Prof: Today we are going to look at the three cantos in
the eighth sphere of Dante's cosmos;
we are beyond the planets, beyond all this so called
eighth sphere, or the Heaven of the Fixed
Stars.
Before we get to, which will be next week--
next time, the Empyrean, the heaven of light and fire
but now we are in the heaven of the fixed stars and Dante
discusses the three theological virtues.
The three theological virtues, unlike--
they are so called to distinguish them from the
cardinal virtues that Christians share with the classical
tradition, namely the fortitude,
prudence, and justice, etc.
These are the virtues that deal with the understanding of the
divine; they open up this horizon of
speculations about the language of God,
the way God speaks to us, theology in this sense,
the way in which we speak about God,
theology, the logos.
In theology there's the word logos and the way God speaks to
us, so it's the place in paradise
where Dante will focus on the meaning of what I call--
it's not my phrase, "basic words,"
the words which are foundations of the way in which we come out
to discover who we are; they are words that we use,
the words that we many not even know exactly what they mean and
yet Dante will try to define them,
they are, I repeat faith, hope and charity.
The three virtues that Dante will--
in this, using Paul's letter to the Hebrews where he accounts or
gives a definition at least of faith and hope,
but they are words--they are terms that always implicate each
other.
You cannot go explaining faith without really talking about
hope.
You cannot go on talking about hope without explaining faith,
and both of them are recapitulated and come together,
gather within the question of--within the virtue of charity
and the virtue of love.
They are words that--they are very mysterious in many ways but
there are degrees of understanding all of them.
The three examiners, because Dante will go through
the equivalent of a university examination,
a medieval Bachelor's degree, that's the term comes to us
from the universities, medieval universities,
the Bachelor.
Dante is a bachelor who presents himself to the teacher,
the teacher is testing him, and he will give an answer
according to textbooks.
Authentic--where the authentic--the departed of one's
own beliefs, one's own hopes, and one's own charity are
gathered.
The three teachers are going to be three Apostles who are known
as Peter for faith, St.
Peter for faith and that makes sense because Peter himself,
the name stands for the cornerstone on which the edifice
of Christian belief is built; the second one is going to be
for the virtue of hope is going to be James, known as the
Galician because--why him; it would seem to be less
obvious than the other two because he among of all the
Apostles is the one whose death was recorded in the Acts of the
Apostles and so he lived in a certain expectation of a life to
come, so he would seem to be the real
figure of hopefulness of some idea of--
some way of expecting a future and the life of eternity.
The virtue of charity instead, is examined by John,
the Apostle, to distinguish him from the
seer, the writer of the Apocalypse.
So it's the three Apostles Peter, James,
and John.
Are there ways in which we could--I could give you some
summary ways of trying to understand some of these
virtues.
One thing that I would ask you to look through when you have
time to go into detail of these texts,
it seems to me that all the three cantos deal,
or have as a kind of what I would call under text,
the subtext of them, something running through but
sometimes even visible but not all the time visible,
is the question of exile.
Dante is retrieving the language of exile as if these
virtues are clearly virtues that don't concern at all the blessed
in heaven; they can only concern us here
in time.
The blessed in heaven certainly do not need faith,
or hope, or they don't really need to know about what love may
be; either they have it or they
wouldn't be there so this is-- but it's the language of exile
is running through these three issues just as the language of
time, so the connection between time
and exile probably needs not much explanation,
much glossing.
We are in time, we are fallen,
and it's only in the language of the fall that it's possible
to think about exile.
The other element running through this is really the
question of, very visible, especially in Canto XXVI,
the actual question of language itself.
What is the language of God?
What are the names of God?
Dante asks that question.
Are we talking about an entity with a name,
and if so, you know the whole debate about the so-called
tetragrammaton, the four letters that are
supposedly that name God.
That's what the word means, the four letters.
Are they known or is God just an effable?
Is there some--Is He some kind of reality we can never even
hope to name or are we going to be related and connected to this
idea, this knowledge of God by
analogical discourse.
These are positions, the mystical position that
denies even our knowledge of the name of God,
the analogical position put forth by Aquinas,
for instance, that we really talk about God
analogically and know the qualities we attribute to God
only they're not real by what we may know in our own lives.
Dante asks this question about what is the language of God?
What are the names of God and how do we get to know God?
The first virtue then is the virtue of faith.
There are many ways literally--I call it a basic
word because it's really a basic word because it founds us.
It's a stone, Peter asks for the foundation
of all this poetic edifice of the Divine Comedy.
I would like you to think about this--
the actual--when we get into the text,
there is actual apostrophe at the beginning of Canto XXIV of,
"'O fellowship elect to the great supper of the blessed
Lamb, who feeds you so that your
desire is ever satisfied, since by God's grace this man
has foretaste of that which falls from your table,
before death appoints his time, give heed to his measureless
craving and bedew him with some drops;
you drink always from the fountain whence comes that on
which his mind is set.'" He wants to know--
what I do--what I would like to stress is the presence of this
actual metaphor of a banquet.
It is as if Dante is--clearly we're dealing with two metaphors
here; one which is exilic,
the manna in the desert, the falling of this dew on the
exiles, the wanderers,
the Jewish wanderers in the desert,
and the other one is the eschatological banquet.
It is as if any debate about faith has to be placed within a
communal context.
This is not going to be the professional faith the way you
may have it, let's say in 1550 roughly.
I'm really alluding to, as a contrast,
just to make you understand the case,
the great debate between two figures of the Renaissance
called Erasmus and Luther.
They debated, at length, about the question
of whether or not how a text written about a century earlier,
around 1440, a text by Valla,
a great humanist who wrote about the free will in the
defense of the free will-- on free will.
He--they were--it was unclear to them what Valla really meant
so they go on debating; the text in called On Free
Will.
