John T. Slattery - Dante: The Central Man of All the World
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John T. Slattery >> Dante: The Central Man of All the World
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First come, shedding heavenly light, the seven mystical candlesticks,
symbolic of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost or the seven sacraments of
the Church. Next follow twenty-four ancients representating the books of
the Old Testament. Then are seen the four prophetic animals symbolizing
the four Evangelists. Christ drawing a chariot representing the Church,
the central figure of the pageant, advances under the form of the
fabulous griffin, half eagle and half lion, typifying the two-fold
nature of our Lord. On the right side of the chariot, dancing are three
nymphs, the theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity. On the left
side are four other nymphs--the cardinal virtues, Prudence, Justice,
Fortitude and Temperance. Next come two old men, dignified and grave,
St. Paul and St. Luke, who are followed by four others representing
other books of the New Testament viz., the Epistles of St. James, St.
Peter, St. John and St. Jude. The rear guard is an aged Solitary
symbolic of the Apocalypse.
"And when the chariot was opposite to me" writes Dante, "a clap of
thunder was heard; and those worthy folk seemed to have their further
march forbidden, and halted there with the first ensign" (XXIX, 153).
What is the meaning of this symbolic procession so common to Dante's
day, so alien to ours? We have already said that it is a dramatic
representation of the human race finding happiness, finding its Eden in
its membership in the Church. But it, also, is a symbolic lesson for the
individual. Dante, the type of humanity having done penance for his
sins, is about to be received through the sacrament of penance into the
soul of the Church i.e. into the full communion of grace. It is
fitting, therefore, that the Church should advance to meet him, the
repentant sinner, and should reveal itself to him before receiving him
into its bosom.
If objection be made that Dante already has been absolved from sin and
in Purgatory has made expiation for his offences, the answer is given by
Ozanam; "At the term of the expiatory course, as at its beginning, to
quit it as well as to enter upon it, we must render submission to a
religious authority and fulfill the conditions without which God does
not treat with us--confession for oblivion, fears for consolation and
shame for definitive rehabilitation." When the pageant comes to a halt
the participants group themselves about the Griffin and the Chariot, by
that act declaring that the goal and object of their desires are
centered in Christ and His Church. Then one of the company by divine
command calls aloud three times to a heavenly being, the spouse of the
Church, to appear and the cry is repeated by the whole company. From the
Chariot arise, as will arise the dead from their graves, a hundred
angels scattering flowers over and around the Chariot and also raising
their voices in the call for the Heavenly Bride. They first sing the
words of the Canticle of Palm Sunday. _Benedictus qui venis_ (Blessed
art thou who comest) and then the beautiful line from the Aeneid:
_Manibus o date lilia plenis_ (Oh! give lilies with full hands). Then
comes from the clouds through the midst of the flowers showering down
again within and without the Chariot, arrayed in the colors of the three
theological virtues, the object of the invocation.
"Crowned with olive over a white veil a Lady appeared to me, vestured in
hue of living flame under a green mantle." It is Beatrice, Dante's
beloved, now apotheosized in the personification of Revelation. What
other poet ever dreamed of so glorifying his beloved that for her coming
the natural virtues prepare the way, the supernatural virtues, as
handmaids accompany her to assist us to the understanding of her
doctrine, the angels sing her laudation and she herself in the role both
of unveiler of the Scriptures of the Prophets and the Apostles and the
mystical Bride of the Canticles is worthy to be called "O Light, O Glory
of the human race?"
Dante before seeing her face, recognizes her by some mysterious instinct
of love, recognizes her after a lapse according to fiction of ten years,
but in reality of twenty-four years since her death.
To Virgil, Dante turns to tell the joyous news but Virgil has gone and
tears course down the face of his disciple.
"Dante," says Beatrice, "weep not that Virgil leaves thee, nay weep thou
not yet, for thou wilt have to weep for another wound." Awed by her
appearance, he is taken back by her greeting. The mere thought of her
loveliness uplifted him in the world. The hope of seeing her carried him
through the horrors of Hell and the penance of Purgatory. Crowned and
mitred over himself he came to Eden to meet her. And she has only
reproaches for him. Particularly to the angels does she tell the story
of his defection from the high ideals which she inspired in him. "This
man was such in his new life potentially that every good talent would
have made wondrous increase in him--(but) so low sank he that all means
for his salvation were already short save showing him the lost people.
