‘The Call of the Beautiful: Augustine and the Object of Desire in Purgatorio X,’ Desire in Dante and the Middle Ages, eds., M. Gragnolati, E. Lombardi, F. Southerden and T. Kay (Legenda, 2012), pp. 86-100 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Seeing and narrating: on the poetic of image and word in Purgatorio XVII1
Canto XVII of Purgatorio is the 51 st of the 100 cantos of the Commedia and the middle of the three central ones. Cantos XVI, XVII and XVIII are rightly considered to be central from one very important aspect – man's free will. It is here that Dante the protagonist learns the lesson on the dialectics of the instinctive love of man for God (dilectio naturalis), which cannot err, and his free will based on reason (dilectio intellectualis),2 which lets him choose freely which goods to love and therefore also choose wrongly, either because he chooses the wrong object or because his mode of love is out of balance and is too strong or too weak. The teaching of Virgil on the sins of love takes place on the top of the stairs to the fourth circle of Purgatory, or in fact when the poets have already set foot inside the fourth circle),3 after they have left the circle of the iracondi, who cannot see anything because of the dense and bitter smoke. The nature of the purifying punishment of those whose wrath has dimmed their reason in lifetime, leaving them unable to reason and choose correctly, suggests that seeing and right or wrong judgement are closely related.
Too often, partly because of the tradition of the lecturae Dantis, partly because of the monopolising attention on the figure of Matelda, the griffin or the Five Hundred Ten and Five, when thinking of the last six canti of Purgatorio one cannot help but concentrating on single allegorical episodes and problematic textual passages. Not seldom, shedding light on specific verses results in details being over-exposed against a blurred background, compromising thus the overall meaning of the whole picture. In its essence, it is safe to say, an Eden cannot be the place of unresolved mysteries and enigmas. It rather is, as it is supposed to be according to the whole Latin and Arabic medieval tradition, a place of beauty and delight, the "beatitudo [...] huius vite, que per terrestrem paradisum figuratur" (Mon. III, xvi, 7). Like a mise en abyme of Dante's quest, the last six canti of Purgatory manifest the comic happy ending of a journey where the pellegrino d'amore accomplishes his long awaited return to Beatrice, the place where he gains certainty that the political and religious corruption of Rome will soon end, the place where he, after long years of wandering in sin, is made certain of his final salvation. What joy, what pleasure could be greater for the pilgrim than listening his Beatrice proclaim: "sarai meco sanza fine cive / di quella Roma onde Cristo è romano"? Like when in the middle of the heraldic crest a little portion contains the whole picture, so here, in the middle of the poem, we are presented with the same initial sense of disorientation given before by the dark, now by the divine forest; we have Virgil and Beatrice, personal biography and universal history, political message and anagogic mission of redemption, the starting point of the Humankind and the arrival of the purgatorial journey, the eternal primavera and the infernal Proserpina, the Classic Parnassus and the Biblical garden, the Latin of Virgil and the Latin of the Psalms, the poetry of Stilnovo and the cryptic style of prophetism, the sweet Matelda and the
Earthly Paradise: Dante's Initiatory Rite of Passage
Quaderni di Studi Indomediterranei 10, 2017
Despite reaching the summit of Purgatory, Dante is not quite ready for Paradise yet. Through a long sequence of seven cantos that begins in fire and ends in water, Dante the author now takes us through what, in the circumscribed space of pre-lapsarian earthly Paradise, needs to be shown, said and staged for his self as wayfarer to be rifatto sì come piante novelle / rinovellate di novella fronda (“made as new trees are / renewed of new foliage”), so that access to the stars be granted him. If the entirety of the Commedia can be understood as the poetic expression of a vision that finds its roots in love and its end in transformative, prophetic revelation, then the Earthly Paradise sequence goes right to the heart of the mystery that seals Dante’s poem. This paper approaches some of the complexities of that mysterial rite of passage.
