The Last Witness: Dante

 From The Imaginative Conservative:

Dante died at Ravenna on September 14, 1321, and that noble city which had sweetened his exile was determined to retain his body. When his name became celebrated, Florence, his ungrateful fatherland, tried to recover it, but in vain. So there he lies, close to the church of St. Francis, where he had so often prayed, in a tiny garden filled with cool shade and with silence. Far removed from the strife and suffering of earth, as in the sublime vision born of his imagination, beyond the circles of hell and the mount of expiation, he has, no doubt, attained to everlasting peace, to the seven stages of heaven where, at the summit, dwells the Lamb.

His principal work, the Divine Comedy, was written during the last years of his life, after he had reached the age of fifty, when knowledge of men and experience of events had taught him to hope in God alone.

Consisting of three parts—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—this famous work is one of the most tremendous achievements in all the literature of the world. Like many a great monument of human thought, it has its fanatical devotees, its tireless scholiasts; but the general public admires it from farther off and without pretending to penetrate its secrets, confining themselves to a few episodes which are part of the common culture of the West.…

[T]he Divine Comedy is a fascinating work, an intellectual universe so wonderful that it is hard to know how any man could have conceived it. The beauty of language, the rhythmic cadences, the definitive exactness of so many formulae, and above all that interior breath, that vital urge which drives the poem along, even through interminable declamations, until it reaches a land of light and incomparable fullness—all these qualities make the Divine Comedy a unique achievement, one of the three or four priceless jewels in Europe’s crown.

Notwithstanding a host of symbols and obscurities, the general meaning of the poem is clear. It is the description of a journey claimed to have been made by the author in Holy Week, 1300, through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. He describes those whom he met on the road, the facts which he learned, and his own meditations on this marvellous experience. The descriptive passages are so extraordinarily precise that it has been possible to draw maps and plans and to build models of that country beyond the grave. But across the background formed by this strange geography, a perpetual shifting of figures, episodes, and allusions transforms each region into a dreamland forest where the most resplendent images succeed nightmare visions.

The theme was not original. Many ancient writers, e.g., Homer and Virgil, had pictured the living visiting the dead. There were also Muslim poems describing journeys through heaven and hell; and Celtic monks of the barbarian epoch, in the feverish solitude of their convents, had written many another such tale around the persons of St. Brendan or St. Patrick. But upon this common ground Dante erected a monumental structure, combining the profound truth of man’s destiny with all that the Middle Ages had discovered about eternal realities, and resting the whole of his romantic story upon theological foundations.

Dante himself is the hero of the Divine Comedy; the background is his own experience, the story of his conversion. Wandering in “the dark forest” of vice, he almost stumbles into hell where so many unfortunates pay the price of sin. Saved from damnation through the intervention of our Lady, he gradually discovers the way of light by climbing the painful mount of Purgatory. Two providential beings come to assist him on this journey: Virgil, representing human reason freed from the yoke of passion, and Beatrice, who stands both for ineffable love and for revealed truth. Thanks to them, he is able to reach the place of all peace and of all justice, Paradise. The poem is essentially autobiographical. He whom we follow on this curious road is a man like unto ourselves. Like him, we are shaken by the gusts of hell, we feel the breath of fire in which the damned are burning. With him we share the proud sorrows of sinful love. With him also we rise to light and certainty. He is a man speaking to men with human voice…

The historical framework within which this mighty adventure unfolds is none other than that society of which the poet had direct experience: Christendom. The events to which he refers are those of Christian history; the protagonists of his fantastic work are men who had played a part therein. The problems he is so anxious to solve are those which troubled the whole Christian world. His ideal is the same as that which inspired reforming popes, saints, crusaders, and great thinkers; it is the ideal of a hierarchic order upon earth corresponding to the perfect harmony of heaven.…

Dante’s anxiety for Christendom led him to concentrate his attention on the Church as supernatural guide of that society and keystone of its existence. No literary work has ever been so completely concerned with the Church as is the Divine Comedy. None has spoken with more fervour and tenderness of the Spouse of Christ than he who is so often quoted for his invective against some of her prelates and some of her institutions. He was her devoted and unwavering son; he wished to see her absolutely pure, absolutely beautiful, strictly faithful to her Master’s precepts, freed from the filth wherewith human weakness defiles the Vessel of Election. (Read more.)

Share