Dante the pilgrim is on the threshold of the greatest adventure of his life. He is beginning a journey which will take him through the wonders of paradise to the highest heaven and the vision of God. But on the way, he knows, he will be a witness to the horrors of the damned in hell, and of the trials of those who must purge their sins away through suffering, in purgatory. This then is going to be an arduous, harrowing journey. He must prepare himself! The day was coming to its end and the darkening air Inferno Canto 2:1-6 To help his resolve he reminds himself of two other famous visitors to the afterword. He thinks about Aeneas, the protagonist of Virgil's great epic poem the Aeneid, and his journey to the underworld. Then he remembers that the Apostle Paul spoke about a journey he made to paradise in the third heaven. But these thoughts don't help him; in fact they make things worse. When he contemplates his famous predecessors he realises that he has no qualifications for such a journey. He is no ancient warrior here (like Aeneas) nor is the chosen apostle of the Church, like Paul. Suddenly he feels terribly inadequate. He tells Virgil his feelings and seeks his help. But me? Who has deemed me fit to go there? Inferno Canto 2:31-36 And so he begins to have second thoughts Like someone who loses the desire Inferno Canto 2:37-42 Virgil sees the pilgrim's dilemma. He understands the terror in his heart "If I have rightly understood your words", Inferno Canto 2:43-48 Virgil encourages the pilgrim by telling him why he came to help him. He tells the pilgrim that the lady Beatrice herself, the great love of Dante's life, visited him in his 'suspended' place at the edge of hell, where he exists in a shadowy half life with the other great pagan thinkers and writers, and that there she asked him to find and help the pilgrim. He is only here to help the pilgrim because the woman Dante the pilgrim (and Dante the writer) adored has summoned him. By saying this Virgil reminds the pilgrim that Grace and Beauty are waiting for him on 'the other side'. I was one of those who were suspended Inferno Canto 2:52-57 Beatrice had been told about the pilgrim's struggle on the mountain by Saint Lucia who in turn had been sent by the Virgin Mary herself. Beatrice had been desperately worried that Dante the pilgrim would be too afraid of the the wild beasts ever to leave the forest and find the way to paradise. Virgil describes what she said to him about the pilgrim "My friend, who is no friend of Fortune, Inferno Canto 2:61-70 BeatriceThis is our first encounter with Beatrice. According to Dante (the writer) he had fallen in love with her when he was only 9 years old (when she was perhaps only 8). Although they both eventually married other people, his intense love for her continued throughout his life even after she died. His earlier book the New Life (Vita Nuova) was a literary attempt to express that love and a reflection on the inadequacy of human language (at least in the poetic styles with which Dante was familiar) to express that love or explain what love really meant It seems from what he says in the New Life that for him, his love for Beatrice opened a window into what it meant to love God. The intense longing for an object of beauty so utterly unattainable seemed to him to be a reflection of the human search for God. Dante reflects that if he could only find a language to express that kind of love he might do justice to his love for Beatrice and, of course, we the readers, are left with the impression that such language might just do the trick for the human longing for God too! Dante ends that book by saying that he must stop writing because as yet no such language exists and that he will only continue when it does. I think that we are to understand the Commedia as Dante's answer to that dilemma. Here at last is a form and a language fit for such weighty themes. So we already know that Beatrice is more than just a woman Dante once loved. She has come to represent for him the embodiment of Love, and remarkably perhaps, of his love and longing for God. Somehow Beatrice, the beautiful, unattainable and now distant (because she has died) woman from Florence, is the bodily incarnation of all the things that Dante truly values. beauty, truth and divinity. It should be no surprise then to see her presented at the beginning of the Commedia as an 'angel of mercy', concerned, moved, compassionate, and deeply affected by her 'friend's' plight. She is described as by the pilgrim as she, compassionate who moved to help me. Of course, she is unspeakably beautiful. Virgil describes her so blessed and beautiful with eyes of light more bright than any star and with a voice like an