Erasmus maintains that Valla really had defended the
existence of free will.
Free will, which is a gift of God, it's something that has
been given to us and therefore we really have to come to know
God through the acknowledgement of his authority because the
freedom that we are talking-- that he is talking about,
he thinks Valla is talking about,
actually comes from him, and so by the free will we come
to know and come to choose also the existence of the divinity.
Luther had very radical ideas about the question of freedom.
There was not such a thing he would argue as free will,
and actually the world, the universe is a universe of
absolute faith, and faith is freedom and it's
given to us by freedom because it releases us from all
obligations, it frees us from all
constraints, it just makes us understand that our own
relationship to the Creator is without any other intermediary
forces of the world.
It's a radical, theological claim of freedom,
and faith together.
It's very possible; many people,
just to extend this argument, there are many poets and
thinkers who go on changing his scenario and believe that,
for instance, freedom is actually the source
of not faith but faithlessness.
That the idea of--one's own faithlessness may come,
as a denial of God, may come from the assertion of
one's self and the assertion of one's own total freedom.
But this is--I'm giving you this to exemplify the nature of
the debates and the force of the debates.
Dante insists--so removes the question of faith from one of
radical subjectivity or radical faith,
aware that there may be some kind--some flip side to it,
that faith and lack of faith really both depend,
if you reduce them to subjectivity,
one can go on sliding into one of the two options very easily.
Dante focuses on, with this first image,
on the question of the communal experience, the banquet.
That to me is part of the shared world,
this eschatological banquet, where they're all the--
the vision where, at the end of time,
but the allusion is also to the manna where these various
figures are-- the community comes together
and then Dante goes on really focusing on the individuality,
on the private professional faith, it's really about him.
The interesting thing that I want to point out is Beatrice's
words to Peter, around lines 30,
she goes on appealing to him to go on to examining,
but she does so in a peculiar way.
Let me read this passage, "And she,"
lines 32, "'O eternal light of the
great soul with whom our Lord left the keys,"
this is very canonical, it's part of the hagiography,
the account of the iconographic representation of Peter with the
two keys, "which He brought down of
this wondrous joy, test this man on points light
and grave as thou seest good regarding the faith by which
thou walkedst on the sea."
This is an allusion recorded in the Gospel of Peter walking out
of an act of faith, walking on water,
because Jesus asks him and tells him so.
The strange thing about this reference is that Peter did not
want to walk on water.
It is the moment of, let me call it the crisis of
faith, the moment where Peter had no
faith and in fact Jesus calls him,
"Oh man of little faith why don't you walk,"
and then I guess feeling that he's teetering on the brink of
the abyss you can imagine, really see soaring over the
waves, finally does manage to go on.
This is a poignant moment because clearly Dante's
emphasizing that there are degrees of faith and that the
so-called crisis of faith must not be seen as denials of faith.
On the contrary, that somehow there is a sort of
dialectical movement between a profession of faith and doubts
about owning and that's the-- owning this gift,
of having this gift of faith.
This is one of the strange moments and it's in the light of
this strange fluctuation between faith and experience of not
faith that I think that what happens later has to--
the wait has to be understood, and then whether he loves
rightly and rightly hopes, and believes,
here are the three--three of the language--
the three theological virtues all come together.
"Is not hid from thee, since thou hast seen it
there," and so on and then Dante uses both the language of
the university, academic life,
as if this were really an academic test.
We'll come back to this issue in a moment.
Just as the bachelor--that's the--the Bachelor of Arts,
the baccalaureatus, as we call it arms himself so
there are two.
There is the weapon of knowledge, the academic,
knowledge as a force, knowledge as a weapon,
"just as the bachelor arms himself and does not speak to
the master," magister,
"submits the question-- for argument,
not for settlement."
These issues are issues that always need the open-endedness
of argumentation and not that of a settling of the point.
"I armed myself with all my reasons while she was
speaking, to be ready for such a questioner and for such a
profession.
'Speak, good Christian, declare thyself.'"
This is a knowledge that makes him visible,
"declare thyself," but a knowledge that does not
keep him hidden, sort of brings him into
existence, makes him visible to us.
What is faith and that's the question that he--that Peter
asks.
And the answer is, "'May the grace which
grants it to me to make my confession to the Chief
Centurion,' I began, 'give me right utterance for my
thoughts.'
And I went on: 'As the truthful pen,'"
an allusionist to Paul, a questioning an authority,
and the word authority, as you know,
is that which is--what do we mean by authentic and
authorities are key words, the word is auctoritas.
It means that comes which is worthy of faith.
The teacher is not necessarily worthy of faith.
You can question the opinions of the teacher and reject the
question of the--there's a distinction between the master
and the author.
The one--or the authority, the one who is an author is one
who is worthy of belief, worthy of faith,
so he quotes Paul, so this is a canonical answer,
"'As the truthful pen of thy dear brother,"
Paul, "wrote of it with thee,
father, put Rome on the good path, faith is the
substance," literally the foundation,
that which lies under all the things.
The ground of all things, substance of things hoped for,
so faith--if you want to understand faith we ought to
probably go and read about hope, things hoped for and the
evidence of things not seen.
This I take to be its quiddity, quiddity and medieval--part of
the medieval lexicon meaning its constitutive essence,
its specificity.
Now if you thought that in the Middle Ages that we'll go on
talking about faith, the famous formulation of faith
comes from Tertullian who says, "I believe because it is
absurd," so that faith becomes the
consequence of, the extension of,
the absurdity of all things.
Because the claim made on what one believes has in itself the
idea of going--being beyond reason, absurd in that sense
would be beyond reason.
That's one of the ways in which faith is defined.
It really means that faith exceeds the law of reason;
it means that faith can never really quite be an object of
knowledge.
Dante does not pursue that line.
He tries to make faith a reason co-extensive.
