me in all of these issues? Dante's saying here, in the encounter with Beatrice, "Without answering, I lifted my eyes and saw her where she made herself a crown, reflecting from her the eternal beams." This is the language of image and the language of reflections.



What Dante's saying to Beatrice is that we are always in a world of images, and that somehow the image is the locus of the sacredness, but the image is also has its own fleeting quality. The journey of Dante is to go between the images and the essences. Now he's preparing for the final leap. This is to say that Dante's journey was not a journey to Beatrice; it's going to be a journey to God. Beatrice is the stepping stone for the pilgrim's entering the experience of the beatific vision.



This is what I want to emphasize, and in fact, Canto XXXI, ends with, "Like one that comes," line 113, "Like one that comes, perhaps, from Croatia, to see our Veronica," Veronica is an allusion to one of the pious women, who during the Calvary ascent of Jesus, is said to have wiped his face and the face of Jesus remained imprinted on her veil and so that Veronica became--it's the name of the woman Veronica, but it was also understood in the whole of Middle Ages as vera icona, this was the kind of phony, to be sure etymology given to the Veronica. It was--Dante's evoking now the pilgrims who come to--who go to Rome from Croatia to see the true image left imprinted on the veil of the Veronica. This is where Dante himself is. He is like one of those pilgrims who is still seeing the image but wants to move beyond images, wants to go and see what lies behind it.



The journey of the Divine Comedy is the journey within that in tercets, between images and essences so to speak. This is Veronica, "and whose old hunger is never satisfied, but he says within himself, as long as it is shown: 'My Lord Jesus Christ, very God, was this then your true semblance?', such was I, gazing on the living charity of him who in this world tasted by contemplation of the peace." That's how we can--we are ready to get into Canto XXXIII which is the final canto and the final vision.



Let's see how Dante carries that off and let me begin with saying a couple of things. There are a number of dramas that will go--are going to be unfolding in Canto XXXIII. The first drama is that of the pilgrim who wants to see the face of God, wants to see the face of God, wants to preserve the wit so that he can be able to come back and retell the story, tell the story, write the poem as a witnessing to the vision he has had. So it's a way of thinking about the relationship between vision and language, if you want to say it in a very general way. How are the two related to each other? The real--the other drama is how is he going to remember? Can he remember? Number four, what does he really see? These are the number of problems that he faces.



The poem begins with--Canto XXXIII begins with a prayer, a prayer to the Virgin Mary, or the Virgin Mother, and it's going to be constructed through a series of paradoxes as you can see, Virgin Mother, daughter of your son, paradox is about time, paradox is about all sorts of reversals of the natural order, "lowly and exalted more than any creature," a way of using paradoxes that challenge the rational understanding of the world. This is not going to be a rational representation of what Dante will see, "fixed goal of the eternal council, thou art she who didst so ennoble human nature, that its Maker did not disdain to be made its making. In thy womb," Dante goes on now to that motif of birth with which we began talking from Inferno I, when we discussed Virgil.



This idea of the beginning, the idea of a beginning of birth as an image of beginning, and an image of nature becoming an event; the idea of nature becoming a historical event, a possibility of a historical event. "In thy womb was rekindled the love by whose warmth this flower," this flower really means the whole of the mystical rose that he has just seen, so the mystical rose begins in--it's contained in the womb of Mary, "has bloomed thus in the eternal peace." It's another way of making this idea of--I could gloss this image of the womb as--in terms of this is the immense sphere of the mystic, within which--the immense sphere within which the finite and the infinite come together and meet. The immense sphere, it's a circle; the immense sphere whose center is nowhere, or whose center is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere. That's the way that he is understanding, he's explaining this motif of the incarnation.



What is crucial about this image, I believe, is first of all, the humanization of the divine. This is clearly the divine that becomes divine because it enters history and experiences all that the human beings experience. The other element that, I think, that Dante is pushing forth is the feminization of the divine in the sense that here the divine has become the child of a woman, and the woman is therefore part, they subsume this part of this divine. A kind of feminine--I don't call it feminist because I don't really know what that is but the feminine--and I don't mean it as in--it's a true statement I don't know, but it's a feminine, a theology of a feminine element in God. "Here thou art for us the noonday torch of charity, and below among mortals thou art living spring of hope."



And then the second stylistic theme here is the repetition, the iterative mode, "Thou, Lady," skip a few lines, and "Thy loving-kindness in thee is mercy, in thee pity, in thee great bounty, in thee is joined all goodness there in any creature." What is the point of this iterativeness of--the style of repetitions of anaphoric style? I think one of the reasons, you may think of others, but one of the reasons is a language that is falling upon itself as a way of giving consistency to itself. The poem at this point is really dealing with vanishing traces, things that cannot quite be pinpointed or placed within logical propositions, and therefore, the language becomes incantatory as if it were an effort to create a kind of--a mood, a sort of--creating a reality through this mood induced through these iterations.



Then the prayer of Bernard continues, "This man," and in the pilgrim line 30, 20, "This man, who from the nethermost pit of the universe to here has seen one by one the lives of the spirits, now begs of thee by thy grace for such power that with his eyes he may rise still higher towards the last salvation; and I," this is extraordinary. We are in Paradise, so far, Dante strays so far from the temptations of mystical writing, which ends up always evoking identities, representable identities; Dante distinguishes very carefully until the end between I and he. There are individualities in this Paradise of Dante's imagination, "And I," this is Bernard, "who never burned from my own vision more than I do for his." See the differences, I and him, "offer to thee all my prayers, and pray that they come not short, that by thy prayers thy wilt disperse for him every cloud of his mortality so that the supreme joy may be disclosed to him."



That's the first prayer to the Virgin. "This too I pray to thee, Queen, who canst what thou wilt, that thou keep his affections pure after so great a vision." The first danger to the pilgrim is that he may be losing literally his mind. The vision of God may--a face may obliterate his powers of--this vision may obliterate the powers and the affections. "Let thy guardianship control his human impulses. See Beatrice and so many of the blessed who clasp their hands for my prayers." This is an extraordinary vision. The whole of the cosmos is praying for Dante--the pilgrim's beatific visions. "The eyes by God beloved and reverenced… and I, who was drawing near to the end of all desires."



I want to emphasize this, even this language of desire, up to know the poem has been--can be called literally--we've been calling it so many things, a poem of hope, a poem of peace, it's a poem of exile, and poem of desire and the poem of longing. The prayer is the mode of this longing. Prayer, you address someone you don't see hoping that you can be heard and that your prayer can be answered is a desire for a response. This is really the mode of Dante's theology. At the heart of his theological universe, there is a sense of constant longing and a sense of being not quite where he wants to be. "I who was drawing near to the end of all desires," I emphasize and I prepare you in case I would not make a point about that. Very soon the language of Dante will change from desire to enjoyment.



He starts getting the sense of this sweetness and this idea of the fullness of his pleasures. A desire will shift into joy very soon, "ended perforce the ardour of my craving. Bernard signed to me with a smile to look upward, but already of myself I was doing what he wished; for my sight, becoming pure, was entering more and more through the beam of the lofty light which in itself is true." Now the first defeat; Dante starts recording the forgetfulness of this experience. "From that moment," first of all, "my vision was greater than our speech, which fails at such a sight." How are you going to make a failure become a success? How--from the fact that he is not going to be able to see will become somehow a mode of his own, not just a humility because it would be a success in terms of the pilgrim's own humility, but in terms of the writing of the poem. Now the poem will be a different way of understanding the poem, not just going to be a representation of plentitude of vision, but until the end the statement of a longing for a vision that may come.



The memory too fails to such excess. Excess in Italian is really the language--I don't know, probably English is best, etymologically it's the same thing, but in Italian it's outrage. Outrage in the sense in which with resonance that there is something too bold and over--a kind of hyperbolic, an overreaching because that's really what it is. An excess is an overreaching, "Like him that sees in a dream and after the dream the passion wrought by it remains and the rest returns not to his mind, such am I; for my vision almost wholly fades, and still there drops within my heart the sweetness that was born from it." That's all he's going to be left with. This sweetness that gathers in the chamber of the heart. This has been a journey of the heart, because as I have been saying to you in a number of ways in the past few weeks, is that the journey to God is a journey of the mind, but it's a journey of the heart. You have to--you will come to know God through this idea of the heart.