For this I visited the portal of the dead and to him who has guided him
up hither, weeping my prayers were borne. God's high decree would be
broken if Lethe were passed and such viands were tasted, without some
sort of penitence that may shed tears."
To her lover she turns for confirmation of the truth of her words: "Say,
say if this is true; to such accusation thy confession must be joined."
"Confusion and fear together mingled, drove forth from my mouth a
'Yea,'" a monosyllable of confession which showed the depth of his
shame.
But it is the sight of the superhuman beauty of Beatrice which completes
his contrition and resuscitates his love so as to fit him to pass
through the waters of the Lethe.
"My eyes beheld Beatrice, turned toward the animal (the Griffin) that is
One Person only (Christ) in twofold nature (i.e. God and man). Under her
veil and on the far side of the stream she seemed to me to surpass more
her ancient self, than she surpassed the others here when she was with
us. So much remorse gnawed at my heart that I fell vanquished and what I
then became she knoweth who gave me the cause." (XXXI, 82.)
When he recovers consciousness he finds his immersion in the Lethe in
progress by Matilda. Then he is led to Beatrice by the four nymphs (the
cardinal virtues) and at the request of the three nymphs who typify the
theological virtues she smiles upon him.
"The fair lady (Matilda) dipped me where I must needs swallow of the
water, then drew me forth and led me, bathed, within the dance of the
four fair ones, and each did cover me with her arm. 'Here we are nymphs
and in heaven are stars. Ere Beatrice descended to the world, we were
ordained for her handmaids: we will lead thee to her eyes: but the three
on the other side who deeper gaze will sharpen thine eyes to the joyous
light that is within."
Beholding the glorified beauty of Beatrice wholly inexpressible, Dante
is in such rapture that he is oblivious of everything else.
"Mine eyes with such an eager coveting
Were bent to rid them of their ten years' thirst
No other sense was waking; and e'en they
Were fenced on either side from heed of aught:
So tangled, in its custom'd toils, that smile
Of saintly brightness drew it to itself."
When our poet comes out of his rapture, the Chariot and the mystical
company are moving to a tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
which according to a beautiful tradition has become the Cross of Christ,
the tree of salvation. To that tree is attached the Chariot which Christ
(the Griffin) now leaves to enter Heaven again with the ancients and the
angels. Beatrice remains with the seven nymphs to guard the Chariot (the
Church). Up to this point the picture of the Church has been one of
peace and happiness. Now with prophetic eye the poet beholds the
tribulations which the Church will suffer from without and within. The
description of the vision and the explanation of the symbolism are so
well set forth by Ozanam that I quote his words unable to improve upon
them, as I also share his view as to the unwarranted severity here of
Dante's censures of the Church.
"An eagle falls like lightning upon the tree, from which he tears the
bark, and upon the car, which bends beneath his weight. Then comes a fox
which finds its way within, and then a portion is torn off by a dragon
that issues from the gaping earth. Thus far it is easy to recognize the
persecutions of the Roman emperors which so harried the Church, the
heresies by which it was desolated, and the schisms by which it was
torn. Soon, the eagle reappeared, less menacing but not less dangerous;
he shook his plumes above the sacred car, which speedily underwent a
monstrous transformation. From divers parts of it arose seven heads
armed with ten horns; a courtesan was seated in the midst; a giant stood
at her side, exchanging with her impure caresses which he interrupted to
scourge her cruelly. Then, cutting loose the metamorphosed car, he bears
it away, and is lost with it in the depths of the forest.
"Is not this again the Church, enriched, by the gifts of princes who
have become her protectors, sadly marred in appearance, sundry of her
members defiled by the taint of the seven capital sins, and herself
ruled over by unworthy pontiffs? Is not this the court of Rome,
exchanging criminal flatteries with the temporal power, which flatteries
are to be followed by cruel injuries, when the Holy See, torn from the
foot of the cross of the Vatican, is transferred to a distant land, on
the banks of a foreign river? But these ills will not be without end nor
without retribution. The tree that lost and that saved the world cannot
be touched with impunity, and if the Church has been made militant here
below, it is with the liability of suffering from passing reverses, but
also with the assurance of final victory."
Dante's own eternal victory is now assured, Beatrice directs Matilda to
lead him to the Eunoe, whose waters will regenerate him and fit him to
ascend to Paradise. "Behold, Eunoe which gushes forth yonder, lead him
thereto and as thou art wont, revive in him again his fainting powers."
