I've decided to split this post into three, one for each canzone. This is because I'd like whoever actually reads this blog to carefully consider what is said, one reading at a time, the reason for which will become clear as one reads.
I'd like to dedicate anything good in this series to Anthony Esolen, who has been a great friend and companion thus far in the study of the Poet, and who has been my greatest encouragement, so to speak, even before I had the pleasure of meeting him, through his lovely translation of the Commedia. Moreover, many of the thoughts in these posts will consciously echo and expand upon many things he has already said in his lecture at Thomas Aquinas College, and the subsequent article in First Things in March 2009 based on that lecture, so this is as much as giving credit where credit is most certainly due.
I promised (mostly to myself, as I do not have any idea of how much readership I actually get,) in my last post, that this one would be about the Catholic Poet's work. I owe so much to the Commedia that I cannot begin to estimate what my life would be like without that man-made representation of “la gloria di colui che tutto move”; in his magnum opus, I was given a window by which that glory of the One could shine into my life, revealing to me the beauty of a universe formed in an order of Divine Love. And this universe was not just some theoretical universe, constructed by the magnificent but fallible genius of some human prodigy, but a universe which in its very nature excelled even the great representation Dante made, both in being real and in transcending his words, by Dante's own admission:
Da quinci innanzi il mio veder fu maggio
che 'l parlar mostra, ch'a tal vista cede,
e cede la memoria a tanto oltraggio.
Whatever human language can convey
must yield to vision, passing the extreme---
to such prowess memory must give way.
Ultimately, the origin of the order of this magnificent universe, in all its splendor, is something which passes beyond our very mode of describing the universe, and can only be pointed to, never comprehended and only partially understood, as one understanding that knowledge is in the most qualified manner understands the fullness thereof. It was Dante who introduced me to this magnificent splendor beyond splendor, revealing to me that what I professed was in fact more beautiful than I could imagine even possibly; as though one lived their whole life feeling alone, only to suddenly have a curtain lifted and a innumerable multitude of companion angels revealed. No longer did I need to fear death, though surely death was something which the things I professed would preclude fearing. To be unsuccessful in life, to be afraid of failing; these things were irrational fears, to be cast aside as I race for the goal which is presented to all and exceeds all other possible goals, sanctity. Without this realization, I realize now, my life would be worthless to me (as I am now, admittedly, but also objectively, since it is possible to speak of these things considered as goods.) For what is the point of an unexamined life? What could possibly satisfy me but God? I am as aware as anyone else that the things of this world don't satisfy, although I haven't tried them all (thanks be to God!) On the one hand, it is good to have experience; on the other hand, the way today's culture rates “experience” and “maturity” is flatly insane, as though one must contract a disease in order to seek the good of health.
I have often said, in defense of Dante's importance to the Catholic life, that Dante is to Scholastic theology as flesh is to bone. Those who find Scholastic theology heartless have never read Thomas' Eucharistic hymns, or the poetry of Bonaventure's thought, or Dante's Purgatorio and Paradiso. This, I think, is a good analogy, but I could make a bolder one closer to the senses: poetry is to philosophy as sex and the four loves are to marriage. When one makes the commitment to matrimony, one binds oneself to their spouse, making their two lives one life; accordingly, when in a good marriage, one spouse passes away, the other feels as though part of their life is gone, never to be replaced. The purpose of sex in marriage is the opposite of this; when two lovers unite, they express their intimacy in a visible act held between them alone, and by that act bring another into the world as a visible fruit of their love. Likewise, when one reads Thomas, or other systematic theologians, one binds oneself to God in the pursuit of knowledge of the truth, but this systematic understanding can feel hollow when one is actually tested; one needs a visible reminder, and the pursuit of knowledge without love is vain, like a marriage without sex. Poetry, in one of its most evident purposes, is the expression of the experiential truth of what one believes; it ties the intellectual order of knowing to our own experiences, making them more definite, incarnating them. And when poetry achieves what it sets out to do, it bears fruit in the soul. The resolve to knowledge and the binding-to-the-self thereof becomes a binding in act. Perhaps the truer exposition of this relation would be that poetry is to philosophy as the recognition of the good of sex is to the recognition of the good of marriage, but this is not really as snappy, nor does it set up the difference in kind between these two pursuits, and rather emphasizes their similarities, which is not as helpful.