But also, you know, that Dante's clearly punning on the notion of what memory is, because to him memory is connecting to those with a heart. What can I remember? What can I recall within me? What is this--the only thing that memory can retrieve is this sweetness of the heart. Such a--then he continues, "Thus the snow loses its imprint in the sun." The image of the liquefaction of shapes, the loss of shapes, water that had been crystallized just dissolves, and then an image which brings us back to the Aeneid, the third book of the Aeneid, "thus in the wind on the light leaves the Sybil's oracle was lost." This is the idea when Aeneas goes to the Sybil's cave to find out about the future, his future, and as the Sybil opens the gates the wind comes and will go on scattering all the leaves kept within it. It's the impossibility of reading, the impossibility of deciphering the actual leaves, like sort of messiness and confusion, that's exactly the state of mind in which he seems to find himself.



"O Light Supreme," Dante now shifts to another mode on his own, and now in a sequence of prayers. "O Light Supreme that art so far exalted above mortal conceiving, grant to my mind again a little of what thou appearedst, and give my tongue," this is the kind of--the prayer of--this is the prayer of that language may, I am missing a page here--this is the prayer that somehow, language now may triumph over him, over the threats of forgetfulness. Forgetfulness threatens him. Why am I insisting so much? "That it may leave but a gleam of thy glory to the people yet to come." What Dante is saying is that his poem is meant for the future, that in effect, he's envisioning a future. This is not a poem written for him, it's not a poem written for his contemporaries, it's a positing of a future. That is to say, the opening up to, and that's what work will do, a work of art invents and prepares a future, so more than an act of remembrance, and the commemoration, the poem will be what we call it, a prolepsis, a proleptic move, a movement forward into the future.



Why do I talk so much about memory? Dante seems to be becoming now utopian, lend me some of your glory, let me see your glory so that a spark of it may be left in my text, so that the future will understand it and will see, and some fire can come from that spark. Now why does then language--his insistence on memory? Because that's the answer, he talks about retrieving the memory of what he has seen because the actual constitution of his poem, he can only his write his poem, he can only have some authority for his voice if he remembers what he has seen. In order to ground the poem in the notion into the vision of God, that therefore, will authorize him to say all of the things he has been saying about the living and the dead, the powerful and the not so powerful, the historical figures and the cultural figures of the past, it's crucial for him to remember so that memory becomes the actual foundation of his representation. He has to bring it back, give it a presence to what has gone on in his experience. Do you see what I mean?



He's forced to go on remembering and yet he cannot. How is he going to--where does his authority come from then? If he can't remember, and he says that he can remember very little, only the sweetness that has been gathering in his heart, where does it come from? This is the third--fourth challenge of the poem. "I think," he continues, "from the keenness I endured of the living ray, that I should have been dazzled if my eyes had been turned from it; and I remember that for this cause I was the bolder to sustain it until I reached with my gaze the Infinite Goodness."



Once again, breaking the narrative and turning into the meditative, a prayer, sort of begging that the divine may reveal itself and remain with him. "O abounding grace, by which I dared to fix my look on the Eternal Light so long that I spent all my sight upon it. In its depth." That's what he sees. "I saw that it contained," the cosmos as a book. That's it, the whole world I called it last time, a cosmos book, the cosmos as a book. That is to say, as a parchment maybe, but he uses also the image of a book which is different from a volume, the volume is rolled up. The book is the one which we have a kind of square structure. The two together, as a kind of allegory wrapped up. "I think I saw… in its depth I saw that it contained, bound by love in one volume," now that was the word Dante had used for Virgil at the beginning of the poem. A way to give continuity to his quest and his questions begins with the volume of Virgil's book and that Virgil's book becomes a pre-figuration of the book of the cosmos that he sees bound together.



"That which is scattered in leaves through the universe, substances and accidents and their relations as it were fused together in such a way that what I tell of it is a simple light. I think I saw the universal form of this complex," of this compound, "because in telling of it I feel my joy expand." Now is the retrieval of--or rather the recovery of this state of mind, which is one of joy, which excludes absence. Desire has to be replaced by joy because desire always entails an absence. We long for what we do not have, at least at that moment. Desire is always tied to an experience of lacking. Joy is tied to an experience of plentitude of a procession somehow at this point, and now another mythological figure that I want to focus on. "A single moment makes for me deeper oblivion," you see now the dialectics between memory that fails and oblivion does its memory, and efforts at remembering and the reality of forgetfulness.



This was the dialectic between the two metaphors together, "A single moment makes for me deeper oblivion than five and twenty centuries upon the enterprise that made Neptune wonder at the shadow of the Argo." What an extraordinary image. Single moment, it's clearly an image to say that I forgot more in one second, so time doesn't exist here. It exists in Dante, Dante is still being human, he stills has time, time is--at least he can only--his life can only be measured by time, but he's in the presence of the eternal instant, but a single instant he says literally, I'm just glossing this, a single instance made me forget more than what we have forgotten in twenty-five centuries from the experience of the Argo, allusion to the Argonauts, another mythological counter to Dante's own journey. They went for the--Jason went for the golden fleece, Dante's going for the beatific vision, another little connection to Canto I of Paradiso starts with a reference to the story of the Argonauts, the daring of the Argonauts, and now Dante is closing the circle here once again.



There's a further--something else that in the story of the Argonauts as Dante retrieves it, is that the guard is now below, Neptune is in the depth, and Dante is now thinking of the divine as being also caught in its own unreachable, unfathomable depth, which is a height, but you see there are two different perspectives. More importantly, here Dante sees Neptune wondering at the daring of man, just as Neptune is wondering at the daring of the Argonauts; the implication is that he too has had this kind of daring that the divine, that God may be wondering at his own achievement. What is crucial is the change of perspective from the depth of underneath the sea to the depth up in the sky, up in the heavens for Dante's God.



Then he continues, "Thus my mind," Dante's so careful--I wish we had time about this to show you. I mean I know that there are some graduate students who may want to think about this whole issue of how Dante's lexicon about mind, intellect, reason, he's so carefully calibrated and differentiated; mind is the faculty of visionariness. It's also the root word of measure, as you know; Latin etymology is--the medieval minds are always taken with the discovery of the root words. The word measure comes from the immense, for instance, comes from the word for mind. It is as if he's still keeping a sense of the measure for himself. He's still aware of his own particular city. He's not lost in the immensity of what's around him, "Thus my mind, all rapt, was gazing, fixed still and intent, and ever enkindled with gazing. At that light one becomes such that it is impossible for him ever to consent that he should turn from it to another sight; for the good which is the object of the will is all gathered in it, and apart from it that is defective which there is perfect."



Now language fails, memory fails; the second failure is that of speech. "Now my speech will come more short even or what I remember than an infant's." You know that the word infant, which usually we take that to be a child, it literally means the child who cannot speak. You refer; you use the word infant for someone who is pre-, as it were babbling even, that's the infant really. "Fari," in Latin means to speak, "And infant's who yet bathes his tongue at the breast. Not that the living light at which I gazed had more than a single aspect--for it is ever the same as it was before--but that my sight gaining strength as I looked, the one sole appearance, I myself changing was, for me, transformed. In the profound and clear ground of the lofty light appeared to me," that's the vision that he has, "three circles of three colours and the same extent, and the one seemed reflected by the other as rainbow by rainbow, and the third seemed fire breathed forth equally from the one and the other. O how scant is speech and how feeble to my conception!"



It ends with an unavoidable statement of failure, a failure of memory so that the memory can be forgetful memory, and the failure of speech unable to contain the plentitude of what he sees. Vision exceeds language, exceeds speech, there is more to the text Dante is saying, there's more to my experience of the world than what I can say in words. There is--not everything is reducible or containable within the syllables of our language. "This, to what I saw, is such that it is enough to call it little. O Light Eternal." Once again, "that alone abidest us in Thyself," a divine that is now caught within itself and is self contained. Look at this, "In Thyself alone and knowest Thyself, and, known to Thyself, and knowing lovest and smiles on Thyself."



This is the kind of inner and closure or circularity of the divine. In Italian, I have to read to you in Italian so you see line 123--line 125 maybe, O luce etterna che sola in te sidi. "Sola," only you understand yourself, t'intendi, e da te intelletta e intendente te ami e arridi! You see how the words keep repeating and falling on themselves to convey the idea of the self-enclosed nature, now there is something that always escapes, a grasp and escapes Dante's. There's some--for all of the diffusiveness of God in the creation there is an element of the divine that literally is absolutely self-transcendent, just transcends itself completely. "That circling which, thus begotten, appeared in Thee as reflected light when my eyes dwelt on it for a time, seemed to me, within it and in its own colour, painted with our likeness."



He sees our own, as he calls it, our effigy line 131, "nostra affige," our likeness. He doesn't say "my likeness," it's a poem therefore that at the end seems to want to retrieve the commonality of the common likeness that we have. What he sees is the incarnation, the human image within God, because in God there is also the human since we are--if you agree with the principle that we are creations of God and the way we were created in His image, so therefore there's something human also within the divine, and then he continues, "Like the geometer who sets all his mind to the squaring of the circle," a famous mathematical surd in the Middle Ages, meaning one of the impossible paradoxes of how do you square the circle, and the geometers will go on reflecting on it and that's what Dante--where Dante places himself. The science of measurement stumbles against this paradox that the geometer--and fails.