The poem closes with an address to the reader:
"If, Reader, I possessed a longer space
For writing it, I yet would sing in part
Of the sweet draught that ne'er would satiate me;
But inasmuch as full are all the leaves
Made ready for this second canticle,
The curb of art no farther lets me go.
From the most holy water I returned
Regenerate, in the manner of new trees
That are renewed with a new foliage,
Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars."
(Purg., XXXIII, 136.)
DANTE'S PARADISO
DANTE'S PARADISO
Of Dante's trilogy the Paradiso is truly his "medieval miracle of song,"
the supreme achievement of his genius. Here the poetry of the sublime
reaches its highest point--the summit on which Dante is a lonely and
unchallenged figure. "No uninspired hand," says Cardinal Manning, "has
ever written thoughts so high in words, so resplendent, as the last
stanza of the Divina Commedia." It was said of St. Thomas: "_Post Summam
Thomae nihil restat nisi lumen gloriae_." It may be said of Dante: "_Post
Dantis Paradisum nihil restat nisi visio Dei._" ("After Dante's Paradiso
nothing remains but the vision of God.")
Shelley's tribute to the supremacy of Dante's Heaven is no less
beautiful: "Dante's apotheosis of Beatrice and the gradations of his own
love and her loveliness by which, as by steps, he feigns himself to have
ascended to the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most glorious
imagination of modern poetry."
Ruskin says: "Every line of the Paradiso is full of the most exquisite
and spiritual expressions of Christian truths and the poem is only less
read than the Inferno because it requires far greater attention and
perhaps, for its full enjoyment, a holier heart."
That Dante's Inferno is more popular reading than his Paradiso is due to
the fact that evil and its consequences offer to the artist richer
material for dramatic fascination and to the reader more lively interest
in characters intensely human, than does the less sensational story of
the Elects finding peace and happiness in a realm transcending the
experiences of human nature. Dante's Purgatorio also finds a wider
circle of readers because his penitents, suffering, struggling and
aspiring, like people upon earth, have more human traits and exhibit
more human interest than the saints confirmed in grace against human
weakness.
Another reason for lesser interest manifested in this part of the Divina
Commedia is the difficulty and obscurity of the Paradiso. It is not easy
reading, because it requires study, repetition, concentration,
meditation, qualities absent from the art of reading as it prevails
today. If we ever have time to look at a book, the habit of skimming
with inattentive rapidity so urges us onward that we find ourselves
flitting from page to page, from chapter to chapter, panting and
uninstructed. And if we belong to the bookless majority who have no time
to read, we rush to the moving picture theatre to get our mental
pabulum--often a season's best seller--boiled down, served in
rapid-fire order and bolted in the twinkling of an eye. For all such
Dante's Paradiso is an intellectual as well as a spiritual impossibility
and the poet begs such not to follow him on his voyage to the eternal
kingdom.
"Oh ye who in some pretty little boat
Eager to listen, have been following
Behind my ship, that singing sails along,
Turn back to look again upon your shores;
In losing me, you might yourselves be lost.
The sea I sail has never yet been passed.
Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo,
And Muses nine point out to me the Bears.
Ye other few, who have the neck uplifted
Betimes to th' bread of Angels upon which
One liveth here and grows not sated by it,
Well may you launch upon the deep salt-sea
Your vessel, keeping still my wake before you
Upon the water that grows smooth again.
Those glorious ones who unto Colchos passed
Were not so wonder-struck as you shall be,
When Jason they beheld a ploughman made."
(II, 1.)
The song which Dante sings in the Paradiso is the eternal happiness of
man in vision, love and enjoyment united to his Creator. In preparation
for this final consummation the poet, as he ascends to the Empyrean,
gives a most beautiful epitome of the principal mysteries of religion
and of some of the tenets of scholastic philosophy, treating especially
the Fall of Man, Predestination, Free Will, the Redemption, the
Immortality of the Soul and the theory of Human Knowledge. Allegorically
considered, the poem is a veil, under which we see the ideal life of man
upon earth, exercising virtue and gaining virtue's rewards.
To exhibit man's supreme, happiness in the next life, the Christian
poet, insisting that his purpose is the inculcation of truth, both to
save and to adorn the soul, must base his theme upon the doctrines of
the Church. The definition of some of those dogmas Dante anticipated.
