Dantes Dream: A Jungian Psychoanalytical Approach (Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture) 9781501518225, 9781501513725, 9781501513565, 1501518224

Table of contents :
Contents
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1 Dante, Dreams, Jung, and His Composition Process
Chapter 2 Young Dante and His Contemporaries Interpret Dreams
Chapter 3 The Anima and Divine Eros: Beatrice, Lady Philosophy, and Gemma Donati
Chapter 4 Three Beasts or Four in the Dark Wood: Dante and the Shadow of His Civilization
Chapter 5 Neutrals, Acheron, Limbo, Infants, and Virtuous Pagans
Chapter 6 Limbo and Change
Chapter 7 Shadows in Upper Hell: Francesca and Paolo, Ciacco, and Filippo Argenti
Chapter 8 Deeper Shadows: Brunetto Latini and Ugolino of Pisa
Chapter 9 From Satan, to Cato, to Christ: Virgil and the Reconciliation of Reason
Chapter 10 Beatrice, the Heavenly Spheres, and the Rose of Paradise
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Gwenyth E. Hood Dante’s Dream

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture XXX Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture LXXVI

Gwenyth E. Hood

Dante’s Dream

A Jungian Psychoanalytical Approach

ISBN 978-1-5015-1822-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-1372-5 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-1356-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021935502 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Dante in the gloomy wood. Engraving from 1870, by Gustave Doré, Photo by D. Walker/© iStock/Getty Images Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents Abbreviations Introduction

VII 1

Chapter 1 Dante, Dreams, Jung, and His Composition Process

23

Chapter 2 Young Dante and His Contemporaries Interpret Dreams

55

Chapter 3 The Anima and Divine Eros: Beatrice, Lady Philosophy, and Gemma Donati 77 Chapter 4 Three Beasts or Four in the Dark Wood: Dante and the Shadow of His Civilization 87 Chapter 5 Neutrals, Acheron, Limbo, Infants, and Virtuous Pagans Chapter 6 Limbo and Change

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Chapter 7 Shadows in Upper Hell: Francesca and Paolo, Ciacco, and Filippo Argenti 121 Chapter 8 Deeper Shadows: Brunetto Latini and Ugolino of Pisa

127

Chapter 9 From Satan, to Cato, to Christ: Virgil and the Reconciliation of Reason 141 Chapter 10 Beatrice, the Heavenly Spheres, and the Rose of Paradise 159 Bibliography Index

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Abbreviations In the notes, the following abbreviations are used: CW

DDP KJV PDP RSV

Collected Works of C. J. Jung. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Edited by Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, and Gerhard Adler. 20 vols. Bollingen Series XX. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954–1979. (Listed as CW 1, CW 2, etc.) Dartmouth Dante Project, edited by Robert Hollander. Copyright 2021. https://dante. dartmouth.edu/. King James Version (Bible) Princeton Dante Project, edited by Robert Hollander, http://etcweb.princeton.edu/ dante/index.html Revised Standard Version (Bible)

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-203

Introduction Dante’s Commedia (or Divine Comedy)1 purports to recount a visionary journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, a journey which happened in the year 1300, around Easter. Precise information about the date is eventually given by the devil Malacoda, who describes the severe earthquake damage which happened almost exactly 1266 years before, at the time of Christ’s crucifixion (Inferno 21.112–14). Virgil, Dante’s companion and guide, had already mentioned this earthquake (Inferno 4.54), and that it immediately preceded Christ’s arrival in Limbo to liberate Adam, Eve, and the other believers of Old Testament times – the action traditionally called the Harrowing of Hell.2 Though Malacoda soon proves himself a deceiver, Dante’s early commentators recognized that this talented fraudster was putting forward a truth already known to his interlocutors (the actual date) in order to gain credence for false information on another subject (the condition of infernal bridges within the Eighth Circle of Hell). Hence, they recognized that Dante, through Malacoda, was revealing the date of his vision, and using traditional information – that Christ, whose birth marked the first year of a new era, was crucified at age thirty-three – to indicate the year 1300.3 The perspective of 1300 and of Holy Week4 is maintained throughout Dante’s Commedia. Thus, from

1 The Comedy (La Commedia) is the title Dante gave his masterpiece. It fits, as he explains in his letter to Can Grande, Epistole 13.28 (sec. 10), because the work begins in adversity and ends in happiness. But Dante’s three-part epic needed a more distinctive title, so admirers soon called it The Divine Comedy (La Divina Commedia); see Toynbee, “Commedia,” Dante Dictionary, pp. 171–72. Here Toynbee points out that the poem was called La Divina Comedia in “some of the oldest [manuscripts]” as well as in Boccaccio’s Vita di Dante. 2 The clearest biblical reference is Matthew 27:51–53: “[A]nd the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints that slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto many” (KJV). 3 Jacopo Alighieri, Jacopo della Lana, and Pietro Alighieri (1, 2, 3) all supply this date, glossing Inferno 21.112–14 (DDP). Anonimo Selmiano hesitates between 1299 and 1300 because he cannot decide whether Christ was crucified at thirty-two years and three months or thirty-three years and three months. 4 Malacoda’s words indicate that the previous day was the anniversary of the crucifixion. Dante and his contemporaries accepted a tradition, mentioned by Augustine of Hippo in On The Trinity, p. 118 (bk 4, chap. 11), that Jesus was both conceived and crucified on March 25. Florentines would remember this date because they began their New Year on March 25, a tradition continued by Florentine notaries and chroniclers until around 1749; see Santagata, Dante, p. 405 n22. Many scholars assume, however, that Dante meant, not the anniversary, but the movable feast, Good Friday, which was April 8 in 1300; see Grandgent, DDP, on Inferno 21.0 (proem). For most purposes, the difference between these dates matters little. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-001

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Introduction

the start to the end, anyone who addresses Dante, whether suffering soul, demon, angel, or saint in Heaven, speaks as though it were 1300. Allusions to later events take the form of prophecies, except when Dante occasionally addresses his readers as the retrospective narrator of his vision.5 Given Dante’s intense interest in later events, he might have been tempted to end the original dream and begin another, as Langland does with Piers Plowman, the better to address contemporary conditions. Yet even the last thirteen cantos of the Paradiso, which were not discovered until after Dante’s death on September 14, 1321,6 were written from the perspective of 1300. Dante’s son Jacopo (in Boccaccio’s account) only discovered the whereabouts of these last cantos, which Dante had presumably kept back for polishing, when the poet himself appeared in a dream to reveal it to him.7 This allowed Jacopo to assemble the completed Commedia around 1322, adding his own commentary on the Inferno.8 With a poem so emphatically structured as a vision, written when dreams were widely accepted as conveyors of hidden truths, we might expect early commentators to focus on the Commedia’s visionary qualities. But prophetic dreams carry risks, both for those who dream them and those who accept and heed them.9 Early commentators were cautious, and Dante himself gives a carefully mixed message in his famous letter, of uncertain date, to his patron, Can Grande della Scala. After thanking Can Grande for his recent generosity, Dante explains that he has decided to dedicate his unfinished Paradiso to him. (Apparently Inferno and Purgatorio were disseminated by that time.) Dante then offers the beginning of a commentary on Paradiso. This poem, he asserts, is indeed upon a marvelous (admirabilis) subject, because its author “will expound those

5 For example, in Inferno 26.4–9, rebuking his city of Florence for its five citizens among the thieves in Circle 8, bolgia 7, Dante as narrator alludes to a recent prescient dream about some action soon to be taken by the town of Prato against Florence. This is not the dream of 1300. 6 Boccaccio, Esposizioni, DDP, on Inferno 1.1–3. Giovanni del Virgilio and Menghino Mezzano specify September 13 in their epitaphs, but Toynbee, Dante Alighieri, pp. 103–5, suggests that their reasons are “metrical.” Santagata, Dante, pp. 338–39, accepts September 13, evening, as a compromise date for Dante’s death. 7 Boccaccio, Life of Dante, trans. Nichols, p. 65 (chap. 14). 8 Barański, “Textual Transmission,” p. 512; “Early Reception,” p. 521. 9 Around 1320, a certain Cardinal Beltrando investigated the Visconti rulers of Milan for a supposed plot to kill Pope John XXII by sorcery, an enterprise for which they allegedly considered recruiting Dante, though nothing indicates that they contacted him. This record does, however, suggest that Dante’s Commedia made some attribute sorcerous knowledge to him. After Dante’s death, Cardinal Beltrando was with difficulty dissuaded from exhuming and burning Dante’s body. He did burn Dante’s Latin treatise, De Monarchia (On the Monarchy). See Boccaccio, Life of Dante, trans. Nichols, p. 70 (chap. 16) and Santagata, Dante, pp. 314–15, 453–54 and n20.

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things which he saw in the First Heaven and was able to retain in his mind.”10 Is this premise fictional? “Fictive” (fictivus) does appear second among many adjectives which Dante applies to the work’s “form or manner” (forma sive modus). It is preceded by “poetic” (poeticus) and followed by “descriptive, digressive, and figurative; . . . analytical, probative, refutative, and exemplificative” (descriptivus, digressivus, transumptivus, diffinitivus, divisivus, probativus, improbativus, et exemplorum positivus).11 Though “fictive” (fictivus) can mean “fictional,” it can also mean “composed” and does not clearly denote untruth. However, some early commentators, including Dante’s son Pietro, do discuss the Commedia as a fictitious vision, often using the formula “he feigns” (fingit).12 Dante’s careful words about the author’s memory are meant to indicate the poem’s range; he soon explains why those who visit the heavens have trouble remembering it: For . . . the human intellect in this life, by reason of its connaturality and affinity to the separate intellectual substance, when in exaltation, reaches such a height of exaltation that after its return to itself memory fails, since it has transcended the range of human faculty.13

He illustrates this point with scriptural examples: the transfiguration of Christ (Matthew 17:1–8), which was never afterwards clearly described by Peter, John, and James, the disciples who witnessed it; also, the Apostle Paul, who was “caught up” (raptum), he says, to the “third heaven,” where he heard things mortals cannot repeat.14 For Dante, Paul’s Third Heaven was the heaven of God’s presence, the highest or tenth heaven of Dante’s Paradiso but the “First Heaven” of the letter to Can Grande. Perhaps because numerology was important

10 Epistola 13.50 (sec. 19); my translation here of “se dicturum ea que vidit in primo celo et retinere mente potuit.” 11 PDP Epistola 13.27 (sec. 9) and Toynbee’s translation there (p. 176, Letter 10, in Toynbee’s edition). 12 Pietro Alighieri (1), DDP, on Inferno 1.1–3. 13 PDP Epistola 13.78 (sec. 28) and Toynbee’s translation there (p. 208–9, Letter 10, in Toynbee’s edition). By the “separated substance” with which the human intellect is “connatural,” Dante apparently means the angelic intelligence; see Toynbee, ed., Epistolae, p. 190 n2. The concept is that angels have some role in conveying to mortals their own vision of God, but this does not remain in human memory once the vision ends. See Dante, Convivio 3.4.9; also, Aquinas, Summa Pt 1.1, q86, art. 4; pp. 589–91: “Whether our intellect can know the future?” and Pt 1.1, q94, art. 2; p. 639: “Whether Adam in the state of innocence saw the angels through their essence?” 14 2 Corinthians 12:2, KJV and Vulgate.

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to Dante, he knew that there was more than one way to apply numbers.15 As for the exalted experience itself, Dante declares that if any detractors questioned whether such an unworthy author could be granted it, they should read the prophet Daniel, where “even Nebuchadnezzar by divine permission beheld certain things as a warning to sinners, and straightway forgot them” (et Nabuchodonosor invenient contra peccatores aliqua vidisse divinitus, oblivionique mandasse).16 Dante specified that the poem should be interpreted by a fourfold method of exegesis,17 which, however, had hitherto been reserved for sacred Scripture, and which, moreover, implies a narrative with a literal aspect, from which allegory can then be extracted. Thus, to demand the fourfold method is to claim that the vision really happened, perhaps “the stuff of heresy” as Hollander puts it.18 Mulling these troubling issues, in the nineteenth century some scholars began to argue that Dante’s letter to Can Grande was wholly or partly faked. Indeed, its mode of transmission remains mysterious. Some early commentators (Pietro Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Guido da Pisa, and Francesco da Buti among them) seem to quote from it and even apply its methods, without identifying their source.19 Filippo Villani was the first to name both letter and recipient, around three-quarters of a century after Dante’s death.20 However, the letter’s authenticity has been convincingly defended, most recently by Robert Hollander.21 That Dante would use a dream or vision as the basis for his masterpiece would be no great surprise. In his youthful autobiographical work, La Vita

15 Augustine, Aquinas, and Dante all considered Paul’s “Third Heaven” to be the highest heaven, the Empyrean. Aquinas offers two ways of assigning it the number “three,” and Carroll paraphrases them, glossing Paradiso 28.97–105 (DDP): “Counting upwards from the earth, the first heaven is the Sidereal, divided into eight spheres – the Fixed Stars and the Seven Planets; the second, the Crystalline; and the third, the Empyrean. Sometimes also three kinds of supernatural vision are called three heavens, – corporeal, imaginary, and intellectual, the intellectual being, according to St. Augustine, the third heaven of St. Paul.” See also Aquinas, Summa, Pt 1.1, q68, art. 4; pp. 456–57: “Whether there is only one heaven?” 16 PDP Epistola 13.78–81 (sec. 28) and Toynbee’s translation (PDP; p. 192 Toynbee’s edition). 17 PDP Epistola 13.20 (sec. 7). 18 Hollander, Life, p. 100. 19 Edward Moore, “The Genuineness of the Dedicatory Epistle to Can Grande,” enumerates these early references, pp. 346 and n1. Later, pp. 349–54, he suggests that early commentators had seen a separate “memorandum” which Dante wrote for early readers of his unfinished poem. The actual letter to Can Grande might have been an elaboration of the memorandum. See also Hollander, Dante’s Epistle to Cangrande, p. 28. 20 Filippo Villani, Expositio, DDP, on Inferno 1.0 (Proem; first “Nota”). 21 Hollander, Dante’s Epistle to Cangrande (1993).

Introduction

5

Nuova, finished around 1292,22 he plainly discusses turning dreams into poems. The first such poem, placed in chapter 3, does not itself clearly announce a dream-vision, any more than the Commedia does. Instead, this dream-sonnet states that three hours after sunset, Amor (the god of Love) manifested himself to the poet, holding in his arms, asleep, the poet’s beloved. Given the hour and the supernatural visitation, Dante’s audience understood that he meant a dream. Similarly, in Inferno 1.1–54, the poet finds himself lost in a dark forest and confronted by three beasts, the most frightening of which is a preternaturally wasted she-wolf, more daunting than the lion at her side. Where would we meet such creatures? Possibly in a dream, an interpretation perhaps supported by Dante’s statement that he was “full of sleep” (pien di sonno) when he strayed off the path (Inferno 1.11).23 To others, the phrase acknowledges, allegorically, that Dante’s sleeping moral senses led him astray.24 These interpretations are not mutually exclusive. Whether in a dream or conscious allegory, Dante is soon journeying as a living man among the dead, intending to recount his story to others on his return to the world. But he comes to doubt the prudence of relating what he has seen. When he confesses as much to his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida in Paradiso 17.127–42, the latter exhorts him to reveal everything (tutta tua visïon) nevertheless, since after the initial shock, it will provide even those whom he offends with “vital nourishment” (vital nodrimento). Besides, the poem will not awaken new scandal, since the souls he has encountered are mostly already famous. Dante perhaps suggests that the vision he is granted has a specific time limit, as Longfellow implies in his translation of Paradiso 32.139–41. Here Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux cuts short his discourse on this account: But since the moments of thy vision fly, Here will we make full stop, as a good tailor, Who makes the gown according to his cloth . . . (Ma perché ’l tempo fugge, che t’assonna, qui farem punto, come buon sartore che, com’ elli ha del panno, fa la gonna . . .)

22 In chap. 34 of La Vita Nuova, Dante mentions only one anniversary of Beatrice’s death, the first. This suggests that he finished writing it before the second one, in 1292. 23 Guido da Pisa, DDP, on Inferno 1.11, thinks a fictional dream is indicated. 24 Pietro Alighieri (1,2), DDP, on Inferno 1.10–11 and (3) on Inferno 1.10–12, cites Psalms, Proverbs, Seneca, Paul (Ephesians 5:14), and Boethius to support this interpretation.

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Others propose that Dante is not sleeping here, but awake and in need of sleep after a long watch.25 Nevertheless, that the Commedia was a dream-vision (fictitious or otherwise) seemed the predominant theory until the early twentieth century. Whether perceived as dream-vision or as something else, whether fictitious or (partly) true, Dante’s Commedia won extraordinary fame. More manuscripts survive of it “than for any other medieval vernacular work.”26 Other poets and writers, in Italy and beyond, responded to and emulated it. Commentaries multiplied at first, then slacked off perhaps in the sixteenth century, then began multiplying again, in even more languages, about two centuries later.27 Now, nearly seven centuries after Dante’s death, his works reach quite a different audience, culturally and religiously, than the one he originally addressed. In modern times, dream-visions invite psychoanalytical interpretations. In fact, the psychoanalytical writings of Freud, Jung, and their successors have become so prominent that we tend to apply their insights in criticism, no matter the theoretical approach. Hence, specialized psychoanalytical approaches to Dante’s work seem appropriate. Suitably, then, in 2017, David Dean Brockman published a Freudian analysis of The Divine Comedy, in which we learn that Dante’s journey through the afterlife is much like Freudian psychotherapy. Brockman is obliged to spend the first chapter reviewing Freud’s persistent and clearly articulated view that religious experiences are basically pathological. In contrast, Brockman can demonstrate, with his own insight from years of clinical experience and a review of psychoanalytical studies, that religious “conversion,” though differently described and not always understood by therapists, has therapeutic benefits.28

25 The first DDP commentator to clearly explain that Bernard means Dante’s sleep will soon end is Francesco da Buti (dated 1385–1395), glossing Paradiso 32.139–51. Twentieth- and twenty-firstcentury commentators on DDP who gloss Paradiso 32.139 this way include Tozer, Carroll, and Grandgent. Pietro Alighieri does not gloss this line. Barolini, Undivine Comedy, p. 144, regards both Paradiso 32.139 and Inferno 1.11 as references to a dream vision, but says that Dante “does not dwell” on this aspect because he “need[ed] to veil in mystery the ultimate mode of an experience that he – like St. Paul – was unable to explain.” Benvenuto da Imola is the earliest commentator on DDP (on Paradiso 32.139–41) to propose that Dante is not asleep but weary: “After an extremely long effort and vigil, you wish to rest” (post longissimum et maximum laborem et vigiliam optas quiescere). More recent DDP commentators also deny that Dante is asleep (the dates supplied by the DDP): Manfredi Porena (1946–48), Siro A. Chimenz (1962), and Charles Singleton (1970–75). Of these, some think Dante in a non-sleeping mystical state. Durling, in his translation, renders Paradiso 32.139 as “the time is fleeting that holds you asleep.” 26 Barański, “Textual Transmission,” pp. 511–12. 27 Hollander, Life, p. 93. 28 Brockman, A Psychoanalytic Exploration, pp. 1–22 (chap. 1).

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In the Jungian approach, religious experience and its expression through the mythological imagery of dreams has a more positive value. From person to person, from century to century, among many different cultures, such imagery, which Jung called archetypal,29 shows many repeated but varying patterns, reflecting common ground and differences in the way the psyche’s development and experience is understood. In the Jungian system, the ego, or “empirical personality,” that which says “I” in human consciousness,30 exists in dialogue with the mysterious Jungian Self, which is “not only the centre [of the psyche] but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness.”31 The Self is not fully knowable, being linked both to biological matters below consciousness and perhaps to spiritual matters transcending consciousness. Infants make no distinction between ego and Self, but individuals develop ego-consciousness as they grow.32 Thus, Jung says, “The ego stands to the Self as the moved to the mover . . . . The Self . . . is an a priori existent out of which the ego evolves. It is, so to speak, an unconscious prefiguration of the ego.”33 As ego-consciousness develops, the Self manifests itself with archetypal imagery often involving gods and goddesses; hence, Jung also calls it “the God within us,”34 and sometimes identifies it with the imago Dei, the image of God within each

29 C. G. Jung found the word archetype in his philosophical reading and, thinking that it meant something like the Platonic Idea, used it to describe what he was observing because, as he explains to a correspondent (C. G. Jung to Bernhard Milt, 13 April 1946, in Letters 1:418–19, at 419), he preferred words with a historical connection to those which lacked it. But, as he explains in Archetypes, CW 9.1:43 (par. 89), he also drew on Levy-Bruhl’s anthropological concept of représentations collectives and the ethnologist Adolf Bastian’s concept of “elementary” or “primordial thoughts.” In “A Psychological View of Conscience,” CW 10:449 (par. 847), he also says that the term was meant to account for the fact that “myths and fairy-tales of world literature contain definite motifs which crop up everywhere,” including “the fantasies, dreams, deliria, and delusions of individuals living today.” (The latter passage is also cited in the glossary entry on “Archetype” in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ed. Aniela Jaffé, p. 392.) The images themselves are not directly transmitted, but the “inherited structure of the psyche” passes on certain patterns of perception and communication. While retaining their ancient underlying patterns, the imagery and motifs produced can be shaped and changed by cultural forces, so that, as C. G. Jung put it to Father Victor White in 1954 (April 10), “Archetypes, in spite of their conservative nature, are not static but in a continuous dramatic flux” (Letters 2:163–74, at 165). 30 Carl Gustav Jung, AION, CW 9.2:3 (par. 1). 31 C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12:41 (par. 44). (This passage is cited in the entry for “Self,” in the Glossary of Jung and Jaffé, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 398.) 32 Edinger, Ego and Archetype, p. 5. 33 C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion, CW 11:259 (par. 361). 34 C. G. Jung, Two Essays, CW 7:237 (par. 399).