"Like the geometer who sets all his mind to the squaring of the circle and for all his thinking does not discover the principle he needs, such was I at a strange sight. I wished to see how the image was fitted to the circle and how it has its place there; but my own wings," the flight of the soul, the wings of the soul, the platonic idea that we go on developing wings, of the two Eros allows us to unfold our wings for the sight. It's also a pun, I think, on Dante's own name. We have been talking about, "were not sufficient for that, had not my mind been smitten by a flash wherein came its wish. Here power failed the high phantasy."



How many fantasies are there? There are three, the highest form of the imagination, that's what he means that the--a pretty romantic distinction, I mean, coloriage between imagination and fantasy. Dante follows--Dante belongs in that same line of thinking, "But now my desire and will, like a wheel that spins with even motion, were revolved by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars." That's the end of the poem which ends exactly the way--with Dante doing two things. One seeing the Prime Mover and understanding the Prime Mover, not the way he did at the beginning of Paradiso I, but love. The definition of God as the Prime Mover, you remember, seemed to have a limitation for Dante as the Prime Mover moves the universe, and somehow then detaches, disengages himself from it.



Now Dante sees that primal, the motion as a motion of love, the universe as a universe of love, but calls the world together and prevents it from falling apart is exactly this power. Prevents it from chaos, it's this power called love so the whole universe is in motion. Love that moves the sun and the other stars, and the only thing stable, the only thing that makes it cohere is this love. By using this same language here of love that moves the sun and the other stars, it's a universe of love, we understand that. Dante uses, symmetrically, the same phrase, the stars of the sun and the other stars in Inferno--at the end of Inferno and at the end of Purgatorio. Fair, remember that, and then now I was cleansed enough to come back and look at the stars, the end of Purgatorio. Then now Virgil and I finally managed to come back and see the stars.



Now Dante says, the love that moves the sun and the other stars, what he's really doing is placing himself immediately with this line right back on earth. He's here with us looking up at the stars. It's the line that shifts, allows him to shift from the moment of this vision that he has, a vision that is the vision of the incarnation at the end. That is to say his own--our own likeness, that's all he sees, that's all he remembers, and then comes back to earth. But it also means that this line places Dante exactly in Inferno I and this is the story of the poem.



The story of the poem--we have been reading the poem as an account of an experience of a pilgrim who goes from the dark wood in Inferno I to the beatific vision, whatever he remembers of it, and then comes back to tell us about it. But in effect we are also discovering in this reading of the poem, is that by the end of the poem Dante says, now my journey starts, the real journey was this poem here. We are in a sense, by that last line, caught in the circle of Dante's telling, in the drama of Dante's story. We read the poem which is a kind of journey for us, then we read because we want to tell our own story, and then we want to go on re-reading it once again. Do you see what I mean? It's a sort of, if you wish, witty even, way for Dante to say this poem will hold you, and it's meant to hold you, and I wish it holds you. You can see the poem as both a journey and the telling of the journey endlessly like the movement of the sun and the other stars. This is the end of the poem.



Let me see, I'm sure that there are questions. I raised some issues and we have a minute--a few minutes and I'll tell you then later what we're going to do next time. Please.



Student: Can you talk about this line where he's--at line 52 [Canto XXXIII], "Bernard signed to me with a smile to look upward…the lofty light which in itself is true. There are few things going on here about light and truth and I'm wondering--the light seems to be pure all and what's happening is that Dante's vision becomes--that the faculty improves enough to appreciate this and that his sight somehow fails and then he has failure of memory. I don't know, light is the truth, it no longer illuminates but isn't very obvious to the truth at this point. I'm not sure it seemed like there was a lot going on and I'm not quite--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Okay, the question is in reference to lines--line 52 of Paradiso XXXIII where Dante says, "And I who was drawing near to the end of all desires," that we understand, " ended perforce the ardour of my craving. Bernard signed to me with a smile to look upward, but already of myself I was doing what he wished;" that's fairly, at least literally clear, "for my sight, becoming pure," that's also clear, Dante's experience in the final poems can be reduced to a refinement of the faculty of vision, physical but also clearly spiritual. "Becoming pure was entering more and more through the beam of the lofty light which in itself is true" meaning that--I think this means, and this is also a footnote of yours, it's the footnote is too the famous phrase, "In thy light we see the light." The idea that--you are quite right that it's not a light that reveals an object being a true object; that's really what you--the point that you are making. That's absolutely true, I would agree with that, but it's really a statement about the light which in itself is--contains a light. It's this kind of--that's the meaning of the biblical phrase, "In thy light we see the light," it's not because of your light I see the world, I see myself or whatever, in thy light I see the light. The light is the light of truth, that's what he's saying. It's the light of truth in and of itself, the light of truth. Yes, it's a light in itself. That was your point or not?



Student: Kind of, I'm just a little confused what the function of light is.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: What the function of light here? Well, the--I can give you a little bit of the idea of what we call the metaphysics of light in Paradiso. Dante begins with the idea that what we know of the divine is light, a light that--the power of which and the limitation of which is exactly like the dark in the sense that the light reveals to us the divine, but at the same time hides the origin of the light. You cannot see through the light. That's really the understanding of Dante in Paradiso I saying, "The glory of Him who moves all things," the glory is an image really means light. The light of Him, who moves all things, is what I really saw.



Now Dante's seeing the origin of that light, that which has remained forever invisible, exactly the way the dark has. You may say that some of our imagination is that we are in the dark. We don't know the origins of anything; we don't know the causes that lie beyond our perceptions. We don't know the origin of the dark, we may even go like mystics believing that the dark is the image, is the cover for light. If there is a dark there must be a light somewhere else, in fact that dark may occasionally be removed. The worst thing about the mystical language of the divine in terms of light is that the light itself, which makes all things visible, remains in and of itself impenetrable in its origin to the human eye. Now Dante sees it, that's the idea of the true light, "In thy light we see the light." Is that a little--



Student: The beatific vision then is not exactly--



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: This is not a beatific vision. He has seen a moment of light and the origin of the light, that's still not God. The beatific--the only thing that he remembers of the beatific vision is some--he doesn't say. Some sweetness that has gathered in his heart, and what he then sees beyond the general form, he sees a number of things. The general form of the cosmos, which is this conjunction of circle and square, book and volume, if you want to visualize it in terms of--I like that image because it really implies the Word. It's the theology of the Word that seems to come out of that.



Then the other things that he sees is our likeness, i.e., he sends us back to Genesis 1, or the creation of man as told in Genesis. "Let me us make man in our image and likeness," so here's our likeness. You are talking now about the light and the meaning about this light is that the light--what does it mean to say that the light is true? Not because he reveals and dissipates the shadows that would be one way, one function of the light, the like the light, the light of the mind, the light of the sun, whatever. Because of that, the artificial light, but there is a way in which Dante is now thinking about what is called metaphysics of light.



What is the light in and of itself? The light--Dante by the way, if you really want to know this, Dante distinguishes between the word for light and the word for lamp, lume, luce, and so on light, lamp and so on and a number of scientific distinctions. Here he is talking about the vision of the origin of light, "In thy light we see the light," that's the meaning of the phrase.



[end of transcript]

The last class of the semester consists of a brief recapitulation of topics in the Divine Comedy addressed throughout the course, followed by an extensive question and answer session with the students. The questions posed allow Professor Mazzotta to elaborate on issues raised over the course of the semester, from Dante's place within the medieval love tradition to the relationship between his roles as poet and theologian.

Transcript



December 4, 2008



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Here we are, talking about--recapitulating the work done on--in reading part of the poem, selections of this poem. It's a little difficult; of course, I'm not going to tell you exactly what we have been talking about. We have been reading from the work outside of the Divine Comedy; we started there with the Vita nuova, which we read as you recall, as a visionary text, as a story of an education, as an autobiography and we tried to explore what those terms mean and how they interact with each other. How does one term shed light on the other? What does it mean to write an autobiography and at the same time having an education? The two converge, of course, in Dante's imagination.