angel's, soft and gentle. Virgil describes her later turning her shining eyes away. But even more meaningful for Dante (both Dantes!) she is a woman who still loves, and someone deeply affected by the plight of the man who loves her. She is fearful for Dante, and she wants Virgil to help him so that she can be comforted, in other words although she is in paradise (and so presumably wants for nothing) her happiness can be disrupted by the thought that of Dante's distress. She confesses to Virgil that love moved me as it moves me now to speak. When she turns her shining eyes away from Virgil he sees that there were tears! The name Beatrice means blessing and we shouldn't doubt that for Dante in the Commedia she is a character who embodies, represents 'blessing' but she is, as well, a real woman (well, as real as a character in fictional descent to the underworld can be!), the woman he loved and who, he believes, still loves him. She is even prepared to leave her holy seat in heaven and journey down to the centre of the earth, to the edge of hell, to seek Virgil's help on his behalf! Will the real Beatrice please stand upSo is this meant to be a a real 'woman in love' the woman from Dante's earlier life, or is this a heavenly woman who represents virtue? Does she love Dante as a woman or with a divine, compassionate pity? Is she she the embodiment of erotic desire or a saint? Well, here is the genius of Dante. As he presents her to us she is both. She is a woman, his woman, beautiful and desirable, a woman clearly still with strong feelings for Dante, but she is also someone whose love represents the divine love which is what the poem is really all about. It's interesting that Beatrice descends from paradise to the edge of hell to rescue Dante (albeit through a third party). There is in this 'action', some critics believe, a reference to the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, God coming down to the world to rescue the lost. Amazingly Beatrice becomes an embodiment of Christ, an incarnation of an incarnation if you like! This connection had already been hinted at in the New Life. In one scene Dante describes how, as he lay in bed one night he dreamt that Beatrice died. Then, sighing deeply, I said to myself: "It is bound to happen that one day the most gracious Beatrice will die."At that, such a frenzy seized me that I closed my eyes and, agitated like one in delirium, began to imagine things: as my mind started wandering, there appeared to me certain faces of ladies with dishevelled hair, and they were saying to me: "You are going to die." And then after these ladies there appeared to me other faces, strange and horrible to look at, who were saying: "You are dead." While my imagination was wandering like this, I came to the point that I no longer knew where I was. And I seemed to see ladies preternaturally sad, their hair dishevelled, weeping as they made their way down a street. And I seemed to see the sun grow dark, giving the stars a color that would have made me swear that they were weeping. And it seemed to me that the birds flying through the air fell to earth dead, and there were violent earthquakes. Bewildered as I dreamed, and terrified, I imagined that a friend of mine came to tell me: "Then you don't know? Your miraculous lady has departed from this world." At that I began to weep most piteously, and I wept not only in my dream, I wept with my eyes, wet with real tears. I imagined that I looked up at the sky, and I seemed to see a multitude of angels returning above, and they had before them a little pure white cloud. It seemed to me that these angels were singing in glory, and the words of their song seemed to be: Hosanna in excelsis; the rest I could not seem to hear. The New Life 23 This is an amazing passage. The imagined death of Beatrice is likened to the death of Jesus Christ. The gospels tell us that when he died the sky was darkened and the earth shook. In Dante's dream vision of Beatrice's death the angels come to take her spirit (a small white cloud!) just as angels attended Christ, and their song, Hosanna in excelsis, reminds the reader of what the angels sang when they appearing to the shepherds in the nativity story. In his delirious imagination (which presumably is how he 'gets away' with such a daring allusion) Dante thinks of the death of Beatrice as having the same importance (for him!) as the death of Christ. She is (for Dante) the agent of salvation, the incarnation of divine love In the Commedia the likeness to Christ is even more blatant. As noted she comes down from heaven to the borders of hell to find Virgil just as many believed Christ descended to hell after his crucifixion to rescue the worthy saints who had lived