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human individual, as postulated by Christian theology.35 Jung also likened it to the Hindu and Buddhist concepts of Atman.36 The Jungian Self performs some functions like those of the Freudian superego,37 but encompasses all potentialities of the psyche, good and bad. To find personal stability or happiness, a person must make peace with this Self. Unsurprisingly, then, Jung once mentions religious conversion as a milestone which some of his patients regard as a suitable conclusion to their psychotherapy; conversion in this context apparently means either adopting a new religion or “having found one’s way back to the church or creed to which one previously belonged.”38 Not that Jung regarded all religions as equal. He observed that patients often benefited therapeutically from examination of the religious ideas suggested in their dreams and from conversion experiences,39 but he thought it no simple matter for an individual to exchange one culture’s archetypal patterns for another.40 Personal, religious, cultural, and political struggles are all interconnected and a change in one can affect the others. The Jungian approach can, because of this openness to religious imagery, treat Dante’s vision respectfully, yet take a perspective different from that of his original audience. Some Jungians have an affinity for Dante’s material and draw upon it fruitfully. Donald Kalsched, for example, in his recent book, Trauma and the Soul, uses Dantean imagery to describe how “dissociation” caused by childhood trauma can effectively split a subject’s personality, placing the innocent childlike “soul” into a limbo-like state, guarded by a diabolical “Dis” (Dante’s most usual appellation for Satan). As Kalsched explains it, this seemingly tyrannical Dis might

35 C. G. Jung, “Concerning Mandala Symbolism,” CW 9.1:354 (par. 626). Though Jung acknowledged that the divine image, or imago Dei, in man – mentioned in Genesis 1:26–27 – originally signified what he meant by the Self, he doubted whether the contemporary Christian understanding of it was the same. In AION, CW 9.2:4 (par. 74), he stated that “an all-embracing totality” of the divine image and the Self must include “the animal side of man,” as well as “the dark side of things,” and even “the Luciferian opponent.” The modern Christianity he knew rejected at least the last of these. 36 C. G. Jung, Civilization in Transition, CW 10:463 (pars. 872–73). 37 The Freudian superego and the Jungian Self both command moral authority and both sometimes resolve or modify conflicting moral claims. For superego, see Brockman, Psychoanalytic Exploration, p. 20; for Self, see C. G. Jung, “A Psychological View of the Conscience,” CW 10:453 (par. 854). 38 C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12:4 (par. 3). Specifically, Jung lists “conversion” as the eighth of nine such milestones. Other milestones include (6) “the disappearance of painful symptoms” (presumably the ones that brought the subject to psychotherapy in the first place), and (7) “some positive turn of fortune, as an examination, engagement, marriage, divorce, change of profession, etc.” 39 C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12:15 (par. 17). 40 C. G. Jung, “Commentary on ‘The Secret of the Golden Flower,’” pp. 311–12.

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actually be an emissary of the Self or god-within, which in such cases protects the soul from unbearable experience. Meanwhile, a more sophisticated but “fragile” ego-consciousness makes decisions and deals with the world, preferring the “chronic” pain of “an inner Hell” to the unpredictable “acute” pain of facing reality.41 Benevolent figures who console and protect the imprisoned innocent seem to be emissaries of the mysterious god-within, but may quickly show themselves to be demonic tyrants if any attempt is made to free the imprisoned child-soul. Sometimes through therapy, the child-soul can be strengthened and re-associated with the more mature personality. Sometimes ego-consciousness, with implied repentance for previous defiance, offers itself as a sacrifice for the child-soul, bringing about a reconciliation in which the psychic guardian’s punishing aspect disappears, replaced by benevolence.42 These Dantean images, along with the Christian motifs associated with them, fruitfully illuminate Kalsched’s case histories, though Dante’s vision does not in its entirety match the pattern found in the survivors of infant trauma with whom Kalsched is mostly concerned. In interpreting Dante’s Commedia as a whole, the Jungian approach, like any other, must be applied with care. C. G. Jung sometimes preferred to draw examples for his theories from unsophisticated or popular art, because such art displays human motives and archetypal motifs most naively, relatively unhampered by cultural mechanisms for concealing or suppressing them.43 Dante’s Commedia, however, ranks among the most carefully structured epics ever written, the masterpiece not merely of an individual but of a culture whose special passion, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was in the elaboration and systematization of its knowledge.44 Dante’s finished work represents eminently thoughtful and conscious artistry, not the guileless outpourings of the unconscious. But awareness of an original unconscious inspiration will cast its artistic shaping in a different light. In the Jungian view, different cultures direct and channel their psychic energies in different ways, some possibly improvements over others, though perfection has not been attained or even defined. For the sake of his patients, Jung, by necessity, focused on the culture, literature, and religion of the Western world,

41 Kalsched, “Dissociation and the Dark Side,” p. 90. 42 Kalsched, “Loss and Recovery,” esp. p. 55; “Dissociation and the Dark Side,” pp. 86–93; “Trauma, Transformation,” esp. pp. 154–55; “Innocence, Its Loss, and Recovery,” pp. 214–42. 43 C. G. Jung, The Spirit in Man, CW 15:88–91 (pars. 137–43). Here Jung says that literature concerning “the sphere of conscious human life” is of less interest than the “visionary” expression of the unconscious – that is, the “primordial experience which surpasses man’s understanding and to which in his weakness he may succumb” (p. 90, par. 141). 44 C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, pp. 1–12 (chap. 1).

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largely Christian, although he also explored and incorporated insights from tribal societies and Eastern religion. He regarded Dante’s vision as data for his studies and came close to perceiving Dante’s vision as the definitive elaboration in archetypal imagery of medieval Roman Catholic dogma, of which he admired the psychic effectiveness. He wrote, “Dogma takes the place of the collective unconscious by formulating its contents on a grand scale. The Catholic way of life is completely unaware of psychological problems in this sense. Almost the entire life of the collective unconscious has been channeled into the dogmatic archetypal ideas and flows along like a well-controlled stream in the symbolism of creed and ritual.”45 In contrast, for many of his patients, such imagery had become abstract and inactive in the psyche. Artists like Dante, Jung thought, could sometimes renew and revitalize a culture’s encounter with the archetypes, as evidenced by the play of imagery from art and literature in individual dreams.46 Though at his cultural distance Jung may have perceived Dante as a conveyor, par excellence, of dogma’s “well controlled stream,” he understood that persons playing this cultural role sometimes encounter considerable turbulence. This he examined in the case of Nicholas Flüe, or Brother Klaus, a fifteenth-century monk and mystic (canonized and declared the patron saint of Switzerland by Pope Pius XII in 1947).47 Brother Klaus, Jung concludes from the fragmentary evidence, had a visionary experience in which he encountered a wrathful God. This “terrified and shattered him.” But besides wrathfulness, he found in God a troubling femininity which the tradition he had absorbed did not support.48 More broadly, Brother Klaus’s tradition contained archetypal imagery which could express the nature of his god-within or Self as including some qualities which his ego-consciousness considered base, contemptible, and wrong (the Shadow) and some which it considered gender-inappropriate (the Anima). However, an individual’s psychological balance does not necessarily match that of the culture at its greatest dynamisn and wisdom. The individual must struggle to find harmony and balance, a task more difficult for some than others.

45 C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:12 (par. 21). 46 In two extensive dream-sequences which C. G. Jung examines for insight on a subject’s psychic development, he finds not only archaic images but also imagery mediated by literary works important to the dreamers – Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha in one case, and Goethe’s Faust in the other. See C. G. Jung, Symbols, CW 5:171–206 (pars. 251–99), and Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12:39–224 (pars. 44–330). 47 C. G. Jung’s first article about “Brother Klaus” was published in 1933. Subsequently (after Klaus’s canonization) it was reprinted in Jung’s Psychology and Religion, CW 11:316–23. Jung revisits the case in Archetypes, CW 9.1:8–12 (pars. 13–21). 48 C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:64 (par. 131).

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As Jung saw it, human beings do not experience life in isolation but in an “I and You” relationship with others in a society which includes male and female. Hence the individual psyche possesses both male and female attributes, and the Jungian Self is androgynous, sometimes seen as a hermaphrodite but more often as a divine couple. In Christianity, this couple is often represented as Christ with his Church (the Church being, scripturally, the Bride of Christ),49 or as Christ and the Virgin Mary, his mother. In individual psychology, individuals develop and refine into consciousness the psychic abilities appropriate to their gender much more extensively than those belonging to the other gender. As a result, the perceptions and attributes appropriate to the other gender form a sort of unconscious secondary personality, Anima for males and Animus for females. Anima and Animus are Latin words whose ordinary meaning translates to English as “soul” (anima) and “mind or spirit” (animus), and in plain Latin, both sexes have both. Thus, Jung’s usage simultaneously retains and changes the original Latin meaning, since in Jungian usage, only males have an Anima, while only females have an Animus. The separation of Anima and Animus from the conscious ego is stronger in youth; for as people age and gain status, perhaps marry, and take on roles of increasing significance in society (dealing with people of both genders), they may develop the wisdom and insights belonging to the opposite gender, though in a style appropriate to their own, hence absorbing Anima or Animus into their personalities. But in youth, when they have not done this, they tend to project the qualities of Anima or Animus onto other people of the opposite sex, especially parents and spouses.50 However, because the Anima ultimately is part of the man’s own psyche, C. G. Jung sometimes found her represented in dreams by unknown women or by women known only in dreams.51 Encounters between men and the Anima could often be troubling. Whatever the nature of his vision, Klaus prayed, studied, and painted while grappling with his insights. That he ultimately found peace, Jung declares, is shown in the intricately balanced patterns of his paintings: the mandala form, which ideally incorporates both a circle and square but often includes much

49 C. G. Jung, Symbols, CW 5:269 (par. 411). 50 Clearly the projection of Anima and Animus will affect the way couples interact with each other. If the partners are compatible and actually do possess the qualities of the Anima or Animus projected on each other, they can help each other in the development and “assimilation” of their own qualities, in time. See C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:70–72 (pars. 144–47); also Harding, The Way of All Women, p. 70 (chap. 2). 51 C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion, CW 11:28–29 (pars. 45–47); also “Flying Saucers,” CW 10:366 (par. 693); and Archetypes, CW 9.1:199 (par. 356).

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Introduction

elaboration of imagery, especially of flowers, animals and human figures.52 Mandala images represent balance among the contending forces of the psyche, and harmony between the conscious ego and the Self or god-within. Had Brother Klaus failed to achieve this, he might have been “torn asunder”; that is, a variety of cultural, judicial, or psychiatric disasters might have befallen him.53 Klaus’s case and Dante’s might have much in common, but Dante’s more clearly involves what Jung called nekyia (also transliterated as nekuia and given as the title of the eleventh book of Homer’s Odyssey), a ceremony to summon ghosts for prognostications.54 Dante’s journey, on the other hand, follows the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid, where Aeneas himself descends to the underworld to speak with the dead. Both ancient stories are analogous with the shaman’s spiritual journey, as known in tribal cultures.55 Communication with death and the dead presumably puts the totality of human insight before the protagonist when, in a crisis, the balance of psychic forces is disrupted and harmony between the conscious personality and the inner divinity has been seriously compromised. Then the subject undergoes a symbolic death and rebirth, followed by a new childhood and growth to new adulthood, achieving a new harmony and balance between ego-consciousness and Self (or god-within). Such experiences are intense and troubling in dreams but worse when the unconscious invades waking life with hallucinations or irrational actions which ego-consciousness is too weak to control.56 Jung himself approached such a crisis when, after his painful break with Freud in 1913, he suffered horrific waking visions of worldwide bloodshed, melding into ominous night-dreams. Later he took comfort in the thought that some of this was not merely personal agony but a foretelling of World War I, which soon erupted. Although in his official

52 C. G. Jung, Integration, p. 95n3 (chap. 3), explains that mandala, in Sanskrit, “means circle or magic circle,” and that “[i]ts symbolism embraces all concentrically arranged figures, all circular or square circumferences having a centre, and all radial or spherical arrangements.” The circle implies protection, and a square implies union of “a single or double pair of opposites,” as C. G. Jung states in AION, CW 9.2:194 (par. 304). Consequently, a square or cross within a circle is “the traditional antidote for chaotic states of mind,” because it represents stable wholeness desired by the Self; see C. G. Jung in Archetypes, CW 9.1:10 (par. 16). But mandalas often form shapes involving flowers such as the lotus or rose or a golden flower, and these symbolize the womb, “the birthplace of the gods”; see C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12:180 n125. 53 C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:10–11 (pars. 16–19). 54 See “vέkυια,” in Liddel and Scott, Greek English Lexicon. Also C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12:53 n2. I am indebted to my colleague, Dr. Charles Lloyd, professor of Classics, for alerting me to this issue. 55 Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By, pp. 202–11. 56 C. G. Jung, Civilization in Transition, CW 10:236 (pars. 472–75).

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writings he stated that images from the collective unconscious arise from “the inherited brain-structure itself” of human beings,57 in his later memoir he sometimes writes as if the collective unconscious were an interpersonal medium allowing images to pass from mind to mind.58 Jung recorded the vision and his experience in notebooks as he worked through this psychic material, sometimes holding the images at bay with yoga until he was calm enough to deal with them, sometimes yielding to them. In this way, he developed his practice of “active imagination,” although at the time he still feared that he was lapsing into mental illness or “doing a schizophrenia,” as he later wrote.59 Active imagination is a Jungian technique for “com[ing] to terms in practice with the unconscious” when the natural balancing tendency of the unconscious has been disrupted or annulled. Consciousness is then left too much to its own devices, with bad results, until eruptions from the unconscious overwhelm it. Active imagination, which can moderate this process, involves taking an image or motif from the unconscious and subjecting it to what Jung once called “meditative observation.”60 By definition, the unconscious is not directly accessible to consciousness, but some sense of its preoccupations can be obtained in various ways, typically through dreams, though other sources include “waking fantasies” and “automatic writing.”61 The “meditative observation” might involve engaging in imaginary dialogue or trying to model, draw, or paint an image.62 The point is to avoid “fantas[izing] aimlessly into the blue,” and instead to “grasp the meaning of the inner object.” This technique can produce “a mutual rapprochement and synthesis of the conscious and unconscious halves of the personality.”63 Sometimes this will seem like a conversation with a person, as Jung suggests when instructing one correspondent: “Hold fast to the one image you have chosen and wait until it changes by itself. [E]ventually step into the picture yourself, and if it is a speaking figure at all then say what you have to say to that figure and listen to what he or she has to say.”64 This deliberate inquiry into the unconscious

57 C. G. Jung, Civilization in Transition, CW 10:10 (par. 12). 58 Jung and Jaffé, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 137–38. 59 C. G. Jung, The Red Book, pp. 201, 205 (Introduction). Jung first wrote of this experience in his “Confrontation with the Unconscious,” Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 170–99, esp. 175–81. See also Kalsched, “C. G. Jung’s Divided Self,” pp. 262–63. 60 C. G. Jung to Pastor A. F. L. van Dijk, 25 February 1946, in Letters 1:415–16, at 416. 61 C. G. Jung, “The Transcendent Function,” pp. 95 (preface), 109–10 (pars. 152–54), 114 (par. 162), and 118 (par. 172). 62 C. G. Jung to Count Hermann Keyserling, 23 April 1931, in Letters 1:82–83. 63 Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, The Grail Legend, p. 143 (chap. 8). 64 C. G. Jung to Mr. O, 2 May 1947, in Letters 1:459–60, at 460. Here Jung recommends his essay, “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious” in CW 7:123–304, where (222–24)

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may have become more necessary in modern times because the normal cyclical process by which unconsciousness balances consciousness is disrupted more continuously than in the past, partly because the line dividing conscious and unconscious is much more sharply drawn. In primitive cultures, where it is far more porous, no such artificial exercises are necessary.65 Though Dante’s culture was not exactly primitive in Jungian terms, the division between conscious and unconscious probably was not as definite as it was becoming in Jung’s time. We see this in the readiness with which Dante and his contemporaries discussed dreams. But, as Jung later wrote, even in cultures more open to what dreams can convey, this psychic journey of maturation can fail, if the subject flees the trials and continually retreats to infancy.66 On the other hand, if all goes well, the subject grows to a stronger maturity, better aware of unconscious conditions and adapted to individual circumstances. All this can be part of what Jung called the individuation process, which, as the name implies, must happen on an individual level. However, one person’s experience can inform or guide another’s. For Dante’s Christian culture, Christ was the example and guide, exemplar of the Self or god-within. Thus, Dante’s descent into Hell followed by ascent to Paradise is an imitation of Christ.67 Just as Jungian theory predicts, Dante’s account refreshes a traditional image which had grown abstract and stale by his time. Thomas Aquinas had parlayed Christ’s infernal descent “in essence,” only to the shallowly placed Limbo, specifying that he visited the rest of Hell merely “in effect.”68 Dante, in his imitation, penetrates the depths of Hell and goes out the other side. At the time of his dream, Dante is, as he says himself, “in the middle of the path” (nel mezzo del cammin) of human life (Inferno 1.1); that is, thirty-five years old, and, in Jungian terms, on the hinge between the first half of life, focused on the development of consciousness, and the second half, focused on “coming to

he defines the technique as “intense concentration on the background of consciousness” and gives examples. 65 C. G. Jung, “The Transcendent Function,” pp. 101 (par. 139), 111 (par. 158). 66 C. G. Jung to John Weir Perry, 8 February 1954, in Letters 2:148–50, at 148: “First of all, the regression that occurs in the rebirth or integration process is in itself a normal phenomenon inasmuch as you observe it also with people that don’t suffer from any kind of psychopathic ailment. When it is a matter of a schizoid condition . . . there is a marked tendency of the patient to get stuck in the archetypal material. In this case, the rebirth process is repeated time and again.” 67 For key points on Dante’s “imitation of Christ” in the Commedia, see Martinez and Durling, “Additional Note 16,” in Durling, ed., Inferno, pp. 580–83. See also C. G. Jung, “Christ, the Symbol of the Self,” CW 9.2:36–71. 68 Aquinas, Summa, Pt 3, q53, art. 2; p. 3068.

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selfhood” or “self-realization,”69 during which, as part of achieving harmony with the Self or god-within, the unique individual seeks to fulfill his or her individual potential or destiny.70 This is also called the individuation process, and differs from individualism in that the individual is not necessarily exalted over the culture or nation but may find fulfillment in assuming cultural roles or in self-sacrifice.71 For Dante in 1300, a crisis impended, one with religious, political, and personal aspects. His dream shows them all interconnected. In the Commedia’s opening lines, he finds himself lost in a dark forest, trying to climb a sunlit hill, only to meet three terrible beasts, which might be called Shadows – cultural, spiritual, and personal. For all Jungian archetypal figures have their shadowaspects,72 and then there is the personal Shadow, which, as C. G. Jung states, “personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself and yet will (especially if not acknowledged) always be interfering with conscious intentions, directly or indirectly – for instance, inferior traits of character and other incompatible tendencies.”73 Dante flees these beasts, running downward toward a terrible valley, a chasm representing death, damnation, and psychic destruction. A stranger then appears, and Dante begs his help. The newcomer reveals himself as the Roman poet Virgil, whom Dante already trusts, both as a moral and a literary teacher. In Jungian terms, Virgil is a Wise Old Man, a messenger of the Self, come to offer help in accordance with the principle which Jung calls Logos, roughly corresponding to reason or knowledge.74 His pagan wisdom is suspect, but less suspect, in Dante’s crisis, than Pope Boniface, chief religious authority of Dante’s own culture. Virgil explains that it is currently impossible to bypass the three beasts to gain the sunlit hilltop by a direct approach. He proposes instead to lead Dante the opposite way, going first through Hell, where evil souls are punished, and

69 C. G. Jung, Two Essays, CW 7:173 (par. 266). 70 Emma Jung and Maria von Franz, Grail Legend, p. 85 (chap. 5). 71 C. G. Jung, Two Essays, CW 7:173–74 (par. 267). 72 C. G. Jung, “Christ, the Symbol of the Self,” CW 9.2:36–71, discusses Shadows of the Self and of Christ. 73 C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:284–85 (par. 513). This passage is also cited in the glossary entry for “Shadow” in Jung and Jaffé, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 398–99. 74 Some confusion results from the fact that Logos is a Christian name for Christ, while Christ, in Jungian terms, is also the symbol of Self. Also, in C. G. Jung to Albert Jung, 20 May 1947, Letters 1:462, Jung explains that one aspect of the Anima is Sophia – that is, Wisdom, sometimes called the Eternal Feminine. In “Answer to Job,” he acknowledges that Anima/Sophia is partly identified with “the Johannine Logos” (CW 11:387, par. 610). But the interconnection and interchange among the Jungian archetypes render the fluid identities less troubling.

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Introduction

then through Purgatory, where souls suffer gladly for their own purification. After Purgatory, a more worthy guide may show him the heavens. Dante readily agrees, but soon has second thoughts, which prompts Virgil to explain that their meeting was not by chance, and he was sent to Dante’s rescue by Beatrice, the beloved of Dante’s youth. She, for Dante’s sake, briefly left her place of bliss in Heaven to obtain Virgil’s help in Limbo (Inferno 2.52–81). Unmentioned here but relevant is Dante’s resolve, years before, to compose some great work in Beatrice’s honor,75 for which purpose he evidently pored over Virgil’s epic and came to admire his vision. With Beatrice involved, Dante once more agrees to Virgil’s plan. This confirms that Virgil, as Wise Old Man, is a messenger of the Anima, sent to the subject or dreamer who has lost connection with the “valid principle” which gives meaning to his life76 and is thus “in a hopeless and desperate situation.”77 Beatrice is the Anima figure, and like the Wise Old Man, a messenger of the Jungian Self. She represents Divine Eros, the complement to Logos. By Eros, Jung did not mean (as in popular usage) merely sexual attraction. Though he admits taking his concept from Plato, he also does not mean the passion to possess and increase the beautiful, as described in Plato’s Symposium.78 He defines Eros as “psychic relatedness,” meaning, in colloquial terms, love as a real force in the psyche, ideal or not. (Because more prestigious words such as “charity,” and its Greek parallel agape, were often acknowledged as remarkable virtues or unrealized ideals, he avoided using them in his system.)79 Jung perceives Eros as the female aspect of the divinity, and defines the masculine aspect, Logos, as “objective interest.”80 Later, aware of difficulties this nomenclature created, he suggested that Logos and Eros might be exchanged for the images of Sol (Sun) and Luna (Moon), respectively, to appeal to “an alert and lively fantasy” instead of implying impossible precision. Explaining his original choice, he said, “By Logos I meant discrimination, judgment, insight, and by Eros I meant the capacity to relate. I regarded both concepts as intuitive ideas which cannot be defined accurately or exhaustively.”81 Indeed, since both men and women clearly need and have Eros and Logos, to identify either as exclusively feminine or masculine is problematic, but the

75 Dante, La Vita Nuova, chap. 42. 76 C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:34–35 (pars. 71–75); also C. G. Jung, “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales,” CW 9.1:217–18 (pars. 400–402). 77 C. G. Jung, “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales,” CW 9.1:17–18 (par. 401). 78 Plato, Symposium, 199C–212B. 79 C. G. Jung to Erminie Huntress Lantero, 18 June 1947, Letters 1:464–65. 80 C. G. Jung, “Woman in Europe,” CW 10:123 (par. 255). 81 C. G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14:179–80 (pars. 224–26).