You can only write an education--a story of your education if you have a sense of what your whole life is about. If you have some pattern of coherence and intelligibility that you can impose on, and extract from, respectively, the sense of your life. But above all, I was interested in that partial, because it's sort of--it's truncated at the end as a sort of interruption--deliberate interruption, because what kind of preparation it gives us. To what extent is it repeated that adventure Dante narrates in the Vita nuova is kind of an adumbration of the Divine Comedy? In many ways the two texts really are implicating each other in the sense that Dante finishes the Vita nuova--stops writing the Vita nuova, that's the inconclusive, the unfinished quality of the text so that he can go on writing the Divine Comedy, if you see what I'm saying. The Vita nuova ends with the statement of a project, of a project to come, which therefore will be in a certain way the fulfillment of what is only hinted at in the Vita nuova.



The two texts are literally one is preparing for the other, the other one--then the Divine Comedy turns out the way we were reading the Divine Comedy last time. The Divine Comedy itself has a sort of inconclusive quality about it. Dante reaches and experiences the beatific vision, and yet his text succumbs to the enormity of the task of describing it, and there were a number of reasons why we said Dante does that. What seems to be, and is, a defeat at the level of the imagination turns out to be a great triumph for Dante's own theology, right? The measure in which that the poem ends in a kind of defeat, in sort of the--with the admission of the impossibility for Dante--the poet's language to contain and therefore reify, circumscribe that which he has seen, right?



He's sort of ending with this question mark, this vision of effigy as he says, our own image. That's all that is left for him to recall, which really means that--in the refusal to pinpoint, describe, and define the so called beatific vision, some people could be very disappointed; why doesn't he tell us what he really saw? Because that would be the statement valid for him; he wants us, at the end of the poem to adventure, to take our own journey and make our own discoveries about that which remains the essential point of the Divine Comedy, as is the essential point of all great texts about tradition: the encounter between the human and the Divine. That is the point of all the great epics.



Whether it is in the form the Aeneid where the hero is always uncertain about what the gods are telling him, uncertain as how to decipher it, and yet he nonetheless pursues what he takes to be--and makes mistakes--Aeneas, along the way--but what he takes to be God's will. This is the way he can live out his own sense of ethical imperative to himself, to his people, the refugees that are coming from Asia Minor and going toward an unknown land, and the Divine imperative, or whether it's going to be the renaissance text from Spencer's Fairy Queen to Tasso's, to Milton, to Lucretius, who writes in a theological epic. The idea he wants to cure his readers, he has one reader in mind: the young epicurean, and this is Lucretius, whom Dante had never read--he read in parts and was very fascinated by what he read, who wants to educate one young man, Manaus, a young epicurean to the real and bitter truth of what the epicurean philosophy may be and that bitter truth, the harsh truth--Lucretius thinks that there is no such thing.



That ours--the Roman world is a desecrated world, that the gods have fled, that's the--but that is still in the mode of an atheist, it is still a theological concern because the implication of what I'm saying is that atheism itself may be a way of addressing, of course, it's a way of addressing the question of God, the un-knowability of God, the distance of God, maybe the non-existence of the gods. The Divine Comedy from this point of view partakes of this extraordinary tradition. But he does it in a way which is remarkably different; Dante does his theology in a way which is remarkably different from anything else that has gone on before him and, in many ways, after him. I think there is a mode of recapitulation, this is what I have to--I will have to briefly illustrate and give you the chance to ask more questions specifically about the poem.



Some of these things that I have said to you--the whole poem moves towards this kind of theology. Condensed in Canto XXXIII of Paradise, recapitulated right there. Of course Inferno goes on talking about issues of politics, which is not that they are easy, they are very complicated, but in some ways they are rooted in Dante's own theology. That is, it's too easy to believe that, you know, this is politics, this is theology; they are always implicated with one another. In fact, sometimes the best way to understand the theology is to talk about the politics, and the best way to understand the politics is to really talk about the theology. They are completely, always implicating each other. Inferno talks about the ethics and the politics, Purgatorio talks about aesthetics and ethics above all. The possibility of reconstructing the human beings; so flawed they seem to be, so incredibly sunk into the ditches of their own perversions, of our perversions. How do you--so radical, Dante's condemnation of the political realities, of civil war, people cannibalizing each other, and not in a metaphor that man is a wolf to man, but literally they are doing this. How do you get out of it?



It's very difficult to be so--to ostracize politics from the possibility of the human imagination and then at one point saying, well I still need this. How are you going to make a persuasive case for your readers? This was the great challenge of Purgatorio. We saw the question of time, the great problem of freedom, that all of a sudden seemed to surface in Purgatorio with Cato's suicide, you remember, with the debate about the soul, and created freedom, and by an act of freedom, God's freedom to the attainment of the free will. Around this extraordinary concern of freedom, and therefore the possibilities of the moral life, we came to the conclusion of Purgatorio with a garden, the Garden of Eden, the place of pleasures, the place where pleasures are not damned in and of themselves. The question becomes now, because that is the Sabbath, that is the moment where you--pleasure can be seen as the crown of work that which crowns, the correlation of one's own labors and so on. That is also rooted in theology.



Then we ended up in Paradise where we really talked directly, because I think that's really the substance of Paradise, the possibility of thinking of an aesthetic theology. How art and theology go hand in hand, because what joins them is the question of--not just the question of the art being the temptation, ethical temptation, but now the question of beauty as the mode of revelation of the Divine. Therefore, the implication was, and let's hope--I have said that very clearly, that art becomes a way to know God, a way to know the Divine, so we are moving away from traditional assumptions about what is the path to go and encounter God. What is really the discovery of the Sacred; is the Sacred going to be found, some texts in Dante seems to have believed that at some point in a particular--in the animation of nature, is it going to be found in the love that you have for your Beatrice, or you, or Beatrice's for your Dante, or whatever. He goes on thinking about these concerns and how everything that belongs to the world of art is the part of the path to the Divine.



Theology and aesthetics not just as--well, aesthetics as a way of making beautiful the reality, the theological content of Dante's faith. Not just that, but--that's no longer the question of an ornamentation. That was the problem, by the way, of Lucretius who at one point says, I wanted to write poetry because I want to make pleasant the bitter medicine that Epicurus goes on administering to you. The way he says it, that the gods have fled, that there is no such a thing as sacredness in the cosmos, that's too bitter to bear. I'm going to say it nicely, now that's really--not so for Dante. How the actual exercise of art, it's an ascetic exercise. You move through art, you refine, you think, and you question all the things. It's not just an ornamentation--ornamentation of being the word for cosmetics, for beautifying that which one has--that which he will say.



These were the concerns and we came to Canto XXXIII of Paradise, and I maintain to you and as way of recapitulation, I think I have said to you, I hope that I have said it all to you, but I will gladly go over it and I hope that if you see more or not quite, haven't seen what I think I've been saying, say it, that's really your last chance as far as I go in this public mode here.



The first thing that we understand about Dante's theology is the extraordinary rootedness of this theology in the human reality. Canto XXXIII is the canto of prayer, and we'll talk more about the prayer as a mode of theologizing. Why is it a special mode of theologizing? The first thing is that it is a prayer to the Virgin Mary, that is to say a way of thinking about how the Divine has entered the world of history and the human flesh.



There's no such thing as an extraordinary--and I think--even talking about the cosmology of Dante I tried to hint, tried to say--look the physical world and the metaphysical world are all part of one universe. They are two separate hemispheres and yet there is always a cross, there is a chiasmus that will connect them, but will make them because that's the irony of every chiasmus. You know what I mean by chiasmus? It comes from the Greek letter chi in Greek, that's a chiasmus, an X, and wherever a chiasmus you have a point of intersection of the two arms, but that becomes also a point of flight. Things come together and can be seen to come together, but things also seem to be divergent, seem to be going away from each other, okay. This is the cosmos of Dante; it's an extension of what he will say in the prayer to the Virgin.



The human rootedness of the Divine, not dualities, okay, that's really a primary item. This will conclude, with the idea that with the--and makes it persuasive that what Dante sees and remembers at the end is our effigy, which is clearly a throwback to Genesis. Let us make man in our image and likeness, that's what Dante will see, but this also means that we are in the world of images, that Dante's own journey ends in the world of images, but not in images as deceptive appearances, only--that which we saw the whole of Purgatorio is full of, now somehow the image probably because of our, the shared quality of that image becomes the locus of the Sacred itself. It becomes, not something that just hides, but also reveals the Divine.



The second thing that I think that we have learned to understand about this theology of Dante is freedom. That the foundation of Dante's own--the foundation of his beliefs, the foundation of his theological beliefs, is in freedom. We talked about the theological virtues, as you recall, the theological virtues faith, hope, and charity: XXIV, XXV, and XXVI with the various examinations that Dante goes on. If you recall, we were talking about the fact that Dante thinks of faith as an act of freedom. That's not unusual for those who have any theological interest to even find traces and implications of this kind of statement. Faith is, for Dante, a way of knowing; he connects it with knowledge, which is not just a way of saying that faith intervenes when knowledge stops because someone who is interested in his curiosity of knowing--now I don't know I'll try hard, maybe tomorrow I will know, I don't need any faith, right?



