Dante

Preamble:

For these few weeks, I will gradually upload my university essays. One reason is a slight writer's block, another is just laziness. Also I want to have an alternative storage space for my essays. On the bright side, all the essays uploaded scored a 1st class (except the one on Ursula Le Guin), so these are among my best pieces and should be of reasonable quality.

Now my essay on Dante (the Italian is left untranslated):

Double-faced Amore, mad flights and fatal passions:
A study of seraphic and cherubic damnations in La Divina Commedia

In (Paradiso XI, l.37), St Aquinas describes St Francis as being ‘serafico in ardore’, thus likening him to the Seraphims, those angels with the greatest love of God (Pseudo-Dionysius’s (Celestial Hierarchy 8.1), St. Aquinas’ (Summa Theologica. 1.63.7.ad 1)) . Similarly, the Franciscan order preaches passionate devotion as the best way to reach the Highest. St Dominic on the other hand is one whose ‘sapïenza in terra fue/ di cherubica luce uno splendore’ (Paradiso XI, ll.38-9). He is likened to the Cherubims, those angels with the greatest knowledge of God. The Dominicans are similarly ‘an order of students’ that emphasizes learning. Dante’s description parallels the medieval Christian categorization of spiritual seekers into either the passionate lover (or the lover of Love) or the lover of knowledge—‘types’ which correspond to the two main forms of God-ward love. Yet as we shall see, Dante reveals the perversions of the ‘seraphic’ and ‘cherubic’ types as well, specifically in the Inferno and through the characters of Francesca and Ulysses.

Turning first to Francesca, we find the ‘heart’ of her damnation in these lines:

Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende,
prese costui de la bella persona
che mi fu tolta, a ‘l modo ancor m’offende

Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona,
mi prese del costui piacer sì forte
che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona.

Amor condusse noi ad una morte. (Inferno V, ll.100-6)

Barolini concurs with Martinez/Durling and other commentators when he writes how ‘these verses weave a plot without a human agency’, where the density of the language ‘creates a sense of tightly compacted ineluctability, of a destiny that cannot be escaped.’ Instead of accepting personal responsibility, Francesca makes Amore the active agent whose coercive action (emphasized by the forceful verbs ‘prese’ and ‘condusse’) and two ‘ineluctable laws’ (l.100, l.104) become the true causes of the fatal passion. Her adaptation of Guinizelli’s canzone: ‘Al cor gentil ripara sempre amore’ in l.100, is also an attempt to use an ‘authority’ to prove how the love between she and Paolo is inevitable. This is of course misguided, for the adulterous Francesca clearly fail to appreciate the Dolce Stil Nuovo understanding of the noble heart as one whose ‘innate resources’ cause spiritual love to inevitably arise. Instead she probably misunderstood it to mean that passion is the ‘destiny of every heart which is noble in this word’s literal sense, that is, made such by the gentility of its blood’. Thus she does not truly speak the language of the Dolce Stil Nuovo, but that of ‘the tradition of love fiction (prose di romanzi) [Purgatorio XXVI, l.118] in the langue d’oïl’—the genre that contains Lancelot du Lac, the ‘Galeotto’ (Inferno V, l.137) of the whole affair.

In Dante’s judgment, Francesca’s attribution of responsibility to the god of courtly romance, the all-powerful Love, is a delusion and serves as no real excuse, even though her beliefs are also that of Dante in his early work, e.g. (Rime 111, ll.9-11): ‘Però nel cerchio de la sua palestra/ liber arbitrio già mai non fu franco,/ si che consiglio invan vi si balestra’. This is probably why the Pilgrim identifies so much with the couple’s plight that he fainted (Inferno V, ll.141-2). The view of the mature Dante is found in (Monarchia 1.12.204), where judgment stands between apprehension and desire, and is in no way affected by it, but precedes and guides it. This is elaborated in his earlier work, the Purgatorio. As Virgil states, the mind (L’animo) ‘ch’è creato ad amar presto’ is easily roused into action by ‘piacere’ (Purgatorio XVIII, l.19). Thus when the faculty of apprehension presents an image (intenzione) of a pleasing object to the mind, it causes the mind to first turn (volger), and then to incline (piega) towards the object through its image (l.24-5). This inclination is love (l.26), and that leads to the ‘moto spiritale’ of ‘disire’ which makes the mind ‘non posa / fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire’ (l.31-3). Virgil also adds that this process is not involuntary, for even if

che di necessitate
surga ogne amor che dentro a voi s’accende,
di ritenerlo è in voi la podestate. (Purgatorio XVIII, ll.70-2)