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tendency of archetypal figures to manifest themselves, at times, in gendered ways is too obvious to ignore. Since Jung’s time, some of his successors have denied that either the Anima or the Animus has “fixed gender,” and others assert that the Anima is not a specifically female entity but “the archetypal structure of consciousness,” for both sexes.82 Actually, Logos and Eros, working together like Einsteinian time/space, are united in the unknowable Self, and cannot really be understood separately, despite their sometimes diverse manifestations. Besides being the partners of the divine couple representing the god-within, Logos and Eros also take turns being parent and child. In some contexts, Jung explains, the Anima is the daughter of the Wise Old Man, but from another perspective “she is also his virgin mother.”83 Overtly Eros maintains connections, while Logos governs direction and action. In an effort to link these archetypal figures to human biology, some suggest an association between the Anima and the right hemisphere of the brain, used “for the processing of spatial, aesthetic, and emotional information,” while the Animus would represent the left hemisphere, “verbal, mathematical and logical analysis and synthesis.”84 As Kalsched points out, the right hemisphere “is more richly connected to the primitive centers in the brain stems and limbic system,” and “seems to be ‘earlier’ both ontogenetically and phylogenetically.”85 This helps to connect right-brain perception with the Anima, since those would be the perceptions of everything we inherit, the world we first perceive as infants in the care of our mothers or mother-surrogates, and which we thus naturally associate with mothers. It also explains why the Mother archetype, associated with the Anima, sometimes appears as a hermaphrodite.86 This does not, however, explain the Anima’s apparently subordinate status; indeed, as Kalsched puts it, the position and structure of the right brain hemisphere make it “the real master hemisphere, with the left hemisphere its emissary.”87 The left brain, Kalsched says, is the hemisphere of “denial”; that is, it doubts preconceptions, devises questions, investigates conflicts, chooses actions which lead to further discoveries, and forms detailed pictures about specific things or situations. However, when all goes well,

82 Rowland, Jung: A Feminist Revision, pp. 51–53; 75–76. 83 C. G. Jung, in Archetypes, CW 9.1:35 (par. 74), describes the Wise Old Man as “the father of the soul.” (The “soul” in this context is the Anima.) He adds, “yet the soul in some miraculous manner, is also his virgin mother, for which reason he was called by the alchemists the ‘first son of the mother.’” 84 Oxtoby, Two Faces of Christianity, pp. 25–26. 85 Kalsched, “Wholeness and Anti-wholeness,” p. 172. 86 C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:67–68 (par. 138). 87 Kalsched, “Wholeness and Anti-wholeness,” p. 172.

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discoveries made by its more conscious thought process will be integrated into the larger contextual picture of the right hemisphere.88 These later observations about the left hemisphere harmonize with Emma Jung’s definition (several decades earlier) of Logos as a quality bringing meaning and power together, not merely physical power, but the power of reason, into “directed power.”89 But Emma Jung also observed that while C. G. Jung identifies the Anima both with female and with “primitive” consciousness, and associates Logos with males and “consciousness,” the Logos he encountered was actually the educated consciousness of Western Civilization. As (Western) women became more educated, she noted, their consciousness also developed along the lines of Jungian Logos, relegating Eros qualities to the unconscious as “weak, passive, subjective” and “feminine.” Meanwhile, the prevailing Logos became increasingly detached from instinctual life in both females and males.90 At the same time, the Logos of Western Civilization, insisting more and more on definable and immediate material results, was becoming more detached from anything indistinct, uncertain, unfinished, or speculative. Taken to extremes, this would deprive Logos of any opportunity to direct power meaningfully. But while this may be a problem for Western Civilization, it does not threaten Jungian Logos, which is not really separate from Eros. Like Einsteinian time/ space, these entities are different aspects of the same force. Eros both contains the whole and maintains relationships. Logos gives meaning to the whole and defines relationships. Logos governs the relationships that can form and persist (thus, Eros), while Eros shapes the way power is directed (thus, Logos). For Dante, Beatrice, as Anima, represents most directly Dante’s connection to his own inner God, and thus to the mythological realness and wholeness of his childhood faith.91 She bypasses the institutional and intellectual religious hierarchies associated with masculine authority, which for Dante were compromised or broken. Yet she also implies a relationship with the true, undistorted meaning behind those hierarchies. Besides that, Beatrice’s bond with Dante belongs to the Courtly Love tradition within his culture, which is simultaneously a

88 Kalsched, “Wholeness and anti-wholeness,” pp. 175–78. 89 Emma Jung, “On the Nature of the Animus,” pp. 2–3, explains that Logos involves meaning and power together – that is, “directed power.” C. G. Jung refers his readers to this explanation of the Animus in his Two Essays, CW 7:90 n1. 90 Emma Jung, “On the Nature of the Animus,” p. 41. 91 The Jungian Anima and Animus, like the Shadow, belong partly to what Jung regards as the personal unconscious and partly to the collective unconscious, though the boundary between the personal and the collective unconscious is fluid; see C.G. Jung, AION, CW 9.2:10 (par. 19); also Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14:106 (par. 128).

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rival to the religious tradition and an asset to it, when preachers and teachers put forward its claims on behalf of the Virgin Mary and of Christ.92 But when the poem opens, Dante has so far lost his connection to Beatrice that she cannot even appear to him directly. Therefore, she chooses Virgil to find him and lead him over the distance that lies between them. Besides being bearer of the poetic wisdom that Dante needs, Virgil, though pagan, had a reputation for at least unconscious sympathy with Christianity, enough so that he had foretold Christ’s birth in his famous Fourth Eclogue, about a wonderful child who would overcome ancient evils and bring back the golden age.93 The beginning of Dante’s descent represents, in Jungian terms, a regression to childhood. Honoring Dante’s obedience and childlike trust, Virgil soon calls him “my little son” (figliuolo mio) (Inferno 3.121–23). Following Virgil, he leaves behind the sighing infants of Limbo, who represent his feeling of lostness, and is soon recognized among the ancient poets at the Noble Castle as Virgil’s pupil, advancing in his individuation process and taking up the lifelong task of writing a poetic masterpiece for his own culture. He continues on his journey, facing what seem huge dangers. However, he is all the while under the protection of the divine Self, represented, among other things, by a geometric mandala form determining the pattern even of the underworld. The mandala’s elaborate circular patterns mark a protected space in which ego-consciousness can encounter entities from the unconscious without being overwhelmed or annihilated.94 Dante meets many manifestations of his personal Shadow, souls disturbingly like himself in the good they have neglected or the evils they have done. The deeper Virgil and Dante go into Hell, the more repugnant, in general, the damned souls become. Dante’s response shifts from sympathetic identification to indignant rejection. Yet he still experiences empathy for a soul in the lowest circle, Count Ugolino of Pisa (Inferno 33), a personal Shadow. That empathy, however, is limited to shared wrath at the persecution of innocents. At the very bottom of Hell, Dante meets the Shadow of all humanity, threefaced Satan, or Dis (as Virgil calls him), whose form mimics the divine trinity. Paradoxically, this encounter with bounded and limited evil is an inverse revelation of

92 See, for example, Woolf, “The Theme of Christ the Lover-Knight.” 93 According to Ziolkowski and Putnam, Virgilian Tradition, pp. 487–503, Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, written around 40 BC, was regarded as a pagan prophecy of Christ from the fourth century AD until beyond Dante’s time. Famous people cited for this opinion include the Emperor Constantine, Augustine of Hippo, Peter Abelard, and Jean de Meun. Modern scholars assume that Virgil meant to flatter the family of Octavius Caesar with this prophecy, but there is no consensus about what impending birth he had in mind; see Carroll, DDP, on Purgatorio 22.63–93. 94 C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12:54 (par. 63).

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divine power and goodness. Hell and Purgatory, both created through Satan’s fall from Heaven, represent a broken mandala, cut in half, and separated by a hemisphere. Here for Dante the process of rejecting ends, and healing begins. As Virgil carries Dante through the center of the earth and out the other side, to where Satan is seen upside down, Dante’s symbolic rebirth is complete. As Dante and Virgil climb Mount Purgatory, the relationship between Virgil’s pagan wisdom and the Christian understanding Dante must develop become central concerns. In Cato of Utica, the guardian of Purgatory, the Roman and Christian concepts of liberty, both allied to Jungian wholeness, are linked. When the two are joined by Statius, the pagan poet turned secret Christian (Purgatorio 22–33), the systems apparently are contrasted. When, in Purgatorio 27, Virgil leads Dante and Statius through the fire marking the border between Purgatory and the Earthly Paradise, all three travelers are welcomed into the divine kingdom by a bright presence speaking the words of Christ, the god-within or Self. Having completed his mission and taught Dante what he could, Virgil leaves Dante with Beatrice. Beatrice, representing Divine Eros, then guides Dante’s ascent through the nine material spheres of Heaven and on to the non-material Empyrean, encompassing all the others. Here Dante sees a great white rose, whose petals form the amphitheater on which the blessed are enthroned, an elaboration of the mandala, as Jung himself points out.95 Here, through the mediation of the Virgin Mary, Dante is granted a vision of Christ, united with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity. Though he cannot long retain or remember the vision, it still leaves him strengthened and in harmony with “the love that moves the sun and other stars” (l’Amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle) (Paradiso 33.145). Broadly speaking, this is the overarching Jungian pattern in the Commedia. In what follows, chapter 1 gives an overview of Dante’s life, with focus on the content of his dream and his subsequent composition process. Chapter 2 examines how the multiple dreams Dante used in his youthful work, La Vita Nuova, shed light on the Commedia and Dante’s approach to it. Chapter 3 examines questions about Gemma Donati, Dante’s wife, and her relationship to the image of Beatrice in the Commedia. It also explores her possible connection to the “compassionate lady” (pietosa donna) of La Vita Nuova, who tempts Dante to set aside his grief for the deceased Beatrice and accept her love instead; Dante later claims, in his unfinished Convivio, that she is a personification of his second love, Lady Philosophy.

95 C. G. Jung, “Concerning Mandala Symbolism,” CW 9.1:363 (par. 652); also, he reproduces an image of the great Rose of the Empyrean in Dante’s Divine Comedy (from Codex Urbanus Latinus 363) in his discussion of the mandala imagery in Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12:173 (fig. 83).

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Chapter 4 examines the Commedia’s opening, with Dante finding himself in the dark forest, confronted by three hostile beasts who make a quaternity with the benevolent Hound whose eventual arrival Virgil predicts. Chapters 5 considers the mystery of Dante’s crossing the Acheron, and the meaning of two groups of inhabitants of Limbo – infants sighing in darkness and virtuous pagans in the shining Noble Castle. Chapter 6 explores Dante’s Limbo in its cultural context, as the concept and image developed and changed over time, and how Dante’s version aligns sometimes more with his culture’s past and future than with its present. Chapters 7 and 8 follow Dante as he meets, learns from, and passes beyond several versions of his personal Shadow: Pope Celestine, Francesca da Rimini, Ciacco, and Filippo Argenti in chapter 7; Brunetto Latini, Guido da Montefeltro, and Count Ugolino of Pisa in chapter 8. Chapter 9 considers the resolution of Virgil’s journey with Dante from Hell through Purgatory, while chapter 10 follows his journey with Beatrice from the Earthly Paradise to the Empyrean, and his vision of the Trinity. For modern readers, a focus on Dante’s personal dream-journey may offer the best way into his poem. The reader will encounter him and his culture through the human circumstances revealed in the dream-images, as he searches for wholeness. On the way, we learn that experience, though differently interpreted, makes its demands upon traditional understandings while evoking new insights.

Chapter 1 Dante, Dreams, Jung, and His Composition Process Any psychoanalytical approach must concern itself with the author’s life, even when (as in Dante’s case) what is known of that life is a slender core of facts served up by wrangling experts with discordant interpretations. In what follows, I take care to show what sources I draw upon and that the interpretations I present are reasonable, but it is impossible to explore alternate possibilities in equal depth; some may go unmentioned unless they are clearly the ones currently favored, or unless discussion of them will illuminate the background. Dante provides much information about himself within his poetry, but such allusions come to us predigested and supplemented by his earliest interpreters, so it is best to start with Giovanni Boccaccio, who wrote Dante’s first Life and transmitted more additional information about him and his work than any other single source.1 A literary figure in his own right, close enough to Dante in time to feel some rivalry toward him, Boccaccio comes with some Jungian issues. Born in 1313, Boccaccio never met Dante but knew and emulated his love poetry from an early age.2 Unlike Dante, he was born out of wedlock. However, his prosperous father legitimized him.3 His father then married when Giovanni was about seven, and soon afterwards, his stepmother presented him with a half-brother named Francesco4 (which was also the name of Dante’s younger half-brother). Giovanni himself never married, and had children only out of wedlock.5 At about the age Dante had been when he began his Commedia, Boccaccio wrote his own masterpiece, the Decameron, a collection of a hundred prose tales supposedly recounted in ten days, by ten young Florentines (seven ladies and three gentlemen), as they 1 Barański, “Textual Transmission,” p. 510. Boccaccio’s Life of Dante (Vita di Dante) is often listed as Trattatello in laude di Dante (Little treatise in praise of Dante), a title Boccaccio sometimes used. But he originally called the work De origine, vita, studiis et moribus viri clarissimi Dantis Aligerii Florentini poete illustris, et de operibus compositis ab eodem (Concerning the origin, life, studies and manners of that most famous man, Dante Alighieri, illustrious Florentine poet); see Bergin, Boccaccio, p. 215 (chap. 13). 2 Bergin, Boccaccio, pp. 34–35 (chap. 2). In his Filocolo, Boccaccio describes his first meeting with his beloved Fiametta in terms that recall Dante’s La Vita Nuova. 3 Bergin, Boccaccio, p. 29 (chap. 2). 4 Papio and Riva, “Life and Works” (for 1319–20). Decameron Web. 5 We know of his children because he wrote an eclogue, Olympia, in remembrance of his daughter Violante, who died as a young child. Within the work, four of her siblings are mentioned. See Bergin, Boccaccio, pp. 50–56 (chap. 2). https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-002

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find refuge together in the countryside from the bubonic plague which rages through Florence in 1348. These young Florentines form their own temporary government, each playing monarch for a day, and each recounting one story each day to the others, with varied settings and tones, but always lively. Boccaccio finished this work around 1352 and wrote his Life of Dante around the same time, in similar style.6 His interest in Dante did not end there, however. Dante was, for Boccaccio, a model in many aspects of life: lover, poet, scholar, and Christian soul. Boccaccio grew more serious with age, switching from amorous vernacular works to more weighty and pious scholarship, mostly in Latin. In 1360, he was ordained priest.7 In the autumn of 1373, the Commune of Florence commissioned him to lecture publicly on Dante’s Commedia. For this purpose, Boccaccio wrote his Comento or Esposizioni on the Divine Comedy, but he only reached the Inferno’s seventeenth canto before ill health ended the project. He died in 1375, bequeathing his books to the Florentine convent of San Spirito,8 presumably including books he had nearly abandoned during a spiritual crisis about a decade before.9 Boccaccio may have drawn Dante’s portrait too much in his own image,10 but at least he saw him as real and human. Boccaccio’s information, added to Dante’s allusions, makes it reasonably certain that Dante was born in 1265 at the end 6 Bergin, Boccaccio, pp. 214–15 (chap. 13). Among the victims of the plague were Boccaccio’s father and stepmother; see Chance, Emergence, p. 131. 7 Papio and Riva, “Life and Works” (for 1313; 1360). Decameron Web. 8 Bergin, Boccaccio, pp. 226–29 (chap. 13); Chance, Emergence, pp. 135, 456 n28. 9 Boccaccio was living in Ravenna, perhaps mourning the loss of mistress, children, and friends, when a self-described “holy man” approached and warned him that he and his scholar-friend, Petrarch, risked damnation unless they gave up scholarship and poetry. Unnerved, Boccaccio planned a full renunciation, but Petrarch, with whom he shared the warning, comforted and dissuaded him; see Bergin, Boccaccio, pp. 50–56 (chap. 2). Boccaccio, then in his late forties, should have had both experience and imagination enough to fend off spiritual bullying from pseudo-religious con-men, about whom he had set down some vivid stories in his Decameron, for example 3.10 and 4.2. However, the unconscious can overwhelm intellect in times of stress. 10 This is perhaps most significant in Boccaccio’s discussion of Dante’s marriage. For example, Boccaccio, in his Life of Dante, trans. Nichols, p. 11 (chap. 3), expounds at some length upon Dante’s possible marital unhappiness, even while admitting that he knows nothing directly about it. His lengthy diatribe about a scholarly man’s inevitable misery in marriage suggests his own experience with a mistress. Boccaccio also asserts that Dante, once exiled, not only never returned to Gemma, but also “never would . . . allow [his wife] to come where he was.” This sounds like specific information collected somewhere, but whether from an individual with knowledge or from general gossip, Boccaccio does not say. How reliable were Boccaccio’s informants, after all? He reports that Dante was condemned to “perpetual exile” and confiscation of property, but does not mention his death sentence (Life, p. 25, chap. 4). Was this detail not transmitted to Boccaccio, or did he neglect to mention it because such sentences were commonplace and fugitives could generally evade literal execution? Even so, a death

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of May. After all, Inferno 1.1 states that the narrator is nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita (midway on the path of our life), which Boccaccio and others take to mean that Dante is halfway through the usual human lifespan – that is, thirty-five years of age, half of seventy.11 Counting back thirty-five years from 1300 brings us to 1265. Additional confirmation comes from one of Boccaccio’s informants, Piero di Giardino of Ravenna, who visited Dante during his last illness, probably in September 1321, and reported that Dante then told him that he had left behind his fiftysixth year exactly as long ago as he had left behind the previous May.12 Dante’s precision here suggests that he was keeping track not merely of the month but also of the day, which in that case would be May 31. Fifty-six, as Scipio the Elder mentioned to his grandson in the latter’s famous dream, is the product of two numbers which both signify completeness, though differently, and at fifty-six years of age, the younger Scipio was to complete his life. Very likely, the elder Scipio’s words stuck in Dante’s mind, and that is why he mentioned his age.13 Dante himself never precisely gives his birthday, but does say that he was born under the sign of Gemini (Paradiso 22.112–17); that is, in late May or early June. Around 1436, the humanist scholar Leonardo Bruni, who had issues with Boccaccio’s Life of Dante, produced a supplementary Life of his own, drawing on knowledge which included documents in the Florentine chancery, to which, as chancellor, he had access,14 plus a visit from one of Dante’s great-grandsons.15 Bruni mentions, as Boccaccio does not, that Dante lost his father, Alighiero Alighieri, in his boyhood (puerizia).16 Other documents, not known to either Boccaccio or Bruni, show that Dante also lost his mother, Bella, even earlier, since Alighiero remarried, and had, by his second wife Lapa, a son named Francesco, and perhaps

sentence carried added dangers. Perhaps Boccaccio did not weigh this adequately when he judged Dante’s marital conduct, post-exile. 11 Dante, in Convivio 4.23, and Boccaccio, DDP, on Inferno 1.1–3, both cite Psalm 90 (Vulgate Psalm 89) for the typical length of a human life: around seventy years (v. 10). Pietro Alighieri gives the narrator’s age as thirty-five in all three versions of his Comento (on Inferno 1.1–3). Jacopo Alighieri (DDP, on Inferno 1.1–3), says that the narrator’s age was thirty-three or thirtyfour, the traditional age of Christ at his crucifixion. Guido of Pisa (DDP, on Inferno 1.1), thinks Dante is referring to the dreaming state, not to his age. 12 Boccaccio, Esposizioni, DDP, on Inferno 1.1–3: “di tanto trapassato il cinquantesimosesto anno, quanto dal preterito maggio avea infino a quel dì.” 13 Macrobius, in his Commentary, chaps. 5–6, reviews the context (p. 95) and explains that seven is called “the virgin” (p. 102) while eight is “justice” (p. 97). 14 Bruni, Life, trans. Wicksteed, pp. 75–76 (chap. 1). Toynbee, “History of the Letters of Dante from the Fourteenth Century to the Present Day,” p. 408. 15 Bruni, Life, trans. Wicksteed, pp. 95–96 (chap. 9). 16 Bruni, Life, trans. Wicksteed, p. 77 (chap. 3); Vita, p. 15.