If you really think about the relationship between knowledge and faith, you can't say faith emerges at the boundary line of knowledge because that boundary line is always shifting, and that would imply the progressive reduction of a kind of receding, and diminishing fragment of the dimension of faith. Dante's saying by connecting a university examination and the problem of faith is that faith itself is a way of knowing I have faith, and that means that I see the world in an entirely different way; I can see myself disengaged from everything around me. I can see that nothing really matters; that all the patterns and parameters of reasons are going to be found wanting. That's really--so it's tied with freedom. Hope introduces the question of the future, and you cannot have freedom without the future. We talked about these temporal issues. You can only think about the possibility of a future if you believe that it is a novelty, if there is a freedom--if you are in bondage you cannot really think of that.



Theologically, because I don't want to confuse you at all, you remember that all three cantos were literally woven with references to Exodus. All three cantos and the story of Exodus, which is crucial to Dante's poetic figuration, is the story of the freedom from a state of bondage. This is the way we understand him, but Dante also knows that freedom can--you only have to shift--this is Luther of course; freedom and faith are one in the same thing. In his attack--you remember that? I mentioned this to you, it doesn't concern Dante but concerns the issue and so we'll mention for clarity. They debated, the two of them, Luther and Erasmus over the idea of what freedom of the will means, and they are really debating a text written a century earlier by one humanist by the name of Valla and they disagree about what that text means.



Luther says to Erasmus, you really are interested in faith as a form of order. I'm interested in faith as a form of freedom because that frees me from all loyalties. It's madness by the sublime quality of the statement, but you only have to shift the ground a little bit and realize that freedom, can really become, and is the source of atheism. Atheism, all of a sudden, becomes important because human beings don't want to be subjected to anybody. It's part of the project to say I am my own man, I am my own woman, I want to do exactly what I want. I don't want to have any loyalties or accept anything that I don't even see. We can bear with the master that we see and maybe has a knife at us, but someone as distant and remote we--Dante then says that's the peculiarity of this religious belief of mine, which is really all about freedom, including the freedom to deny the divinity. This is extraordinary, never heard of in the history of--as far as I know and I have a very limited knowledge believe me, it's no rhetoric; very limited knowledge but I have never seen anything like this.



The third element about this theology is really the great element of love, to discover that the way to God, yes it's hard; there are many ways first of all to God. There is the philosophical of going through knowing, there is the linguistic way through the language, and I'll come to this issue in a moment. There is poetry, there is the world of beauty, then there's the language of the heart, but primarily it is the path to the Divine is love. Dante understands, I wasn't saying that love is so mysterious because I know that deep down you are all young people, many of you are, a couple here are younger, much younger than I am but not really that young, so they are not surprised by any this. But I know that deep down, I remember being young, how I think about the mystery of love, ah… that really speaks to everybody's heart. I wasn't meaning it that way. It is really a thought point that the principle of election, which is so crucial to love, it really cannot be quite explained. I really was meaning it in this theological way as possible. I was already thinking about the statements that I was going to make today about Dante's theology. These are some of the issues that Dante has.



The other day, yesterday, the day before I was asked the question about one line in Dante and I was very--it was a very good question about the fact that Dante's allowed to see the truth, that the light he saw was the truth. That was a very good question. What does it mean? To me it was so clear, and I apologize, because I said well this is really the biblical idea in your light, which your notes will tell you. In your light I see the light, we see the light, and what does it mean? In your light we see the light. What it is that it's part of this mystery that if you are a mystic and you think that the Divine is wrapped in a kind of transcendent darkness, that's the language, or that it is really all wrapped in impenetrable light, it's both the same because neither light has the peculiarity never letting you see the origin of the light, and darkness has the peculiarity of never letting you see the origin of the darkness. When Dante reaches Paradiso XXXIII, and that's the meaning your light, we see the light, Dante sees finally the origin of light. That's the point. There are moments where his sight can become so incredibly sharp and so penetrating, so look at all these ways. The ways--there are many ways in which we can take available to us and it seems that we are always stumbling against something that in the long run you have to stop, and yet if you love, if you think that beauty is part--which is part of love, beauty is part of--love is the hunger for beauty the neo-Platonist will say. In the Florentine neo-Platonist Lorenzo--I don't know where he found it probably in Plotinus; love is the hunger for beauty.



All of these are ways that Dante keeps opening for us in our journey to the Divine, and then there is the prayer which is the question of language. That has also become one of the ways in which I indicate that there is a theological root to the question of language. Not only that we speak out of speaking and language is an allegory, a parable of our desires, a parable of what we lack, we speak because we don't have. That's the specific--and we speak because we--the seat mate and we are pointing maybe without really knowing to what we need. It's always a question of need. Dante has always had a way of connecting language and desire, we talked about that, that's one the themes we discussed. Then all of a sudden in Paradiso XXXIII, though I said to you, look the language now changes.



First of all, the prayer to the Virgin is all about longing, this state of longing but not languishing. There is an etymological connection there somewhere which is not--I'm not going to get into but there's a longing for the Divine to show itself to Bernard of Clairvaux, the great mystic. He who is the great fierce opponent of Abelard, appears on the scene and therefore they--you can overhear the polemics which we haven't got time for, the polemics between Abelard and Bernard that are clearly behind his apparition in Paradiso XXXIII. They all are waiting for the Divine to show itself forth, right, and this language--and yet this desire all of a sudden becomes the language of joy, of enjoyment. That's such an extraordinary shift. Why? Because Dante understands the problem with desire; of course, we like to--we're always talking about how much--how permanent we like to be, in a state of permanent desires because that's what makes us feel alive, young, to desire, you want something. It's true, it's part of the great power of desire, and the language of desire, but if desire were without an object ever then desire becomes of the greatest absurdity and futility. If we go around thinking that we are in a labyrinth of desires then really that is--it's a joke, desire becomes a joke. Dante places this idea of enjoyment, the possibility of this sweetness that instills in his heart. These are the issues.



Then finally, this idea of prayer, and I want to stop there. Let me stop with the question of prayer and then get your questions. The whole poem, I think, from the perspective of Paradiso XXXIII, taking retrospectively the view, not only the fact that there are references to the first words Dante uses in Inferno I is a prayer. "Miserere di me," "Have mercy on me," he doesn't even know whether you are a shade or a man, he sees something, a shape indistinct, turns out to be Virgil, turns out to be poetry. This is the poetry that lends itself, offers itself completely freely. You can go to the library and pick up a book, a free act of someone's generosity. There it is. He turns to it and begins with a prayer, and the poem ends with a prayer, and ends with--it begins with a prayer--the whole poem, the real quality and nature of language is to be a prayer. A prayer implying the tension that we have all the time told what, for Dante, told what necessarily transcends us. There's always a reality that is touched directly by the hand of God, but escapes the world of the human plans, and the human projects. This is what I think the whole poem is about, and it's above all a poem addressed to the future, addressed to us. That is to say, it's not a poem about the past, Dante is the least nostalgic of poets, it's so easy, if you really go wherever and you tell your grandchildren you read Dante. I thought that Dante is a nice little story about the Middle Ages; we are all nostalgic about the Middle Ages. Maybe some of you are here--how were these guys, how were they living? In a world of absolute certainties, right?



Dante is the poet of openness, the poet who understands reason, and understands the risk. Now, that's really what this poem is about, a poem about the future, the poem addressed with a number of apostrophes to readers, and whenever you read apostrophe to readers from beginning of Inferno to roughly Paradiso X, every so often Dante addresses us. You remember I said, at one point he stops, he made this point, what are these addresses to readers? We can read it--whenever you have a kind of--up to the eighteenth century you always read novels, now my dear reader, now my gentle reader, they are coaxing you, pretending they're coaxing you, they couldn't care whether you read it or not I don't think ultimately. Dante doesn't really care whether we are reading him or not. Now you're following the little shape of poetry, the few of you, and I think he means it, who are not afraid of how rough the seas are. You could shipwreck and all of that--of course you could read those apostrophes as a way of saying, look I need you readers because if I have readers I'm constituting myself into an author.



The measure in which there are readers, then I am the author, I am an author because I have--because the poem has made me into an author. Of course there is that, but what I think this is about is you are going to use my poem as the boat with which you can start your own journey. That's the understanding of the future. The poet, Dante, is a poet of the future, which is a way of saying there is a little bit of irony as I say this, that Dante's not a poet of the past, he is the poet toward which we are going. The Middle Ages may not be a time of the past, it may be the Middle Ages in a different form or certainly will come back, will probably come back in the future. This is what Dante clearly thinks.