This power and ‘nobile virtù’ (Purgatorio XVIII, l. 73) is free will (‘libero arbitrio’ (Purgatorio XVIII, l. 74), ‘la volontà la libertate’ (Paradiso V, l.22)). This is a ‘joint faculty of the practical reason and the will’ that ‘consiglia/ e de l’assenso de’ tener la soglia’ (Purgatorio XVIII, ll.62-3) with regards to apprehended objects; a process that allows or stops the inclination of love from becoming the movement of desire through the judgment of the intellect and the corresponding choice of the will. This faculty should ideally make sure that every elected love (amor ‘d’animo’ (Purgatorio XVII, ll.93)) inclines us successively to the means necessary for the fulfillment of man’s ‘primi appetibili l’affetto’ (Purgatorio XVIII, l.57-9) --meaning his natural love and prima voglia (l.59) for the good in general and the particular good of each human faculty (Summa Theologica. I-II, q.10, a.i).

This natural love finds its fulfillment only in the Infinite Good, and as such it is not different from man’s instinct to return to God:

ma vostra vita sanza mezzo spira
la soma beninanza, e la innamora
di sé sì che poi sempre la disira.’ (Paradiso vii, ll.142-4)

This passage (similar to (Convivio iv, xxviii, ll.2-3)) highlights how man loves God, because the rational soul that makes him human is ‘an immediate effect’, and therefore an image of God, and thus of the divine ‘love whose object is God Himself’. Also, since man has been ‘enamored of God’ at the birth of his soul, this element of ‘nostalgia, the truly platonic note in love speculation’ makes God the true end of human love. It is to Him that souls should soar, propelled by natural love, ‘la virtù di quella corda/ che ciò che scocca drizza in segno lieto.’ (Paradiso I, ll.125-6). Man’s love thus determines whether he plays his part in God’s plan, for natural love is found in all, and is the God-given inclination of all things to achieve their special type of perfection and the ‘place in the universe…that is proper or ‘natural’ to them’:

Ne l’ordine ch’io dico accline
tutte nature, per diverse sorti,
più al principio loro e men vicine

onde si muovono a diversi porti
per lo gran mar de l’essere, e ciascuna
con istinto a lei dato che la porti. (Paradiso I, ll.109-114)

Love is the teleological moving force of the Chain of Being, and it is by loving in accordance with the divine will that creatures can voyage to their destined porti; an act that allows cosmic ‘ordine’ (Paradiso I, l.104, l.109) to manifest. This ‘è forma/ che l’universo a Dio fa simigliante’ (Paradiso I, l.105) and that which allows rational beings to see:

l’orma
de l’etterno valore, il qual è fine
al quale è fatta la toccata norma. (Paradiso I, ll.106-8)

While non-rational creatures always follow natural love, rational creatures must choose to love correctly. As such the righteousness of each human love is evaluated in relation to his primal love for God, and it is morally good so far as it conforms to it. Thus ‘amor sementa in voi d’ogne virtute / e d’ogne operazion che merta pene.’ (Purgatorio XVII, ll.107-8), while free will, and its discriminative aspect in particular, is

l’principio là onde si piglia
ragion di meritare in voi, secondo
che buoni e rei amori accoglie e viglia. (Purgatorio XVIII, ll.61-66)

For Dante, love is the saving force capable of bringing man to God, and yet also the impulse that can lead to eternal death.

The latter applies to Francesca and Paolo not because of their love per se (for it is the natural response to beauty), but because they have freely chosen to let it develop into a pursuit of ‘falso piacere’ over the course of abstinence dictated by their ‘impeto primo’ (Paradiso I, ll.134-5). Their choice of ‘l’amor torto’ (Paradiso XXVI, l.62) is thus one in which ‘the appetibile bonum’ is put before the true Good, a commitment that ‘defines itself as the opposite of right love, for it has a particular object and its end is active, finite, centred in self.’ Unlike in the romances, the intensity of their love does not ‘redeem’, and the ‘riso’ (Inferno V, l.133) that Lancelot kisses degenerates to become the fleshy ‘bocca’ (Inferno V, l.136) of Francesca. This is the ‘descent from literature to life, from fiction to reality, from romanticism to realism; or more simply, from sentimental fancy to moral truth.’ Their damnation highlights the futility of the literary cult of love, and implicitly rejects Dante’s early beliefs. Or as Smith succinctly puts it: ‘Dante’s tacit irony is to make the bliss of the Roman de la Rose the hell of his Divina Commedia.’