This is the sense of the--I've got to qualify the term
co-extensive, and I will in a moment,
because obviously they are not, but they are--they belong
together.
This is the sense of the whole metaphorical pattern of the
university context.
That is to say, you can know something about
belief, knowledge and faith really belong together,
they implicate each other.
They are not the same thing because if you really could know
everything of what you belief then there is no reason why you
should belief, that which faith becomes
necessary-- a necessity only because they
are-- it's a way of acknowledging limitations of
what one knows.
But linking knowledge and faith is not just simply a way of
saying that reason can know some of the content of what Dante
believes, that there is a reasonableness
to what one believes, that's all true.
To say that reason and faith go together, there are certain
claims about the reasonableness of what one believes.
It really means, I think, at a deeper level,
that faith itself is a mode of knowledge.
That it is a mode of knowledge exactly the way you have the
knowledge of philosophy though its modalities are going to be
different, because philosophy submits to
the rules of the rationality, but faith opens your eyes and
it's a way of showing you something about the world that
the reason alone cannot do.
The binding of the two metaphors, that's what I meant
co-extensive but not identical.
I didn't mean they're identical; the joining of philosophy and
theology, reason and faith, makes and projects faith as a
way of knowing.
It makes you see the world in different ways then if you were
trying to look at the world in the light of natural reason and
from the point of view of rationality.
So this seems to be the argument and I set the terms
against, let's say, a modern subjective
idea of freedom, freedom of faith as freedom,
that frees you from all, and you are only accountable to
the Creator, or faith as a mode of
responding to the absurdity around oneself,
which is really the language of Tertullian and this scholastic
argument that Aquinas, of knowledge and faith really
needing to be together.
Then the examination goes on and I want to talk about 70,
"'Thou thinkest right," this is the
beginning, the top of the page Canto XXIV,
line 68, "Then I heard:
'Thou thinkest rightly if thou understandest well why he placed
it among the substances and after among the evidences.'
And I then: 'The deep things that so richly manifest
themselves to me here are so hidden from men's eyes below
that there their existence lies in belief alone."
Now, it's the distinction, this is a cesura between belief
and what we are-- the evidence of things not
seen, the paradox remains, so there are things visible
here in the heaven of the fixed stars and not available to those
of us who are in time and in the fallen world.
"On which is based the lofty hope;
and therefore it takes the character of substance.
And from this belief we must reason, without seeing more;
therefore it holds the character of evidence."
This is a gloss on the medieval theological lexicon that Dante
has been deploying.
"Then I heard: 'If all that is acquired below
for doctrine were thus understood, there would be no
room left for sophist's wit.'
This breathed from the kindled love;
and it continued," I want you to pay attention to
this metaphor, for I wish you had--we're
really sitting around the table where I could ask you to
speculate about the presence of the coming metaphor.
"If all that is acquired below for doctrine,"
I am sorry.
"'Now the alloy and the weight of this money have been
well examined; but tell me if thou hast it in
thy purse.'" All of a sudden the question of
money and the question of faith--
faith is literally given as said to be money.
Do you have this coin in your purse?
"I therefore: 'I have indeed,
so bright and round that of its mintage I am in no doubt.'
Then there came from the depth of the light that was shining
there: 'This precious jewel,'"
that's one reason why the metaphor of money is used for--
clearly for faith.
It's a precious jewel on which every virtue rests,
"whence did it come to thee?"
And the language is going to be--it's from the plenteous
reign of the Holy Spirit and the new parchments and so on,
but that metaphor of money as faith really sort of has a way
of lingering on in our minds.
What is the connection?
One connection, I repeat, is to indicate the
preciousness of the faith one holds.
It is really as rare maybe and it's valuable as rare,
beautiful jewels can be.
That's one thing, but clearly there is more,
because the word money which Dante uses in Italian,
moneta, is the same word becomes a
character in an English epic, moneta comes from the
Latin form meneo, the word money as you know
comes from-- meaning a warning,
it's an advice, it's a warning,
a warning about its mintage, it's part of the language of--
we have the word admonishment that comes from it.
It admonishes that it's not a counterfeit,
that it is really pure, so that's another way of
referring to the purity of this faith,
the preciousness before, now the purity of this faith,
the authenticity of it so to speak.
Another trait of money is that money has--
it's that which establishes the value--
it circulates first of all, has the power of circulating,
that's not said by the text but it's implied by the metaphor.
It is as if faith has that power, has that virtue that puts
everything into motion, and therefore questions and
establishes, that's what makes it a basic
word.
It establishes, it's the substance that
establishes the values of all the things that are around us.
Fourth, I cannot really get past my mind that Dante wants us
to think about this kind of the resonance of prophenation that
is in the language of money and link it with really this purity
of faith.
It is as if there is--the distinction is really never
quite between prophenation and the purity of faith and that
somehow the world of faith comes out of the world of
prophenation.
That it belongs to the world of time, it can be profane and yet
it still manages to put things into circulation.
It's really the ambiguity of money, the ambiguity of the
metaphor of money; I think sheds a lot of light on
this virtue that Dante has been examining.
He has been examined about it but he has been--he is examining
it for us.
Let me go and see how--whether we can see more about this
virtue by looking at the question of hope that comes
immediately after with the examination by St.
James.
I begin to tell you here just a little story that--
it's not really an unusual story, but as you probably know,
the Greeks never thought of hope as a virtue.
There's a reference to hope in--as being one of
Pandora's--being one of the entities available in Pandora's
Box.
You know about Pandora's Box, which was opened and all the
evils of the world came out of Pandora's Box,
save for one, hope.
It's a statement, it's a view that all is--
that really casts hope as clearly, some kind of evil or a
delusion, and in fact,
for the Greeks the idea of hope is always a term that implies
the delusion of exiles.
