Mimesis (36 page)

These ideas are found in the passage from Hegel referred to above. Over twenty years ago I used them as the basis of a study of Dante’s realism (
Dante als Dichter der irdischen Welt
, 1929). Since then I have been concerned with the question what conception of the structure of events, in other words what conception of history, is the foundation for Dante’s realism, this realism projected into changeless eternity. It has been my hope that in the process I might learn something further and more exact about the basis of Dante’s elevated style, for his elevated style consists precisely in integrating what is characteristically individual and at times horrible, ugly, grotesque, and vulgar with the dignity of God’s judgment—a dignity which transcends the ultimate limits of our earthly conception of the sublime. Obviously Dante’s conception of what happens, of history, is not identical with that commonly accepted in our modern world. Indeed he does not view it merely as an earthly process, a pattern of earthly events, but in constant connection with God’s plan, toward the goal of which all earthly happenings tend. This is to be understood not only in the sense of human society as a whole approaching the end of the world and the advent of the millennium in a constant forward motion (with all history, then, directed horizontally, into the future); but also in the sense that every earthly event and every earthly phenomenon is at all times—independently of all forward motion—directly connected with God’s plan; so that a multiplicity of vertical links establish an immediate relation between every earthly phenomenon and the plan of salvation conceived by Providence. For all of creation is a constant reduplication and emanation of the active love of God (
non è se non splendor di quella idea che partorisce amando il nostro Sire, Par
., 13, 53-54), and this active love is timeless and affects all phenomena at all seasons. The goal of the process of salvation, the white rose in the Empyrean, the community of the elect in God’s no longer veiled presence, is not only a certain hope for the future but is from all eternity perfect in God and prefigured for men, as is Christ in Adam. It is timelessly or at all times that Christ’s triumph and Mary’s coronation take place in Paradise; at all times the soul whose love has not been drawn toward a false goal goes unto Christ, its beloved, who wedded it with his blood.

In the Comedy there are numerous earthly phenomena whose theoretical
relation to the divine plan of salvation is set forth in detail. From the point of view of modern readers the most astounding instance, and in political and historical terms at the same time the most important one, is the universal Roman monarchy. It is in Dante’s view the concrete, earthly anticipation of the Kingdom of God. Aeneas’ journey to the underworld is granted as a special grace in view of Rome’s earthly and spiritual victory (
Inf
., 2, 13ff.); from the beginning, Rome is destined to rule the world. Christ appears when the time is fulfilled, that is, when the inhabited world rests in peace in Augustus’ hands. Brutus and Cassius, the murderers of Caesar, suffer beside Judas in the jaws of Lucifer. The third Caesar, Tiberius, is the legitimate judge of Christ incarnate and as such the avenger of original sin. Titus is the legitimate executor of the vengeance upon the Jews. The Roman eagle is the bird of God, and in one passage Paradise is called
quella Roma onde Cristo è Romano
(cf.
Par
., 6
; Purg
., 21, 82ff.;
Inf
., 34, 61ff.;
Purg
., 32, 102; etc., also numerous passages in the
Monarchia
). Furthermore, Virgil’s role in the poem can only be understood on this premise. We are reminded of the figure of the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem, and indeed the whole concept is an example of figural thinking. Just as the Judaeo-Christian method of interpretation, consistently applied to the Old Testament by Paul and the Church Fathers, conceives of Adam as a figure of Christ, of Eve as a figure of the Church, just as generally speaking every event and every phenomenon referred to in the Old Testament is conceived as a figure which only the phenomena and events of Christ’s Incarnation can completely realize or “fulfill” (to use the conventional expression), so the universal Roman Empire here appears as an earthly figure of heavenly fulfillment in the Kingdom of God.