So let's go now with your questions. I hope you have many and--not many, a few so that we can talk a bit about this. Yes, whoever wants to--you came in late so I must say--must repeat this--you have to sign and there is that beautiful young woman right there, Maria Derlipanska, that adjective, you forgive me but it's true but also--the other thing is you have to talk very closely to the microphone.



Student: Well, I wanted to talk a little bit more about desire and I'm glad you brought that up because it's been on my mind for the last couple of days. I was just reading Shakespeare's 147th sonnet yesterday in which he says, "desire is death," and it struck me how different Dante's inception of desire is and it's something that he seems to want to stay in and relish and it's almost life to him. We started this course with the Vita nuova and I got so frustrated reading it because I--part of me was saying if you love this woman so much why don't you do something about it? But it's like Dante no, he wants to stay in this place of longing; longing is life for him in some way. That seems to me something vitally important to understanding what the Divine Comedy means and I wonder if you could just go back and talk a little bit about the courtly love tradition, how that might have influenced Dante's thinking about desire, and more specifically, in a spiritual sense as to Dante's theology, how desire played a role in Dante's conception of his relationship to God?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Yes, okay. Well good question. I like the fact that you bring in, I will take the points as I remember them, but also following at my own inner logic. I like the way you bring in Shakespeare's understanding of desire and that desire--it's not that it's really death but ends in death, that the desire leads you to death. That this is a kind of--that is in many ways also a view largely shared by Dante in this sense, but it's not only that, Dante does not stop there. In this sense that you have to understand that there's such a thing as a metaphysics of desire. I don't know if the term is new to you or not. What could that phrase possibly mean? Why do we talk--what does it mean? Metaphysics of desire, to some of you, it may be a little bit unusual, it really means this, that desire--there is a dialectics to desire, a movement to desire that necessarily I want this today then I want that, the desire is inexhaustible, that's what it means. From that point of view it's very important for all those like Augustine, it's part of this restlessness of the heart as St. Augustine mentions. That's the--a theological understanding of desire.



We call it metaphysical because it really wants the absolutes. Desire, by definition, I want now this, the smoking of a cigarette for a great novelist, an Italian novelist at the beginning of the last century was the true emblem of desire, ending in ashes but always like a phoenix you can start over again. It really means that it always--it will come to an end either in death, in nothingness; finally you renounce all desire which is the death of desire or some idea of the absolute of God. That's really--that's what we mean by the absolute--this absolute tension that desire entails. Now then you asked me to talk about the Vita nuova and the uneasiness you had. I mean, you expressed the uneasiness and I respect your uneasiness. I know a man of action like you, a student of philosophy as you are, then you obviously have that kind--I think that you're supposed to have that.



There is such a thing as a passivity of the state of dejection, the sense of the mastery of love that throws the lover poet into--who doesn't really understand what love is at this point, that's what part of the education is. He wants to--the story of the Vita nuova is the story of a poet who knows--he doesn't know Beatrice, he calls her Beatrice only because in the nearness of her he would feel beatitudes; that's what he says, so there's a kind of arbitrariness to names. We don't care about that now, we go on with--there is this idea that he is--the power of love dejects him. It's not yet a virtue, it's a passion, and the word passion really implies that. We think that a passion is what makes us go but Dante makes a careful distinction of the will that becomes paralyzed, the desire to be discovered by the woman he loves. It's very important for him that she says "hi" when they meet in the streets and he--she won't say "hi" and so he goes home and he's dejected and says I'm worthless, etc. That is--he's explaining the kind of--that sort of state of dejection that love can bring in--or the passion of love can bring into the mind.



The mind is clouded, unable to think straight but that--for him also sheds light on the way he understands poetry because he waits for poetry. He's a sort of poet, very romantic poet, who doesn't think that poetry entails discipline. It's almost like somebody else says, it's almost like going to the office at 7:00 a.m., you sit down at the desk, and keep at it, and then maybe you'll manage to come up with a great line. He hopes for--romantically for poetry to come to him, for inspiration to come to him, and then he realizes that his understanding of love was as wrong as his--of the love passion was as wrong as his understanding of poetry, that you've got to really get down and do something about it. When he understands it, it's too late for him, because Beatrice has died, so now the poem--the project of the Divine Comedy--she may be--he has a vision, he sees her at the foot of God's majesty and says I want to go there an meet with her, that's action. You agree that that really is quite--has completely changed.



How does this understanding of love connect with the courtly love tradition? That is really not a difficult question. In fact I would give you a little bit of a bibliography that C.S. Lewis has written a very good book on The Allegory of Love, a book written probably in the late 50s, but last time I read it which was recently some twenty years ago, it was still very good, very powerful. The idea is this that--and I'm really paraphrasing C.S. Lewis more or less, I mean with a lot of gaps in my mind about the richness of the text. That clearly what we think of love today as a romantic understanding, it's really a discovery of the Middle Ages. I have been talking about the fact that, you may all recall, the Greeks did not have this romantic understanding. The Romans didn't have this understanding of love. When you read Catullus, the passion for a woman is something that he's always a little uneasy about. That's not what a virtuous man should be doing. It's a weakness of the will. The weakness of the will, it's a vice, what can you do, we are fallible--we are Romans but we are also occasionally a little fallible.



The idea of romantic love comes with Provencal poets in the south of France, what you call courtly love. I would distinguish that, that's all, the only thing I would say about it. You don't read the C.S. Lewis who ends up with love and the history of love in the--how it changes, that is to say, in the Renaissance. I would distinguish between the two; I would not use indiscriminately courtly love and medieval ideas of love. Courtly love implies a formalization of love and it goes back--some of you I know are writing a paper on this, on Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, which is a way of setting rules for loves, in the perception that love is a potentially disruptive experience and so let us make it into a joke, that's the idea. Let us establish protocols, a code by means of which the woman and the man can really interact and tell each other what this is about. Don't hope marriage because that's a serious business concerning property, and wealth, and status so within the fairly close boundaries of the courtly love tradition, then you go on making such assumptions about yourself about--you can play about the greatness of women, the secret of love, there's a certain code. In the other forms of courtly love, or the sweet new style, and the way it develops. Another book I could mention to you is Valency which is love something--I can't even remember the title, Maurice Valency, he also discusses the shifts between Provencal understanding of love and the sweet new style articulated by Dante and his coterie of poets. That makes it I hope.



Student: Thank you for an extraordinary series of lectures. I was curious about the ending and I wondered if you could comment on Dante's views about the papacy? I thought his choice of Bernard of Clairvaux was very curious and throughout the Divine Comedy he previously was grumbling about papal intervention over temporal powers, so I wondered if you could comment on that conclusion.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Yeah, very good question. Of course I didn't talk about it, and I think that what you're really referring to, I don't know, but I think what you're referring to is the fact that Bernard of Clairvaux wrote a great book called, On Consideration, which seems to be about contemplative life. He's the great reformer of the Benedictine movement, monastic movement in France, and the so called Cistercian monasteries which became the centers of culture where they would copy--they would do poetry, they would write music, they would sing. I mean the arts, the way we know them, really originated with him. He wrote this text On Consideration which actually, in spite of the title, because you know what consideration is a step before you come to contemplation. There are a number--reflection, consideration, and then contemplation. He chooses to write on consideration. He dedicates the book to--this treatise to Pope Eugene IV who had been his disciple, he had been a--a Frenchman who had been a Benedictine monk with him and it's--and this is probably one reason why Dante chooses Bernard.



Bernard, the contemplative monk, the reformer, all of Paradise is populated with founders and great reformers, founders of orders or Justinian and the law, etc. France is Benedict, Dominic, Bernard and so in spite of the fact that he's a contemplative, Bernard did not hesitate to write a text for the spiritual edification of his ex-disciple, Eugene the IV, who is now a Pope and he's aware how the office of the shepherd of the church can distract him from the loftier spiritual aims and the longings, so it's really a sequence of arguments about what you should--how should you administer your time so that you are never really going to lose sight of what your true aim is, Heaven. Dante mentions this text, by the way, in a letter that so many--not I, go on challenging the authority of, the letter to Cangrande that maybe I have-- no not with you, with my graduate students we have gone over, but to me that is actually the indication, the fact that he refers to the treatise by Bernard that the authority of--he is the author of that letter.



Now, you see it clearly another way in which I can understand your question is that you see some kind of divergence, some sort of break. On the one hand this kind of invective, the mode of the invective in Dante when talking about Peter, St. Peter in Paradiso XXVII. I mean, he doesn't--he looks back after the examination on faith, he looks back and he starts attacking what he takes to be the use of patience, my place; remember that, an incredibly moral voice that rises right at the very end. You seem to be worried about the fact that Dante seems to be so moral and--when it comes about the popes and then becomes mystical all of a sudden, is that really one of your concerns? It could be, it could become one of your concerns in asking this question about--at the end of Paradise XXXIII he talks about Bernard such a mystic and yet all over he has been talking about the papacy.