This brings me to the topic of today's exploration: why our life? Dante begins the Inferno with the line “nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita”, a line which has become an exemplar in the history of poetry for its bringing the reader into Dante's opus. “Nostra vita”, “our life”. What does he mean when he says the Pilgrim's journey is the journey of “our” life? The first, and most evident claim, is that of the Inferno, that man, having sinned, justly deserves the punishment of Hell. But the Inferno is not all; there are also the Purgatorio and Paradiso. The first line of the Inferno is equally the first line of the whole work, and Dante is not in Hell yet at that point. So there is a prismatic meaning here, one shedding light in various ways depending on the perception thereof, much like the prophecies of the Old Testament. Dante persona's poetry is to serve as a guide for the reader, even as Virgil serves as a guide for Dante personaggio; Virgil representing the height of reason, the Pilgrim represents reason being brought back to itself. And we, ourselves, as sinners deserving worse than Limbo, are not at the height of reason. Thus, in the Inferno, there is a very real correspondence between reader and read; we are the Pilgrim and the Pilgrim is us. Thus, when we read the Inferno, we fear and tremble as the Pilgrim does, with special attention to those sins of which we know we are guilty. In our trembling we realize the justice of our own condemnation, or come to realize it in an honest reading. In this way, Dante draws us into his own experience.
In the same Canto, we are presented with each of the promised ends which come as our fate, from Virgil's point of view. We are presented with the fate of the intensive punishment of Hell (“ove udirai le disperate strida, / vedrai li antichi spiriti dolenti, / ch' a la seconda morte ciascun grida”, “where you will hear the groans of hopeless men, / will look upon the sorrowing souls of old, / crying in torment for the second death”), the possibility of a mere extensive punishment, which is nonetheless a punishment for original sin (“che quello imperador che la su regna, / perch' i' fu' ribellante a la sua legge, / non vuol che 'n sua citta per me si vegna”, “for that great Emperor who reigns above, / because I was a rebel to His law, / will not allow me entry to his realm”), and lastly the possibility of beatitude (“a le quai por se tu vorrai salire, / anima fia a cio piu di me degna: / con lei ti lascero nel mio partire”, “should you then wish to rise and go to them, / another soul will come, worthier than I--- / with her I'll leave you when I go my way.”) These ends, while they are understood to the best of Virgil's ability, are understood in the way of a man without supernatural grace; this is evidenced by his inability to speak of God as more than an Emperor, an impersonal ruling figure whose order is expressed only in rule, a rule to which Virgil was not outside, but a rebel. This is likewise the best that a man in sin can understand, for when we sin, we separate ourselves from God's love, and doing so, cannot grasp it experientially. Or sometimes that experiential basis is removed deliberately, as a test, in the dark night of the soul, so that even those having faith fall subject to this. Thus, Dante provides hope to the intelligence in the form of a promise, but at the same time presents the promise via one for whom its good was not fulfilled, seemingly. This is the state of one who believes in God in the manner of the demons, and they tremble. Even as they do, we are brought to tremble in confronting what perdition we plunge ourselves into by our own choice. The difference is that we, unlike the demons, are given a choice that can be against that evil; they already chose, and can only tremble at the order they rejected.
There is something very interesting about the motion-analogy inherent in “trembling.” One trembles when one faces something they fear, and as Hitchcock knew well, a great part of fear is recognizing a possible outcome and feeling powerless to prevent it. Fear is, at its heart, a recognition of powerlessness. In the case of the demons, this powerlessness is entire. Their desire for autonomy over freedom meant that autonomy was given them, but the autonomy is to their undoing; in a matter of speaking, to tremble is a motion born of autonomy, because in God, there is no need to fear; death has no sting. Thus, ultimately, we are to overcome our trembling. This is as much as the Church teaches, in that it is actually sinful to spend our entire lives, having recognized our sins, weeping over them and fearing. To do so reveals a willful separation from God, an act of despair. Recognizing our sins, which are always born of our autonomy, we recognize that we are simply not enough to save us. Virgil himself recognizes this: as he says, happy is the man God calls to His throne, and all who are not called, as a converse, are in Virgil's state or worse. Virgil himself, recognizing his own loss, is not happy, but stoical about his fate, which makes his later encounter with Cato downright comical. We are called, though, to accept the grace to get beyond this stoicism, and this trembling.