The Canticle of the Creatures as Hypotext behind Dante's Pater Noster
Rocznik Filozoficzny Ignatianum The Ignatianum Philosophical Yearbook, 2020
The article analyses Dante's explanatory paraphrase and exegesis of the Lord's Prayer, which opens the eleventh canto (v. 1-24) of Purgatory and is the only prayer fully recited in the entire Comedy, a devotional practice in line with the Franciscan prescription to recite it in the sixth hour of the Divine Office when Christ died on the cross. The prayer is reported by the poet on the first terrace of Purgatory, where the proud and vainglorious must learn the virtue of humility, and therefore it symbolizes the perfect reciprocity between man and Godhead. Dante combines and amplifies the two complementary Latin versions of the Lord's Prayer from Matthew 6: 9-13 and Luke 11: 2-4. The two synoptic texts are supplemented by the Gospel of John, from which Dante takes the concept of celestial bread (manna) - the flesh and the blood of Christ - which nourishes, liberates and sanctifies Christians. Apart from the Bible, Dante also draws upon the Augustinian and Tomistic traditions. However, the main hypotext behind the prayer, which is neither cited nor acknowledged in any explicit form in the Comedy, is the Franciscan Laudes creaturarum ("Canticle of the Creatures"), also known as the Canticle of the Brother Sun. Written in vernacular by St. Francis himself, who is also the author of the Expositio in Pater noster, the Canticle was still recited and sung together with the Lord’s Prayer in the Franciscan communities in Dante’s time. Moreover, following the parallel readings popular nowadays in Dante studies, the author argues that Purgatorio 11 may be elucidated in the context of Paradiso 11, which is the Franciscan canto par excellence, and taken together they both offset cantos 10, 11, 12 of Inferno, which are based on the sin of pride (superbia). The denunciation of pride in and around canto 11 of Inferno alludes to humility – the remedy of such pride in Purgatory 11, which in turn prepares the reader for the encounter with St. Francis – the paragon of humility – in Paradiso 11. The author concludes that the Dantean paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer is no less than an elaborate exegesis and homage to Christ and His teachings, something which is encompassed in a nutshell in the Sermon on the Mount.
On the precipice of the First Circle of Hell, Dante the narrator describes his arrival synesthetically: “io venni al loco d'ogne luce muto.” The “silence” of the light is contrasted in the two verses immediately following by the incongruity of the “bellowing” of the sea, a mixed, animalesque metaphor that, Boccaccio notes in his Esposizioni, “è proprio de’ buoi.” According to the Florentine Ottimo Comento, Dante’s description stems from “l’oscurità del luogo, figura la cechitade del loro intelletto; chè come qui è intenebrato lo lume della ragione in sè, così quivi sentono privamento d'ogni luce.” In his late-fourteenth-century commentary, Neapolitan Guglielmo Maramauro writes the following: “Qui D. descrive como esso venne a questo loco MUTO, cioè rimoto d'ogni luce. E qui parla improprie, chè la muteza è solo atribuita a l'omo che non parla. Così questo loco è muto de luce, cioè privato d'ogni luce. E poriase mover un dubio: perchè D. fo con V. nel Limbo «luminoso etc.» e qui dice «I' venni in loco etc.?’” The poetic necessity of convenientia (appropriateness) animates much of Dante’s poetry, but here I will study his use of “improper” rhetoric, for both Boccaccio (“impropriamente”; “proprio de’ buoi”) and Maramauro (“parla improprie”) highlight the incongruity of Dante’s poetics and the seemingly out-of-place metaphors among the upside-down world of Inferno. This talk will explore the strategic use of synesthesia and other “inappropriate,” disordered, poetic instances as fundamental to Dante’s upside-down depiction of Hell, where everything from language to politics to music lacks order. In particular, it will consider the reception of this rhetorical trope– the obverse of appropriateness or that which is “proper”–in some of the earliest commentaries on the poem, as well as the literary legacy of Dante’s infernal silences.
United with the Soul Separated from the Organs: Dante and Aquinas (Purgatorio, Canto XXV. 61–66)
Hungarian Philosophical Review, 2021
As is well known, Bruno Nardi made serious efforts to show that Dante deviated the most from Aquinas regarding the origin of the intellective soul. In this paper, I have no intention of measuring the imaginary distance of Dante from Aquinas or from anyone else. My aim is rather to point out that the way Aquinas and Dante represent the error of Averroes displays a structural isomorphy, which is specific enough to let us conclude that in this crucial respect Dante – directly or through intermediaries – followed Aquinas.