If you were interested in that I would say there is no divergence in Dante between the prophetic voice and the mystical voice. That is something--even those who read the Bible would go on saying, well, the prophets were visionaries. In a way it's true but in a way it's not true, the prophets were not visionaries, the prophets were readers of history. They don't need to have Daniel give an interpretation; Ezekiel has visions, but Isaiah doesn't have visions so it's--you see what I'm saying? There is no clear-cut distinction between the prophetic and the mystical, certainly not in Dante. The two belong together so that's--I don't know that I'm answering your concerns but I overheard a number of let's say rumblings in your question. I'm trying to take care of them.



Student: Is it a reconciliation with the papacy?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: No, not in the sense--no. To talk about--even Bernard is someone who understands how waylaying the office can be and he was obviously writing because he must be aware of what has been happening and what was likely to happen. You don't have to become a chronicler or an historian to do that; you can imagine this can happen. No, there is not that. I think that's Dante's judgment about history is always very clear until the very end. History needs a reform and of course he would say, because he's one who believes in the sacramentality and presence of the self, how the self is crucial--before I start talking about how the world needs reforming let me just begin here. That would be an obvious way to say it, so I call it the language of presence in him, a sense of, I am present to my own self and therefore I have responsibilities toward my own self before I became--I started using the megaphones and let's reform the world. That probably--if there were ever to come and Dante's not a utopian thinker, it would come only because so many people of good will, men and women of good will, his saints, his blessed--the blessed souls that he meets are willing to do something about that. No, no reconciliation, not a sense of finally things will be becoming together, I don't think. Actually I hold onto that.



Student: Just thinking more about desire and wealth and the fact that the will is what loves and the will always contains some element of lack, or desire it seems, so even if it can attain plentitude it still seems that Dante in talking so much about the will and the will as loving, Dante says that love always has some element of lack. It's not just lack, there is plentitude, but still there's always this restlessness and so the love at the end where there is plentitude it seems to be a completely transformed understanding of love, that it's not possible to go--to return from in the beatific vision. If you have this plentitude, is it possible to go back because it does seem like it's a completely transformed understanding of love when you have just the plentitude and not lack anymore so with that mind does--is Dante ever able to attain this love because this love that does have plentitude seems like it should end in silence with no language and Dante does go back and speak, and he does--he is still--he is a pilgrim and a poet and so does he really ever move from the images to the essences and is the uncertainty at the end not just because we have to go on the journey our self but because he is still on the journey?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Well, you are really voicing a very delicate issue in the poem. It's a very controversial issue because that also implies the status of the poem. Do you understand what I'm saying? In other words, if you really think that Dante has seen--has had a beatific vision and he has, and now he's writing the poem to tell us about it, then you're really saying that the poem itself belongs to a higher level of experience because it's written by someone who is in full possession of grace. That's your point, right?



That's a very delicate point because I have not been teaching Dante that way, right, I have not. We are right to say this, at the moment of recapitulation, I probably would--I have wasted your time all along. One little detail that I want to bring to your attention and then I will go to the more general problem; when Dante meets Beatrice in Purgatorio XXXI, this is getting really to be a recapitulation, we're talking about everything in the poem now, he meets Beatrice in Purgatorio XXX and then in XXXI. In Purgatorio XXXI Beatrice forces Dante to go into a confession. You have to go into an admission of who you are, and has to be public; cannot say I know you know, but you have to be duly ashamed because only that way you can transcend whatever it is that you have within you. Dante reluctantly will agree to do that and then Beatrice will say, I want you to go through this so that another time, the future tense, when you will see, will meet the siren I want you to be stronger.



This to me implies, that's one of the many--Dante sees Casella, another aesthetic temptation. One doesn't have to have the temptation to kill someone, to really feel that what is out--has fallen out of grace but this is--he meets Casella and he remembers how sweet was that song he heard from Casella and that sweetness still resounds within me. Now Dante is writing--is talking as a poet--he meets Ulysses, I grieve then and I grieve now. There is a way in which states within the pilgrim do not really go on changing; they are the same, implying that there is some kind of continuity between pilgrimage and poetry writing. To me, the writing of poetry is an extension of the pilgrimage. Dante though goes on saying; I have had the beatific vision. I am now--I know what enjoyment means, not just desire, but I'm coming back to the Earth and therefore I cannot come back to the Earth as anything less than a human being with one project, the project to write a poem, because I want to retrieve that joy and because I want to share that joy.



So I have set down two things in my answer to you. One talking about the question of the pilgrim's experience and the relationship of the pilgrim's experience to the writing of a poem, but I have also said that the poem stands as a sign for us. A hermeneutical moment; Dante means it for us so that we can--his journey continues. That's my answer. You don't have to agree with it because there are--I know there is--there are other people, I have been fighting those people for a long time in my life, I don't want to go back to those fights, but I think that that this my way of looking at it, okay. I can give you more bibliography; I would rather not actually, to tell you the truth. I don't want to tell you about those people who are writing the other way. I have written about them in my books.



Student: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how Dante views other religions. In particular, Judaism and if it sort of falls underneath his idea of religion as freedom, and that if you have the freedom to become an atheist you also have the freedom to choose a different religion and if he views Judaism and Christianity as sort of a continuity both deriving from the same basis or if he ascribes the idea of secessionism that Christianity has succeeded Judaism and invalidates it, and for that reason we don't find, from what I can remember, and Jews in Paradise.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Oh yes you do.



Student: You do? Okay then that's my fault.



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Well, now I have to correct you immediately because then maybe you rephrase it--stay there--because you probably will rephrase the question. When Dante goes on listing, in the mystical rose, we even are told that Beatrice sits next to Rachel. She has a way of elevating her and then he goes on describing all the other--we talked at length about Solomon who is a Jew, I think right? He was a Jew in the Bible. We went on talking about Nathan, I tried to make light of it because I wanted to tell you that Dante saw his own name but it's Nathan, a prophet of David, and also in the harrowing of hell which is Inferno IV, where Dante describes what happens to Jesus after his death, what does he do? He harrows hell. He goes into hell. What is he doing in hell? He goes there to take the patriarchs and the women of Israel and take them to heaven. That's--these are facts--you want to change your question or I can go on telling you more and answering the real questions that you are raising, that is to say the relationship between Christianity and Judaism and the other religions. You want me to talk about that?



Student: That's definitely the issue that I have. Whether Dante--I guess like I said before, I guess by having Jews in Paradise and having the figure of Christ come in and collect the patriarchs, if he's trying to integrate Judaism within Christianity or somehow to find a way between the two?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Yes. That is--so you're interested especially about Dante's sense of--the relationship between Christianity and Judaism? Do you want me to also address the other issue of the way he looks at the Hindus and the Muslims? We talked about Dante and the other religions. In fact, when I--when we talked about Dante's relationship with a sense of Christianity to the other religions, I never mentioned the Jews and probably that to you may have been a kind of glaring omission. This guy is talking about the big religions, what about the matriarchs of the religions? The Judaism--it's likely--I occasionally thought maybe I should say something, and then I said no because Dante doesn't talk about it and so I wouldn't.



Dante does talk when he has--and he is not the only one, centuries before him they were talking--a man like--a great theologian by the name of Bonaventure, a professor of theology at the University of Paris. I mentioned that text I'm sure, and the year 1274 which is also the year of his death, he was invited to Paris, he was teaching there, because he was invited to deliver a number of lectures and he gives these lectures, and then he goes on talking about the other religions, the religions he knows: Hindu and the Muslim religion.



It's an argument--I mention that because it seems to me that Dante follows Bonaventure fairly closely when in the canto of St. Francis, Canto X, the description of the--that legend of St. Francis, Francis is said to have gone to the sultan to try to convert him and fails, and then Dante also talks of the Hindus, with the reference to the Ganges. When talking about justice, Dante is talking about Europe, but in between he alludes to the--he talks about the Persians and the Hindu, the guy from the Hin who is born on the river Hindus, he says you are of the Hindus.



What is the conception there? The critique, they are talking as Christians and they are talking from the point of view of Christianity. The position that Bonaventure will have, and Dante I think follows him, is the following. How does it--how it can be--can they be distinguished? What do they share? They talk about what they share. What do they have in common? They have in common, especially with the case of the Muslims, the biblical--the Jewish tradition. Let me just not mince words here, the Jewish tradition, that's really the common matrix for him.