All may be summed up in the following statement:
"It is of Catholic faith that the souls of the blessed see God directly
and face to face and this vision is Supernatural; that there are degrees
of this vision, corresponding to the merits of the elect; that to see
God in His Essence, the intellect is supernaturally perfected; that the
Beatific Vision is not deferred to the Day of Judgment, but is possessed
at once after death but the Just, in whom there is no stain of sin or
who have no temporal punishment to be expiated; and, furthermore, that
all human beings at the end of the world will arise with their own
bodies."
How will the poet bring home those incomprehensible truths to his
readers? He has to treat a subject wholly transcendent and supernatural.
Though his vision be celestial, his langauge must be terrestrial. He
must visualize states of the soul which are alien to the eyes of the
body and translate into terms of the senses things which are wholly
non-sensuous. Dante is aware that no poet ever essayed that feat before:
"The sea I sail has never yet been passed." (1, 8.) He knows, also, that
shoals and rocks, seemingly impassable and a sea which may engulf his
genius, are before him. "It is no coastwise voyage for a little barque,
this sea through which the intrepid prow goes cleaving nor for a pilot
who would spare himself." (XXIII, 67.)
And yet he will attempt the impossible, he will endeavor to sing not of
the scenes but of the states of suprasensible spiritual joys--joys which
Bishop Norris says "are without example, above experience and beyond
imagination, for which the whole creation wants a comparison, we an
apprehension and even the word of God, a revelation." Conscious of all
that, Dante confesses the impotency of speech, the inadequacy of memory,
the helplessness of imagination for the task to which he sets himself.
He tells us that the sublime songs of the elect "have lapsed and fallen
out of my memory"--"that to represent and transhumanize in words
impossible were." (I, 71.)
"And what was the sun wherein I entered,
Apparent, not by color, but by light
I, though I call on genius, art and practice
Cannot so tell that it could be imagined."
(X, 41.)
So by the very nature of the subject visualization can be only
partial--only "the shadow of the blessed realm," can be shown. But what
human nature can do, even if its feat seems solitary and unique, Dante
has accomplished in a failure which constitutes the most wonderful
achievement in the domain of the sublime in literature, an achievement
leaving us with a sense of his own ineffable bliss and of the
inexpressible joys of the Elect--an achievement which came to pass, say
some readers, because his poem is an account of a supernatural
vision--and Dante hints that he thinks he was so favored, or because it
is a work to which both heaven and earth have set their hand, showing
him, as Emerson observes, "all imagination," or, as James Russell Lowell
says, "The highest spiritual nature which has expressed itself in
rhythmical form."
There are two methods of representing man's supreme happiness, relative
and absolute: one is to depict nature at her best, untouched by sin, and
to show man free from every defect and blemish, in the full perfection
of his being. Naturally the imagery in this case is the imagery born of
finite human experiences. The other method describes, as we said, not
scenes of happiness but transcendent conditions of the soul as it is
brought into ultimate communion with Supreme Goodness--the finite
possessing and enjoying the Infinite. Here the human mind, let us repeat
it, finds earthly images powerless to translate its thought, for it hath
not entered into the heart of man to conceive the glory of the spiritual
world. These two methods Dante follows successively.
His Eden on the summit of Purgatory is literally the earthly Paradise of
Adam and Eve. It is pictured in moving imagery as man's "native country
of delights," a "lofty garden" of ineffable loveliness, high above all
the physical and moral disturbances of earth, its waters, its winds, its
flowers and its music all coming from supernatural sources, its bliss
springing from the perfect harmony of man's animal, intellectual and
spiritual powers in full and perfect accord with reason. It is Paradise
Regained by man's climbing the mountain of Purgatory, and its
significance is understood if we remember that Dante would teach us
that the present life can be made dual, a life worth while in itself,
full of service and godliness as well as a preparation for the unending
life of Heaven.
For Dante there must be, also, the Celestial Paradise where man's
supernatural destiny will be realized in joys which the eye has not seen
and in music which the ear has not heard. His Paradiso has been called
the Ten Heavens, but in reality there is in his plan only one Heaven,
the Empyrean, the abode of the angels, of the blessed spirits and of
God. It is high above the planets and the stars, beyond time and space.
The Church has never answered the question: Where is Heaven?
Theologians, however, have put forth various opinions. "Some say,"
writes Father Honthein, that "Heaven is everywhere, as God is
everywhere, the blessed being free to move freely in every part of the
universe while still remaining with God and seeing Him everywhere."
Others hold that Heaven is "a special place with definite limits.
Naturally this place is held to exist, not within the earth, but in
accordance with the expressions of Scripture, 'without and beyond its
limits.'" (Cath. Encycl., VII, 170.)
