Ten Greatest Poets – Dante Alighieri, Quintessential Poet of the Middle Ages

DANTE ALIGHIERI, QUINTESSENTIAL POET OF THE MIDDLE AGES

The medieval period in Europe witnessed a unique event in history: the emergence of Christendom. What is it?

“Christendom” has been defined as the complementary rule of the Church and the State, the sacerdotium and imperium, respectively.

Our understanding of Christendom, however, is broader and deeper, because it is not limited to the political or religious spheres. “Christendom” describes the interpenetration of entire societies by social mores founded on Christianity and prolific cultural advancement based on the same. By “Christendom,” we mean a unity among geographically proximate peoples that was not simply political, religious, or more accurately, politico-religious, extending from the rulers to the population at large, but rather a wholesale cultural ethos, giving rise to efflorescence in the intellectual and creative arts, and to some extent in related science and technology.

Comparable historical developments would be the emergence of Islamic civilization in the eighth century or the rise of Hindu civilization during the Gupta period in the third century.

Dante Alighieri is the poet par excellence of Christendom. He has no peer. The scope of his poetry, indeed, his vision is, properly, epic.

We could cite medieval epics of comparable dramatic power, suspenseful narrative, heroic subjects, and various other merits, like The Song of Roland or The Song of El Cid, but they are primarily tales of chivalry in which the Christian knight supplants the heathen warrior as hero.

Dante’s poetry, in contrast, is Christian theology, eschatological in outlook. It sums up the worldview of the age. It is a literary archetype of the period.

Dante’s magnum opus is Divina Commedia or The Divine Comedy. He wrote it over the course of 12 years, finishing it in 1320, one year before his death. It dates to the Late Middle Ages, 1250-1500, a period marked by large-scale crises like the Great Famine of 1315-1317, which Dante witnessed.

The epic is about the journey of Dante through three existential states of the afterlife—hell, purgatory, and heaven—which Roman Catholic theology defines as the eschatological lot of each individual person immediately after death. Of the three, only purgatory is temporary. Hell and heaven are final, irrevocable, and forever.

Dante, the author of the epic, is the protagonist. Classical, Christian, historical, and autobiographical personages, particularly Virgil, the creator of the Aeneid, and Beatrice, Dante’s beloved from his childhood and youth, are his guides. 

Beatrice who is in heaven sends Virgil to assist Dante in his journey through hell and purgatory. Although she makes her first appearance in purgatory, she assumes Virgil’s role only once Dante crosses the border into heaven. Beatrice is replaced by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux towards the epic’s end, which closes as Dante is pulled into the wheel of God’s infinite transforming love.

Dante’s is a fantastical universe straight out of Marvel comics. Hell, to begin with, is a witch’s brew of punishments concocted by Dante. Dante’s hell is a descending pit of nine concentric circles in which, for example, those condemned for sins of lust are whirled about by a fierce cyclone; those who had been overpowered by gluttony during their lives on earth wallow about interminably in a pile of putrefaction; and Satan is a three-headed demon who devours the worst sinners known to the medieval world—Brutus, Cassius, and Judas.

Purgatory, next in the journey, is a mountain of nine stories topped by the original Eden of Adam and Eve. At each level of the ascending mountain, souls purify themselves, for example, by tramping about in clouds of acrid smoke, or afflicted by incurable mania.

Heaven is an undiscovered country that reveals itself as a series of crystalline spheres enclosing each other in a series, each sphere embedded with the moon, sun, or one or more of the heavenly bodies, representing tiers of spiritual attainment everlastingly rewarded. Beyond the spheres and the engine powering their motion is the ultimate dimension, the Empyrean, where a mystical rose shines, Dante’s symbol of God’s eternal love and the union of the angels and saints in and with this love.

I composed a short description of Dante’s universe at this link:

https://poetryofgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-universe-of-dante-alighieris-divine.html

Throughout this cosmic journey, Dante episodically engages in biting commentary on the politics of the day, metaphysical exposition, and theological cerebration.

The entire account is a highly sophisticated moral allegory inhabiting an intricate, fabulous universe. Similar in inspiration is John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, also a moral allegory.

Dante holds the distinction of inventing terza rima, the format in which the entire Divina Commedia is written.

There are at least three ways to deeply appreciate Dante’s Divina Commedia. The first is to marvel at Dante’s lively fantastical spectacle. We know based on the unflagging popularity of Greek or Norse mythologies, or that of Hollywood productions the likes of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, the series, for example, that human beings never tire of fantabulous works of fiction well-wrought. 

Often, readers are drawn into the narrative of Divina Commedia because of the description of the lurid chastisements in Inferno. They progress to Purgatorio and Paradiso in diminishing numbers.

Another way to engage the epic is to join Dante in his spiritual sojourn, that is, to read Divina Commedia like a book of spirituality, for example, Saint John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul or Saint Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, an important difference being that the latter works do not claim to be fiction.