He also notices differences, that for instance, the theology of the Hindus is one that presumes the diffusiveness of God into all things. That's not--I don't think that's something that unusual. What does it imply? Because they become critical of it, it then implies the difficulty of making judgments about what's good and evil. If God is everywhere you have to--the sacrality of all things, which is a great idea, and yet there are some aspects of reality where you don't like to think that they are all alike. There is a way in which--this is pantheism and can become--therefore can become--can be critiqued as the lack of distinctions and hierarchies, and ordering. When they come to the Muslims, since the Muslim religion is one that talks about the absolute impenetrability of the human mind cannot ever hope to understand the Divine. We are here at the mercy of God and we live only by the mercy of God. We cannot go on and say, but I live by reason and I die by reason, and I can get to know God. There is a great distance between the human and the Divine. That's the critique.



If this is true then we have nothing to--there is an absolute transcendence and he sees Christianity as that which literally mediates between the two because there is that transcendence and absolute transcendence of God, the way the Muslims understand it, but there is also a possibility of a mediation. Not total mediation the way the Hindus understand it, but the mediation of the cross, the mediation of the incarnation. This is the way Dante takes the other religions. When it comes to the pagan religions, not because they are the pagan religions for instance, and Dante there follows very much the pagan religion, the religion of the Greeks, the religion of the Romans. Dante follows very much St. Augustine, who is the one who talks at length about these issues. That's the ambiguity; there are adumbrations of the Divine, but at the same time, they can become also blasphemous idols of the infernal powers. There is this way of really the smashing, if you wish, of the idols.



When it comes to Judaism, which is really the question that--with which you started actually. I think that Dante is--I talked about that. I shouldn't say that I didn't talk about it. You may recall that I made a point in--at the beginning of the readings of the poem, maybe I was not--it didn't seem to be very important, it was important to me; I sort of went on talking a little bit at length about the question of birth. You remember how there are some characters, representations, all characters? Dante continues, I could have said the same thing in the prayer to the Virgin; Virgin, mother, daughter of your son; two birds in one stone, in half a line as it were. Daughter of your son, Dante focuses on birth. I did say, I went on talking since--Dante talks like this about Virgil, then talks about the birth of Francesca, Giacco in Canto VI, Farinata in Canto X, endlessly talks about this whole issue.



Then I went on talking, this concern with birth is specifically Roman, I said. This is really a Roman insight into the importance--it's really what distinguishes the Greek tragic understanding of birth. Children can really become a curse in--when you read the Thebaid, for instance, where you read the story of Oedipus, with Statius being half Greek, sort of incorporates. Then I added, after saying that this a Roman concern, because it's the whole--it's tied to the notion of foundation. The Roman idea that you can start things over and over again with the foundations of cities and the birth being the way in which nature becomes historical, and therefore, I potentially like all of you potentially can change everything around you. It's not true, as someone at a round table the other night in my department, was saying that you have no experience, there are no events. Of course there are experiences and events, every birth is an event, that's Dante's understanding because he can change history, he can change the future.



After making these statements that that's a Roman idea, and or Dante that's crucial because he's a Roman, and he thinks of himself as a Roman; Florence is the daughter of Rome. Then I added that this is also a Jewish idea of creation. That that's really what we have, mainly the great invention that we have in the Bible, that the world was created and that Dante is connecting two ideas, a Roman and a Jewish idea, which are miraculously convergent. Is this an act of useful patience because that's really the--what I read in your question. Is that an appropriation? It's culture. I think that that's really what you do, but you can say that about the Bible. You read, the Bible is a reading of history, over 800 years of its composition. It's a reading of events around them and the culture, and that's exactly what Dante does. How does he look at--he thinks that the Jews--I guess he's really saying they are not Christians but they believe in a Christ to come and that will save them. This really means that there is an acknowledgement of the dignity and certainly originality of that vision. I answered clearly; you may agree, you may not agree, but it's clear. We agree about that.



Student: I was wondering if you could just brief--I was wondering if you could discuss the presence of violence in all of these texts that we've been reading. I'm thinking particularly about the Vita nuova and the depiction of violence in these dreams filled with passion and very strange representations of the color red and all--as both a lustful color, the fear of death in these depictions of love which reminds me of courtly love and this idea that our passions are sort of transcendental violent dreams, and images that come to us. That's one question, one part, but the other is the presence of violence and violent imagery in Paradiso, I'm thinking particularly about marshes at the beginning in Canto I? Also, the implied moral violation of Piccarda and these continuous images that remind us of human violence and passion as violence, and I wonder how they fit in with the final vision of beatitude and human love?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: That brings us right back to the relationship between the historical and the sacred. Violence is a parody almost of the sacred, and in many ways, the alibi for the sacred because the sacred has to be understood as that which tries to redeem the violence. And Dante, you're absolutely right, never flinches from the understanding that the world of history is an economy of this ongoing violence. It's true. He even addresses you, right. The human beings, the Cato who kills himself hoping that with his death he can bring an end to the civil war in Rome between Caesar and Pompeii, but then the violence that--someone like Piccarda.



How love engenders violence, it's an incredibly thing, because then they have perversions. It's not just that I killed because I want to steal someone's shoes, but then there is a way in which I think I'm engaged a more tragic understanding of violence because a sort it--it's so mediated and so disguised as love. I can love, from Paolo and Francesca, and yet that engenders a lot of violence. Dante has gone through all the phases for this sort of thinking. That of thinking that maybe that's really what history is about; it's all about violence and that any effort at redemption, Christ's redemption of violence, that's really what the whole story of Christian salvation is about.



Dante mentions that, this is not a kind of an opinion, Dante will mention it in Inferno XXXIII. Remember, with the story of Ugolino, in the background of that scene, of that famous cannibalizing, that is the story of the children have been killed, two of his children, and that's always the death of the innocent is really the beginning--what happens to the children? We can go on arguing but what about these kids? We have no response of what is innocent as Dante says, and then you overhear in the background, and I think that Dante wants us to overhear the experience of the cross that was meant to redeem of violence but didn't seem to work, so there is a way in which he thinks violence has--to the notion and to the god of violence, even the redemption succumbs to that vision. The idea of redemption loses in connection with--and in relation to violence. That would be the way we can come to understand it.



There are a number of other extensions, even when we read Dante will say, when we read, it seems to be such an innocuous bland operation that we're engaged in, in the quiet of our studies, etc., then we are still violating the integrity of the text. We still extract, we still break up that unity, we isolate the passage, we make part of what we want, what we want it to signify, hermeneutics is linked, interpretation is linked to an experience of violence. What gives? We agree there, that was your question, how does Dante get beyond that and somehow manage to arrive to a beatific vision?



I think that what Dante is doing is denouncing all forms of violence, confessing to them, admitting them, dramatizing them. It doesn't mean that he's espousing them or he shares them, the whole point of the Divine Comedy is to acknowledge that it lodges -- it, violence -- lodges even in him and within him, but he wants to move beyond it and that's the ascetic aspect of his text, ascetic in the sense that he's literally climbing up the ladder of transcending that which is holding him back. I don't think that--if you are looking for way that--does he get away from it? That's really the other question, does he ever get away? Not in the measure in which he's human and wants to remain human, open to these temptations all the time. Please.



Student: As a pilgrim who has become a senior citizen I have had a question throughout the entire course, and having read Auerbach and Thomas Bergen and Mary Reynolds and others, the question has not been answered for me and I'm not sure you can either. The question is who is Dante? As we've been responding to these--you've been responding to these questions here, I've jotted down human, man, citizen, exile, lover, poet, pilgrim, visionary, theologian, saint, Paul, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Bernard of Clairvaux had their visions and they became saints. Is this man a saint?



Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta: Well, I'm taking a little bit of time to answer because you must know; I think you know that actually there are people who think that he should be canonized. You probably do not know that. Who think that he should be canonized. Actually, I was actually interviewed once about soliciting my ideas. I said I hope not because I want to teach him for what I think he is a poet, a man of extraordinary imagination who divinies our time. That's what I think he is, the power of the imagination, and who understands that the greatest call on him and on us is really the possibility of the encounter with the Divine. I don't know--I hate the idea--if I were to make a movie about Dante--I have been--sometimes when people have been--I have been mentioning it to people actually I would make him into a rebellious type who seems to understand everything that he touches, but he also has a way and takes, as he should from everything, and transforms it, so he has a vision from that point of view. The vision of how the world is and--he invents the world, his world, the world of the Divine Comedy, it's an extraordinary invention. But a saint? I don't know what these other guys have done exactly to make them deserving of sainthood but maybe I'll leave it there, I don't know. Thank you. I think it's time. Thank you so much for your great questions, thanks.



[applause]



[end of transcript]