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a daughter too.17 A document of 1283 indicates that by then Alighiero was dead and Dante was his heir.18 But for some years before that, Dante’s father goes unmentioned in documents where his name and involvement would be expected, so some postulate his death as early as 1275. Thus, there is strong suspicion that he was no longer alive on February 26, 1278 (our style), when his name fails to appear on documents involving a family lawsuit, while those of his two brothers do appear, along with that of Manetto Donati, Dante’s future father-in-law.19 Less than three weeks before, on February 9 of that year, Dante himself, not yet thirteen, evidently contracted to marry Manetto’s daughter Gemma, a maiden whose age is nowhere recorded.20

17 Dante’s mother, Bella, and his stepmother, Lapa, are both named in a document from 16 May 1330, because each brought a dowry to the estate of Alighiero Alighieri (Dante’s father) which only her son should inherit; see Chabot, “Il Matrimonio,” p. 285. That Bella was a daughter of Durante Abati is a widely accepted inference because the latter sometimes acted as a guarantor of loans made to the Alighieri family, and Dante is a shortened form of Durante. Durante is given as Dante Alighieri’s original name in a document of January 9, 1343, which restores Dante’s property to his son Jacopo; see Del Lungo, L’Esilio di Dante, p. 158. Filippo Villani, “De vita et moribus Dantis,” p. 9, mentions that Dante was baptized as Durante. Though the Alighieri and the Donati were Guelph families, Durante Abati was evidently Ghibelline, which some think might have motivated this alliance with a minor branch of the Donati family, rather than a more moneyed, less politically connected family; see Passerini, “Della Famiglia di Dante,” pp. 63–64; also Santagata, Dante, pp. 20–21, 42. This Durante degli Abati guaranteed a loan on Dante’s behalf in 1297, with, as additional guarantors, Dante’s brother-in-law (husband of his sister Tana) and Manetto Donati; see Chabot, “Il Matrimonio,” p. 282. For estimation that Alighiero died “probably shortly after” 1275, see Santagata, Dante, 21; 375 and n24. Petrocchi (Vita di Dante, p. 12) allows some uncertainty as to whether the sister who sits by Dante’s bed in La Vita Nuova chap. 23 is a full or half sibling, and whether she is the sister who married Leon Poggi and became the mother of Andrea Poggi, whom Boccaccio mentions in his Esposizioni (DDP, glossing Inferno 8.1). 18 Toynbee, Dante Alighieri, p. 38 n2. Santagata, Dante, p. 52. 19 Chabot, “Il Matrimonio,” p. 281. 20 What survives is a document from 1329, stating that the widowed Gemma Donati will be paid an allotment of grain in partial compensation for her modest dowry (200 lire di fiorini piccoli) which Florence had confiscated with Dante’s estate. To claim this compensation, Gemma needed to show her dower instrument (instrumentum dotis), stating its value and the date it was drawn up; see Chabot, “Il Matrimonio,” p. 285. Some scholars regard this information as the record of a betrothal, but dower instruments were usually drawn up at the time of the marriage, as Chabot also explains, pp. 271, 273–74, and 276–77. A valid and binding marriage could be established by a contract, even though it would be irregular until solemnized; see Margaret Scott, “Our City’s Institutions,” pp. 790–804. The stated date of the instrument is “anno Domini M° CCLXXVI, indictione VJ, die VIIIJ° mensis februarii” – that is, February 9, 1276, Indiction 6. But Chabot (pp. 271, 273–77) points out there must be an error, because year and Indiction (a fifteen-year cycle) do not match, so probably the following year, 1277, Florentine Style, which belongs to Indiction 6, is meant. That corresponds to February 9, 1278, in the ordinary dating style.

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The early loss of mother and father must have affected Dante deeply. As Brockman points out, “it is a well-established clinical fact that the loss of a parent in childhood (and especially the loss of both parents) can arrest the personality around the time of the loss and can seriously interfere with emotional development by delaying the mourning process.” Brockman also states that Dante “repressed the mourning of his parents and displaced his grief . . . onto the later loss of Beatrice.”21 Though young Dante wrote more feelingly about his love for Beatrice than about his parents’ deaths, the reasons were probably more subtle and complex than straightforward repression. In his youthful La Vita Nuova, Dante describes his first meeting with Beatrice as the most significant event of his life. He was nearly nine when she, about a year younger and dressed becomingly in crimson (sanguine) clothing, became the image through which Love suddenly claimed lordship over his perceptions and senses. Boccaccio places the scene at a May Day festival, though scholars point out that the Florentines’ celebration of this holiday did not become famous until 1300.22 Dante himself recognized that his nine-year-old entrancement with the child Beatrice was out of the ordinary, and that his readers would think his tale untruthful (fabulosa) if he described his further boyhood attempts to see the beautiful girl. Hence, he jumps ahead nine years to Beatrice’s first greeting. Though even his eighteen-year-old feelings may seem excessive, some lack of balance among teenagers in such matters was expected in his culture as in ours. Not content to leave it at that, some scholars try to explain his sufferings in terms of some known pathology, such as epilepsy or narcolepsy.23 However, the early biographers do not report a chronic illness. Boccaccio takes Dante’s word that he was at times lovesick, while Bruni acknowledges that in his youth Dante was “too much engaged in the [amorous] passion, not by way of wantonness, but gentleness of heart.”24 Overall, the facts of Dante’s difficult life show a certain resilience. He must have enjoyed long periods of good health, though stretches of illness now and then might have escaped the fragmentary record. In any case, chapter 3 of La Vita Nuova records that exactly nine years after the first encounter, thus in 1283 (the same year we have definite news that Alighiero is dead), Dante sees Beatrice approach him in the street and, for the first time in their lives, she greets him. Greatly moved, he returns home and has

21 Brockman, A Psychoanalytic Exploration, pp. 36–38. 22 Boccaccio, Life of Dante, pp. 14–15 (chap. 3). Santagata, Dante, p. 36. 23 Santagata, Dante, 28–35, reviews evidence that Dante was perhaps epileptic. For narcolepsy, see Plazzi, “Dante’s Description of Narcolepsy,” in Sleep Medicine. 24 Bruni, Life, trans. Wicksteed, pp. 89–90 (chap. 8).

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a mysterious dream. This he makes into a poem and sends to other love-poets for interpretation. Clearly, this first dream happened, and its associated poem was written, when both Dante’s parents were dead. But what of Dante’s first encounter with Beatrice in 1274? If indeed 1275 was the year Alighiero died, Bella almost certainly was dead, since between Bella’s death and his own, Alighiero had time to remarry and conceive at least one child, perhaps two. That in La Vita Nuova Dante fails to mention his parents’ deaths is not surprising, since it is an account of his poetry, inspired by learned discussions on these matters among friends. That his parents never appear in his masterpiece, his account of his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, is another matter. It is impossible that Dante never wondered where they would be, especially during the three-canto-long passage (Paradiso 15–17) where he converses with his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida. Cacciaguida commends his own son, Alighiero, to Dante’s prayers, since he is still doing penance for pride in Purgatory (Paradiso 15.91–96), but Dante’s own father of the same name goes unmentioned.25 But even though neither parent appeared recognizably in the dream of 1300, Dante’s bereavement surely affected his childhood and adolescence, helping form the unconscious configuration which produced the dream of 1300. After all, Beatrice and Virgil are, among other things, mother and father figures. Though La Vita Nuova concerns Dante’s love for and poetry about Beatrice, he declines within it to describe her death directly. Nevertheless, the event is deeply felt through the detail in which it is imagined beforehand (especially in the delirious dream of chapter 23) and mourned afterwards. On the first anniversary of Beatrice’s death – that is, in 1291 – Dante mentions being startled by honorable company which comes upon him unnoticed because he is so absorbed in drawing a picture of an angel upon some tablets, to celebrate Beatrice’s memory (chapter 34). A brief interval follows (chapters 35–37), during which he is tempted to love another young lady whom he sees looking compassionately down on him from a window. He calls her “the compassionate lady” (la pietosa donna). But soon a vivid dream of Beatrice, once more the eight-year-old child whom he first loved, restores him to loyalty. In the last sonnet of his Vita Nuova, “Oltre la sfera” (Beyond the sphere) he writes of a sigh (sospiro) which issues from his heart and is endowed with “new intelligence” (intelligenza nova) by Love, so that it becomes a “pilgrim spirit” (peregrino spirito), to follow Beatrice through all spheres of the nine material heavens to the immaterial Empyrean beyond them. (There, years later, Dante will end his Commedia.) To Dante, this emissary reports that

25 On the other hand, see Chapter 7 and Virgil’s exclamation in Inferno 8.45, which does vaguely suggest that Dante’s mother is among the blessed.

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Beatrice is being honored, but that is the only part of the communication Dante can understand (chapter 41).26 Finally, a marvelous vision (mirabile visione), not described, prompts Dante to resolve that he will write no more about Beatrice until he can do so worthily (degnamente) and say of her what had never been said of any woman (d’alcuna) before. With this, he closes La Vita Nuova. In Jungian terms, Dante more fully “realizes” the significance of death when Beatrice dies than when his parents did. But rather than a postponed response, it is a maturing and individuated response, elaborating in personal terms the archetypal imagery characteristic of Christian culture. The dream in chapter 23 of La Vita Nuova, which foreshadows her death, follows a moment when, feeling ill and saddened at the limits to human life, he thinks forward to his own death, and it suddenly occurs to him that even “the most noble Beatrice” (la gentilissima Beatrice) will also die some day. This grieves him, like the culmination of all losses, but when the dream shows Beatrice dead, he perceives that death itself has somehow been ennobled by this encounter (23.27). Thus, he unconsciously associates her death with Christ’s death and resurrection, which changed death from an agent of destruction to one of transformation to wholeness.27 After this, Beatrice will represent, for Dante, his most intimate connection to the transcendent God, Divine Eros. But before this, the intensity of Dante’s feelings toward Beatrice surely relate to his childhood bereavement and other conditions of his young life. According to Jung, the Anima first assumes the image of a boy’s mother, only later absorbing the character of other important women in his life.28 A motherless boy might naturally seek a comfort from a motherly woman, but Dante’s unconscious seemingly chose the opposite path, turning away from age and illness to health and beauty in a child near his own age. That he chose immortality over death shows in the appellation he gives Beatrice after their first meeting: “the youngest of the

26 Here Dante is playing with words and scientific concepts. Etymologically, “spirit” is related to “breath,” as words like “respiration,” “inspiration,” and “perspiration” remind us. Heather Webb, The Medieval Heart, p. 2, explains that medieval science, which did not yet understand the circulation of blood, did perceive the heart as the center of a circulatory system involving “spirit” – that is, breath. Such “spirits” mingled with blood in the heart but also “issued from and returned to the heart through the pores in the skin and the gateways of the senses, forming circulations that were not limited by the confines of a single human body.” 27 Jung feared that Christianity’s explicit delay of lasting fulfillment until the next life was inadequate, but could offer no satisfactory solution; see C. G. Jung to Father Victor White, 10 April 1954, Letters 2:163–74, at 166–67. 28 C. G. Jung, Two Essays, CW 7:197 (par. 314), reports that a man’s mother is “the first bearer of the [Anima] image” and that later “it is borne by those women who arouse the man’s feelings, whether in a positive or negative sense.”

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Angels” (angiola giovanissima).29 His choice also placed him precociously in the role of a courtly lover, obliging him to leave behind dependency for active service, admittedly of a minimal kind. He wanted nothing and needed nothing from the beautiful child except to gaze on her now and then. Perhaps, too, he was imitating his father, who put aside grief for a deceased wife and married another woman before Beatrice greets Dante in chapter 3. Also, as Dante approached adolescence, this precocious attachment to Beatrice may have served as a defense against a dangerous erotic attraction to his mentor, Brunetto Latini, whom he later encounters among the Sodomites in Inferno 15.16–124. Brunetto Latini was, according to Lionardo Bruni, largely responsible for Dante’s education.30 Dante implies as much in the Commedia, where Brunetto is the only one besides Virgil to address him as “little son” (figliuolo). In return, Dante speaks of Brunetto’s “dear and good paternal image” (la cara e buona imagine paterna), but does not address him as “father,” though he will come, eventually, to address Virgil that way.31 Some modern scholars have been skeptical that Brunetto Latini, prominent statesman and diplomat that he was, had the time to instruct youths.32 But his pedagogy and his statesmanship are clearly connected. Florentines had built and were building their city-state upon the model of the Roman Republic, and the next generation needed education to carry on the task. But Florence had no university, so Brunetto Latini took on a quasi-formal role mentoring youths destined for political and cultural leadership. The chronicler Giovanni Villani describes him as “a great philosopher . . . and master of civilizing Florentines,” one who “made [the Florentines] accomplished in eloquence, and in knowing how to guide and govern our Republic according to Politics.”33

29 Rossetti’s translation, Dante and His Circle, p. 31. 30 Bruni, Life, p. 77 (chap. 3). 31 Brunetto to Dante: Inferno 15.31, 37. Dante to Brunetto: Inferno 15.83. Dante to Virgil: see Chapter 9 and n20. Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux once calls Dante “little son of grace” (figliuol di grazia), which is not quite the same thing (Paradiso 32.112). 32 Holloway, Twice Told Tales, p. 8. 33 This translation is from Holloway in Twice Told Tales, p. 12. Somewhat differently translated, the passage appears in Giovanni Villani, Chronicle, bk 8, chap. 10, Selfe/Wicksteed edition, pp. 312–13.

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Brunetto Latini lived in the same district or sixth (sestiere) of Florence, Porta San Piero,34 as Dante did, and probably influenced both his early and advanced education.35 When they part in the Inferno (15.119–20) Brunetto’s final words are, “May my Treasure be commended to you,/ in which I still live, and I ask no more” (Sieti raccomandato il mio Tesoro,/ nel qual io vivo ancora, e più non cheggio). By his “Treasure” (Tesoro), Brunetto means his Trésor (“Treasure” in French), an anthology of learned writings translated into Medieval French, including an overview of general knowledge, drawn largely from the Scripture, and then a bestiary and a chronicle of world history up to the present (book 1); then (book 2), instruction about vices and virtues, which incorporates a translation of Aristotle’s Ethics, as well as an account of the seven deadly sins; and finally (book 3), rhetorical instruction, based on Cicero, and illustrated by a discussion of the dispute between Cato the Younger and Julius Caesar over Catiline’s conspiracy. Brunetto might also have meant his poetic dream-vision, originally titled Il Tesoro but later called Il Tesoretto (The Little Treasure) to avoid confusion with the Italian translation of the French anthology.36 This dream-vision breaks off as abruptly as a fragment, but could be intended as a preface for the anthology,37 in which case Brunetto, speaking in the Inferno, probably meant the united work. As a child and youth, Dante most likely profited from both vernacular “treasures.” Later Brunetto probably trained Dante, along with others, in Florentine notarial practices. Such skills would help Dante gain employment and patronage later during his long exile.38 Bruni records that Dante “wrote in a finished hand, with thin long letters perfectly formed.”39 No identified samples are known, but scholars still hope to discover some.40 34 Giovanni Villani, Chronicle, bk 9, chap. 136. Districts in Florence were called “sixths,” since the city was first built with four “quarters,” with two more districts growing up later on the other side of the River Arno; see Giovanni Villani, bk 3, chap. 2. 35 Santagata, Dante, pp. 38, 72. 36 Holloway, Twice Told Tales, pp. 8–10, thinks Brunetto translated the Tesoro himself, although a Ghibelline neighbor, Boni Giamboni, is often credited, because of the shift from proAngevin to anti-Angevin politics in the chronicle forming part of book 1. 37 Holloway’s n6 on line 2934 of Brunetto Latini’s Tesoretto points this out (p. 147), adding that no manuscript in that format survives. 38 Santagata, Dante, pp. 72–73; 381–82 and n46. 39 Bruni, Life, trans. Wicksteed, p. 89 (chap. 8). 40 Santagata, Dante, p. 381, relates a story passed on to him by Padoan, that the scholar Augusto Campana once mentioned finding “documentary evidence” of Dante’s activity as a notary in Florence before his exile. However, Campana wanted to rule out persons of the same name and never published his findings. See also Holloway’s comments on the thirteenth- or fourteenth-century illuminated copy of Brunetto’s Tesoretto, in her introduction to her edition of that work, p. xxx. Holloway mentions other possibilities in her Twice Told Tales, pp. 150, 159 n28–29 and 525.

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As the Tesoretto opens, Brunetto, while on a diplomatic mission to Spain (in 1260), learns that the Ghibellines have prevailed over the Guelphs in battle and seized control of Florence,41 making him an exile, a status he will endure for six years until Charles of Anjou defeats and kills King Manfred at Benevento (1266). Absorbing the news, Brunetto declares that his city should neither be controlled by a single man nor torn apart by contending factions. Instead, all the citizens should pull together as if on the cable (fune) of the ship of state.42 Brunetto’s view of good government would always influence Dante, though as an exile himself, he would say in his De Monarchia that a single ruler (the Roman emperor) was needed to establish the peace; only then could citizens work in harmony, in a condition of true “liberty.” “Liberty” for humans meant that they existed for their own sakes (scilicet ut homines propter se sint), as beings in the image of God,43 not for their labor or possessions or the convenience of rival factions. Because Brunetto turns up among the Sodomites, Brockman notes that “childhood sexual abuse” of Dante is “a possibility.”44 But throughout that infernal encounter, Dante is affectionate and respectful; only the punishing environment, with its burning sands and falling brimstone, condemns Brunetto Latini. Most likely, Brunetto did not mistreat Dante, even though the orphaned boy’s yearning for fatherly guidance and his awareness of Brunetto’s sexuality created erotic tension between them. Therefore, the Anima, in young Beatrice’s image, asserted herself, simultaneously protecting Dante’s innocence and affirming his masculinity. Dante’s tutelage under Brunetto probably overlapped with the time between Beatrice’s first greeting and her death. Dante’s poetry and prose in her honor fit somewhat uneasily within the contemporary tradition of Courtly Love, which occupied a more unstable social space than love for parents, siblings, and extended family. The passionate, exclusive love of one person for another, subsuming but not limited to sexual desire, yet tending to exclude sexual desire for anyone else (what we now call “romantic” love),45 was not consistently acknowledged as a

41 The Italian words Guelph and Ghibelline come from the German Welf and Waibligen, party labels taken, respectively, from the family name of one faction leader and the stronghold of another. Originally the Ghibellines supported the Holy Roman Emperor against the Pope, who was, in turn, supported by the Guelphs. But ultimately the labels came to indicate tangles of family alliances with little relation to political principles. See Hyett, Florence, p. 19; also Giovanni Villani, Chronicle, bk. 5, chap. 38. 42 Brunetto Latini, Tesoretto, lines 164–76. 43 Dante, De Monarchia 1.12.10. 44 Brockman, Psychoanalytic Exploration, p. 38. 45 C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, pp. 131–60, esp. 135, defines Eros approximately this way, and has Courtly Love, later known as “romantic love,” in mind. He and Jung both draw upon Plato, but with different focus.

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phenomenon distinct from lust during this time. Poets who claimed to perceive it as such admitted that it often was unstable. But sometimes it did manifest itself to wonderful effect. Sometimes it motivated admirable people, indisputably worthy of love in the larger sense, to do great deeds. On the other hand, it sometimes disturbed the social order, and all too often was associated with adultery, a great inspirer of hatred, murder, and other mayhem. In short, Courtly Love was unpredictable, setting unique challenges for unique individuals trying to find their way in a complex world. In Jungian terms, it had to do with individuation and selfrealization. Boccaccio provides unique information about the identity of the human Beatrice, only partly confirmed by Dante’s son Pietro. Boccaccio says that Beatrice, “Bice” for short, was the daughter of Folco Portinari, a wealthy neighbor of Dante’s family, and that she married a knight (cavaliere) named Messer Simone de’ Bardi and then died, age twenty-four, in 1290.46 This information, Boccaccio says, was told to him by “a trustworthy person who knew her [Beatrice] well and was closely related to her by blood.”47 Boccaccio’s father, a banker, had connections both with the Portinari and Bardi families.48 The name being known, scholars found more information on Folco Portinari which generally harmonized with Dante’s account, allowing identification of a poet brother, Manetto Portinari, who could be the same near relation of Beatrice whom Dante mentions as his second closest friend, and who asked him to write poems in Beatrice’s honor after her death, in La Vita Nuova, chapters 32–33.49

46 Boccaccio, Life of Dante (chap. 3). Given Dante’s information, using many references to the mystical number nine, Beatrice’s date of death is clearly placed in 1290 but has been construed either as June 8 or June 19. He is perhaps more interested in multiplying nines than in conveying the correct date to his reader. This is because, as he says in La Vita Nuova, chap. 29, he perceives Beatrice to be linked closely to God because she is a miracle whose only root is the Trinity. Also, though less important, the nine material heavens were perhaps in perfect conjunction when she was conceived. Therefore he uses Arabian reckoning (which begins a day at sunset) to say that Beatrice died in the first hour on the ninth day of the month; he adds that it was also the ninth month by Syrian reckoning, in which October counts as the first month. Scholars, including Toynbee (Dante Alighieri, p. 47), calculate that Beatrice would have died around sunset on June 8. Barbara Reynolds, trans. and ed., La Vita Nuova, p. 116, points out that according to the Syrian system in the Elementa astronomica, our western June 19 is the ninth day of Giumâda. 47 Boccaccio, Esposizioni, DDP, on Inferno 2.57: “fededegna persona, la quale la conobbe e fu per consanguinità strettissima a lei.” 48 Del Lungo, “Beatrice nella vita,” p. 21. Chance, Emergence, p. 128, states that Boccaccio’s first stepmother was Beatrice’s second cousin. 49 Toynbee, Dante Alighieri, pp. 46–47 and n5. As Toynbee mentions here, Folco Portinari had four other sons and four daughters besides Beatrice.

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As for Pietro Alighieri, he gives the most detail in the second version of his commentary, where he states that Beatrice was a beautiful woman of the Portinari family, of excellent character, whom the youthful Dante had loved, for whom he wrote many songs (cantilenas), and whose name he had chosen to give to his allegorical figure for Theology in the Commedia. In his first commentary, Pietro had shown no awareness of the historical Beatrice, so he evidently learned more later. Though even there he never mentions La Vita Nuova, his allusion to Dante’s poems and songs for Beatrice shows him now generally aware of that body of work.50 Though it seems a great jump from La Vita Nuova to the Commedia, Dante’s resolve to write something great in Beatrice’s honor suggests some preliminary glimpse, in this youthful work, of the masterpiece. Could he perhaps have begun a version before his dream of 1300? The two and a half Latin hexameters which Boccaccio presents in the fifteenth chapter of his Life of Dante might be a remnant of this early start, although its source, the letter written by a certain monk, Brother Hilary (also called Hilarius, Ilario, and Ilaro), copied without any date into Boccaccio’s journal, the “so-called Zibaldone Laurenziano,” is controversial; those who do not think the letter fraudulent argue about its date.51

50 Pietro Alighieri (2), DDP, on Purgatorio 31.52–54. In (1), on Inferno 2.52–102, Pietro simply glosses “Beatrice” as a figure for Theology, and finds ingenious explanations for her remarks about her life and death in Purgatorio 30–31. Perhaps his mother, or members of his extended family in Bologna, gave him more background later. For the Alighieri family in Bologna, see Santagata, Dante, pp. 174–75 (chap. 6). In (3), Pietro once more omits the Portinari family in glossing Purgatorio 30, but on Inferno 2.82–102 he refers to Beatrice’s “shade” (umbra), thus acknowledging Beatrice as a deceased human being. Santagata, Dante, p. 319, expresses the widespread view that Pietro’s commentaries have been tampered with, especially the second and third versions. However, Chiamenti in his edition of Pietro’s Comentum, pp. 2, 5–6, 13, and 27–62, carefully documents a continuity of development among the three versions, which he dates respectively (1) 1339–41, (2) 1344–49, and (3) 1353–64. 51 Zygmunt G. Barański, “Textual Transmission,” p. 510; Santagata, Dante, pp. 89–90; 389–92. Information suggesting a date in early 1309 includes Dante’s projected journey to France and his declared intent to dedicate the remaining two parts of the work, respectively, to Moroello Malaspina and King Frederick of Sicily. Mention of Moroello fits Boccaccio’s story that Dante resumed work on the Commedia in late 1307 because of Moroello’s encouragement. Then, in October 1308, Dante’s relation by marriage, Corso Donati, was killed. Though Corso was not a friend, the powerful Donati connection had been Dante’s best hope for getting his sentence annulled. The political reverse might have prompted Dante’s decision to leave Italy. However, in June 1309, the newly elected Henry of Luxembourg announced his intent to assert imperial authority in Italy, and Dante was soon among his followers. Between that time and Henry’s death, Dante would probably have preferred to dedicate Paradiso to the emperor. After the emperor’s death, he became disillusioned with King Frederick of Sicily, who is denounced in Paradiso 19.130–35.

