From the Tree to the Labyrinth (26 page)

The controversy surrounding this
Epistola
is well known, whether, that is, it is the work of Dante or not, but as far as our problem is concerned, the discussion is irrelevant: even if the
Epistola
had not been written by Dante it would nonetheless reflect a medieval idea that deserves our attention.

On the other hand, in the
Convivio
Dante positions himself no differently. It is true that the second treatise, which concerns allegory, recognizes that “the theologians take this sense differently from the poets,” but immediately afterward the author affirms that it is his intention to interpret the allegorical mode in the sense of the poets. And the sense of the poets is that by which allegory transmits, under the “cloak” of fable, “a truth hidden under a beautiful fiction. Thus Ovid says that Orpheus with his lyre made beasts tame, and trees and stones move towards himself; that is to say that the wise man by the instrument of his voice makes cruel hearts grow mild and humble, and those who have not the life of science and art move to his will” (Dante 1909: 73).

This would appear to be another expression of deference to the parabolic sense, such as we found in the case of the fables. But now let us see what Dante does, for instance, with the poem “Voi che ‘ntendendo il terzo ciel movete”)(“You who with your understanding move the third heaven”). He devotes chapters II–IX to explaining how it speaks
literally
of the angels and the heavens, with ample astronomical clarifications, and he devotes the following chapters to the allegorical explanation: “I say that by heaven I mean science and by heavens the sciences, because of three similarities the heavens have chiefly with the sciences.… For each moving heaven moves around its center, which, as to its movement, does not move, and so each science moves around its subject,” and so on, taking care in addition to remind us how the Gentle Lady of the
Vita nuova
represented Philosophy. And this is the allegorical sense, fairly well hidden, like that of Scripture.

In the
Convivio,
however, both the literal sense and the allegorical sense are presented as
intended
by the author, and we are basically still talking about an allegory
in verbis.
In
Epistola XIII,
on the other hand, something further is suggested.

Prima facie,
as an example of an allegorical reading the author interprets facts narrated by the Bible. It could be objected (see Pépin 1970: 81) that here Dante is citing not the
fact
of the Exodus but the
words
of the Psalmist who speaks of the Exodus—a difference Augustine was already conscious of (
Enarrationes in psalm
os CXIII). But a few lines before citing the psalm, Dante speaks of his own poem, and he uses an expression that some translations, more or less unconsciously, attenuate. For example, the Italian translation of the Latin
Epistola
by Frugoni and Brugnoli, in the Ricciardi edition of Dante’s minor works, makes Dante say “the first meaning is the one we have from the letter of the text, the other is the one we have from what was meant to be signified by the letter of the text” (“il primo significato è quello che si ha dalla lettera del testo, l’altro è quello che si ha da quel che si volle significare con la lettera del testo”) (
Epistole XIII,
7, 20). If this were the case, Dante would still be talking about a parabolic meaning, intended by the author. But the Latin text says: “primus sensus est qui habetur per litteram, alius est qui habetur per significata per litteram,” and here it seems that Dante means to speak of the things “that are signified by the letter” and therefore of an allegory
in factis,
and there is nothing in the Latin to justify that “was meant to be signified” (“che si volle significare”) which appears in the Italian version. If he had wished to speak of the intended sense, Dante would not have used the neuter plural
significata
but some other expression such as
sententiam.

How can we talk about an allegory
in factis
apropos of events narrated in the context of a secular poem, whose mode, Dante tells us in the course of the letter, is “poeticus” and “fictivus”?

There are two possible answers. If we assume that Dante was an orthodox Thomist, then we can only conclude that the
Epistola,
which clearly runs counter to Thomist principles, must not be authentic. In that case, however, it would be odd that all of Dante’s early commentators (Boccaccio, Benvenuto da Imola, Francesco da Buti, and so on) have followed the path indicated by the epistle. But the most economical hypothesis is that Dante, at least as far as his definition of poetry went, did not follow Thomas’s opinion.

