CVSP 205: DANTE Poetry and Eternity DAVID CURRELL

CVSP 205: DANTE

Poetryand

Eternity

DAVID CURRELL

THE END

Contents

• Beginnings, Middles

• Christianity (theology) and Antiquity (poetry)

• The Divine Comedy: Structure and Narrative

• Medieval reading practices

• Dante and Florence: politics and exile

Beginnings, Middles

• “Midway along the journey of our life…”

Beginnings, Middles


• Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

Beginnings, Middles



• Commencement of the poem’s narrative 1300 (precisely on eve of Good Friday)

Beginnings, Middles



• Commencement of the poem’s narrative 1300 (precisely on eve of Good Friday)

• “Middle Ages”

CLASSICAL CHRISTIAN

CLASSICAL CHRISTIANReason

(philosophy)

Aristotle

Virgil, Aeneid (poetry)

“Greater honor still they deigned to grant me:they welcomed me as one of their own group,so that I numbered sixth among such minds”

(Inferno IV.100-2)

City-state (Florence)

VIRGIL as guide

CLASSICAL CHRISTIANReason

(philosophy)

Aristotle

Virgil, Aeneid (poetry)

“Greater honor still they deigned to grant me:they welcomed me as one of their own group,so that I numbered sixth among such minds”

(Inferno IV.100-2)

City-state (Florence)

VIRGIL as guide

Faith (theology)

St. Augustine (Confessions, City of God)

St. Thomas Aquinas

City of God (as King)

(“Men, therefore, needed the restraint of laws,needed a ruler able to at leastdiscern the towers of the True city.”

(Purgatorio XVI.94-6)

BEATRICE as guide

CLASSICAL CHRISTIAN

“Io non Enëa, io non Paulo sono”

“I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul” (Inferno II.32)

Familiar Faces (?)

Familiar Faces (?)

Familiar Faces (?)‘Brothers,’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousandperils have made your way to reach the West,during this so brief vigil of our senses

that is still reserved for us, do not denyyourself experience of what there is beyond,behind the sun, in the world they call unpeopled.

Consider where you came from: you are Greeks!You were not born to live like mindless brutesbut to follow paths of excellence and knowledge.’ (Inf. XXVI.112-20)

Dante’s Translators

STRUCTURE NARRATIVE

STRUCTURE NARRATIVE

3 spaces (hell, purgatory, heaven)

further subdivisions:

• circles (hell)• terraces (purgatory)• spheres (heaven)

united by: divine love

Dante the Poet

STRUCTURE NARRATIVE

3 spaces (hell, purgatory, heaven)


• circles (hell)• terraces (purgatory)• spheres (heaven)

united by: divine love

Dante the Poet

3 canticles (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso)


• cantos (33 per canticle)• tercets• terza rima

united by: journey

Dante the Pilgrim

Cosmos

Inferno

Purgatorio

Paradiso

CIRCLES

TERRACES

SPHERES

Purgatory

Terraces: 7 “Capital Vices” purged

Shoreline (Arrival)

Entry: Dante receives 7 “P”s

First valley (Waiting)

LUSTGLUTTONY

GREEDSLOTH

WRATH

ENVY

PRIDE

PurgatoryNeither Creator nor his creatures ever,my son, lacked love. There are, as you well know,two kinds: the natural love, the rational.

Natural love may never be at fault;the other may: by choosing the wrong goal,by insufficient or excessive zeal.

While it is fixed on the Eternal Good,and observes temperance loving worldly goods,it cannot be the cause of sinful joys;

but when it turns toward evil or pursuessome good with not enough or too much zeal—the creature turns on his Creator then.

(Purgatorio XVII.91-102)

LUSTGLUTTONY

GREED

SLOTH

WRATHENVY

PRIDE

TOO MUCH

NOT ENOUGH

TURNEDTOWARDEVIL

Inferno I.1-9 (Musa trans.)

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vitami ritrovai per una selva oscuraché la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa duraesta selva selvaggia e aspra e forteche nel pensier rinova la paura!

Tant'è amara che poco è più morte;ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,dirò de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.

Midway along the journey of our lifeI woke to find myself in a dark woodfor I had wandered off from the straight path.

How hard it is to tell what it was like,this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn(the thought of it brings back all my old fears),

a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer.But if I would show the good that came of itI must talk about things other than the good.

Inferno I.1-9 (Palma trans.)




Midway through the journey of our life, I foundmyself in a dark wood, for I had strayedfrom the straight pathway to this tangled ground.