There is, in this, an analogy to humanity. Dante was a genius at parallelism. What goes for every human goes for humanity, and these fates are assigned to and chosen by every human; thus, humanity itself is affected. There are three states in which one may apprehend human nature: the state of beatitude, in which human nature is supernaturally raised by grace; the state of naturally perfect nature, in which Adam and Eve were in the Garden; and the state of fallen nature, to which we ourselves as sinners are subject. This canzone most evidently corresponds to the last, as is vividly depicted by the more airy punishments allowing a sort of autonomy towards the beginning, and as gradually being supplanted by less autonomous punishments as it goes on (buried upside down, boiling tar, various transformations, crippling and painful diseases, etc) until eventually one reaches the traitors in Judecca, encased in ice, and Satan himself, whose strange autonomy itself serves to encase him. Recognizing how we are inevitably imprisoned by our pride and other sins, we are to desire the levity of freedom; this levity, though, only comes about from subordinating ourselves to a higher order. To the degree that we subordinate ourselves, though, we are given the good of autonomy, as will be more evident in the Purgatorio.
There is also an analogy to the order of our study of nature. The ungraced study of philosophy and the natural sciences can, at best, when perfectly studied and acted upon, keep us from intensive sin of the sort seen after Limbo, but just as our powers of understanding are fallen in original sin, so also is the power of our knowledge. Adam and Eve, had they not acted against the ordination of God which was made clear to them, would not have fallen; they had perfect control over themselves, which means they were not inclined by concupiscence to sin. Yet in their pride they did so, and in their sin the very knowing they had was fallen, and through Adam we are inheritors of this fallen nature, whereby we cannot by our own power control ourselves, but are subject to the new law in our members of which St. Paul spoke. Thus, however much we know under our own power, we cannot escape the justice of our condemnation by our own actions, prompted by our fallen way of knowing. We cannot, on our own, return to the Garden, in which is our second childhood, our "Hurrah for Karamazov!" Thus, the knowledge of the Pagans, their great learning and their expressions thereof in poetry, are futile for them; nothing of their own can help them escape condemnation.
Both of these analogies (of nature and of knowledge in particular) will be revisited in subsequent posts, because they are not abandoned in the later canzoni, but fulfilled. In fact, all things spoken of in the Inferno are put into a greater context in the later canzoni; the justice of condemnation, the difference between autonomy and freedom, the order of sin as subsumed and brought forcefully to a good in the order of love, and the new recognition of justice which comes with that love. That all these things are but individual themes in a brilliant and diverse symphony, transcending all music ever composed and fulfilling all goods which inspire music at all, should indicate to the reader that the exploration of the Commedia is no idle pursuit. It is, at its greatest, the bringing forth of the order of the Incarnation in our very hearts, bit by bit, through the injunction to subordinate oneself to the order of Divine Justice, and seek the mercy God has promised us. This is, of course, insofar as Dante can bring us to act by his poetry, and this, he recognizes, is something requiring the intervention of those blessed souls who already live in union with Love Himself. Thus, I feel I should end this post with a prayer to one saint who inspired him to see, and to act from that seeing.
Saint Lucy,
Whose beautiful name
Signifies light, By the light of Faith
Which God bestowed upon you,
Increase and preserve
His light in my soul,
So that I may avoid evil,
Be zealous in the performance
Of good works,
And abhor nothing
So much as the blindness
And the darkness
Of evil and sin.
Obtain for me,
By your intercession
With God,
Perfect vision
For my bodily eyes
And the grace to use them
For God’s greater honor
And glory
And the salvation of souls.
Saint Lucy,
Virgin and martyr,
Hear my prayers
And obtain my petitions.
Amen.
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