Dante believes that poetry has philosophical dignity, not only his own poetry but that of all the great poets, and he does not accept the dismissal of the poet-theologians decreed by Aristotle in his
Metaphysics
(and commented upon approvingly by Saint Thomas). Sixth among so much wisdom (along with Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan—as he remarks in
Inferno,
IV, 48), he never ceased to read
both
the facts of mythology
and
the other works of the classical poets as if they were allegories
in factis,
a practice that, despite Thomas’s
caveat,
was cultivated in Bologna in the period during which Dante resided there (cf. Renucci 1958). These are the terms in which he speaks of poets in the
De vulgari eloquentia
(I, 2, 7), in the
Convivio,
and in many other places, and in the
Divine Comedy
he has Statius openly affirm that Virgil taught those who came after him “like someone who goes at night and carries his lamp behind him and does not help himself” (
Purgatorio
XXII, 67–69): the poetry of the pagan poet conveys additional meanings of which the author is unaware. And in his
Epistola VII
Dante offers an allegorical interpretation of a passage from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses,
seen as a prefigurement of the destiny of Florence.

For Dante, then, the poet continues Holy Scripture after his own fashion, just as in the past he had confirmed or even anticipated it. He believes in the reality of the myth he has produced as he tends to believe in the allegorical truth of the classical myths that he cites, along with historical personages assumed as
figurae
of the future, even mythological personages like Orpheus. And Cato of Utica himself will be judged worthy of signifying, along with Moses, Christ’s sacrifice (
Purgatorio
I, 70–75), even God himself (
Convivio
IV, 18, 15).

If this is the poet’s task, to figure by means of a poetic lie facts and events that function as signs, in imitation of the signs of the Bible, then we can understand why Dante would propound to Cangrande della Scala what has been defined by Curtius as his “self-exegesis” and by Pépin as his “self-allegoresis.” It is plausible that Dante thought of the secondary meaning of his poem as being close to the secondary meaning of the Bible, in the sense that at times the poet himself, when inspired, is not aware of all he is saying. For this reason he invokes divine inspiration (addressing Apollo) in the first canto of
Paradiso.
And if the poet is someone who “when Love inspires him notes, and in the same way as Love dictates within goes signifying” (
Purgatorio
XXII, 52–54), in order to interpret what he is not always aware that he has said, we may then use the same procedures reserved by Thomas for sacred history. If a poetic text were entirely literal-parabolic, it is not easy to see why the poet would clutter up various passages with enunciatory instances in which he invites the reader to decipher what is hidden “beneath the veil of the strange verses” (see, for example,
Inferno
IX, 61–63).

That said, we are bound to admit that, as far as his manner of interpreting metaphors goes, Dante does not break with the ideas of his time and in particular with those of Thomas. Let us take the
Vita nuova,
and confine ourselves to examining how Dante explains the sonnet “Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare.” The poem contains a number of metaphorical expressions, such as “benignamente d’umiltà vestuta,” “dolcezza al core,” not to mention the invitation, addressed to the soul, to sigh
(sospirare).
Well, Dante makes it immediately clear that “this sonnet is so easy to understand … that it has no need of any division.” And the same is true for the other compositions he comments on: he clarifies the general philosophical meaning, but it does not occur to him to explain the metaphors. If we turn to the
Convivio,
we find something very similar. Indeed, it is curious that, in explaining “Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona” (and I would argue that the verb “ragiona” [“reasons, speaks”] is already a first metaphorical expression, to say nothing of the fourth verse, in which the intellect “disvia” [“goes off track”]), not only does Dante fail to explain his metaphors, but, in order to explain the profound meaning of his poem, he employs liberal quantities of additional metaphors as if they were readily comprehensible: “Lo quale amore poi, trovando la mia disposta vita al suo ardore, a guisa di fuoco, di picciolo in grande fiamma s’accese; sì che non solamente vegghiando, ma dormendo, lume di costei nella mia testa era guidato” (“Finding my life disposed toward ardor, this love later blazed up like a fire, from a small to a great flame, so that not only while I was awake but also during my sleep the light of her penetrated my mind”), going on to speak of the “abitaculo del mio amore” (“the dwelling of my love”), its “multiplicato incendio” (“spreading fire”), and so on. Similarly, apropos of “Voi che ’ntendendo,” whereas the
canzone
itself, philosophical in its content, does not contain many metaphors, in his commentary the author piles on metaphors intended to explain the text but which he makes no effort to explain, such as “trapassamento,” “vedovata vita,” “disposarsi a quella immagine,” “molta battaglia intra lo pensiero,” “rocca della mia mente,” and so on. For Dante too, then, metaphors are
completely
part of the literal (intended) meaning and do not require any effort of interpretation.