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The monk’s letter purportedly accompanies Dante’s gift-copy of his finished Inferno to Uguccione della Faggiuola, a powerful nobleman to whom it is supposedly dedicated. The learned prior explains that the author, traveling toward France, sought hospitality at the convent and, with some encouragement, showed his work. On being asked why he treated his sacred subject in the vernacular, he admitted that when first “the seed” (semen) for the work, “perhaps poured down from heaven” (caelitus fortasse . . . infusum), had “germinated” (germinaret), he intended and even began to write it in Latin. By way of illustration, he provided his original opening:52 Ultima regna canam, fluvido contermina mundo, Spiritibus quae lata patent, quae premia solvunt Pro meritis cuicumque suis. (Let me sing of the last realms, bordering the flowing cosmos, Those that lie open to the spirits and pay out recompense To each as each deserves.)

Clearly this is not the beginning of the Inferno. The “recompense” given to all spirits might be good or bad, but not simply bad. The wideness (lata) of the last realms suggests freedom, not imprisonment. Dante might be transforming themes of his sonnet, “Oltra la sfera” into Latin, celebrating Beatrice’s glorious place in the Empyrean, perhaps at the Last Judgment. If he began such a work, Dante’s other concerns must have distracted him. By September, 1301, when Dante left Florence on the diplomatic mission to Rome from which he was never able to return, he had solemnized his marriage with Gemma Donati and had by her at least three children.53 “Family

52 Muzzi, Tre Epistole Latine, p. 40. The translation here is mine, but Toynbee provides a complete English translation of the “Letter of Frate Ilario to Uguccione della Faggiuola,” including the hexameters, and includes it in his Dante Alighieri, pp. 263–66 (Appendix B). Santagata, Dante, p. 91, provides several other translations for the hexamaters and suggests that these lines might introduce either a “generic afterlife” or Paradiso. 53 Three names – Jacopo, Pietro, and Antonia – are given for Dante’s children in Florentine documents of 1332 about the division of Dante’s property (then partly restored) among his heirs. While Jacopo and Pietro appear in other documents, and Boccaccio mentions them in his Vita di Dante (chap. 14), Antonia appears only here. However, many scholars believe that she is the same person as Sister Beatrice, the nun at the convent of Santo Stefano dell’Uliva at Ravenna, mentioned as Dante’s daughter in several later documents. Nuns often took new names when they were professed. However, Chabot, in “Il Matrimonio di Dante,” p. 298 n85, casts doubt on this identification, pointing out that a daughter had no rights to a paternal inheritance, apart from her dowry, and the dowry should have been given when she became a nun. (It is presumed that this Beatrice became a nun before or shortly after her father’s death

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cares” – that is, the marriage itself, Boccaccio claims – “drew Dante to cares of state.”54 That Dante makes no specific mention of his wife or children in his surviving works is usually explained by his adherence to rhetorical rules demanding reticence about self, friends, and family, with few exceptions. As Dante explains in the Convivio 1.2.1–24, rhetorical principles recommend against both self-praise and self-blame. However, self-blame is worse, because attributing bad deeds to oneself implies that one is comfortable with one’s misdeeds. Thus, necessary self-defense is allowed; one may speak to contradict false accusations or calumnies. Also, one may perhaps reveal things about oneself, good or bad, if that will benefit others.55 Presumably Dante’s allusions to himself within his works all fit one exception or the other. With the current state of the evidence, it is hard to know much about Dante’s marriage. Since documents indicate a marriage contract in 1278, some modern

at Ravenna.) However, there might be exceptional circumstances, and two gifts later made to Sister Beatrice might be tardy contributions to her dowry. In 1350, while Sister Beatrice still lived, Boccaccio brought her ten gold florins from the Florentine charitable confraternity of Or San Michele; see Toynbee, Dante Alighieri, p. 71 n2; also Del Lungo, L’Esilio di Dante, pp. 161–62. In 1371, after her death, three gold ducats were paid to her convent on her behalf, by a man with a troubled conscience who acted anonymously through a local representative; see Bernicoli, “La Figliuola di Dante Allighieri,” pp. 339–40. Of the known sons, Jacopo died sometime between 1342 and 1350, see Jacopo Alighieri, Chiose, p. 3 (Jarro’s introduction). Pietro died in 1364; see Chiamenti’s introduction to the third version of Pietro Alighieri’s Comentum, p. 2. Scholars disagree about which son was the elder. Pietro is sometimes put forward because records show he held two ecclesiastical benefices at Ravenna in 1319, while Jacopo apparently controlled no property at the time. See Jarro’s edition of Jacopo Alighieri’s Chiose, p. 1; also Chiamenti’s introduction to Pietro Alighieri’s third version of his Comentum, p. 2. Jacopo’s having inherited property from Gemma Donati in 1343 perhaps indicates her recent death, but she is last clearly documented alive in 1332, consenting to the property division. See Chabot, “Il Matrimonio,” pp. 298–99 and n85. Other children are sometimes listed for Dante. A certain Giovanni Alighieri, described as a son of “Dantis Alagherii de Florentia,” witnessed a document on October 21, 1308 in Lucca. Since no other information links this Giovanni to the famous poet, some speculate that his father was actually a “Dantino di Alighiero da Firenze” (Dantinus in Latin) who lived in Padua and survived the famous poet by many years, since documents show him “in 1339, 1345, 1348, and 1350” according to Toynbee, Dante Alighieri, p. 91 n3. This discussion of Dante’s reputed progeny is not exhaustive; see Chance, Emergence, p. 433 n18. 54 Boccaccio, Life of Dante, p. 23 (chap. 4). 55 Dante, Convivio 1.2.1–14. The more subtle reason that we should avoid speaking of ourselves, in either praise or blame, Dante says, is because we do not understand ourselves well enough to give a true account. A corollary is that we should treat ourselves like friends, and friends should only be rebuked in private.

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scholars postulate a marriage less than a decade after that, overlapping many events in La Vita Nuova. This complicates the task of interpreting the youthful work, which seems not to reflect the concerns of a married man and father. This literary issue, with some Jungian aspects, must be postponed for later exploration.56 In fact, both of Dante’s sons apparently were born close to 1300, as scholars conclude because in the legal sentences pronounced upon Dante, no sons are mentioned until 1315, even though Florence customarily banished the sons of exiled fathers when they reached the age of fourteen.57 Since Florentines did not banish female offspring the same way, this is no help in establishing the age of Dante’s daughter. Boccaccio’s account, however, indicates that Gemma had small children (piccoli figliuoli) when Dante was exiled, and that she carefully handled (assai sottilmente reggeva) what she was able to get of her dowry for their benefit.58 As for the date of the marriage, Boccaccio declares that Dante’s family arranged it in order to comfort Dante after Beatrice’s death.59 He clearly knew nothing of the 1278 contract. But much incongruity in the evidence disappears if we assume that Gemma was considerably younger than Dante, perhaps even an infant or a toddler, at the time of the contract. During this period, we know that marriages between children often were arranged and sometimes even solemnized, though not consummated until later. To be sure, we know most about such marriages when royal families were involved, and in such cases there are obvious motives for putting politics before biology.60 But the violence and civil war which wracked Tuscany and Italy in Dante’s youth may have given even merely well-to-do families motives for making alliances based on promised marriages between young children. Also, in a different, though contemporary development, Dante’s Paradiso mentions that an unfortunate custom was becoming prevalent in Dante’s Florence, to marry off daughters at younger and younger ages, with larger dowries than had been expected in earlier days (Paradiso 15.103–5). L’Ottimo Commento says that in those times, maidens were married at sufficient age (d’etade sufficiente), but “today” (oggi), which was

56 See the third chapter of this book. 57 Santagata, Dante, p. 53. 58 Vita di Dante, chap. 5. 59 Boccaccio, Life, chap. 3. 60 One such child-marriage, with a Dantean connection, was solemnized in 1333 between sixyear-old Andrew of Hungary, grandson of Dante’s royal friend Charles Martel, and seven-yearold Joanna, granddaughter and heiress to Robert the Wise, king of Naples. This attempt at settling an inheritance dispute (alluded to in Paradiso 9.1–12) ended badly when Andrew was murdered in 1345. See Goldstone, The Lady Queen, pp. 38–45; 108–10.

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for him around 1333, they are married “in the cradle” (nella culla). This reflected a male advantage in the marriage market, stemming partly from the short span of time during which women could bear children, and the ease with which female marriageability could be damaged by scandal. More women than men would be interested in marriage at a given time, and females of higher status not uncommonly married “down.”61 Those unable to afford a large dowry might be obliged to accept older bridegrooms. Gemma’s family perhaps traded a more modest dowry, paid earlier, for the prospect of a bridegroom of acceptable family and optimal age (from the cultural perspective) when she herself reached nubile age. Dante’s family apparently paid more money to arrange an acceptable marriage for Dante’s sister Tana at about the same time.62 No connected narrative tells us what Dante’s life was like during these years. In Purgatorio he apparently confesses that after Beatrice’s death he drifted or fell into immoral ways. Beatrice explains his faults (Purgatorio 30.121–29) to assembled angels and saints in the Earthly Paradise (the translation and paraphrase here are Vernon’s),63 For some time I sustained him with my countenance; showing him my youthful eyes, I led him with me bound on the right way. So soon as I was on the threshold of my second age . . . and changed life (earthly for heavenly), he abandoned me, and gave himself to others. When I was risen up from flesh to spirit, and beauty and virtue had increased in me, I was less dear to him and less pleasing.

This indictment could fit several kinds of wrongdoing, love affairs included. Some scholars find suggestions (or declarations) of illicit affairs in Dante’s short lyrics, especially the rime petrose or “stony rhymes,” a sequence of four poems, one of them with “arrestingly frank sexual content,”64 about a lady of stonelike beauty and coldness but possessing an “excruciating combination of disdain and the power to enthrall.”65 Frankness is relative; by modern standards these

61 L’Ottimo Commento, DDP, on Paradiso 15.103–5. Maristela Botticini, “A Loveless Economy?” p. 109. 62 Chabot, “Il Matrimonio di Dante,” p. 285 n54–55, analyzes a seventeenth-century copy of a record which states that Tana, who may have married around 1275, had a dowry of 366 gold florins (fiorini d’oro). Chabot believes this was an error, and that in this historical context, the sum was probably in silver “small florins,” worth roughly a twentieth of the gold. The gold florins were first minted in 1252, according to Giovanni Villani, Chronicle, bk 6, chap. 53. This would make Tana’s dowry worth slightly less than twice Gemma’s. But if gold florins are involved, Tana’s dowry was much greater. 63 Vernon, ed., Readings on Purgatorio, 2:548–49. 64 Hollander, Life, p. 43. 65 Bemrose, New Life, p. 34.

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poems are still rather elliptical. In one of them, “Così nel mio parlar” (Thus in my speech),66 Dante reproaches the lady as if she deliberately inflicted his lovepangs upon him; then he imagines how differently he would act if he learned that she felt the same for him. He mentions getting hold of her blonde hair (biondi capelli) and keeping it near him all day, and of taking vengeance (io mi vendicherei) for the lady’s long rejection before granting her “peace with love” (con amor pace). Dorothy Sayers explains that the vengeance Dante threatens means that he will make certain that the lady desires him before their sexual consummation, which shows that he would be “a satisfactory bedfellow,” understanding the importance of mutual pleasure.67 Of course, not all of Dante’s short lyrics need be straightforwardly autobiographical. In the Commedia, Dante directly confesses no illicit love affairs. In the first books of the Convivio, begun after Dante’s exile,68 he reinterprets the episode of the compassionate lady in La Vita Nuova (chapters 35–37) as an allegory about Lady Philosophy, who eventually won his heart, a process complete, he indicates (counting the time in cycles of the planet Venus), in 1294. That could be the date of his marriage with Gemma. Once exiled, Dante needed to live down whatever reputation for immaturity and frivolity his Vita Nuova had given him, since he perceived that the work was still circulating and attracting attention. By that time, he might have thought it true enough that the positive change in his life came not simply from another love affair, and not even simply from marriage, but from dedicating himself to a higher system, Philosophy, which encompassed ethical values, pursuit of true knowledge, and concern for family, community, and government. To draw attention to the human lady to whom the original Pietosa poems of the La Vita Nuova were addressed might have been an embarrassment both to her and him by then, even if that lady were Gemma. The years between 1293 and 1301 were probably Dante’s happiest, in a worldly sense. Some suggestion about the company he was keeping is provided by the identities of six souls who recognize Dante on his journey in the Commedia before he recognizes them. These six are Ciacco (Inferno 6), Brunetto Latini (Inferno 15), Casella (Purgatorio 2.76–118), Nino Visconti (Purgatorio 8), Forese Donati (Purgatorio 23 and 24), and Charles Martel (Paradiso 8 and 9).69 Four of the six – Charles Martel, Brunetto, Nino, and Forese – died between 1294 and 1296. Ciacco died in

66 Rime 103. 67 Dorothy Sayers, “Dante and Milton,” p. 162. 68 Dante specifically mentions his exile in Convivio 1.3.4. 69 The facts mentioned here about all six can be found in the relevant articles in Toynbee, Dante Dictionary: “Brunetto Latino,” pp. 99–100; “Carlo (3), Charles Martel,” pp. 125–26; “Casella,” pp. 122–23; “Ciacco,” pp. 153–54; “Forese,” p. 246; and “Nino (2), Nino Visconti,” p. 400.

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1286, but two things link him tenuously to the Donati family: first, Ciacco is punished for gluttony, like Forese Donati, and second, Boccaccio’s Decameron 9.8 tells of an attempt by Ciacco to sponge a sumptuous meal off Corso Donati.70 Four of these souls share literary interests with Dante: Brunetto commends his Tesoro to Dante, Charles Martel and Casella quote or sing Dante’s own poetry to him, and though Forese does not quote a selection, he and Dante are known for a somewhat obscure and coarse poetic “contention” (tenzone) sequence, of which the authenticity was long disputed.71 Five of the six have political interests, with Brunetto being a statesman, Ciacco a clever prognosticator, and Forese the brother of a faction leader. Nino, as a grandson of Count Ugolino Gherardesca,72 was an ally of Florence in its regional conflict with Pisa,73 while Charles Martel, king of Hungary and heir to the throne of Naples, was a powerful and glamorous friend to have. Politics brought trouble. Two factions struggled to control Florence, eventually called the Bianchi (or “White”) faction, interested in maintaining Florence’s Republican institutions and political independence (when possible); and the Neri (or “Black”) faction,74 whose leaders, especially Gemma’s kinsman, Corso Donati, sought power over Florence through alliances with the Pope and the French monarchy.75 Corso may have aspired to despotic power over Florence,

70 In Decameron 9.8, Boccaccio tells a story involving both Ciacco (Inferno 6) and Filippo Argenti (Inferno 8). A mischievous freeloader, Biondello, falsely tells the glutton Ciacco that Corso Donati is about to serve up an opulent meal of lampreys to some guests. Ciacco approaches the aristocrat’s table and is welcomed, but finds himself sharing an austere Lenten repast: first chickpeas (cece), then salted tuna-belly (sorra), and finally fried fish from the Arno. Ciacco later gets revenge by sending an impudent request to the irascible Filippo Argenti in Biondello’s name. Argenti then attacks and beats Biondello so mercilessly that concerned bystanders must intervene. 71 See Durling and Martinez, “Additional Note 10: Dante and Forese,” in Durling, ed., Purgatorio, 612–13. 72 Sometimes he is named more fully as Ugolino, count of Donoràtico. He was a member of the Gherardesca family. See Sforza, Dante e i Pisani, pp. 90–91. 73 Bruni provides an Italian translation of an otherwise lost letter in Dante’s own hand, written after his exile, and reminding the contemporary Florentine government of his past loyalty and service, particularly at the battle of Campaldino in 1289, part of the conflict to which the Pisan struggle led. This letter, Bruni reports, included Dante’s own sketch of the battlefield and the positions of the contending forces. See Toynbee, “History of the Letters of Dante from the Fourteenth Century to the Present Day,” p. 89. 74 The chronicler Giovanni Villani, Chronicle, bk 8, chap. 39, states that these faction names originated in a family quarrel from the nearby city of Pistoia that spread to Florence following patterns of pre-existing political divisions, and were first used on May 1, 1300, in that city. 75 Santagata, Dante, p. 334, presents a genealogical table but cannot definitely name the common ancestor of Corso and Manetto (Dante’s father-in-law).

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but failed where the Medici would succeed in the next century.76 Brunetto’s teaching disposed Dante toward the Bianchi by conviction, but ancestral pride and ties by marriage with the Donati helped him mistrust fickle crowds and timid leaders courting popularity. With a foot in one faction and a toe in the other, Dante was trusted, to a degree, by both sides. As 1300 approached, Christian pilgrims began flocking to Rome, stirred partly by vague traditions about a Jubilee celebration and partly by mysterious impulses rooted in the chaotic times. Pope Boniface, either anticipating or reacting to popular enthusiasm, offered pilgrims to Rome a spiritual benefit hitherto reserved for crusaders: plenary indulgence, which meant, at least as the chronicler Giovanni Villani understood it, the remission of “both punishment and guilt” for all sins.77 Boniface excluded some persons and categories from this offer, simultaneously asserting papal authority and exacerbating his enemies’ hatred.78 If not in the excluded categories, penitents living in Rome would receive the indulgence after undergoing a thirty-day regimen involving attendance at Mass, visits to shrines, and confession. Only a fifteen-day regimen was required of pilgrims from father away. Many came, bringing intense piety and material gifts:79 It was said that thirty thousand pilgrims entered and left the city daily, and that daily two hundred thousand pilgrims might have been found within it. . . . Processions went incessantly to S[aint] Paul’s without the Walls and to S[aint] Peter’s, where . . . the [veil] of Veronica, was exhibited. Every pilgrim laid an offering on the altar of the apostle, and the . . . chronicler of Asti assures us, as an eye-witness, that two clerics stood by the altar of S[aint] Paul’s day and night, who with rakes in their hands gathered in lavish untold money.

No doubt many priests, monks, and friars heard confessions with integrity and kindness in guiding so many pilgrims on their physical, moral, and spiritual adventure. Perhaps, as Santagata suggests, a loan Dante received in Florence on March 14 that year was for the expenses of his pilgrimage.80 Inferno 18.28–33 has a vivid allusion to the challenging management of pedestrian traffic in Rome during

76 Pietro Alighieri (1, 2, and 3) on Purgatorio 24.82–84; 24.70–93; and 24.55–93 respectively, states that Corso Donati aspired to the “lordship” (dominium) of Florence. For Cosimo de’ Medici’s winning the lordship of Florence (somewhat in the style of the Roman Augustus) see Durant, Renaissance, pp. 74–77. 77 Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, p. 330; Giovanni Villani, Chronicle, bk 8, chap. 36, trans. Selfe/Wicksteed, pp. 320–21. 78 Excluded were “Frederick [of Aragon, king] of Sicily, the Colonna and their adherents, and . . . all Christians who held traffic with Saracens”; see Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome, 5.2:558. 79 Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome, 5.2:558–61. 80 Santagata, Dante, pp. 119–21.

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the height of the Jubilee, suggesting that he witnessed it. His fifteen days might easily have included March 25, the calendar anniversary of the crucifixion, allowing him to return to Florence for Holy Week and traditional local celebrations there.81 Dante would have been driven to make the pilgrimage through some combination of the infectious religious enthusiasm, troubling awareness of his own failings, and anxiety at the accelerating crisis at Florence. In Rome, he would walk in famous places mentioned in books and legends, where Aeneas and also the saints Peter and Paul had walked, where a republic once ruled, to be replaced by an empire. He confessed to a priest, in accordance with the conditions required for the indulgence. Confession required self-examination under the guidance of a benevolent authority who spoke for the omniscient God. This would create auspicious conditions for what Jungians call “big dreams,” dreams which “tend to come at important thresholds in one’s life – puberty, early middle age, the approach of death – and can give one’s life a new direction.”82 Perhaps the dream came at Rome, or perhaps in Florence after Dante’s return. If the Commedia was inspired by a memorable and disturbing dream around Holy Week in 1300, we would expect Dante to start writing about it soon afterwards – if not within hours, at least within days or weeks. He would have had a raw need to examine the dream’s meaning, using artistic exploration as well as thought, similar to the technique which Jung would later develop and call active imagination. The earliest commentators generally assumed that the date Dante indicates through Malacoda is actually when he began composition,83 but Boccaccio is the earliest source for the story that Dante had written the first seven cantos before his exile, left them behind, and forgot all about them in the subsequent turmoil,

81 Giovanni Villani, Chronicle, bk 1, chap. 60, describes the tradition of the Sacred Fire on Holy Saturday, where each household relights its fires from a torch being carried in procession through the streets to the baptistery. There it would light the candles for the ceremony in which all the children born that spring would be baptized. 82 Joyce Crick, introduction to Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, trans. Crick, p. xxi. C. G. Jung, in Structure and Dynamics, CW 8, states that “big dreams” tend to come “mostly during the critical phases of life, in early youth, puberty, at the onset of middle age (thirty-six to forty), and within sight of death” (p. 378, par. 555). Kalsched, in his introduction to Trauma, p. 12, remarks how psychotherapy tends to inspire significant dreams. Victor White felt moved to explain how Roman Catholic confession serves a different purpose from Jungian analysis, since analysts and confessors kept comparing themselves to one another; see White, God and the Unconscious, 163–73 (chap. 9: “The Analyst and the Confessor”). 83 Examples include the following, all from DDP, on Inferno 21.112–14: Jacopo Alighieri, Benvenuto da Imola, and Pietro Alighieri (1, 2, and 3).