before his birth. When Dante eventually meets Beatrice in paradise her entry into the poem is heralded by voices who cry Benedictus qui venis ("blessed is he who comes") which is what the crowds cried out when they saw Jesus as he entered Jerusalem shortly before his death. The link is obvious because the voices do say 'he'. Her entry into the poem is really being compared to the entry of Christ! There are many other references to Beatrice as an incarnation of Christ throughout the poem which I will try to highlight as we go on, but what is really important here is that these connections allow the reader to see the feminine aspects of God. Because Dante defined his love for God in terms of his love for Beatrice it doesn't really come as a surprise (although it may well have been shocking!) that for Dante, God can take on feminine attributes. This is emphasised by Joan M. Ferrante who writes in her entry on Beatrice in The Dante Encyclopedia Part of Beatrice’s role as a Christ figure, a female in whom one can see God, is to help Dante see the female side of God. This is not unknown in medieval tradition (divine wisdom—Sophia or Sapientia—is a woman in the Old Testament; God and Christ are on rare occasions described as a mother; the Trinity and key divine attributes are feminine nouns), but Dante programmatically gives the female attributes of God alongside the male, showing that they are not determined by grammar but by conviction. For much of the poem Dante speaks of God in the masculine, but Beatrice speaks of provedenza (Par. 1.121), la mente profonda (2.131), la verace luce (3.32), l’etterna luce (5.8), and la divina bontà (7.64), using feminine adjectives and pronouns that emphasize the gender; and she describes the ultimate mystic union as the final salvation in which Dante will “inher” himself (l’ultima salute . . . t’inlei, Par. 22.124–127). Dante slowly moves into the feminine mode (Par. 13.26–27, 18.118–19), and by the last canto he describes his vision of God first in masculine terms and then in feminine (cf. Par. 33.115–120, and 124–132). The Dante Encyclopedia p 92 Perhaps because she is the female image of Christ, Beatrice also represents blessing (as he name suggests literally 'beatifier'), and she also embodies truth. Impersonal abstract ideals were often portrayed as women in medieval and ancient texts but it was more usually women from the bible or classical literature who became those embodiments. The fact that a real woman from Florence (who was therefore not a bible character) who had been married (and was therefore not a virgin) should have played such a role was in itself remarkable. No less remarkable is that Beatrice as Truth or 'Theology' gets to rebuke and instruct anyone and everyone about the true meaning of the bible and the Church's teaching! Once she does, Beatrice does not defer to anyone; indeed she declares her judgment “infallible” (secondo mio infallibile avviso, “according to my infallible view,” Par. 7.19)—a word that is otherwise used only of God’s justice in the Commedia (Inf.29.56), and she promises to resolve his problem (about just punishment for just vengeance) swiftly with words of great significance (Par. 7.22–24). Beatrice does not hesitate to correct the writings of philosophers or theologians by name: she reinterprets Plato on souls returning to their stars (Par. 4.22ff.), rejects Gregory the Great on the orders of angels (Par. 28.133–135), and corrects Jerome on the creation of angels long before the creation of the world (Par. 29.37ff.). She teaches views that differ from those of Thomas Aquinas but without naming him: on mediated creation (Par. 2), on secondary creation of the elements (Par. 7), and on the memory of angels (Par. 29). Beatrice also discourses on universal order, free will, the sacredness of vows and valid dispensations, divine justice and revenge, and God’s reason for creation. And she does all this in a heaven filled with learned doctors, several of whom had argued for Paul’s injunction against women’s speaking or teaching. The Dante Encyclopedia p 93 But quite amazingly she does all this while remaining a 'real woman', not a disembodied virtue. This heavenly incarnation of Truth and Beauty is also a woman capable of tears and distress, a woman who loves and who is touched by Dante's love for her. Here she is an idealised lover, the ultimate woman! But the character of Beatrice changes again in Paradiso, from the stern and mocking accuser to the helpful, informative, and even friendly teacher who takes pride in his achievements and smiles at his occasional lapses; to the concerned mother who comforts and nourishes him; to the lover who satisfies his desire. She is, curiously, more human in