We have only to observe what happens when in
Epistola XIII
to Cangrande della Scala he explains how the poet has attempted to render the ineffability of the divine vision. Dante obviously cites Pseudo-Dionysius, and, even if he had not done so, we would have known perfectly well where the theme of the unutterability of God came from. He further warns us that “multa namque per intellectum videmus quibus signa vocalia desunt: quod satis Plato insinuat in suis libris per assumptionem metaphorismorum” (“in fact with the aid of our intellect we see many things for which we lack verbal expressions: which is sufficiently demonstrated by Plato in his works when he makes use of metaphors”) (
Epistola XIII,
29). And, even using a very conservative definition of whether an expression is used metaphorically, in
Paradiso
33, 55–145, we can identify seventy-seven metaphors and similes—some of which are among the most striking in the poem. But throughout the
Epistola,
it does not even occur to Dante, who seems determined to explain everything, and brings in philosophy and theology to elucidate what it was he wanted to say, to comment upon these metaphors. When he cites the opening lines of the
Paradiso,
“The glory of him who moves all things / penetrates and shines throughout the universe,” he confines himself to saying that what he says is “bene dictum,” explaining that the glory of God “penetrat, quantum ad essentiam; resplendet, quantum ad esse” (“it penetrates as to its essence, it shines as to its being”)
Epistola XIII,
23). He says, in other words, what philosophical purposes these two metaphors are used for, but he feels no need to say in what way glory (in any case already a metaphorical expression) can be said to
penetrate
and
shine.

At this point it remains to be seen whether metaphor, having forfeited its cognitive function in poetry and in the text of Scripture, could still assume a revelatory function in a theory of divine names—where the challenge is to name someone whom no literal expression can give a proper account of.

In the wake of Neo-Platonism, in the sixth century the idea of the One as unfathomable and contradictory enters the Christian world, through the agency of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (hereinafter “Dionysius”). In his works the Divinity is named negatively as something that is

the Cause of all [and] is above all and is not inexistent, lifeless, speechless, mindless. It is not a material body, and hence has neither shape nor form, quality, quantity, or weight. It is not in any place and can neither be seen nor be touched. It is neither perceived nor is it perceptible. It suffers neither disorder nor disturbance and is overwhelmed by no earthly passion. It is not powerless and subject to the disturbances caused by sense perception. It passes through no change, decay, division, loss, no ebb and flow, nothing of which the senses may be aware. None of all this can be either identified with it nor attributed to it.…

… It is not soul, or mind, nor does it possess imagination, conviction, speech, or understanding. Nor is it speech per se, understanding per se. It cannot be spoken of and it cannot be grasped by understanding. It is not number or order, greatness or smallness, equality or inequality, similarity or dissimilarity. It is not immovable, moving or at rest. It has no power, it is not power, nor is it light. It does not live, nor is it life. It is not a substance, nor is it eternity or time. It cannot be grasped by the understanding since it is neither knowledge nor truth. It is not kingship. It is not wisdom. It is neither one nor oneness, divinity nor goodness. Nor is it a spirit, in the sense in which we understand that term. (
The Mystical Theology,
trans. Luibheid, pp. 140–141)
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