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until fortuitous circumstances brought them back to him, around 1307. This story tends to be rejected by modern scholars in what Hiram Peri calls “a surprisingly dogmatical way.”84 Current “consensus” holds that Dante began the Commedia between 1304 and 1307.85 As reasons for rejecting Dante’s indicated date, skeptical experts point offhandedly to excessively accurate prophecies supposedly made within the first seven cantos, but their more basic assumption is that the Inferno can only have been conceived by a bitter exile, not a political rising star, which Dante was in 1300. But there is a more cogent reason for doubting Boccaccio’s story, seldom stated explicitly: if a memorable “big dream” had inspired Dante to begin his great project, the mere loss of seven cantos would not have stopped him.86 Between memory and poetic craft, he could easily have reconstituted them. For Boccaccio’s story to be right, Dante must already have suspended work on the poem before his exile. And why not? Perhaps his first efforts satisfied his immediate inner need to deal with the material. Perhaps facets of the dream were still opaque to him, since in Jungian terms, the dream provided warnings which required “not . . . simply intellectual understanding, but understanding through experience.”87 Besides, when the raw compulsion of the dream-material subsided to manageable proportions, aesthetic and practical challenges became more daunting. Dante had written poems based on dreams before, but only love-poems, a genre in which some excess was tolerated, if only with humorous disdain, partly because it could not be stopped, and partly because such poets often matured, renounced the genre, and went on to better things.88 A poem with serious political and theological issues could get quite a different reaction. This was not the moment to infuriate Pope Boniface unnecessarily. Had he been divinely commanded to write down the dream, it would have been different. But unlike scriptural visionaries like Zechariah or John the Apostle of Revelation, Dante reports no angelic command to write exactly what he is shown. Nor,

84 Peri, “The Original Plan of the Divine Comedy,” p. 191. 85 Hollander, Life, p. 92, approvingly cites Petrocchi’s opinion that the Inferno was begun in 1304. Pertile, “Works,” p. 492, states that “[t]he consensus among modern scholars is that composition began around 1307.” 86 Troya, Del Veltro Allegorico di Dante, p. 83. Implying that this is the real issue, Troya expresses doubt that Dante would be so neghittoso (neglectful) as to let events deprive him of a poem which made his enemies fear him and by which he hoped to reverse his misfortune. 87 C. G. Jung, Two Essays, p. 109 (par. 184). 88 Kay, in Dante’s Lyric Redemption, pp. 6–7, 24, compares Dante to three near contemporaries, all making appearances in the Commedia, who wrote love poetry and later renounced love as a theme: Guittone d’Arezzo, Arnaut Daniel, and Folco of Marseilles. Brunetto Latini also renounces Amor, in his Tesoretto, lines 2357–426; see also Holloway, ed., Tesoretto, p. 119 n10.

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like Julian of Norwich in that same century, did he have an extensive visionary dialogue with Christ, which of its very nature demanded precise, immediate recording. Even in the first seven cantos, he exercises discretion on his own initiative, omitting, for example, some details of his conversation with the ancient poets in Limbo (Inferno 4.103–5). He must have had an overwhelming sense of the dream’s importance, to be driven by it into such a new literary direction. However, he would naturally have some doubts about its meaning and the wisdom of writing about it. For example, Brunetto Latini, his beloved teacher, had been honorably buried in the church of Maria Maggiore in Florence in 1294,89 presumably with all benefits of the sacraments and of priestly absolution. Yet Dante met him in Hell, which should have been horrifying. But perhaps emotions were mixed, and the presence of his old mentor, being so much himself, left joy behind as well as nostalgia, and even a feeling that something had been resolved, and that Brunetto had given him his blessing. Would Brunetto’s eternal fate really be revealed to him, or did that scene convey some other meaning? Also, Dante knew that Ugolino of Pisa, grandfather of his friend Nino Visconti, had starved to death among some adult sons and grandsons of his, but in the dream, they seemed like young children. Of course, there was truth in that: a father would still see the child even in grown children. But in writing the scene, how much should he follow the dream, and how much bend to known history? Given Dante’s growing responsibilities, puzzles like this were reason enough to neglect the poem. In 1301, the catastrophe struck. In 1302, already driven from his city and ruined, Dante was condemned in absentia to death by burning at the stake.90 He at first made common cause with his fellow exiles, acting as their secretary,91 while Pope Boniface’s successor,92 Benedict XI, tried to reconcile the factions. But Benedict soon died, and the other exiles tried some ill-timed and badly managed military exploits,93 provoking Dante to withdraw himself and become, as his ancestor

89 Paget Toynbee, “Brunetto Latino,” Dante Dictionary, 99–101, here 100. Holloway, Twice Told Tales, p. 166. 90 Del Lungo, L’Esilio di Dante, pp. 97–106. Santagata, Dante, pp. 143–45. 91 For example, in Dante’s Epistola 1, sent to Cardinal Nicholas da Prato. 92 Boniface VIII died October 11, 1303, only a few weeks after he was attacked and captured (September 7) in his palace at Anagni by forces including the Colonna family (his Roman enemies) and some henchmen of King Philip IV. Three days later, the people of Anagni counterattacked and obtained his release, but the shock of the event probably hastened his death. Purgatorio 20.85–90 alludes to this event. See Giovanni Villani, Chronicle, bk 8, chap. 63; Compagni, Chronicle, bk 2, chap. 35; and Gregorovius, City of Rome, 5.2:588–96. 93 Compagni, Chronicle, bk 3, chaps. 10–11; also Giovanni Villani, Chronicle, bk 8, chap. 72; Vernon, Readings on Paradiso, 2:16–17; and Santagata, Dante, pp. 171–73.

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Cacciaguida puts it (Paradiso 17.69), a party by himself (parte per te stesso). Perhaps living in Bologna, Dante began and left unfinished his Latin treatise, De Vulgari Eloquentia (On the vulgar tongue). Perhaps there too, around 1304,94 he began his vernacular Convivio (The banquet), proposing, on analogy with his youthful La Vita Nuova, to write commentaries on fourteen of his canzones, and promising “manly and temperate” (virile e temperata) writing, unlike the admittedly somewhat “hot and impassioned” (fervida e passionata) earlier work (1.1.16–17).95 This is when he explains how the compassionate (pietosa) lady at the window in La Vita Nuova really was “[the] daughter of God . . . most beauteous Philosophy,” his second beloved. Yet he mentions the blessed Beatrice (Beatrice beata) as alive not only “in heaven with the angels” (in cielo colli angeli) but also “on earth with my soul” (in terra colla mia anima). In her honor, he ends a chapter with a digression about the immortality of the soul (2.8.4–16). On October 6, 1306, surviving documents show Dante’s presence in Lunigiana, using both diplomatic and notarial talents in settling disputed territorial claims between the bishop of Luni and several branches of the locally important Malaspina family.96 Through one of these Malaspinas, the first seven cantos of his Inferno would return to him. The action, however, started with Gemma Donati. Back in 1301, on October 31, while Dante was still in Rome as Florence’s envoy, Pope Boniface’s officially appointed “peacemaker,”97 Charles of Valois, had entered Florence,98 permitting the Neri faction to re-enter in the prince’s wake, to pillage, murder, and seize prisoners at their pleasure. Gemma presumably took refuge with her father, but beforehand, anticipating this mayhem, she had sent chests containing important papers and other valuables to a safe place.99 According to Boccaccio’s most detailed account, in his Esposizioni, the chests remained there for about five years – that is, until about 1306–1307 – at which point, the situation being somewhat calmer, Gemma initiated legal action to claim rights on her dowry, which Florence had confiscated with Dante’s estate. For this purpose, she sent Dante’s nephew Andrea Poggi, along with a legal representative (procuratore), to seek the necessary papers. Finding these, they also found a notebook (quadernetto) containing a strange poem

94 Hollander, Life, pp. 46–47. 95 Wicksteed, with his translation of the Convivio, pp. 7, 388–416, provides translations of the other eleven canzones which Dante supposedly intended to discuss. 96 Toynbee, Dante Alighieri, p. 92. Santagata, Dante, p. 194. 97 Appointed in Anagni, September 2, 1301 – see Santagata, Dante, p. 138. 98 Toynbee, “Carlo (4),” Dante Dictionary, pp. 128–30, here p. 129. 99 Santagata, Dante, p. 155 (chap. 5), suggests that this place might have been a monastery or church, available through the mediation of one of Dante’s nephews, a priest.

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unlike anything they had seen before: the first seven cantos of the Inferno.100 This they brought to a cultivated Florentine, Dino di Lambertuccio Frescobaldi, who admired it, made copies for himself and friends, and forwarded the cantos to the Marchese Moroello Malaspina, Dante’s current host, requesting that the author be encouraged to finish the work. When the manuscript was laid before him, Dante said, I really supposed that these, with my other possessions and many writings, had been lost when my house was robbed, so therefore all of it was completely taken from my mind and thought. But since it has pleased God that they not be lost, and he has put them before me again, I will do what I can to follow my original intention. (Io estimava veramente che questi, con altre mie cose e scritture assai, fossero, nel tempo che rubata mi fu la casa, perduti, e però del tutto n’avea l’animo e ’l pensiero levato: ma, poiché a Dio è piaciuto che perduti non sieno, ed hammegli rimandati inanzi, io adopererò ciò che io potrò di seguitare la bisogna secondo la mia disposizione prima).101

Boccaccio and Benvenuto point to a mildly awkward splice between Canto 7 and Canto 8 as evidence that Dante resumed the writing after a long hiatus.102 Others have noted a sudden increase in the author’s artistic and psychological maturity.103 Still, for a work written over such a long stretch of time, the Commedia does, in the end, have surprising unity. As Pertile writes, “given the range, complexity, internal cross-referencing, and near-total consistency of the narrative as a whole,” it seems as if “the entire poem, from beginning to end, must have been

100 Boccaccio, Esposizioni, DDP, on Inferno 8.1, explains that Andrea Poggi, Dante’s nephew, and Dino Perini, a companion and student of Dante’s last days in Ravenna, each claimed to be the finder of the seven cantos. Perhaps each, speaking to Boccaccio at different times, neglected to mention the other’s involvement, but Boccaccio cannot resolve the matter. Being a notary, Dino Perini fits the role of Gemma’s procuratore (“lawyer,” as Toynbee translates it), who accompanied the nephew to whom Gemma had entrusted the key. 101 Boccaccio, Esposizioni, DDP, on Inferno 8.1. 102 In the last line of Canto 7, Dante and Virgil reach the foot of a tower. Canto 8 begins with the words Io dico, seguitando (I say, continuing), and Dante explains that before they had reached the tower’s foot, they had seen two small flames shining at its summit (Inferno 8.1–4). Thus, Dante has to move the action backward a little before he moves forward again, something he did not do in previous cantos. 103 Santagata, Dante, pp. 125, points out that many critics notice the relative artistic immaturity of the “early cantos” of the Inferno, displayed in “the behavior of Dante the character, who wavers between excessive piety and excessively vindictive fury” and also “the unclearly defined character of Virgil.”

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in Dante’s mind as he composed each canto.”104 Perhaps, imitating Virgil, Dante made an outline at an early stage of what he intended to write.105 Returning to the poem and the dream brought back some of the old difficulties, but time and experience had changed Dante’s perspective. If the dream and his early pondering of it had performed their function, he now had a clearer sense of the warnings and instructions it had given him and what it could do for others. Also, at that point, he had more to gain by pleasing his literary audience than he had to fear from annoying any pope, since the Avignon papacy, though still influential, could not act in Tuscany as swiftly and powerfully as Boniface once could from Rome. In the rest of the work, Dante’s active imagination perhaps grew bolder about filling in blurry patches and adding new material, but if some of this was suggested by later dreams, he built on the foundation of the original vision instead of treating the new dreams. His artistry leaves no obvious seams between the original dream-material and later additions. However, prophecies clearly meant to flatter patrons probably belong in the latter category. For example, when, in Purgatorio 8.85–135, Dante tells Conrad Malaspina that he has heard of his family’s reputation for being hospitable, and Conrad replies that within seven years Dante will have personal experience of this, Moroello Malaspina, to whom Purgatorio was reportedly dedicated,106 surely got the point. Similarly, when in Paradiso 17.76–81 Cacciaguida predicts great things for the boy, nine years old in 1300, who would become Can Grande della Scala, the adult Can Grande probably smiled at flattery more imaginative than his daily fare. Scholars seize on such prophecies to date Dante’s composition process, but there are pitfalls in assuming that all identifiable events occurred earlier than the writing. A notable example is the death of Pope Clement V in 1314, alluded to, but inexactly, in Inferno 19.82–84. Not all believe that Dante finished Inferno so late. Jungian considerations help us understand why Dante would venture a guess in Clement’s case. Prophecies, retrospective and otherwise, are more to readers than clues about the poet’s composition date. As William Franke explains, literary prophecies draw connections between events, thus illuminating their meaning, a purpose served whether or not the prophecy is retrospective.107 Still, apart from this, readers do

104 See Lino Pertile, “Works,” p. 493. 105 For Virgil’s use of an outline, see Vita Suetonii Vulgo Donatiana, p. 192. Santagata, Dante, suggests that Dante might have “sketched out at least an outline” of his poem after his pilgrimage to Rome (p. 121) and “retrieved” some of it in 1307 (p. 219). 106 In Brother Hilary’s letter. Also, Moroello’s wife, Alagia, is mentioned kindly by Pope Hadrian V, in Purgatorio 19.142; see Santagata, Dante, p. 194. 107 Franke, Revelation of Imagination, pp. 214–15 (chap. 3).

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care about a poet’s accuracy in foreseeing the future. The boundary between natural and supernatural perspicacity can be uncertain. So it is no surprise that Boccaccio had second thoughts about the story of Dante’s lost and recovered seven cantos. Thinking it over, Boccaccio was bothered most of all by the partly correct prophecies of Ciacco, the courtly glutton, in Inferno 6.64–75. Stating flatly that he does not believe that Dante had a prophetic spirit (spirito profetico), Boccaccio speculates that perhaps, after all, Dante wrote that canto after his exile. Nevertheless, he leaves the question open.108 His caution seems wise, because Ciacco’s prophecy really only involves some moderately good guesses, ambiguously expressed. For example, he predicts bloodshed between two Florentine factions, but that would be nothing new. He predicts that one faction will banish the other, only to have the exiles return before three years have passed and banish their rivals permanently. This is more specific but follows a historical pattern likely to be repeated: the Ghibelline victory of 1260, followed by the Guelph triumph in 1266, from which the Ghibellines never recovered. That reversal took six years, but it was an easy guess that the Neri, allied with Pope Boniface and the French kings, would manage their retribution more swiftly, considering that their rivals, the Bianchi, imagined that they could preserve the Florentine Republic without outside support. Actually, it only took the Neri about a year and a half. Ciacco, however, does not predict Dante’s own exile, which will first be clearly prophesied in Inferno 10.79–81, three cantos beyond the original seven. In 1300, Dante likely did not see himself as a member of either faction and did not foresee being exiled with one of them.109 The prediction of Clement V’s death is another matter. It is made in Circle 8 of Hell, in the flaming pit we might call the Simoniac Succession, where popes guilty of simony – that is, of selling holy things, especially the papal office – are planted head down, with the most recent offender on top, fire also burning on the soles of their feet. Dante mentions that the burial pit is the size and shape of the fonts in the baptistery of St. John, where he was baptized, and that on seeing it, he thought of a more recent traumatic incident (Inferno 19.19–21):110 One of [the fonts], not many years ago, I broke for someone drowning inside: Now let him be like a letter with a seal, to establish truth.

108 Boccaccio, Esposizioni, DDP, on Inferno 8.1. 109 Bruni, Life, Wicksteed translation, p. 84, reports that Dante was “reputed to lean to the White faction” although he claims to have been “impartial.” 110 My translation is influenced by Pietro Alighieri’s commentary. For a picture of a font similar to the one Dante remembers, see Durling, ed., Inferno, p. 296.

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(l’un de li quali, ancor non è molt’ anni, rupp’ io per un che dentro v’annegava: e questo sia suggel ch’ogn’ omo sganni.)

As Benvenuto da Imola explains the episode, some children had been playing among the fonts, and one became jammed so tightly inside that he might have suffocated had Dante not smashed the font with an ax that someone put into his hands.111 Pietro Alighieri adds that some people thought Dante had acted “from a certain arrogance” (arrogantia quadam), rather than from true need. Hence, Dante calls the boy as a witness to the truth, figuratively a “letter with seal.”112 Dante’s vision partly echoes Dante’s experience here. The position of the Simoniac popes, head-down, feet-up, mimics the position of the trapped boy, at the same time suggesting how the sale of holy things inverts spiritual authority. With this inversion, Dante finds himself in the position of a confessor standing near to hear the last words of an “assassin” (assessin) who is being executed by burial head-down, in accordance with Florentine law (Inferno 19.50).113 When Virgil, at Dante’s request, brings him to take a closer look, the sinner calls out the name of Boniface, declaring that the writing (scritto), a prognostication he has seen,114 must be wrong, since his expected successor has arrived ahead of schedule. (Only the latest papal simonist can been seen at the top of the pit; the others are crushed below him.) This pope, Nicholas III, died in 1280, and was perhaps the first one whose political machinations Dante followed in detail. From his presence and position, we know what Dante’s unconscious thinks of him. Nor, given the impending crisis in 1300, is it surprising that Nicholas expects Boniface to succeed him soon, but in any case, Boniface was dead when Dante resumed writing the Inferno, so indicating his death date involved no risk. However, Nicholas goes on and predicts that the next Simoniac after Boniface will be “from westward, a pastor without law” (di ver’ ponente, un pastor

111 Benvenuto da Imola, DDP, on Inferno 19.16–18; 19–21. 112 Pietro Alighieri (2), DDP, on Inferno 19.19–21. In (3), Pietro uses different words to say something similar. 113 Longfellow, DDP, on Inferno 19.50, points this out. 114 Martinez and Durling, commenting on Inferno 19.54 (Durling ed., p. 229), suggest that Nicholas has seen “the book of the future, which the damned may read until the events approach.” But a few cantos earlier (Inferno 10.100–105), Farinata suggests vaguer sources of knowledge for the damned, since they see the future like those with “bad light” (mala luca), variously interpreted as poor eyesight (Vernon, Readings on the Inferno 1:363–64) or dim illumination, such as “twilight” or “moonlight” (Martinez and Durling, in Durling ed., p. 168, on Inferno 10.97–108). Pope Nicholas may have caught a quick glimpse of a “book” not regularly available to him. Because of their imperfect knowledge, the damned always ask new arrivals for news.

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sanza legge), who will buy his office from the French king, just as a certain Jason purchased the high priestly office from King Antiochus in the Book of Maccabees (Inferno 19.83–87).115 These are not vague innuendoes which might fit any pope involved in political machinations; they point specifically to Pope Clement’s alleged purchase of the papacy from Philip IV of France, which appeared quite blatant to contemporaries, a corrupt transaction between two potentates who otherwise did not care for each other.116 If Dante dreamed this in 1300 while Boniface lived, we might almost be obliged to postulate supernatural knowledge, but in 1307 or 1309, Dante’s active imagination might easily have drawn Pope Clement, based on his current record, to join Nicholas and Boniface in their pit. Rumors of Clement’s poor health would encourage the association.117 All told, Dante risked little in having Nicholas state (in 1300) that Boniface need not wait as long after his death (which happened in 1303) for his Simoniac successor to arrive, as Nicholas has waited already. This reckoning brings us to 1323, nine years past Clement’s death in 1314. A 1309 dissemination date for the Inferno remains plausible. Meanwhile, the world changed. In June 1309, the recently elected King of the Romans, Henry of Luxembourg, called Henry VII, announced his intent to come to Italy for his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor. Thinking that this would bring peace to Christendom, Dante warmly espoused his cause. Three of his surviving letters are to or about Henry VII.118 But when the emperor at last belatedly (in Dante’s view) laid siege to Florence, the center of the opposition to him, the

115 2 Maccabees 4:7. 116 Bertrand de Goth, later Clement V (1305–1314), was elected in June 1305, about eleven months after the death of Benedict XI, Boniface’s immediate successor. There had been a longdrawn-out dispute between two factions of cardinals, one wishing to punish Philip IV for the assault on Boniface and one desiring to placate the overwhelmingly powerful French monarch. As a compromise, all cardinals agreed to choose a French cleric, and then drew up a list of candidates, all thought to be unfriendly to Philip IV. Then a crafty member of the “peace” group sent Philip IV this information, which enabled him to approach and bargain with Bertrand de Goth, subsequently notifying the appeasing group that Bertrand was acceptable. Chroniclers and commentators give differing versions of Philip’s supposed agreement with Clement, but it always includes large sums of money and a stated or unstated commitment to destroy the Templars. See Gregorovius, City of Rome, 5.2:496–99; Giovanni Villani, Chronicle, bk 9, chap. 80, and on DDP, Guido da Pisa on Inferno 19.82–84 and Benvenuto da Imola on Inferno 19.79–84. 117 Fraticelli, Vita, pp. 276–77; 293–94 n7, reports that Clement V was known to suffer often from “sharp pains in the intestines” (acerbi dolori d’ intestini), and that, as the chronicle of Asti reported, this “terrible disease of lupulus” (horribilis morbus lupuli) made him “always afraid that his death was close by” (facea sempre temere di sua prossima morte). 118 PDP Epistolae 5–7.