It's really what befalls an exile, someone who loses one's
land and what is left for him to do nothing but hope.
It's the radical illusion; it's a kind of hope against
hope.
I have nothing more to do; it's a self-deception,
that's really what it is.
Dante does not follow that route for hope,
and in effect, I think that he finds in the
Bible the idea that-- or a kind of a new--a different
horizon for the rethinking, the way in which hope can be
viewed.
Hope, first of all, is literally a virtue of time.
More so faith--the language of the clock, you must have noticed
in Canto XXIV introducing the world of hope.
I did not want to talk about it because I know that I'll be
talking about it now.
Hope is as much of faith a virtue of time,
because it's a virtue not only of time;
it's a virtue specifically of the future.
It tells me whenever--if I have hope--I can't really hope about
the past, it would be--it would fly against all sense,
against all logic.
I hope yesterday it didn't rain; it doesn't make sense does it?
I mean it's--but I can hope that tomorrow it won't snow.
I can have that hope which would be a silly hope,
but it's a hope nonetheless because it's a virtue of time in
the future.
It's a way of experiencing time in the future,
that's one thing that Dante is doing, linking therefore hope
and temporality.
But it's not only a virtue of time;
it's the most realistic of virtues.
Normally, we think, and the Greeks would sort of
give us a cause to pause, that if you really hope it's
because you are really desperate.
You hope because they have no rational reason,
no realistic reason to believe that things are going to go the
way you wish they went for you, so you go on hoping.
Dante says no, hope is the most realistic of
virtues because it tells me that nothing is really ever over.
That's what makes it realistic.
The negation of hope, the opposite of hope would be
despair.
Dante, you remember, is the scene for Dante,
is the scene that we find in canto--
we never read it, and now retrospectively I can
tell you that you should go and read it,
Canto VIII of Inferno, and even in Canto IX,
the encounter with the Medusa is that fear of despair,
that idea of being petrified.
The Medusa can turn you into a stone;
that is to say, that you are imprisoned and you
remain caught either in your standpoint or in that particular
reality that you have or the idea of yourself as you like
to-- as you think you have been,
and the idea of the past.
Dante says, no hope is a virtue of the future;
it's a virtue that can even change the past.
In that sense, it's effective on the past,
though it's--because it tells us that the past may not be what
we thought it was.
Whatever disaster you may have had,
whatever disappointment you may have had in the past,
that disappointment may contain seeds that really will reappear
in the future, and maybe a preparing a future
that will surprise you.
This is a different understanding of time that Dante
presents.
It's an understanding of time that once again Dante links with
two moments of his which is-- in that sense it's really not
different from faith, it fulfills faith,
it unveils the element of faith.
You cannot really go on hoping about something like that unless
you have some--an act of faith.
Dante goes on explaining it in existential terms and tying it
to his own hope of returning to his homeland,
his own native city, and the larger pattern of
exile.
I want to examine that with you.
The poem begins with a subjunctive;
Canto XXV begins with an optative, what we call,
"I wish" that things were going that
way.
"If it ever come to pass," contingency,
the word is contingency in Italian,
it uses the Latinism because we don't really use that in that
sense, but I'll read in Italian even
if Margaret-- I wish she were here se mai
contingua, that's a Latinism,
if ever I were to-- contingent, if it ever happened
in that sense, "that the sacred
poem," "poema sacro,"
"if it ever come to pass the sacred poem,"
and the sacred means-- remember that Dante uses the
word "sacred" always in a double sense.
A sacred, he's not investigate with some kind of magic,
idolatress power because for Dante the sacred is never
reducible or localizable, that's a verb,
in one object or in one particular place.
He means it ambiguously as that which contains the profane and
the sacred within it, hell and heaven,
the scriptures of heaven and hell.
"The sacred poem to which both heaven and earth have set
their hand," it's an incredible moment of
prophetic self-awareness.
I am writing but I know that without God I would not be able
to be writing this poem, "that it has made me lean
for many years," writing now.
I'm sorry that I'm giving you this kind of simple paraphrase
of it, but the ascesis of writing, writing is a--do you
understand what I mean?
Writing is an ascetic labor of the soul,
it makes me lean as if he were undergoing fasting,
the rituals of the commitment to a particular labor,
so I call it the ascetic labor of the soul;
"should overcome the cruelty that bars me from the
fair sheepfold."
If I could ever go back home, but he called back home
Florence, in the canto of hope where he's an exile,
and the city is described in passive terms.
The metaphor of the city as a sheepfold,
the Passover language, the language you expect to have
in the Eclogues of Virgil,
the pastoral tradition.
The idyllic world, that's what we mean by the
pastoral tradition.
If there ever were some peace, some idyllic circumstances in
that city, and you can continue,
"where I slept as a lamb," here he continues
with the pastoral language, "an enemy to the wolves
that make war on it, with another voice now,
and other fleece I shall return a poet,
and to the font of my baptism take the laurel crown;
for there I entered into the faith that makes souls known to
God, and after, because of it,
Peter thus encircled my brow."
Dante is still in the circle of hope and the heaven of hope,
and yet now he's really thinking about the last ceremony
of Peter on him who blesses him three times.
It is as if literally faith, and hope are now converging,
the two virtues come together.
What is Dante saying though here in this proem,
at the beginning of this canto?
He's casting his hometown Florence in the pastoral
language, as a sheepfold,
and they know he's alluding to a Messianic time where--
when if it were just--when the peace were restored,
when the factions, the wolves, the Guelfs,
the pun of wolves and Guelfs, that's very clear that's what
etymologically the word Guelfs comes from,
from wolves and the lambs will lie together,
almost a kind of impossible time, a Messianic time,
when finally peace will be restored.