In my essay “Figura” (referred to above, p. 73), I have shown—convincingly, I hope—that the Comedy is based on a figural view of things. In the case of three of its most important characters—Cato of Utica, Virgil, and Beatrice—I have attempted to demonstrate that their appearance in the other world is a fulfillment of their appearance on earth, their earthly appearance a figure of their appearance in the other world. I stressed the fact that a figural schema permits both its poles—the figure and its fulfillment—to retain the characteristics of concrete historical reality, in contradistinction to what obtains with symbolic or allegorical personifications, so that figure and fulfillment—although the one “signifies” the other—have a significance which is not incompatible with their being real. An event taken as a figure
preserves its literal and historical meaning. It remains an event, does not become a mere sign. The Church Fathers, especially Tertullian, Jerome, and Augustine, had successfully defended figural realism, that is, the maintenance of the basic historical reality of figures, against all attempts at spiritually allegorical interpretation. Such attempts, which as it were undermine the reality of history and see in it only extrahistorical signs and significations, survived from late antiquity and passed into the Middle Ages. Medieval symbolism and allegorism are often, as we know, excessively abstract, and many traces of this are to be found in the Comedy itself. But far more prevalent in the Christian life of the High Middle Ages is the figural realism which can be observed in full bloom in sermons, the plastic arts, and mystery plays (cf. the preceding chapter); and it is this figural realism which dominates Dante’s view.

The world beyond—as we put it earlier—is God’s design in active fulfillment. In relation to it, earthly phenomena are on the whole merely figural, potential, and requiring fulfillment. This also applies to the individual souls of the dead: it is only here, in the beyond, that they attain fulfillment and the true reality of their being. Their career on earth was only the figure of this fulfillment. In the fulfillment of their being they find punishment, penance, or reward. That man’s existence on earth is provisional and must be complemented in the world beyond, is a concept in keeping with Thomist anthropology, if E. Gilson’s observations on the subject are valid. He writes (
Le thomisme
, 3rd ed., Paris, 1927, p. 300):
une sorte de marge nous tient quelque peu en deçà de notre propre définition; aucun de nous ne réalise plénièrement l’essence humaine ni même la notion complète de sa propre individualité
. It is precisely this
notion complète de leur propre individualité
which the souls attain in Dante’s beyond by virtue of God’s judgment; and specifically, they attain it as an actual reality, which is in keeping with the figural view and the Aristotelian-Thomist concept of form. The relation of figure fulfilled, which the dead in Dante represent in reference to their own past on earth, is most readily demonstrable in those cases in which not only character and essential being, but also a signification apparent in the earthly figure, are fulfilled: as for example in the case of Cato of Utica, whose merely figural role as the guardian of earthly political freedom is fulfilled in the role he plays at the foot of the Mount of Purgatory as the guardian of the eternal freedom of the elect (
Purg
., 1, 71ff.:
libertà va cercando
; cf. also
Archiv. Roman
., 22, 478-481). In this instance the figural
approach can explain the riddle of Cato’s appearance in a place where we are astonished to find a pagan. Such a demonstration is not often possible. Yet the cases where it
is
possible suffice to let us see Dante’s basic conception of the individual in this world and in the world beyond. The character and the function of a human being have a specified place in God’s idea of order, as it is figured on earth and fulfilled in the beyond.

Both figure and fulfillment possess—as we have said—the character of actual historical events and phenomena. The fulfillment possesses it in greater and more intense measure, for it is, compared with the figure,
forma perfectior
. This explains the overwhelming realism of Dante’s beyond. When we say, “This explains …,” we do not of course overlook the genius of the poet who was capable of such a creation. To put it in the words of the old commentators, who distinguish between
causa efficiens, materialis, formalis
, and
finalis
of the poem:
Causa efficiens in hoc opere, velut in domo facienda aedificator, est Dantes Allegherii de Florentia, gloriosus theologus, philosophus et poeta
(Pietro Alighieri; in a similar vein also Jacopo della Lana). But the particular way in which his realistic genius achieved form, we explain through the figural point of view. This enables us to understand that the beyond is eternal and yet phenomenal; that it is changeless and of all time and yet full of history. It also enables us to show in what way this realism in the beyond is distinguished from every type of purely earthly realism. In the beyond man is no longer involved in any earthly action or entanglement, as he must be in an earthly representation of human events. Rather, he is involved in an eternal situation which is the sum and the result of all his actions and which at the same time tells him what were the decisive aspects of his life and his character. Thus his memory is led along a path which, though for the inhabitants of Hell it is dreary and barren, is yet always the right path, the path which reveals what was decisive in the individual’s life. In this condition the dead present themselves to the living Dante. The suspense inherent in the yet unrevealed future—an essential element in all earthly concerns and their artistic imitation, especially of a dramatic, serious, and problematic kind—has ceased. In the Comedy only Dante can feel this suspense. The many played-out dramas are combined in one great play, involving his own fate and that of all mankind; they are but exempla of the winning or losing of eternal bliss. But passions, torments, and joys have survived; they find expression in the situations, gestures, and utterances of the dead. With Dante
as spectator, all the dramas are played over again in tremendously concentrated form—sometimes in a few lines, as in the case of Pia de’ Tolomei (
Purg
., 5, 130). And in them, seemingly scattered and fragmented, yet actually always as parts within a general plan, the history of Florence, of Italy, of the world, unfolds. Suspense and development, the distinguishing characteristics of earthly phenomena, are no more. Yet the waves of history do reach the shores of the world beyond: partly as memories of the earthly past; partly as interest in the earthly present; partly as concern for the earthly future; in all cases as a temporality figurally preserved in timeless eternity. Each of the dead interprets his condition in the beyond as the last act, forever being played out, of his earthly drama.