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poet withdrew from the emperor’s court rather than take up arms against his own city.119 About this matter, Dante directed a somewhat cryptic letter to Moroello Malaspina, accompanied by the equally cryptic “Canzone Montanina” (Mountain song),120 which may be an account of Dante’s progress on the Commedia.121 The letter, not dated, refers to the court (curia) which Dante just left but now misses. Moroello, addressed as magnificentie vestre (your magnificence), is reminded that there he had watched often “as if amazed” (velut . . . sub admiratione) while Dante performed “the duties of liberty” (libertatis officia). This establishes that Dante and Moroello have been at the emperor’s court, since preserving “liberty” is the emperor’s principal responsibility, according to Dante’s De Monarchia.122 But because Dante is being held captive, he cannot return, which his “present sequence of oracles” (presentis seriem oraculi) will further explain.123 This prepares Moroello for some riddling pronouncements. Obviously, Dante will not be coming to the siege of Florence; Moroello probably was prepared to hear that. In the poem’s last stanza or congedo, Dante instructs his messenger-poem to tell Florence that her author is being held captive so strictly that he can no longer make war (guerra) upon Florence, even should the city revoke the unjust sentence. Otherwise, the letter and poem have good news for Moroello, though announced like a catastrophe. The writer has been seized and completely overwhelmed by a poetic vision with roots in his past, despite previous resolutions not to fall prey to such things. While walking unsuspectingly beside the Arno, the poet was astonished by thunder from above, and then a beautiful woman appeared, matching his wishes and expectations (auspiciis) completely, both in appearance and manners (mores). Since mores can be perceived only by insight, and auspiciis suggests hope, the implication is that he knows this lady and wishes to see her. Then, the god of Love immediately appears and drives away all the rest of Dante’s concerns, binding his free will. In La Vita Nuova, the god of Love was never able to bind Dante’s will except through Beatrice; when the

119 Bruni, Life, trans. Wicksteed, p. 88. Henry VII laid siege to Florence September 19, 1312, raised it January 6, 1313, and died August 24, 1313, at Buonconvento, near Siena; see Sismondi, Italian Republics, pp. 115–16. 120 Dante, Epistola 4; Rime 116. Scholars assign the poem this title because Dante calls it “montanina mia canzon” (my mountain song) in its last stanza or congedo. 121 This draws on many lines of evidence and thinking from Colin Hardie, “Dante’s ‘Canzone Montanina.’” Hardie observes that the curia which Dante mentions having left must be the emperor’s, and that Dante’s reference to war (guerra) on his city is literal. He also sees the visionary lady of this poem as Beatrice. 122 Dante, De Monarchia 1.12.10. See also Toynbee, ed., Epistolae, p. 32 and n2. 123 A word search on PDP shows that Dante uses no form of oraculum elsewhere in his works.

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two come into conflict, Beatrice ultimately wins.124 That pattern holds true here, since Dante complains to Amor that the lady is “an outlaw of your court” (sbandeggiata di tua corte), not obedient to him. This lady, then, is Beatrice. In Jungian terms, this suggests a new eruption of unconscious material connected to Dante’s earlier vision of 1300. It is, perhaps, all the more dramatic because Dante now, with greater ego-strength, can put up more resistance when he chooses. But his feelings are mixed. He calls the lady “guilty” (ria) but does not wish her cruelty to abate. This dramatizes, on the one hand, his desire to maintain some egocontrol by escaping from divine perfection, and on the other hand, his unwillingness to let such wonder and beauty leave him. Despite his claim of helplessness, the vision wins his self-surrender. He has set aside the De Monarchia to work on the Purgatorio, and it is going well. With his inside knowledge, Moroello can enjoy the cryptic communication, anticipate more of the Commedia soon, and show the letter and poem to anyone who asks what Dante is doing. Meanwhile, if Florentines see the “oracles,” they will be angry and apprehensive. As a forty-seven-year-old horseman, Dante probably did not frighten them much, but as a poet he might be dangerous. Despite superficial assurances that he is not making war on them, neither letter nor poem retracts the harsh words he has already said. Neither acknowledges any ethical mandate not to attack his city. Instead, he claims, absurd as it might seem, that love-madness has seized him once more. But anyone well acquainted with Dante’s earlier work might guess that another, fiercer poem might soon appear with more rebukes for Florence. Henry VII’s death, on August 24, 1313, is alluded to or mentioned in Purgatorio 33 and Paradiso 30. No strong emperor emerged from the ensuing succession conflict. But the French monarchy was also weakened by succession struggles when Philip IV died a few months later.125 War continued in Italy, but Paradiso alludes to fewer later events, presumably because Dante became less engaged with political affairs from then on.126 Florence made some attempts to lure back exiles with pardons or with reductions in sentence (thus reducing potential recruits for attacking forces) but these came to nothing in his case. In 1315, his

124 See discussion of La Vita Nuova, chaps. 37–39, in Chapter 2 of this book. 125 Philip IV of France died in November 1314, from an accident during a boar hunt, alluded to in Paradiso 19.118–20. 126 Santagata, Dante, pp. 309–10.

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sentence was renewed, this time with his sons added (mentioned only as sons, not by name). Death by decapitation now replaced the original sentence of death by burning at the stake.127 Sometime between 1317 and 1319, Dante and his sons apparently settled at Ravenna, at the invitation of its current ruler Guido da Polenta.128 Though Dante was by then famous for his Inferno and Purgatorio, his correspondence with the Bolognese poet Giovanni del Virgilio shows that his learned audience disapproved of his using the vernacular. In a Latin epistle, Giovanni informed Dante that if he put his marvelous talents to work on a genuine Latin epic, Giovanni would heartily support his being crowned poet laureate in Bologna. Thus challenged, Dante replied in Latin Virgilian hexameters, not epic style but in a pastoral eclogue, giving himself the shepherd-name Tityrus, referring to Giovanni as “Mopsus,” and using agrarian imagery to express his intent to finish the Paradiso and perhaps earn Florence’s pardon and acclaim by doing so. He probably sent some cantos to Virgilio with his reply. Virgilio’s response acknowledges the worthiness of the project and envisions “Phyllis,” apparently Virgilio’s pastoral name for Dante’s wife Gemma, celebrating Dante’s homecoming.129 Before he died, Dante wrote all thirty-three cantos of the Paradiso, but apparently put aside the last thirteen before he was quite satisfied with them. In midto late August of 1321, war threatened Ravenna, and Dante was sent as a diplomat to Venice. According to Filippo Villani, the Venetians refused to hear him, so fearful were they of his eloquence, but the fragmentary evidence suggests that Dante’s efforts actually did help stop the hostilities, leading to the negotiation of a formal treaty after his death.130 But Dante fell sick on the journey, probably of malaria, and died shortly after his return. Presumably his death was not foreseen far enough in advance for his family to reach his deathbed, or there would have been no mystery about the last thirteen cantos. He was buried in a Franciscan

127 In Epistola 12, Dante indignantly declares to an unknown friend that he will not accept a pardon that required the payment of a fine and a public ceremony of repentance and submission. However, scholars debate whether he was made such an offer. See Santagata, Dante, pp. 298–301. 128 Santagata, Dante, p. 320; Hollander, Life, p. 174. 129 Wicksteed, Appendix IX in Witte, Essays on Dante, p. 444. Dante’s reply to this eclogue ends abruptly, probably unfinished. A marginal note in Boccaccio’s hand in one of his manuscripts states that “one of Dante’s sons,” presumably Jacopo, sent the reply to Virgilio after Dante’s death. See Hollander, Life, p. 173; and Santagata, Dante, p. 339. 130 Filippo Villani, “De vita et moribus Dantis,” p. 11. Phillimore, Dante at Ravenna, pp. 155–63; esp. 158.

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church at Ravenna on instructions from his patron, Guido da Polenta, who himself pronounced the eulogy and apparently placed a laurel crown on Dante’s head, traces of which remained when the tomb “was opened at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and again in 1865.”131

131 Toynbee, Dante Alighieri, p. 104.

Chapter 2 Young Dante and His Contemporaries Interpret Dreams Dante was eighteen years old when he wrote the first sonnet which he describes and discusses in La Vita Nuova (chapter 3). In the previous chapter, he explained how, nine years earlier, when nearly nine years old, he had met Beatrice, then only beginning her ninth year, at some neighborhood festivity. She seemed both noble and humble in a dress the color of blood (sanguigno), suitably adorned (he thought) for her age.1 Then three “spirits” (spiriti) within him, respectively representing life, perception, and physical processes, all cried out in dismay or joy, at the presence of a new divinity. Their words, in this otherwise vernacular narrative, are Latin, accentuating the eruption of some extraordinary state into daily life, something sacred and archetypal. As D. G. Rossetti translates the scene:2 At that moment, I say most truly that the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently that the least pulses of my body shook . . . ; and in trembling it said these words: “Here is a deity stronger than I; who, coming, shall rule over me.” At that moment the animate spirit, which dwelleth in the lofty chamber whither all the senses carry their perceptions, was filled with wonder, and speaking more especially unto the spirits of the eyes, said these words: “Your beatitude hath now been made manifest unto you.” At that moment the natural spirit, which dwelleth there where our nourishment is administered, began to weep, and in weeping said these words: “Woe is me for . . . often I shall be disturbed from this time forth.”

To put it bluntly, his heart will be governed, his eyes will be blessed, and his digestion will be hindered, because from then on, as he says, “Love ruled my soul” (Amore segnoreggiò la mia anima), through the image of this Beatrice. But though the boy Dante takes some trouble to catch further glimpses of this adorable girl, it is not until exactly nine years later, and in the ninth hour of the day, that, dressed in the whitest of clothes (di colore bianchissimo), walking through the streets of Florence with two somewhat older ladies, Beatrice speaks directly to Dante, offering a courteous greeting. Greatly moved, he returns home, sleeps,

1 Dante’s description of Beatrice’s clothing, La Vita Nuova, chap. 2, “di nobilissimo colore, umile e onesto, sanguigno,” is rendered differently by various translators. Rossetti has “a most noble color, subdued and goodly crimson” (p. 31) and Reynolds writes “a very noble color, a decorous and delicate crimson” (p. 29). 2 Rossetti, Dante and His Circle, p. 31. I replace the Latin, which Rossetti leaves in the text, with the English translation from his footnotes. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-003

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and dreams that a mysterious “Lord of fearful aspect” (segnore di pauroso aspetto) appears in his chamber within a fire-colored cloud, carrying in his arms a sleeping lady, whom he recognizes as “the lady of the greeting” (la donna de la salute). Here Dante avoids saluto, the usual word for “greeting” and instead writes salute, which can also mean “safety,” “health,” and “salvation.” No translation can quite capture Dante’s provocative wordplay here, as Hollander points out.3 The mysterious lord holds Beatrice wrapped in a blood-colored cloth, the same hue she wore at their childhood meeting. Beneath it, she is naked (nuda). The fearful lord speaks, but his words are at first incomprehensible until at length Dante recognizes some Latin: “Ego dominus tuus” (I am your master). This identifies him as Amor, the god of Love. Amor’s use of Latin here also links him to the scene, nine years before, when Dante’s “spirits” cried out in that language. It also confirms his connection to something beyond the mundane, a heady mix of the sacred and profane, including Christian liturgy and pagan love poetry, and beyond that, from his personal unconscious to the collective unconscious, the archetypal images that persistently represent the hidden energies of the psyche.4 Amor is not only archetypal but also represents what Jung calls an autonomous complex, a quasi-independent personality in the unconscious;5 Anima, Animus, and Shadow among others sometimes manifest themselves this way,6 but this mysterious Amor, rather than any of these, is more like a Wise Old Man, but one growing toward the Magician, the latter being an archetypal figure who can personify the unconscious in males who have absorbed or accepted the qualities of the Anima.7 Being masculine, Amor partakes of a Logos figure, but his name indicates that he also partakes of Eros. At eighteen, Dante was on the young side to be coming to terms with his Anima, since

3 Hollander, Life, pp. 19–20. 4 C. G. Jung makes a distinction between the collective unconscious and the personal unconscious. The former involves inherited thought-patterns belonging to the species, while the latter draws on an individual’s memories. However, since the collective unconscious can use imagery and evoke feeling from personal memory, the boundary between collective and personal unconscious is permeable. In general, the unconscious reacts to conscious thought, presenting everything from flat contradiction to remote variations on alternate scenarios. In doing so, it serves a compensatory function, offering corrections for misjudgments or excesses of the conscious mind; see C. G. Jung, Two Essays, CW 7:109 (par. 183). 5 C. G. Jung, Two Essays, CW 7:227 (par. 374). 6 C. G. Jung, “Answer to Job,” CW 11:362 (par. 557); also AION, CW 9.2:10 (par. 19); and Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14:106 (par. 128). 7 About the Magician, represented by such figures as Mercurius from alchemical writings and Merlin from the tales of King Arthur, see Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, The Grail Legend, p. 368; also, Jung and Jaffé, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 228.

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Jung thought males did well without this until their mid-thirties. He admitted, however, that some, including artists, might need to do it earlier.8 Amor holds a flaming object in his hand which he tells Dante is his own heart, saying, “Vide cor tuum” (Behold your heart). Then the god wakes the sleeping lady and somehow urges (sforzava) and induces her (le facea) to eat this flaming heart, which she does doubtfully (dubitosamente). This accomplished, Amor changes from happy to sorrowful and ascends toward the sky, bearing the lady with him. Dante wakes from his dream and composes a sonnet about it, which he sends to several Florentine love-poets, requesting interpretation. So runs the prose account. The original sonnet, written nine years earlier, is less detailed. No Latin interrupts the vernacular poetry. No name is given for the lady; she is called “Madonna” (my lady), sufficient to identify her as the poet’s beloved when love-poets are addressed. Her greeting that day is unmentioned, as is her state of dress or undress. But the burning heart (core ardendo) appears (3.12), and the lady consumes it at the urging of Amor, who then departs weeping (piangendo). That he carries the lady off is not stated, nor is the direction he takes. With so many clues withheld, it is no great surprise that none of the responding poets interpret the dream correctly, but Dante continued correspondence with some, especially Guido Cavalcanti, who became “the first of my friends” (primo de li miei amici).9 As he finishes La Vita Nuova, probably in 1292, Dante declares that the dream’s meaning is now obvious. He does not explain it, however, but leaves his readers to glean something like this: Beatrice has become aware of Dante’s attentions, hence her greeting in the street. That she consumes Dante’s heart, at Amor’s urging, signifies that she recognizes Dante’s love for her, and in some sense accepts it, but with misgivings. In Jungian terms, Beatrice perhaps senses intuitively that Dante has projected his Anima upon her, and accepts some responsibility to act with awareness of it. However, in life their relationship will develop no further. She will die and ascend to Heaven, taking his heart with her. To survive, their connection must be translated to a spiritual dimension. The blood-colored or crimson cloth in which Amor holds Beatrice wrapped alludes to their childhood meeting, when she wore that color, but also suggests Dante’s current more carnal interest. However, seemingly with other concerns,

8 C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:71 (par. 146). 9 La Vita Nuova, 3.14. Various translators try to render this phrase more colloquially; for example, “first among my friends” (Rossetti, p. 34), “best friend” (Musa, PDP, 3.14), and “foremost of my friends” (Appelbaum, p. 7). Guido would influence Dante’s intellectual and poetic development significantly, so that modern scholars speak of his “Cavalcantian” period. See Barolini, ed., Dante’s Lyric Poetry, pp. 158–59; also Took, Dante, pp. 121–33.

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the adolescent Beatrice had worn pure white that day. The dreamer’s perception that she is naked beneath Amor’s drapery suggests she still has choices to make about what colors she will wear in the end. For medieval alchemists, white meant the union of all colors and could signify both purity and wholeness.10 With Beatrice, the superlatively white garments might represent innocence (implying lack of experience, or denial of carnality); on the other hand, they might suggest a mature balance. When Beatrice finally appears in the Earthly Paradise (Purgatorio 30) her garments are of red, white, and green, but the red garment is likened not to blood but to “living flame” (fiamma viva). This suggests passion transmuted to spiritual form. In the dream, Amor’s sudden grief signifies Beatrice’s death, which from one perspective breaks his power over Dante. Yet Amor’s power somehow also carries Beatrice heavenward, toward her sublime goal. Dante’s rendering the dream into poetry and sharing it with other poets formed a part of his own interpretive process. If the others, responding to his cryptic account, offered incomplete insights, not always sincerely given, still, friendships began and flourished through this interchange, a sometimes-playful analogy to the Jungian process of active imagination. The inquiry explored both the meaning and the emotion conveyed by the dream’s imagery. The surviving contemporary interpretations of Dante’s first dream-poem all address the most vivid image within it, the lady’s consumption of Dante’s burning heart. These readers did not know Jung, but they had some common ground. Over the centuries before Dante, many authorities had reported, analyzed, and discussed dreams. Calcidius, Augustine of Hippo, Gregory the Great, Honorius of Autun, and Thomas Aquinas, to name but a few, had divided and subdivided categories of visions.11 Ethical philosophers and theological thinkers naturally were especially concerned with dreams that apparently recommended actions, either by direct command, or by foretelling future events which dreamers would want to prevent or ensure. Some similarities between their concerns and those of Freud, and Jung, are obvious, but so are differences. Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio includes a late classical (fourth- to fifth-century) digest of the ancient tradition of dream-interpretation, subordinated to the practical task of interpreting Cicero’s “Scipio’s Dream,” actually a passage from his De Re Publica (On the Commonwealth), which survives

10 C. G. Jung, Mysterium Conjuctionis, CW 14:286 (par. 389). Emma Jung and Von Franz, Grail Legend, p. 184. 11 Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, chaps. 2–4.

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only in fragments.12 Macrobius was widely read and admired in the MedievalRenaissance period, including Dante’s portion of it. He lists five “main” kinds of dreams, two of them, he thought, useless for foretelling the future and three usable in different ways. But the two categories he considered useless are not without interest for moderns. For our purposes here, however, we can exclude what he calls the phantasm.13 His insomnium needs more attention. The insomnium, often translated “nightmare,” is, as Macrobius describes it, produced by the concerns preoccupying the dreamer’s waking hours. For example, a hungry man dreams either of searching for food or of finding and eating it, while “the lover . . . dreams of possessing his sweetheart or of losing her.”14 The insomnium is often unpleasant, either directly or because it raises vain hopes which are quickly dashed. Thus, Macrobius dismisses the insomnium as useless, without much discussion, presumably because of the tradition he was transmitting, based on generations of trial and error. In ancient and in modern times alike, people have dreamed happy or unhappy elaborations upon whatever preoccupies them during the day. Such dreams are no more helpful than waking thought in predicting the future. But waking thoughts are actually somewhat useful in anticipating some future events. Probably Macrobius understood that a dream’s commonplace content could suggest why the dream might not be prophetic, but could not altogether eliminate it from consideration as a prophetic dream. The three kinds of dream Macrobius thought valuable were the “oracular dream” (oraculum), the “prophetic vision” (visio), and the “enigmatic dream” (somnium).15 These categories are not mutually exclusive; in fact, as he explained himself, Scipio’s dream, featured in his commentary, had qualities of all three. First, in the oraculum, “a parent, or a pious or reverend man, or a priest or even a god clearly reveals what will or will not transpire, and what action to take or to avoid.” Scipio’s (natural) father and (adopted) grandfather are revealed to Scipio in their current heavenly dwelling, the Milky Way, to give him information, thus placing this dream within the oracular genre. Second, the prophetic visio foretells

12 As Stahl explains in the introduction to his translation of Macrobius, pp. 4–5 and 10, Cicero’s passage, “Scipio’s Dream,” survives largely because it was copied in manuscripts with Macrobius. 13 Macrobius describes the phantasm as an apparition manifesting itself to a person who is neither quite awake nor asleep; that is, as a hypnopompic or hypnogogic hallucination. These are sometimes associated with stress or physical illness. See Hufford, The Terror that Comes in the Night, pp. 115–79 (chap. 4). 14 Macrobius, Commentary, pp. 88–90 (bk 1, chap. 3). 15 Macrobius, Commentary, pp. 87–88 (bk 1, chap. 3); Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, pp. 21–23 (chap. 2).

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the future. Scipio’s dream shows him the heavenly dwelling where he, too, will go, thus foretelling the future. Third, the enigmatic somnium, “offer[s] information,” but only while “conceal[ing it] with strange shapes” and “veil[ing] with ambiguity [its] true meaning.” Some aspects of Scipio’s dream require “skillful interpretation”16 to be meaningful at all. Hence the commentary. Macrobius does not say so, but the dream also meets the stated definition of the insomnium. Scipio the Younger explains to his friend Laelius that the dream came to him after an exhilarating day on which an African king, Masinissa, entertained him splendidly and spoke warmly about his grandfather, the elder Scipio, Masinissa’s old friend. Scipio himself observed that people often dream about whatever they have just been thinking or doing.17 This knowledge does not lead him to dismiss the dream as meaningless. After all, what better occasion could arise for daemonic and ancestral spirits to offer their guidance than when the dreamers’ thoughts are already turned in the relevant direction? Of course, people with greater wisdom and responsibility will be more capable of receiving such guidance. Hence the tradition was, as Jung puts it, that important dreams, sometimes called “big dreams,” came to “big men” – that is, “medicine men, magicians, chiefs, etc.”18 The everyday preoccupation of a cultural or spiritual leader may not be trivial, after all. To be sure, in times of crisis, what Jung calls “the collective unconscious,” and which, as Kalsched points out, is “popularly known among primal peoples as the ‘spirit-world,’”19 might give guidance to anyone able to understand even a little. Macrobius implies a similar tradition when he argues that though Scipio the younger had no formal rank when he dreamed his dream, he was already a skilled warrior and thinker, and was pondering the problem of Carthage, which made him a suitable recipient for “a public and universal dream.” Such dreams, Macrobius says, are generally heeded only when they come to men of high rank or when “many plebeians” dream the same thing.20 An added complication, Macrobius acknowledges, is that even when spirits speak in oracular dreams, intending to convey information, they do so in ambiguous or misleading ways. The elder Scipio, for example, tells his namesake that his life will reach its climax when he is fifty-six years old, and that he may then do yet greater service to his nation if only he can escape his kinsmen’s attempts on his life. Macrobius imagines a reader objecting that the elder Scipio,

16 Macrobius, Commentary, pp. 87–90 (bk 1, chap. 3). 17 Cicero, “Scipio’s Dream,” in Macrobius, Commentary, pp. 69–71 (chap. 1). 18 C. G. Jung, Civilization in Transition, CW 10:152 (par. 324). 19 Kalsched, “Dismemberment and Rememberment,” p. 284. 20 Macrobius, Commentary, p. 91 (bk 1, chap. 3).