He goes on adding that he would be acknowledged,
that's part of his hope, he will be acknowledged,
there will be--at that time he would acknowledged as a poet on
the font of his baptism, which as you know he refers to
the Baptistery of St.
John, where we do have records that he actually was christened.
That's simple language, but you have to ask yourselves,
why would Dante talk?
Why would he use this particular metaphor?
The baptism is clearly the place where a community is
constituted, then the baptismal font has that value.
Not only has that value, it's actually the same
baptismal font that Dante had-- you remember there had been a
prophenation of it in canto-- described in Canto XIX of
Hell where Dante says that he broke one of those
Guelfs, which we try to understand in
figurative terms since it would be inconceivable that Dante
would be capable of breaking it.
He says he began to rescue someone who was dying.
What is a baptismal font?
For those of you who have no inkling of what this is it's
the-- what we call the sacramental,
the typological, if you really--more textual and
historical about that sacrament, that ceremony,
re-enactment of Exodus.
When a child is baptized, he is literally said--he's told
actually that he is once again re-enacting the crossing of
Exodus.
To me this is extraordinary, that Dante says that he would
be now acknowledged and be given the laurel of the poet on the
baptismal font.
The question you have to ask yourselves is,
no doubt, is, Dante's asking how does a poet
come home?
He imagines a triumph at the baptismal font,
is there a home--what is the homecoming of poets?
That's the hope, hope for a homecoming where
everybody will be at peace and there will be a feast,
a festive mood and he was going to be welcomed back and he would
hailed and acknowledged as a poet,
a great fantasy of every--of the winner's return.
That's literally what he is saying.
Yet, he's using this language of a baptismal font which is the
language of Exodus.
It is as if he were saying that the poet can only come home in
order to tell his community that I have to get out again.
That all of them will have to do exactly what's happening to
him, that the exile that has
been--with which he has been punished,
and which has befallen him, is really the message that his
poetry can only give to the community from which he has been
exiled.
He is convoking the whole community around the baptismal
font, which is the figure of exile,
to tell them this is really where we belong --
in exile, in the language of spiritual exile,
a language in which clearly implies some kind of re-making
of oneself, re-thinking of oneself.
Now, with this in mind, Dante goes on seeing the barren
for whom below they visit Galicia, an allusion to
Santiago, and then she herself will go on.
I want to--before we read the passage I want to give you this,
"And that compassionate one," line 50 that
Beatrice's presentation of Dante to St.
James.
"And that compassionate one who directed the feathers of
my wings," a flight of the soul,
the name of the family Alighieri, "to so high a
flight anticipated my reply: 'The Church Militant,'"
this is Beatrice, "'has not a child more
full of hope, as is written in the Sun that
irradiates all our host; therefore is it granted him to
come from Egypt to Jerusalem, that he may see it before his
warfare is accomplished.
The other two points about which thou didst ask--not for
enlightenment, but for him to report how dear
this virtue is to thee--I leave to himself;
for they will not be hard for him, nor occasion for
boasting," and then like a pupil once
again taking this language of school, the school child.
The main thing about this self--this presentation by
Beatrice is that Dante's journey is glossed through one figure,
one figure that I have been telling you ever since we
started this course, these classes in September
through the figure of Exodus.
Dante's journey here is literally described as a journey
from Egypt to Jerusalem, which is the master plot of the
Hebrews' exile from the bondage to the story of freedom and
exile becomes really the-- that of exile is the figure
of--the master figure of the poem.
Dante then therefore is linking now exile and hope,
and I think I already have indicated to you that this idea
of writing as writing in the mode of exile is also the--
it's not to be seen in a subjective way only relating to
him, or the pre-condition to his own
poetry but involves the whole of history.
History has to be seen from the standpoint of exile,
so there's at the top of page 363, line 69,
"'Hope' I said," again,
"is a sure expectation of future glory,"
as is the openness to time as futurity,
"and it springs from divine grace and precedent
merit.
This light comes to me from many stars,
but he first distilled it in my heart who was the sovereign
singer of the Sovereign Lord," David,
who to Dante is the greatest of poets.
Now we move on from here now to the last virtue,
the last virtue of love.
It is--there is a progression faith,
hope, and charity, it is as if only--
you have to know these virtues before the beatific vision can
even be possible to you.
You have to understand what it is that they do to you and they
produce in you.
We come to love, however, we are--we would be
looking for a definition of it as at least in a formula,
in a kind of a citational formula given and available in
Canto XXIV and XXV, we would be looking for it in
vain.
There's no definition of love, and it's clear to me,
it's clear to you, I take that Dante really thinks
that this is "the word."
Love is the key word that seems to escape all possible
definitions, which we know around us,
in a variety of ways, we understand it and yet we
cannot quite confine it and define it,
and that to define it would really literally be a way of
reducing its impact and reducing its value.
It's such a basic word that Dante says that the only word
that is really left, imaginary, etymologizing in
this treatise on language that he writes,
this treatises on the De vulgari eloquentia,
he says that the word love is the only residual term from the
past that means that language is a way of--
like food, the banquet, the beginning of Canto XXIV,
is a way of gathering us and bringing us together,
so love and food, food is given as a metaphor at
the beginning, now love that escapes any
particular definition and yet it's the culmination of all
these theological virtues.
What Dante does see and he has--I really want to turn to
this scene at the end of Canto XXVI, Dante meets Adam.
It's the confrontation with the beginning,
it's the confrontation with the arch poet,
because Adam is the one who names the world,
and therefore brings it into existence;
that's really what we mean by poet and that's what we're
expecting of poets to do, since this is the meeting,
the encounter with him, lines 90 and following,
Dante addresses him, "O fruit,"
though the word really is apple,
"O fruit that alone wast brought forth ripe."
What on earth does he mean?
That's a strange way of addressing someone,
"oh fruit alone wast brought forth ripe."