When, for example, in the first terrace of purgatory Dante stoops to gain access to the souls of the proud weighed down by stones; when in the third terrace he contemplates a vision of Saint Stephen, the very image of meekness, martyred by the Jewish mob; or when in the sixth terrace, he is admonished by a voice to abstain from eating the dainties of a tree of forbidden fruit, we can identify with his spirit and relive his sentiments.

A third way is to investigate the plethora of symbols populating the narrative. Many of hell’s punishments are symbolic plays, for example.

Dante shows Muhammad (Mahomet), the founder and first prophet of Islam, and Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, the first caliph and last prophet of Islam, both cleft in twain, Muhammad, the entire front torso, and Ali, the front of the head. They are condemned to the punishments of the fraudulent in the eighth circle of hell. Because the medieval mind understood Islam as a schismatic Christian sect, Muhammad and Ali are identified as instigators and promoters of schism. Hence, Dante symbolically cuts them in half.

The following excerpt from Inferno gives us a taste of Dante’s horrors. Translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow has been updated to modern English.

A cask by losing centerpiece or cant

was never shattered so, as I saw one

rent from the chin to where one breaks wind.

Between his legs was hanging down his entrails;

his heart was visible, and the dismal sack

that makes excrement of what is eaten.

While I was all absorbed in seeing him,

he looked at me, and opened with his hands

his bosom, saying: “See now how I rend myself;

how mutilated, see, is Mahomet;

in front of me Ali weeping goes,

cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;

and all the others whom you here behold,

disseminators of scandal and of schism

while living, are therefore cleft thus.

—Inferno, Canto XXVIII, lines 22-37

See:

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=tpukDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=A%20cask%20by%20losing%20centre-piece&f=false  

Crucial to our appreciation of Dante is the quality of the translation. Critical reception of Longfellow’s translation has been uneven.

When Dante visits the sun in the fourth heavenly sphere, he meets a who’s who of medieval intellectual esteem—Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Gratian, Peter Lombard, King Solomon, Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius), Orosius, Boethius, Isidore of Seville, Bede, Richard of Saint Victor, and Siger of Brabant. They are purportedly paragons of wisdom. Dante places them on the sun because it illumines the earth and, metaphorically speaking, wisdom is illumination.

A fourth way to appreciate Dante is to savor his lyricism. This possibility depends greatly on the quality of the translation.

One contemporary translator whose English shows a lyric flair is Allen Mandelbaum. Some of his work is available online.

In this passage, for instance, he does a good job conveying Dante’s dread at hearing the despairing sounds swirling from the gates of hell.

Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries

were echoing across the starless air,

so that, as soon as I set out, I wept.

Strange utterances, horrible pronouncements,

accents of anger, words of suffering,

and voices shrill and faint, and beating hands—

all went to make a tumult that will whirl

forever through that turbid, timeless air,

like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls.

—Inferno, Canto III, lines 22-30

See: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri

This next passage located in the first terrace of purgatory is powerfully poignant. It is, in my opinion, a lyrical masterpiece. Here Dante embroiders the Our Father, and this version is what the souls of the proud pray at the beginning of their ascent up the mountain.

Translation by Allen Mandelbaum has been slightly edited, updated to modern English.

Our Father, You who dwell within the heavens

but are not circumscribed by them out of

Your greater love for Your first works above,

Praised be Your name and Your omnipotence,

by every creature, just as it is seemly

to offer thanks to Your sweet effluence.

Your kingdom’s peace bestow on us, for if

it does not come, then though we summon all

our force, we cannot reach it by ourselves.

Just as Your angels, as they sing Hosanna,

offer their wills to You as sacrifice,

so may men offer up their wills to You.

Give to us this day the daily manna

without which he who labors most to move

ahead through this harsh wilderness falls back.

Even as we forgive all who have done

us injury, may You, benevolent,

forgive, and do not judge us by our worth.

Try not our strength, so easily subdued,

against the ancient foe, but set it free

from him who goads it to perversity.

—Purgatorio, Canto XI, lines 1-21

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purgatorio

Mandelbaum also enchants us with his lyrical translation of the verses describing the transforming light of God that primes Dante for the beatific vision.

Like sudden lightning scattering the spirits

of sight so that the eye is then too weak

to act on other things it would perceive,

such was the living light encircling me,

leaving me so enveloped by its veil

of radiance that I could see no thing.

—Paradiso, Canto XXX, lines 46-51

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradiso_(Dante)

Vital to the success of any literary narrative is how it ends, and in this respect Dante does not disappoint.

Translation by C. H. Sisson is workmanlike.

But already my desire and my will

were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed,

by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars.

—Paradiso, Canto XXXIII, lines 142-145

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradiso_(Dante)

Divina Commedia ends with “stars,” the same word which closes Inferno and Purgatorio. It is a literary flourish that brings to mind Cassius’ grievance in Julius Caesar (Act I, Scene 2, 140-141):

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

To which Dante would undoubtedly take exception.

William Shakespeare, England’s National Poet:

https://poetryofgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2018/06/ten-greatest-poets-william-shakespeare.html

Dante Alighieri, detail (1865), Piazza Santa Croce, Florence, Italy by Enrico Pazzi