Yet if Francesca and Paolo show the perversion of the ‘seraphic’ lover, then Ulysses represents the perversion of its ‘cherubic’ counterpart:

O frati’, dissi, ‘che per cento milia
perigli siete giunti a l’occidente,
a questa tanto picciola vigilia

d’i nostri sensi ch’è del rimanente
non vogliate negar l’esperïenza,
di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente.

Considerate la vostra semenza:
fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza. (Inferno XXVI, ll.112-120)

This orazion picciola (l.122) reveals the ambiguity of Dante’s Ulysses. On one hand, it ‘is written in language that in tone and cadence is similar to that of all the great maxims of moral conduct in the poem’ and it is a powerful speech that ‘rightly or wrongly’ has ‘moved generations of readers’. Cicero’s praise in the De Finibus of Ulysses’ ‘innatus cognitionis amor et scientiae’, or Horace’s ‘quid virtus et quid sapientia posit/ utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulixen’ among others, also informed Dante’s picture of Ulysses setting out on his quest for virtue and knowledge; endowing it with the awesome spirit of the classical world and ‘man in his natural dignity’. This has led the ‘pro-Ulysses group’, led by Fubini, to maintain that ‘Dante feels only admiration for the folle volo, the desire for knowledge it represents, and the oration that justifies it.’ But these critics pay too little attention to Ulysses’ damnation. Also there is no one else in Inferno whose speeches are unrelated to their damnation, and it is unlikely that Ulysses should be the only exception.

Then there is a less united group that emphasizes Ulysses’ sinfulness and seeks to investigate the cause for his damnation, whether attributing it to his fraudulent counsel or pinpointing the voyage as the main sin. Given that Ulysses has been ‘a figure of sapientia’ since late antiquity (as could be seen by the words of Horace and Cicero), and that St. Augustine himself used Ulysses’ voyage as ‘a paradigm for the vita philosophica’ , his voyage to gain ‘l’esperïenza’ of the ‘mondo sanza gente’ could thus possibly represent the attempt to know God’s mysteries through personal intellectual efforts. Nardi therefore argues that ‘Ulisse invece personifica in sè la ragione umana insofferente di limiti e ribelle al decreto divino che interdiceva all’uomo di mettersi sulla via che conduce al legno della vita.’ As such, the Ulyssean ‘ardore’ (Inferno XXVI, l.97) for knowledge is clearly a l’amor torto, because the folle volo (Inferno XXVI, l.125) that follows flaunts the ‘decreto divino’ (as symbolized by the pillars of Hercules (Inferno XXVI, l.108)), and like Francesca’s affair, sets the fulfillment of personal piacere over the loving obedience to God. There is also a parallel between Adam and Ulysses in that both have hubristically trespass the ordained limits of their knowledge: ‘Nell follia d’Ulisse e dei suoi compagni v’è tutto l’orgoglio umano che spines Adamo ed Eva al trapassar del segno [Paradiso, XXVI, l.117] gustando il frutto della scienza del bene e del male, per esser simili a Dio.’ Thus Ulysses represents those who instead of sincerely loving God and Truth, strive arrogantly to be His equal through the acquisition of universal knowledge. Nardi compares this endeavor to Lucifer’s rebellion, and it clearly constitutes an excessive love of self.

Interestingly, Nardi and others have pointed out the Ulyssean ‘passion for knowledge’ and ‘Averroistically-inspired reason’ in Dante’s philosophical work, Il Convivio. Lansing however cautions that ‘in the Convivio Dante never explicitly sets reason in opposition to faith or philosophy against theology. His goal…is forever one of synthesis, of bringing together, or at least correlating, diverse systems of thought.’ Yet he also admits that the Convivo is peculiar in being the only work of Dante kept under ‘house arrest’. He further notes the enthusiasm in the Convivo’s language, like when Dante alludes to the idea of the Church as the Bride of Christ, and promotes Philosophy ‘as sponsa Dei’:

‘Oh nobilissimo ed eccellentissimo cuore che ne la sposa de lo Imperadore del cielo s’intende, e non solamente sposa, ma suora e figlia dilettissima!’ (Convivo III.xii.13).