There were a lot of theological debates as to ripeness is an
element of grace, a description of grace for
Dante.
If you're not ripe, when you are ripe when you have
received and been touched by grace.
The argument was, Adam created in a natural
state, or was he already created in a state of grace?
How long was he in the earthly paradise before he fell?
If he was in a state of grace why could he--why did he fall?
If he was in a state of grace why could he commit this sin of
transgression?
Is it a transgression that he commits by eating of the fruit
of the tree?
Dante implies that he was in a state of grace,
ripe, refers to him as ripeness, the idea of
"fruit that alone was brought forth ripe."
"O ancient father of whom every bride is daughter,
and daughter-in-law," this is the very language that
Dante will deploy in Paradiso XXXIII for the
prayer to the Virgin and being the daughter of her son--
the question of the divinity and humanity of Christ.
"As humbly as I may I besiege thee to speak with me.
Thou seest my wish, and to hear thee sooner I do
not tell it."
Let me just skip a few lines and see the answer that Adam
will give, line 115 and following,
"Know then, my son, that not the tasting of
the tree in itself was the cause of so long exile,"
so even Adam, the fall was in a state of
exile, exile from the garden, falling into the wilderness
where he had to transform the wilderness into a garden,
so that the work would be the way in which he could regain
that which he had lost, the garden, "but solely
the trespass beyond the mark."
I'll come back to this.
"In the place from which thy Lady sent Virgil,"
in Limbo, "I longed for this
assembly during four thousand, three hundred and two
revolutions of the sun."
He's clearly thinking about the harrowing of hell by Christ so
that added now years to the four thousand he counts.
"I saw it return to all the lights on its track nine
hundred and thirty times while I lived on earth.
The tongue I spoke was all extinct before Nimrod,"
we saw him as the founder, the giant, it's a residue of
gigantomachy, the classical idea of the
giants fighting the gods, Nimrod who builds the Tower of
Babel, so the debate between them
hinges on language.
Language is the key now and retrospectively we really come
to understand the language of theology,
the question of what is the--what are the properties of
theological language and what are the properties beyond that
of all words?
That's the argument.
"I spoke with… Nimrod's race gave their mind
to the unaccomplishable task," the building of the
Tower of Babel that would not be finished,
"for no product whatever of reason--
since human choice is renewed with the course of heaven--
can last forever.
It is a work of nature that man should speak,
but whether in this way or that nature then leaves you to follow
your own pleasure.
Before I descended to the anguish of Hell the Supreme Good
from whom comes the joy that swathes me was named I on
earth."
"I" in Italian, not "I"
in the sense of the subject; I don't think that that's what
Dante meant.
"And later he was called El;"
Dante's using two Hebrew words, what he takes them to be Hebrew
words for the name of God.
God was called "I" first and then he was called
"El."
In fact, this is--one of my students suggested to me that if
you read them backwards they really spell out the word Eli
which would be a word that we would acknowledge maybe nowadays
as being the word for an appeal to God,
I and he was called El, "and that is fitting,
for the usage of mortals is like a leaf on a branch,
which goes and another comes.
On the mountain that rises highest from the sea I lived,
pure, then guilty from the first hour to that following the
sixth, where the sun changes
quadrant," and that's the end of this
encounter.
Let me focus on this question of the language that Dante's
really with--encounter with Nimrod explicitly highlights.
Adam changes Dante--through Adam is changing the account he
had given in the De vulgari eloquentia,
which is a story about the origin of words,
of language, and where he had claimed that
Hebrew persists; Adam's language unchanged
through history because it was inconceivable,
he adds there, that Jesus would be using a
language other than the primal language and not the corrupt
language of human beings.
Now the story changes, actually Adam's language has
suffered alterations already in the Garden, where the names of
God keep changing.
This, I think, is the key.
This is the whole question of theology then,
the names of God, the way we speak about God.
God was called "I," and then he was called
"El," there is no proper name for
God.
We only have words or languages that keep changing according to
our own historical circumstances,
and Dante goes on changing his own paradigmatic account about
the status of the sacred language.
He says there is no such a thing as a persistent sacred
language in history.
What comes out is that language is the mark of our own distance
from the divine, that we are--and the language
that we use is a part of our own exilic circumstances and exilic
predicament, and therefore all the language
of theology that Dante has been describing is part of this
exilic longing of human beings.
This is the story from XXIV, XXV, and XXVI.
Dante uses theology and examination of theology only to
place us back on the world-- on this world where we go on
hoping, believing, and loving,
realizing that these are all mysterious terms,
without which, however, that's another meaning
of the word for-- the resonance of money,
without which we-- where we know faith is a form
of trust without which you cannot really be functioning
together.
Where we have hope as the realization of faith,
and where we have love as that which is--
we are always longing for and somehow the meaning of which is
mysteriously escaping us.
These are, I think, the three fundamental issues
that Dante is discussing and let me take some questions.
Student: You passed over briefly this statement of
Adam that his transgression was not in the act of testamentary
but in crossing a boundary.
I wonder if you could unpack that a little more because it
seems to me not-- it seems to me a bit of a
controversial statement first of all because the command was
"do not eat from the tree," so for Dante to say
this, it seems like he's--there's
something very specific that he wants to get across in this idea
of boundary, maybe if you could elucidate
that for me a little further.
Prof: The question is, a question that I really
welcome, and I was hoping someone would ask.
The question is that I did not--I read from,
I did not really explain the Adam statement when he says that
his sin was not in the tasting of the tree but in the
trespassing of the limit, the mark, and therefore it
seems that there is some issue of boundaries here and would I
care to reply-- try to give a response to that.
Yeah, I could give a response on a number of levels.