her relations with Dante in Paradiso than anywhere else in his writings. She draws him upward by the reflected light of the divine in her eyes—beautiful eyes which remain to the end the means by which Love caught him (Par. 28.11–12), in a fire that still burns (26.14–15). When he sees love in her holy eyes, his affection is free of any other desire (18.7–18), and she has to remind him that Paradise is not only in her eyes (18.21); when he looks down on Earth from the fixed stars, his mind, always in love and courting her, burns more than ever to bring his eyes back to her (27.88–90). Her beauty draws him, and her smile—denied here only once when its intensity would overwhelm him (21.4–6)— comforts and encourages him; the smile that burns in her eyes makes him feel he has plumbed the depths of Paradise (15.34–36). The Dante Encyclopedia p 93 She speaks!But there are other ways too in which the development of Beatrice as a character is remarkable. Not least is the fact this beatrice speaks! Throughout the book devoted to her (or to his love for her) the New Life she is virtually silent. Here in the Commedia she speaks volumes. Teodolinda Barolini has traced the literary development of Beatrice from a typical lady of the courtly romances of Dante's day (the silent, inaccessible beautiful objects of desire), to the woman we meet in the Commedia who speaks. She writes The portrait of Beatrice in Inferno 2 seems fully consonant with her courtly, and specifically, lyric past: the verses with which Vergil describes her—eyes more shining than a star, smooth, soft diction emanating from an ‘‘angelic voice’’—have clear stilnovist antecedents, as has often been noted. But the interesting point for me here is one that has been less remarked, and it is that, while couching his description of Beatrice in the language of the lyric tradition from which she derives, Dante just as surely breaks with that tradition. He ruptures the connection of the Commedia’s Beatrice to her lyric past by having this Beatrice use her angelica voce—by having her speak. Because we are in hell, and Beatrice does not enter hell, her speech is reported by Vergil, but it is her speech nonetheless; it is reported verbatim and it takes up most of the canto. The fact that she speaks is central, just as central as the impulse that moves her to speak: she is moved by love, and the same force that moves her to leave heaven on Dante’s behalf also causes her to speak. The famous verse in which Beatrice states the cause of her motion and her purpose makes it equally clear that her purpose is intimately bound up with her speech: ‘‘amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare’’ (love moved me, which makes me speak) (Inf. 2.72). In this declaration that love moved her and makes her speak, Dante both conjures Beatrice’s past and scripts for her a radically new future. This future, which will unfold in the Commedia, is contained in the verb parlare, a verb betokening an activity utterly alien from the agenda of the lyric lady. Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture p 371 Barolini further points out that here in Canto 2 of the Inferno, we can witness the development of this new Beatrice, this 'walking talking' version. In Dante's earlier work The New Life Beatrice was frequently the object of praise. She was praised by other women, by Dante of course, and even by God himself. Here in Canto 2 of the Inferno she becomes an embodiment of the praise of God. When St Lucia comes to her to tell her of the pilgrim's plight, she addresses her as Beatrice, God's true praise. She is so beautiful, so perfect a human being, that her very existence she praises and glorifies God. But also here we see the transformation. From being the object of praise, or even the embodiment of praise, she becomes the one who praises, i.e. the agent of beatification. As she takes her leave of Virgil, thankful for his willingness to help, she promises that when I return to stand before my Lord often I shall sing your praises to him. This is no longer the passive recipient of the opinion of men (or God, or other women) but one who can make her own judgements and by speaking them, bless the object of her praising. These are verses that have captured critical attention, including mine, in the context of the drama of Vergil; we have wondered if Beatrice can legitimately promise to praise a damned soul. In the same way that I have thought about verse 72, ‘‘amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare,’’ [love moves me as it moves me now to speak] within the economy of the Commedia’s extraordinary emphasis on speech without focusing on the significance of a courtly female speaker, so I did not notice the