Most importantly, Lansing writes how the Convivio reveals a story where the donna gentile of the Vita Nuova, ‘now baptized Lady Philosophy’ emerges ‘victorious over Beatrice’, a victory celebrated in ‘Voi, che n’tendendo il terzo ciel movete’ and also in (Convivo II.ii.3-4; Convivo I.xii).

It is in this light that we can interpret the Siren dream of Purgatorio XIX. The dream follows the lesson of love by Virgil, and the Pilgrim’s reaction shows the natural human response to ‘piacere’ (l.21), while the action of the holy lady indicates the need for discrimination between objects of love. The erotic quality probably means that the piacere in question refers to sensual pleasures (like the case of Francesca). Yet judging by Ulysses’ cognitionis amor et scientiae, Cicero’s influential interpretation of the Siren episode in the Odyssey as Odysseus’ temptation of knowledge and the Siren’s claim that ‘Io volsi Ulisse del suo cammin vago /al canto mio’ (ll.22-3), the ‘piacere’ should include ‘intellectual temptations’ as well. Thus Dante’s Siren is possibly an emblem of ‘philosophical pride or as the temptation of false knowledge’, a knowledge which lacks the aid of revelation, and handicaps the finding of Truth. And it is possible that allegorically, Beatrice’s words about the Pilgrim’s enthrallment to a ‘pargoletta’ (l.59), and his failures to resist after ‘udendo de Sirene’ (Purgatorio XXXI, l.45), record Dante’s past idolatry of Lady Philosophy and his Ulyssean pursuit of ‘virtute e conoscenza’ in the Convivio.

The dream in (Purgatorio XIX) then dramatizes how Dante/pilgrim (the poet and character) was converted with the aid of Virgil and Beatrice —incidentally the same movement of grace that saved the Pilgrim from the ‘selva oscura’ of (Inferno I, l.1). This highlights the possibility that the Dante/pilgrim’s loss of the straight way in the first Canto is the straying that the Siren dream dramatizes, and which Beatrice later rebukes in (Purgatorio XXX). Indeed, Beatrice states that Dante/pilgrim, by giving himself to another (Purgatorio XXX, l.126), was brought so low that the only way to save him was to ‘mostrargli le perdue gentil’ (l.138)—again recalling the Inferno. Thus the shipwreck and siren-diversions of Ulysses can stand for Dante/pilgrim’s ‘disastrous prelude to the preparation of grace’ and ‘preconversion self’ where he gives an excessive importance to philosophy and intellect. Dante/pilgrim’s conversion then includes the all-important process where he becomes a ‘new Ulysses’ —a new creation who recognizes that Reason can lead only towards a finite intellectual understanding of God and world.

So while the intellect is needed to discriminate between good and evil loves, it is not enough by itself to reach the lowest reaches of the supernatural world (Mount Purgatory). It is Virgil who exemplifies the true attitude. While he like Ulysses ‘personifica la ragione umana tendente alla sua totale esplicazione’, he wisely recognizes its limits and humbly commends the Pilgrim to the superior truth of Revelation from Beatrice:

Quanto ragion qui vede
dir ti poss’io; da indi in là t’aspetta
pur a Beatrice, ch’è opra di fede. (Purgatorio XVIII, ll.46-8)

Reason must give way to faith with regards to the mysteries of God:

State contenti, umana gente, al quia;
chè, se potuto aveste veder tutto,
mestier non era parturir Maria; (Purgatorio III, ll.37-9)


Instead of depending on personal resources, the New Ulysses depends on grace and humble faith to reach God. Contrast Ulysses’ folle volo with how the Angel scorn to use ‘argomenti umani’ and ‘remo non vuol, né altro velo/ che l’ali sue, tra liti sì lontani (Purgatory, II, ll.31-3). Or the voyage metaphor in (Paradiso II, ll.8-9) where the Pilgrim ‘no longer trusts to himself, and he does not lead, but allows himself to be led’:

Minerva spira, e conducemi Appollo,
e nove Muse mi dimostran l’Orse

Yet faith and dependence does not imply a fideistic satisfaction with ignorance. Instead those doubts that spring up at the ‘piè del vero’ (l.131) serve as the natural force which spur ‘noi di collo in collo’ (l.132) till one reaches the Truth ‘di fuor dal qual nessun vero si spazia.’ (l.126). The ardore of Ulysses for knowledge are certainly required for the flight to God, but it must be directed firmly at the Highest Truth, and the wings and oars should be humility and a faithful openness—those attributes that enable the Pilgrim to be led by Beatrice and the other channels of Divine Light.