First of all, I would remind you that this is
Canto XXVI of Paradise, and Canto XXVI of
Paradise is symmetrically connected with the other two
Cantos XXVI, the canto of Ulysses who also
trespasses the boundaries, who is a metaphysician of
sorts, who is dealing with space and who himself--
there is really nowhere on earth he is really going;
he doesn't know; he's trying to go somewhere but
doesn't really know that.
They are connected--and then Canto XXVI of Purgatory
dealing with love in its perverted form of Guinizelli,
of the poets and Caesar, so that's one of the
connections.
Another connection is that these are three cantos where
Dante is using foreign languages.
There's a deliberate connection there in the Canto of XXVI of
Inferno.
You may remember that Virgil goes out of the way to speak--
be the one who is the interlocutor of Ulysses and
supposedly to speak Greek, in Canto XXVI of
Purgatory, Dante uses the Provencal
language of Arnault Daniel who now starts speaking in
Provencal, and then now we are
using--Dante's using the foreign language,
Hebrew, the names of God, so it's--that's one connection,
so there are a lot of other, of these connections.
In the case of Adam, who makes that distinction,
to come specifically to your point,
who makes the distinction between the tasting of the fruit
and it was not that he tasted the fruit,
but that he trespassed the mark.
That seems to be--you're right, that was a very controversial
subject, because indeed that was the
command given to Adam, "Thou shall not taste of
the fruit of this tree," and Dante presents Adam who
instead goes out to do that.
It's clear that he thinks that the tasting of the tree was
not--he's saying that that was not his sin.
That's Dante's take on it.
It's not the tasting of the tree that was the sin;
the sin was that he abolished all boundaries.
I read that--I'm restating the--changing slightly so I'm
giving a paraphrase of what has been--what seems to be the issue
here.
It's clear that Dante thinks that Adam's act of eating of the
tree was good, and Adam's act of the eating of
the tree was actually the discovery of a knowledge that
had-- that managed to elevate him and
that was good.
From this point of view this is--there seems to be a contrast
between Ulysses' form of knowledge and Adam's form of
knowledge.
Ulysses' form of knowledge is that he literally is--
does not go, doesn't even know where he is
going, that's part of the problem,
in purely metaphysical terms.
He had no directions, it was a gratuitous quest.
In the case of Adam, getting to know of the fruit of
the tree was not an issue.
In fact, Dante says, that maybe real knowledge is
always going to be tied to an act of making discoveries,
making even transgressions.
What was the problem is that there had been a loss of
boundaries that he lost.
How are we to understand the loss of boundary?
It was the kind of knowledge that made Adam realize that he
could be divine; that was his problem.
As soon as you--the imposition of the boundary,
God's imposition of--or establishment of the boundary
between the human and the divine was also a way of letting Adam
know-- I'm not going to read this as
if it were a kind of atheistical statement at all,
it's letting Adam know that he had to be aware that he was not
divine, that he was a human being.
What he, Adam, wanted to do was grow in
knowledge and discover that he could also be divine.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
That is the issue.
For him to fall then would be a way of re-establishing that
boundary and realize that he is a human being and not divine.
It's a growth in self-knowledge.
If you really know that you--if you really know who you are,
you are really--you have grown.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Dante's changing the sense of what the fall of man is,
and the fall of man is not the fall in the growth of knowledge
but that growth of knowledge that leads you to erasing the
boundary, to believe that you are by
virtue of that knowledge that you have gained,
that you are now divine.
This is really--the whole poem is trying to convey to us is
that this is a steady temptation that human beings seem to have
and we can't-- we need to be reminded,
and when we hear it from God himself we don't quite believe
it, and then we have to grow into
that recognition of boundaries between ourselves and something
that we aspire to but we are not it yet.
Good question, but I had anticipated this
answer, I must say, in a number of ways talking
about Adam in the past.
I hope that you don't remember because more or less I said the
same thing--I don't know that I mentioned before.
One might wonder, just to go back to that issue,
one might wonder, does Dante really make it clear
that he's really not Adam but he still thinks that he is Ulysses
at this point?
One thing that he understands that he is--
the canto before he acknowledges King David as the
supreme-- and he did earlier,
the supreme poet, he's really placing himself in
David's Psalms are the lyrical recapitulations of and glossing
of Exodus.
That's really where he now I think is trying to move that
he's more-- he cannot be like Ulysses,
he knows he's not-- he does not want to be,
he cannot be Adam, that's the kind of model he's
trying to regain for himself.
Okay, maybe you see the connection with where we said a
little earlier with what I--the response I gave to your
question.
Yes.
Student: I'm just going off of Dante's theological
beliefs.
In Canto XXIV he talks about his belief in the Trinity and I
was wondering if you could just explain that further,
because he seems to be saying both that the Trinity are three
separate entities and the unity.
I know there was controversy and different factions of
different-- different factions in
Christianity believe different things about the Trinity and so
I was wondering what Dante believed.
Prof: Well, Dante has a number of
references throughout Paradise to the Trinity.
One of them actually, a very significant one,
that we never talked about was in Canto XXV of Purgatory
where Dante thinks that the way we human beings understand--
can understand it--one of the ways which we can understand the
Trinity is to think about the structure of the mind:
memory, intelligence,
and will because there are three but part of one thing,
and three functions.
Or, in Canto XXIV, of Purgatorio that
Professor Lummus, I'm sure explained to you,
is that the-- if you want to understand Dante
there seems to imply when he talks about,
I am one when he declares his own poetic practice and one who
when loved and dictates inside me,
I go on using my language and so on.
One way, in which the Trinity was explained,
they would say, think about speaking to make it
existentially compelling and concrete.
When you speak, you have an idea in your mind,
otherwise it's babble.
You have an idea in your mind, you emit a sound,
but to emit the sound you need the breath,
and you cannot have the sound without the breath,
and you cannot have the sound without the idea,
so that speaking encompasses this three-fold components of
one.
The Trinity is always connected to one.