signficance of the verb lodare being placed in the mouth of the stilnovist lady. With ‘‘di te mi lodero’’ [I will praise you] Beatrice takes on a new mantle and a new role: rather than passively being praised, she is actively doing the praising (note the heightened reflexive forms, ‘‘mi lodero’’), and so becoming Dante’s 'Beatrix loquax'. Dante and the origins of Italian Literary Culture p 373 So we discover in the Commedia a woman who embodies the divine. She talks, she teaches, she evokes praise and she honours and praises others. She descends to hell and she rises to paradise again. She is beautiful and perfect of course (this is a work written by a man) but she is also a real woman in the sense that she embodies Dante's memory of the Beatrice he loved. To place her in such a central, starring role, to give her words, was a daring and revolutionary move. Joan Ferrante writes Inspired by his love for Beatrice, Dante moves from the self-absorption of the lyric lover to the self-sacrifice of a public reformer. He sees her first as a beautiful and inaccessible woman, then as a Christ figure sent by God to give meaning to his life, and finally as a loving woman sent by Mary to save his soul (and his poetry) and to turn him into a willing instrument of the divine will. He imputes more and more meaning to her—as theology, revelation, faith, perhaps contemplation, and grace—but he never attempts, as he did with the donna gentile, to deny her reality as a woman he knew and loved. Those who would deny her historicity, like those who reject her allegorical significance, deny the fullness of Dante’s poetry. The Dante Encyclopedia p 95 You may also be interested in
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April 2016
GalleryThis blog is as much about images as it is about text. Below is a slideshow of the pictures and images used in this blog. Click on any of the pictures to go to the post where that image is featured.
PostsLocating Paradise #1 In a Garden, Far, Far Away
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'
The Resurrection According to Rahner
Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #4 'And Who by Fire'
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #3: Held in the Balance
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2: Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #1: The Broad and Narrow Gates
Daily Dante 7: Many Rivers to Cross
Daily Dante 6: 'You Gotta Serve Somebody'
In Hell Everyone Can Hear You Scream. The Vision of Tundale #3
Teeth, Spikes and Cleavers: At the Sharp end of Hell. The Vision of Tundale #2
'No Pain No Gain': The Vision of Tundale #1
'Hellzapoppin':
Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #2 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (and we feel fine)'. Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #1
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #2 Blinded by the Light
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #1: Glorious and Immortal
Daily Dante 5: What the gates said.
Daily Dante 4: When I find myself in times of trouble
Daily Dante 3: I'll take you there
Daily Dante 2: Fierce creatures
Daily Dante 1: If you go down to the woods today
In Seventh Heaven or 'What Enoch Did Next'
A World of Fire and Ice: Heaven according to Enoch
The Power and the Glory: Visions of God as king in the Hebrew bible
The Beautiful Bestiary of Catherine Cleves: Monsters and Demons in detail.
Heaven is for Real: Heaven as a physical space up above the sky
Resurrecting the Dead or Reviving the Flowers? The loss of resurrection faith in Judaism.
The Defeat of Death #1: The promise of resurrection in the Isaiah Apocalypse.
The Defeat of Death #2: Death as a hostile power and promise of God's victory in Isaiah
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: The 'Last Judgement' according to Stefan Lochner
Hell in the Hospital: The 'Last Judgement' of Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune altarpiece.
'Hell' in the New Testament #2: The gates of Hades shall not prevail
The Hours of Catherine Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book
'On Earth as in Heaven': The kingdom of God as a revelation of heaven
'Hell' in the New Testament #1: Gehenna
Lost in Translation #1: How the King James version got it so wrong about hell
Heaven is not our home
Domes, Depths and Demons: The cosmology of the Hebrew world
A Bigger God
"See you in Sheol" - Sheol, the common destination of all
Heaven, Hell and Christian Hope
BooksBelow are some of the books which have helped me the most in the research and writing for this blog. Click on any image to find out more about that book at its page on Amazon uk.
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