God is Light and Truth, revealer and possessor of all knowledge, but He is also the divine beloved, the lover and the ardore of infinite love:

O luce etterna che sola in te sidi,
sola t’intendi, e da te intelletta
e intendente te ami e arridi! (Paradiso XXXIII, ll.124-6)

Thus the cherubic love for Truth is ultimately also the seraphic passion for Beauty and Love. The seeker of wisdom and the lover are seekers of the same Lord, just as both St Dominic and St Francis works for ‘un fine’ (Paradiso XI, l.42): the service of Christ and his Body on earth. The Pilgrim’s quest is not just a transfigured Ulyssean voyage, but also the fulfillment of the passion of Francesca and Paolo in the transcendent eros of Beatrice and Dante. No longer is love turned lustfully towards the ‘sign’, the external beauty per se, but towards:

l’essenza ov’ è tanto avvantaggio,
che ciascun ben che fuor di lei si trova
altro non è ch’un lume di suo raggio. (Paradiso XXVI, ll.31-3)

Thus ‘such intelligible beauties’ as Dante perceives in Beatrice are the strongest ‘morsi/ che far lo cor volgere a Dio’ (Paradiso XXVI, l.55-6). Dante hence insists from the very start on the ‘intelletto d’amore’ (Vita Nuova xix and Purgatorio XXIV, l.51), and Beatrice is she ‘che ’ mparadisa la mia mente’ (Paradiso. XXVIII, l.3). And whether it is the increasing knowledge revealed to him by the blessed souls, or the intensifying beauty and goodness that shows forth in the raggio of Beatrice’s eyes (Paradiso XXVIII, ll.11-12 etc.), both are means through which God woos the soul. The equivalence is clearer at the allegorical level where Beatrice is a figure for Christ, revelation, theology and grace. Her beauty and loveliness then is the glory and attraction of Truth, and vice versa. Thus whether it is in response to knowledge or the sight of the beloved, love must increase:

chè ‘l bene, in quanto ben, come s’intende,
così accende amore, e tanto maggio
quanto più di bontate in sé comprende. (Paradiso XXVI, ll.28-30)

Dante’s ideal is similar to the ‘spiral of grace described by St Augustine, knowledge increasing love and love intensifying the desire to understand’. This culminates when his

vista, venendo sincera,
e più e più intrava per lo raggio
de l’alta luce che da sè è vera. (Paradiso, XXXIII, ll.49-54)

With his intellect raised by amorous grace to become intuitive sight, he is finally ready for the vision of the primal Truth:

Nel suo profondo vidi che s’interna,
legato con amore in un volume,
ciò che per l’universo si squaderna:

sustanza e accidenti e lor costume
quasi conflati insieme, per tal modo
che ciò ch’I dico è un semplice lume. (Paradiso XXXIII, ll.85-90)

And this oneness with Reality is also his fusion with ‘l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.’ (l.145). Thus only at the end of the Commedia is revealed the culmination of the seraphic and cherubic urges behind the damnation of Francesca/Paolo and Ulysses—unveiling their full tragic grandeur in the glory of Dante’s deificiatio.

To conclude, in Dante’s conception, all things are moved by love, and in rational creatures, it is their responsibility to love in accordance with their natural urge towards God. Those who do so are often divided into two types of seekers who emphasize either the love of wisdom or the love of Love--as typified by the cherubim and seraphim, the Dominican and the Franciscan. Francesca and Ulysses on the other hand represent the perverted versions of these ideals. Francesca and Paolo freely choose to misdirect their love towards sensual pleasure instead of the summa bonum, swerving fatally from their primal impulse. They thus represent the inverse type of the spiritual lover. Ulysses on the other hand can be seen as an allegorical figure of the philosophical seeker, perhaps even Dante himself, who pursues knowledge with great ardore, but is handicapped by hubristic pride and an indifference to God’s will. The Ulyssean voyage thus represents more the love for self than the love for Truth. Dante/Pilgrim on the other hand is a New Ulysses whose sight is fixed on God, and who depends on grace and humble faith for his journey. Inseparable from this, he and Beatrice also transfigure the romance of Francesca and Paolo into a divine passion that looks beyond the sign to ultimate Love—revealing Dante’s highest ideal as the fusion of seraphic and cherubic impulses. It is thus only in the Paradiso, when we see how Ulysses and Francesca have precisely those elements that propel the flight to God, that we appreciate the full tragic waste and significance of their damnation.




























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