In the first canto of the poem Dante says to Virgil: “Thou alone art he to whom I owe the beautiful style which has done me honor.” This is doubtless correct—and even more in respect to the Comedy than to his earlier works and
canzoni
. The motif of a journey to the underworld, a large number of individual motifs, many stylistic turns—for all these he is indebted to Virgil. Even the change in his theory of style from the time of his treatise
De vulgari eloquentia
—a change which took him from the merely lyrico-philosophical to the great epic and hence to full-dimensional representation of human events—cannot be accounted for by anything but the influence of classical models and in particular of Virgil. Of the writers we know, he was the first to have direct access to the poet Virgil. Virgil, much more than medieval theory, developed his feeling of style and his conception of the sublime. Through him he learned to break the all too narrow pattern of the Provençal and contemporary Italian
suprema constructio
. Yet as he approached the problem of his great work, which was to come into being under the sign of Virgil, it was the other, the more immediately present, the more living traditions which overwhelmed him. His great work proved to be in the mixed style and figural, and indeed in the mixed style as a result of the figural approach. It proved to be a comedy; it proved to be—also in terms of style—Christian. After all that we have said on the subject in the course of these interpretations, there can be no need for again explaining that (and why) conceiving all earthly occurrences through the medium of a mixed style—without aesthetic restriction in either subject matter or form—as an entity sublimely figural, is Christian in spirit and Christian in origin. Hence too the unity of the whole poem, in which a wealth of themes and actions is organized in a single universal pattern which embraces both
heaven and earth:
il poema sacro, al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra
. And, on the other hand, it was again Dante who first felt and realized the
gravitas
proper to the antique elevated style, and even surpassed it. Let him say what he will; let it be as vulgar, grotesque, horrible, or sneering as may be: the tone remains that of the elevated style. It is impossible to imagine that the realism of the Comedy could ever sink to the level of farce and serve the purposes of popular entertainment as the realism of the Christian drama so often does. Dante’s level of tone is unthinkable in medieval epics before his time; and he learned it, as can be shown by many examples, from antique models. Before Dante, vernacular literature—especially that of Christian inspiration—is on the whole rather naive so far as questions of style are concerned, and that despite the influence of scholastic rhetoric—an influence which of late has been rather heavily emphasized. But Dante, although he takes his material from the most living and sometimes from the humblest vernacular, has lost this naive quality. He subdues every turn of expression to the gravity of his tone, and when he sings of the divine order of things, he solves his problem by using periodic articulations and devices of sentence structure which command gigantic masses of thought and concatenations of events; since antiquity nothing comparable had existed in literature (one example may stand for many:
Inf
., 2, 13-36). Is Dante’s style still a
sermo remissus et humilis
, as he calls it himself and as Christian style should be even in the sphere of the sublime? The question could perhaps be answered in the affirmative; the Fathers themselves did not scorn the conscious employment of the art of rhetoric, not even Augustine. The crux of the matter is what purpose and what attitude the artistic devices serve.