According to Dante's conception, Heaven, being non-spatial and
non-temporal, is not a place but a state of spiritual life. As an aid in
depicting that state he makes use of a unique literary device. He
poetically creates nine Heavens, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, the Primum Mobile or First
Movement. These, according to the Ptolemaic system which our poet
follows, are concentric with the earth, around which as their center
they revolve, while the earth remains fixed and motionless. The motion
of each of these nine spheres, originally coming from the Primum Mobile,
is communicated to it by the love of the angelic guardians, a literal
application of the common saying that "love makes the world go around."
As a poetic fiction necessary for him to enter finally the true Heaven
Dante is required to pass through these nine spheres, the fiction being
used by him as an artist to declare the glories of the heavens and as a
teacher to inculcate doctrines for the instruction and edification of
mankind. In each of the nine Heavens groups of the blessed are
represented as coming to meet him "as he returns to God as to the port
whence (he) set out when (he) first entered upon the sea of this life."
This peerless rhetorical figure is explained in the Banquet, where he
says: "As his fellow-citizens come forth to meet him who returns from a
long journey even before he enters the gates of his city; so to the
noble soul come forth the citizens of the eternal Life." This apparition
of the blessed spirits to greet the mystic traveller as he mounts from
sphere to sphere has several advantages: "it peoples with hosts of
spirits, the immense lonely spaces through which the journey lies"; it
affords the poet the opportunity of asking them "many things which have
great utility and delight"; it finally gives him a sensible sign of the
degree of beatitude which they possess in that realm of many mansions
where each is rewarded according to his merit and capacity, the capacity
of each spirit being in proportion to its degree of knowledge and love.
This is stressed by the poet's representing the apparitions first as
faint yet beautiful outlines of human features, then as ascent is made
to the other Heavens, the spirits make themselves known by increasing
manifestations of light so dazzling finally that the splendor would
blind Dante if his vision were not divinely adapted to its supernatural
needs.
The inequalities of bliss are also symbolized by the sphere in which the
spirits appear to him; those in the sphere of the moon, e.g., are less
favored than those in the Heaven of Mercury. The inequality of merit,
and therefore of reward, is also declared by the difference in both the
quickness of the spirits' movement and their clearness of vision into
the essence of God. The Empyrean, it is worth while repeating, is the
only true Paradise, the nine Heavens being only myths or poetic devices.
If spirits are seen there, they have come forth only from the Empyrean
and will quickly return there after preparing the poet for the eternal
Light of Light.
The materials out of which Dante constructs his Paradiso are not, as we
are already aware, fantastic images such as he employed for the first
two parts of the Divina Commedia, but are things of the spirit, viz.,
knowledge, beauty, faith, love, joy; and he is aided in making visible
those invisible entities of the spiritual life by such intangible things
as sound, motion and light.
Light, indeed, is one of the leading elements in the Paradiso. The poem
begins with a reference to the light of God's glory, and its last line
speaks of "the Love which moves the Sun and the other stars." And
between this beginning and this end in thirty-three cantiche light is
represented not only by degrees of increasing intensity and variety of
unlocked for movements but as surrounding the spirits, living flames,
and constituting, symbolically, the beatitude of Heaven.
Dean Church, in his classic essay on Dante, has a beautiful paragraph
that here calls for quotation: "Light in general is his special and
chosen source of poetic beauty. No poet that we know has shown such
singular sensibility to its varied appearances.... Light everywhere--in
the sky and earth and sea--in the stars, the flames, the lamp, the
gems--broken in the water, reflected from the mirror, transmitted
through the glass, or colored through the edge of the fractured
emerald--dimmed in the mist. The halo, the deep water--streaming through
the rent cloud, glowing in the coal, quivering in the lightning,
flashing in the topaz and the ruby, veiled behind the pure alabaster,
mellowed and clouding itself in the pearl-light contrasted with shadow,
shading off and copying itself in the double rainbow like voice and
echo--light seen within light--light from every source and in all its
shapes illuminates, irradiates, gives glory to the Commedia.... And when
he (Dante) rises beyond the regions of earthly day, light, simple and
unalloyed, unshadowed and eternal, lifts the creations of his thought
above all affinity to time and matter; light never fails him, as the
expression of the gradations of bliss; never reappears the same, never
refuses the new shapes of his invention, never becomes confused or dim,
though it is seldom thrown into distinct figure and still more seldom
colored."
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