Then in Canto X of Paradise,
you remember, we spent some time there,
having this idea of the love of the Father,
and the Son, and the breath of love that
joins them, they go on gazing together,
this idea of the fecundity or this idea of the Trinity as
source, or Dante who thinks about God
in the form of the Mover, but he does go into that and
yet he understands that that's not the effective theology he
wants to think of God as the Prime Mover,
to think as the efficient cause, it makes God as such a
mechanic or a clockmaker or something,
one of these images of God who imparts order and recedes from
creation.
That's really not Dante's idea.
He wants to think of a divinity that is partaking of creation's
love.
Dante's idea of the Trinity--so he has many, many--he tests all
of these paradigms.
I don't think that he ever excludes one.
He does not really agree with the reading of Joachim of Flora
who thought that the Trinity was the unity of--
that Trinity could be dissolved into three separate beings,
so that's no longer a unity.
To have a unity you got to have all three clearly present,
that's what Dante believes.
A unity with a kind of--is it a prismatic unity let me call it,
that's why.
Dante would say, we all have some recognition of
the Trinity, whether it's God and the Word
of God being the Qu'ran from eternally or God and the Word of
God being the Christ, etc.
We all have the word made flesh, we all have some kind of
idea of the Trinity, where one acknowledges God as a
Father, or as a Spirit,
ways in which we can understand this thing we call,
I don't mean irreverently, we call God.
That's the response to what you asked.
Please.
Student: From what you said in answer to the other
question, it seems like you were saying
that if Dante takes the fall it's good enough because it
leads to self-knowledge.
Dante thinks the fall is good because it leads to more
self-knowledge.
I understand how it's different from--
Adam is different from Ulysses in that he is trying to go
somewhere, like he's trying to become more
like God and that's good because it's a definite end,
but it still seems that if the means of trying to achieve that
end is wrong.
If he's trying to become more like God by,
like grasping instead of--like we've been talking a lot about
how the-- and that's real essential and
if he's choosing the wrong way to get to his end,
if that changes the end itself so that he's not even really--
Adam's not even like having the proper end in his search for
knowledge either.
If it changes because he's going about it in the wrong way
and just how that kind of reflects on whether the fall--
whether Dante thinks the fall itself feels like it's good and
is actually leading to something else,
if that's clear.
Prof: No, it's very clear.
The question is--the earlier question, of course,
was about what Dante thinks about the Trinity.
Now the question is going back to the point of Adam,
and my suggestion that the fall is good,
and because ultimately Adam seems to be really wanting to
reach God and I made a contrast to Ulysses and the limitation of
Ulysses' quest is that he really does not know--
he's driven by curiosity.
That's what I meant which we will talk about,
this evil curiosity.
But if the movement toward the good is bad, because after all,
Adam does choose to trespass the boundaries,
why should that really be thought as good?
Is that--that was the question really?
Well, let me just restate this issue.
The problem with Adam--I'm sorry, first of all,
with Ulysses I call it now the curiosity,
which as you know, eventually will become good in
the Renaissance, scientific curiosity,
that's the good thing.
In fact, I have a young colleague who is writing a
thesis about curiosity--a book about curiosity.
She has written a thesis about curiosity linking it with
women's curiosity, it's a very interesting thesis
to say that women are really smarter than men because they
are-- they have been attacked for
being curious, so she has found Renaissance
texts were-- some written by women who go on
making that kind of claim.
I think it's a great idea.
How did Dante understand curiosity?
How do the Fathers of the Church understand curiosity?
Why is it bad?
Because that is the trait of Adam, because curiosity has a
particular quality about it, it's something that continues
this whole understanding, and especially with curiosity
I'm going to give you, well in to the eighteenth
century.
The curiosity is bad because it uses up;
curiosity has a sort of restlessness within it.
I am curious of a particular object, I observe it and I move
onto something else.
I literally consume, I use up a particular object
and devalue it in that process, that's really what made it so
bad.
Ulysses, who goes from one thing to another and is always
open, fascinating figure of the
Renaissance spirit of discovery, but that's really what undoes
this element almost of desire, a kind of--a figure of--I don't
want to make-- I'm using this to badmouth
Ulysses, but a figure of this way of
thinking of the curiosity of Ulysses is really the don Juan
who goes from one woman to another in an endless movement
of curiosity and knowledge, that he's driven by knowledge
to get to know certain particular situations and
people.
Adam, to go back to the question of Adam,
I'm only giving you Dante's reading.
Dante's reading--he distinguishes very carefully
between the testing, the tasting of the fruit and
the trespassing of the mark.
The trespassing of the mark meant you cannot really violate
the boundaries that I want to place between you and myself,
because once you get to know yourself for what you are you
may get to know me, that's what the part of the
violation of boundaries.
You may get to know me for what I am,
so it's a wall that protects both the essence of the divinity
and the specific quality of the human that is at stake.
Adam eats, which means that he wants to grow in knowledge,
and Dante says, that's not the issue.
That was not a problem that I want to grow in knowledge.
The consequence of that growth in knowledge was the
trespassing--actually very well be the cause,
the trespassing of the boundary.
Had he really grown, that's really an acceptable
aim; you have to grow in knowledge.
I'm willing to say about Adam exactly the things that you may
recall I said about the scene of pride when we discussed Canto X,
XI and XII.
It's good that you have this love of excellence and love of
the growth of your own mind.
The consequence of it or the flip side of this quest for more
knowledge is the violation of boundaries and that has to be
re-established.
The fall of man is only a re-establishment of the
boundaries; it's not a way of mortifying
the quest for knowledge.
I'm restating what I--different terms--
slightly different terms what I said before,
but I think that's really a crucial distinction and I would
ask you to try to think-- I see a difference between the
two situations.
I hope you--I have time for another--no we don't.
See you next time.