How hard it is to tell of, overlaidwith harsh and savage growth, so wild and rawthe thought of it still makes me feel afraid.

Death scarce could be more bitter. But to drawthe lessons of the good that came my way,I will describe the other things I saw.

Inferno I.1-9 (Palma trans.)




Midway through the journey of our life, I foundmyself in a dark wood, for I had strayedfrom the straight pathway to this tangled ground.

How hard it is to tell of, overlaidwith harsh and savage growth, so wild and rawthe thought of it still makes me feel afraid.

Death scarce could be more bitter. But to drawthe lessons of the good that came my way,I will describe the other things I saw.

Florence

Modern Italy

Medieval Tuscany

Florence

To me, however, the whole world is a homeland, like the sea to fish—though I drank from the Arno before cutting my teeth, and love Florence so much that, because I loved her, I suffer exile unjustly—and I will weight the balance of my judgement more with reason than with sentiment.

(De vulgari eloquentia I.vi)Was it not enough to correct you that, banished from the light for your first transgression, you should live in exile from the delights of your homeland (I.vii)

FlorenceBe joyful, Florence, since you are so greatthat your outstretched wings beat over land and sea,and your name is spread throughout the realm of Hell!

I was ashamed to find among the thievesfive of your most eminent citizens,a fact which does you very little honor

But if early morning dreams have any truth,you will have the fate, in not too long a time,that Prato and the others crave for you.

And were this the day, it would not be too soon!Would it had come to pass, since pass it must!The longer the delay, the more my grief. (Inferno XXVI.1-12)

Letter to Can Grande

“For the first sense is that which is contained in the letter, while there is another which is contained in what is signified by the letter. The first is called literal, while the second is called allegorical, or moral or anagogic. And in order to make this manner of treatment clear, it can be applied to the following verses: ‘When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people, Judea was made his sanctuary, Israel his dominion’ [Psalm 114:1-2]. Now if we look at the letter alone, what is signified to us is the departure of the sons of Israel from Egypt during the time of Moses; if at the allegory, what is signified to us is our redemption through Christ [typology]; if at the moral sense, what is signified to us is the conversion of the soul from the sorrow and misery of sin to the state of grace; if at the anagogic, what is signified to us is the departure of the sanctified soul from bondage to the corruption of this world into the freedom of eternal glory.”

Exodus in Purgatorio

William Blake Salvadore Dali


and the celestial pilot stood asternwith blessedness inscribed upon his face,More than a hundred souls were in his ship:

In exitu Israël de Aegypto,they all were singing with a single voice,chanting it verse by verse until the end.

(Purgatorio II.43-48)

(Virgil and Dante on the shore at the foot of Mt. Purgatory)

Purgatorio II: quiz

Three times I clasped my hands around his form,as many times they came back to my breast


(The musician Casella recognizes Dante after disembarking)

Purgatorio II: quiz

Three times I clasped my hands around his form,as many times they came back to my breast


‘So she spoke, but I, pondering it in my heart, yet wishedto take the soul of my dead mother in my arms. Three timesI started toward her, and my heart was urgent to hold her,and three times she fluttered out of my hands like a shadowor a dream, and the sorrow sharpened at the heart within me

(Odyssey 11.204-8)

(The musician Casella recognizes Dante after disembarking)


Two at the end were shouting “All of thosefor whom the Red Sea’s waters opened widewere dead before the Jordan saw their heirs;

and those who found the task too difficultto keep on striving with Anchises’ son,give themselves up to an inglorious life.”

(Purgatorio XVIII.133-38)

(Souls on terrace of the slothful call out to Dante and Virgil)

Purgatorio XVI: Marco on free will

The spheres initiate your tendenceies:not all of them—but even if they did,you have the light that shows you right from wrong,

and your Free Will, which, though it may grow faintin its first struggles with the heavens, can stillsurmount all obstacles if nurtured well.

You are free subjects of a greater power,a nobler nature that creates your mind,and over this the spheres have no control. (73-81)

Purgatorio XVI: Marco on free will

Purgatorio XVI: allegory

On Rome, that brought the world to know the good,once shone two suns that lighted up two ways:the road of this world and the road of God.

The one sun has put out the other’s light;the sword is now one with the crook—and fusedtogether thus, must bring about misrule,

since joined, now neither fears the other one. (106-112)

THE END

Documents

CVSP 205: DANTE Poetry and Eternity DAVID CURRELL