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in his starry abode, must surely foresee his grandson’s murder. Indeed, Macrobius answers, a careful look at the elder Scipio’s words, about his grandson’s “age” being “completed” at fifty-six, indicates that he does know what will happen. Announcing Scipio’s date of death was not his purpose, hence some obscurity. Still, sometimes even the information the dream-authority apparently means to convey is given obscurely, as in the oracle to Aeneas about where he and the Trojan fugitives should settle (Aeneid 3.94).21 In general, Macrobius adds, discerning interpreters can perceive more, “unless divinely opposed,” by which he means that the Graeco-Roman gods, in their contentions with each other, sometimes disrupt mortals’ reception of each other’s oracles. In Christian symbolism, the obstructing divinities take the form of even more ruthlessly malignant demons. Both are versions of the Jungian collective unconscious. Macrobius’s treatment and later elaborations of the classical system informed Dante’s contemporaries as they interpreted his first dream-sonnet. One of them, Dante da Maiano, declares that Dante is sick and needs to have his urine examined by a physician (medico).22 Medical explanations, though of ancient origin, had become more popular in the twelfth century, because of medical texts translated from Greek and Arabic.23 Apparently da Maiano classified the dream as a useless insomnium produced by preoccupation with illness. The poets Guido Cavalcanti and Cino da Pistoia, who became Dante’s friends, sent in playfully serious answers about Dante’s amorous future, which, being love-poets, they did not think trivial. Guido proposes that Amor fed Dante’s heart to his lady to prevent her death, presumably because the heart provides vital nourishment, being the location of the soul.24 Cino da Pistoia suggested that Amor had caused his lady to understand Dante’s heart, thus granting his desire, but then he grew sad thinking of the pangs of love she would feel.25 Perhaps in mockery, Dante da Maiano also submitted his own dream-poem for interpretation, directing it not to lovers but to any wise man (saggio) who cared to take up the challenge. He dreamed, he says, that his lady gave him a garland, and he then found himself wearing a camicia (shirt or shift) of hers. He 21 Macrobius, Commentary, pp. 117–19, here 118 (bk 1, chap. 7). Macrobius notes that the “Delian oracle” said that Aeneas’s company should return to the land from which their ancestors came. But they had more than one ancestor. Since the oracle addressed them as “Dardanians,” however, they might have realized that Dardan’s original homeland, Italy, was meant. 22 PDP Rime 4. 23 Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, pp. 69–70 (chap. 4). 24 Albertus Magnus, interpreting Aristotle and Avicenna, put forward the idea that the soul was located in the heart; see Heather Webb, The Medieval Heart, p. 20; also Pietro Alighieri (1), DDP, on Inferno 1.19–21. 25 Guido Cavalcanti’s reply is PDP Rime 2. Cino da Pistoia’s is PDP Rime 3.

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and she begin to kiss eagerly, and the poet cuts short his account, because he had sworn not to tell anyone what happened next and besides, his deceased mother was suddenly present, no doubt making his oath more solemn.26 Dante Alighieri’s reply perhaps takes satirical revenge for da Maiano’s earlier discourtesy (if Dante’s dream-poem came first). The garland and camicia, Dante declares, represent the lady’s love, while the deceased mother represents her future fidelity. The answer tantalizes with ambiguity. Is the lady’s fidelity as certain as death, or already dead? Would da Maiano venture to ask for clarification? Another contemporary, Guido Orlandi, sent da Maiano a scathing reply, rebuking him for boasting of his amorous conquest using the thin pretext of a dream-poem.27 Like Dante Alighieri, Guido Orlandi gives the mother double significance. Since she is dead, the dreamer’s sight of her reveals corruption (corrozione) in his heart. Besides, she comes with parental authority to chastise him for recklessly blabbing about his love affair, which flouts the courtly lover’s obligation. Guido Orlandi’s interpretation hits the mark in Jungian terms, even if accidentally. Da Maiano’s behavior is inappropriately juvenile, and his Anima manifests herself in aged form to warn him of this.28 However, C. G. Jung preferred not to address images in a single dream, since each dream-image by itself can suggest many different interpretations. A series of related dreams, on the other hand, can produce repeated variations on a theme. Different contexts provide insight on repeated images and motifs which help to define each other better. “As a rule,” Jung writes, “a dream belongs in a series. Since there is a continuity of consciousness despite the fact that it is regularly interrupted by sleep, there is probably also a continuity of unconscious processes – perhaps even more than with the events of consciousness.”29 The several dreams in Dante’s La Vita Nuova do offer something like a series to help illuminate some of the key motifs and figures in them and in the later Divine Comedy. Who is Amor, who claims lordship over Dante when he is hardly nine years old, and brings the sleeping Beatrice to him in a dream when he is hardly eighteen? In chapter 25, Dante explains at some length that Amor is simply a personification, a figure of speech which poets use by license. This shows his uneasiness with the literary conventions he inherited. Dante’s Amor has powers beyond what

26 PDP Rime 39 (Dante da Maiano) and PDP Rime 40 (Dante Alighieri). These poems are discussed as part of a tenzone (contention) sequence between the two Dantes, in Barolini, ed., Dante’s Lyric Poetry, pp. 37–42. 27 Guido Orlandi, “Al motto diredan prima ragione,” in Valeriani and Lampredi, eds., Poeti del primo secolo, 2:274. Dante Gabriel Rossetti has a translation in Dante and His Circle, p. 180. 28 C. G. Jung to Dr. S., 2 March 1935, in Letters 1:189. 29 C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion, CW 11:33 (par. 53).

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we moderns would concede to emotions, including precognition, as when Amor foretells Beatrice’s approach in chapter 24. Of course, it is fair to say that we understand our emotions no better than he did, perhaps worse. Amor, however, is the name of a Roman deity, also known as Cupid (Desire), one about whom C. G. Jung has surprisingly little to say, although Amor absorbed, somewhat inexactly, the attributes of the Greek god Eros.30 Jung did choose Eros as the label for the characteristically female mode of consciousness, associated with “psychic relatedness.” This view of Eros Jung drew mostly from Socrates’s description of Eros as a daemon, a spirit between human and divine but related to both, in Plato’s Symposium.31 Before Socrates spoke, the others at the banquet had described Eros quite differently: as the oldest of the gods; as the youngest; and as a god with separate heavenly and earthly versions. They felt free to extemporize because their greatest poets left his portrait so blurry. Homer gave him no role and Hesiod no parents.32 But the Roman Amor or Cupid developed a distinctive personality and played memorable roles in the Latin classics, particularly Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Amores and Metamorphoses. Amor, son of Venus, was depicted as a small boy, emphasizing both his irresponsibility and his charm.33 In late classical times, he grew somewhat older and acquired a wife, Psyche (or Soul), whose story is best known from The Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius in the second century, though it has earlier roots.34 During Dante’s boyhood, a literary masterpiece in the French vernacular rose to fame in which Amor was an important character. (Amor, the Latin version of his name, will be used in this discussion, even when it appears in French or Italian translation.) This work, The Romance of the Rose (Le Roman de la Rose), was left unfinished by Guillaume de Lorris. The learned Jean de Meun brought it to a conclusion at great length, with many digressions, around 1277.35 Almost immediately it inspired an Italian adaptation, Il Fiore (The Flower), a poem with 232 stanzas in the form of sonnets, thought to have been written around 1285. Amor names this Italian adaptor as “Durante,” which is also Dante’s baptismal name, one bit 30 Plato, Symposium, 210E–212C. 31 Plato, Symposium, 201D–202E (Diotima passage). C. G. Jung, Two Essays, CW 7:28 (pars. 32–33). Here Jung remarks that while Eros has to do with man’s “animal nature,” still, Eros “thrives only when spirit and instinct are in right harmony.” 32 Plato, Symposium, 178B. 33 Perhaps the development of Amor/Eros was a Graeco-Roman phenomenon, however. Apollonius of Rhodes, a Greek poet of the third century BC, depicts Eros (Argonautica 3.6–298) as a playful young son of Aphrodite, much like the Roman Cupid. 34 Meleager mentions a love-story involving Psyche and Eros in the first century BC; see Friedlander, Roman Life and Manners, p. 99. 35 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose, p. xiii (Dunn’s introduction).

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of the evidence scholars have seized upon in attributing the adaptation to him.36 If Dante did this, he must have been occupied with it during roughly the same period when he wrote the poems and prose of La Vita Nuova.37 Il Fiore follows essentially the same plot as Le Roman, but is shorter and more pointed. The god of Love, in both works, appears not as a child but as a king, with vassals and a council of advisors. His most formidable enemy is Reason, a beautiful lady who offers herself to the protagonist as a worthier partner than the Rose or the Flower, and advises him to abandon Amor. The forces of Eros and Logos thus apparently put themselves forward with their weaker feet, so to speak, each wearing the gender opposite to its natural style in the Jungian system. However, these reversals have meaning and purpose. Amor, the son of Venus, must finally appeal to his mother for help before he gains his victory.38 Meanwhile, he seeks to extend his cultural influence beyond what he enjoyed in the past, and so must necessarily adopt some Logos strategies. Reason, on the other hand, clearly claims her indisputable authority. In Sonnet 39 of Il Fiore, she announces that she speaks for Christ and advocates love for the whole world, instead of solely for the Flower. In the Roman, Reason at one point calls herself “the daughter of God the Father.”39 Indeed, in the Christian system, Divine Logos is playing a long game and often chooses patient suasion rather than peremptory command. Reason urges but does not force obedience.

36 In Jean de Meun’s continuation of the Roman, Amor names William de Lorris as the original writer and Jean as the continuator; see Dunn edition, pp. 211–12, sec. 50. In the analogous passage within Fiore (Sonnet 82), Amor mentions Durante as the lover whom he is aiding (thus replacing both Guillaume and Jean). Also in Fiore, Sonnet 202, the narrator calls himself “Ser Durante,” “ser” being an honorific sometimes used for notaries, and not applied to Dante in surviving documents. In Barański and Boyde, The Fiore in Context, arguments for and against the attribution of the poem to Dante are given at length. 37 In Il Fiore’s third stanza, the narrator declares that he fell in love in January rather than May, suggesting the wintry season of Dante’s rime petrose (stony rhymes), that is, Rime 100–103. Barański, in “The Ethics of Literature,” p. 217–18, argues that Il Fiore “could not have been written much after 1285,” because of the relationship between the French and the Tuscan Italian forms within it. On the other hand, the work cannot have been written earlier than 1283–1284, since Sonnet 92. 9–11 alludes to the death of Siger of Brabant, murdered about that time; see Hollander, DDP, on Paradiso 10.136. Il Fiore has a companion poem, Detto D’Amore, thought to be by the same author, which was originally in the same manuscript as Fiore, but was later separated; see Bemrose, New Life, pp. 10–11. 38 De Lorris and de Meun, Romance, Dunn ed., sections 75; 95–96; 98 (lines 15659–778; 20685–816; 21215–345). Il Fiore, Sonnets 105–116. 39 De Lorris and de Meun, Romance, Dunn ed., section 28, lines 5795–920 (p. 123).

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Meanwhile Amor, putting on Logos strategies, prepares calculated actions. He seeks followers with definite standards, some moral, and some material. The Roman’s opening section (omitted in Il Fiore) makes this clear, as the protagonist wanders in a springtime landscape, during the month of May, and finds an enclosing wall upon which are depicted figures of those who must be excluded, including Old Age, Poverty, and Sorrow (physical conditions), and Avarice, Covetize, and Envy (moral qualities). This proves to be the enclosed garden of Mirth, to which Idleness admits the protagonist. The god of Love is among the dancers. The realm of Amor is thus the realm of the physical world in its happy aspect, the world of life and growth and family relationships, even of political contention. Medieval Christian authorities, in theory, spoke slightingly of it, declaring it transitory at best and at worst a delusion. But actually (a prominent theme both in the Roman and in the Commedia) religious authorities exercised considerable power within it and partook of its pleasures. Thus, False Seeming and Constrained Abstinence are indispensable to Amor’s strategy.40 Hence, according to the Jungians, the medieval popular imagination (with its associated archetypal imagery) was trying to adapt its insights to these civilizational conditions, in ways that sometimes scandalized the authorities. This imagination produced the Arthurian tales, the Grail Legends, stories of Courtly Love, and perhaps also the pseudoscience of alchemy. Reason, both in Roman and in Fiore, refuses to validate the protagonist’s love for the Rose or Flower, and insists that to make her his beloved is his only acceptable course. In both works, he rejects her. This rejection is sheer satire, but satire with different nuances in each work. In the Roman, Reason never quite gets around to making her case, since her long speeches with digressions seem tangential to the question at hand, perhaps characterizing most encounters between reason and desire.41 In Il Fiore, Reason makes her point clearly, but Durante responds with equal clarity, leaving readers to wonder at Reason’s failure to make a better response. She has assured Durante that she does not object to love, per se, but only to the lover’s passionate enthrallment with the

40 De Lorris and de Meun, Romance, Dunn ed., sections 52–57 (lines 10887–12540). Fiore, Sonnets 80–127; 139–86. 41 For example, in the Roman, Reason once mentions how Jupiter emasculated his father Saturn in the ancient myth; instead of asking her how that relates to the question at hand, the lover rebukes her indelicacy of expression. She defends her choice of vocabulary, and he concedes her right to speak as she pleases, but she never clarifies the meaning of her reference. See Romance of the Rose, ed. Dunn, pp. 142–48 (sec. 30, lines 6901–7230). This exchange is omitted from Il Fiore.

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Flower, considering his lack of concern about having children (Sonnet 39).42 The lover argues in turn that no one would take the trouble to keep the world populated without the pleasure (diletto) that she is urging him to avoid (Sonnet 40). He also declares that he does not believe or understand her claims of superiority and that he will be completely loyal to the god of Love and the Flower, even if the price is death (Sonnets 42–46). Why does Reason object to the pleasure that may accompany the peopling of the world? There seems to be no obstacle to marriage. Had the protagonist already been married in either the Roman or the Fiore, Reason surely would not have failed to denounce the harms of adultery. The Rose or Flower is presumably a maiden, or else the allegorical deflowering of the bloom at the end would mean nothing. But Reason does not offer to withdraw her objections if the protagonist promises to care for any children he has with the Flower, nor does Durante offer. To make a bargain of it would perhaps move too far into the territory of denatured pseudo-Logos. Both works end with the lady pregnant and the protagonist happy about parenthood. Evidently, lack of commitment in human relationships was not the main problem, as Reason saw it. The problem instead was the power of passionate sexual pleasure over the weak intellect of fallen humanity. Albertus Magnus, teacher of Thomas Aquinas, speculated (as C. S. Lewis paraphrases him) that “the real trouble about fallen man is not the strength of his pleasures but the weakness of his reason: unfallen man could have enjoyed any degree of pleasure without losing sight, for a moment, of the First Good.”43 But since this was not true in the fallen world, then “according to the medieval view, passionate love itself was wicked, and did not cease to be wicked if the object of it were your wife.”44 Couples yielding to such passion would, as Augustine of Hippo put it, conceive children “against the parents’ will”; yet the children, once born, would “compel love.”45 Disproportionate love for offspring undeniably causes

42 These same themes are touched upon in De Lorris and de Meun, Romance, Dunn ed., esp. sections 89–91, lines 19355–906, where Nature, through her priest, Genius, sends a pardon to the god of Love, to Venus, and their company, provided they will have children. This passage is postmodern in its self-deconstructing ambiguity. 43 Lewis, Allegory, p. 15 (chap. 1). 44 C. S. Lewis, Allegory, p. 14 (chap. 1). 45 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Pilkington, p. 47 (bk 4, chap. 2). Augustine here explains that after being promiscuous as a youth, he established a monogamous relationship with one mistress, by whom he had a son, Adeodatus (bk 9, chap. 6). Around ten years later, he allowed his mother to arrange a betrothal with a girl two years below canonical age (that is, around ten). He sent his mistress away in anticipation of the marriage, but, unable to bear celibacy, he soon took another mistress (bk 6, chaps. 13–14). Eventually he chose celibacy.

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some worldly troubles too. Therefore, what would truly be best for the protagonist would be to free himself from compulsory love for transitory creatures of any kind. Neither protagonist consents. Eventually, in Western Civilization, there would be a realignment of archetypal imagery along with a different understanding (conscious and unconscious) of such relationships. The negative valuation of passion would be replaced by a “romantic” view in which, as C. S. Lewis puts it, “it is precisely passion which purifies” and brings souls to a higher level of being. He writes, “Real changes in human sentiment are very rare – there are perhaps three or four on record – but I believe they occur and this [the rise of Courtly, and later romantic, love] is one of them.”46 In Jungian terms (of which this transformation is a special case), a reconciliation of opposites is not reached by logical reflection alone, but by experience, and involves “suffering” as well as “negotiation” until the contending forces change form and aspects of them join in new configurations, with a different balance of harmony and contention.47 But in Dante’s time, this process was still inchoate; it would be nearer completion in the Elizabethan period in England, several hundred years later.48 Clearly, in La Vita Nuova Dante both draws on and counters themes in Roman de la Rose and Il Fiore. In La Vita Nuova, Amor claims lordship over the child Dante (chapter 2) quite as abruptly as the god of Love assaults Durante in Sonnet 1 of Il Fiore. However, Amor makes no appearance and no arrows are shot. Nevertheless, Dante’s three spirits, by crying out, emphasize an inner change. Amor rules Dante from then on, but his power is through Beatrice’s image (imagine), which has such “noble virtue” (nobilissima vertù)49 that Amor cannot rule “without the faithful counsel of Reason” (sanza lo fedele consiglio de la ragione).50 Thus, young Dante remains Reason’s pupil. But it is Beatrice’s qualities, not Amor’s, which maintain Dante’s connection to Reason. While Durante’s loyalty to the god of Love is confirmed when the god of Love locks his

46 C. S. Lewis, Allegory, p. 11. 47 C. G. Jung to P. W. Martin, 20 August 1937, in Letters 1:233–35, at 134: “Pairs of opposites have a natural tendency to meet on the middle line, but the middle line is never a compromise, thought out by the intellect . . .. It is rather a result of the conflict one has to suffer . . .. As a matter of fact, you have to heat up such conflicts until they rage in full swing so that the opposites slowly melt together.” 48 C. S. Lewis, Allegory, p. 298. 49 Literally “the noblest virtue [or power].” This phrase resists easy translation. Rossetti, Dante and His Circle, p. 31, wrote, “her image . . . had . . . so perfect a quality.” Musa, PDP, Vita Nuova 2.9, has “it [her image] was of such a pure quality”; Reynolds has “its [the image’s] influence was so noble,” p. 30. 50 Literal translation of both Rossetti and Musa (PDP).

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heart with a key (Sonnets 2–4), Amor feeds Dante’s heart to Beatrice, which confirms that Dante is subject to this Amor only where Beatrice is his object. Hollander states that “the two most popular current positions” regarding the Amor of La Vita Nuova are “either that [he] is the traditional god of love . . ., or that Amor is in fact the code name for the Holy Spirit and Dante is claiming that his celebration of Beatrice . . . is thus inspired.”51 But from the Jungian perspective, Amor need not be fixed in either of these molds, but may oscillate from one to the other. Amor changes during the narrative, and his changes correspond to growth in Dante’s self-awareness and character. Amor begins as a dominating lord (segnor), then grows younger and more sensitive, becoming a messenger and provider of intuitions to the sleeping and waking Dante (chapter 12, chapter 24). At last he fades to a personification of emotion who appears infrequently. Unlike his counterpart in the Roman de la Rose, Amor does not help Dante win Beatrice, or rather, such help as he gives succeeds only at the beginning, when Amor feeds Dante’s heart to Beatrice. Unlike the protagonists in the Roman and Il Fiore, Dante makes no attempt to approach Beatrice and win her favor. He merely places himself where he is likely to receive her spontaneous greetings. All the same, in chapter 4, his “natural spirit” (spirito natural) is “obstructed” (impedito), and he becomes “so weak and frail” (sì fraile e debole) that his friends worry, and though he and his companions take these things as undeniable symptoms of lovesickness, he does not complain, only acknowledging, when people ask, that he is in love. When they ask whom he loves, he chooses, by Amor’s command (volontade) and Reason’s counsel (consiglio), to smile and say nothing. No doubt Dante expected his audience to grasp his unstated reasons for assuming that Beatrice’s salutation is the most he can expect of her. Probably both were already betrothed or married at this time. Dante, as noted, was already bound by a marriage contract from 1278. Beatrice, at seventeen, was at or beyond the age by which maidens in this culture tended to marry, and prominent families like the Portinari tended to find opportune matches sooner than others.52 Her marriage to Simone de’ Bardi had probably happened already, perhaps recently. Indeed, a splendid marriage and new position as mistress of a household, removed from her family’s strict tutelage, might well be what gave her the confidence to greet Dante openly for the first time.

51 Hollander, Life, pp. 39–40. 52 Kirshner and Molho, “The Dowry Fund,” p. 432, report how maidens with larger dowries married earlier; for example, those with 691 florins of dowry were married at about seventeen years and five months, to a man under twenty-five years of age, while those with 648 florins were married at seventeen years and eleven months, to a man between twenty-six and twentynine.

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For “some years and months” (alquanti anni e mesi) Dante is free to delight in Beatrice’s greeting (chapter 5.4). Apart from that, his main duty as a courtly lover is to keep Beatrice’s identity secret. In chapter 5, a lucky accident makes this easier, though trouble later comes of it. He is gazing at Beatrice one day at church when a lady halfway between them thinks that Dante is staring at her, as do others. Word spreads that this lady is Dante’s mysterious beloved. Since no one, including the lady, seems bothered by this, Dante decides to encourage the misconception, using the lady deliberately as a screen (schermo). He even writes a few poems for her. But eventually, this useful lady must leave Florence. Dante writes a poem of mourning to expresses his real dismay (chapter 7). To see Beatrice without attracting suspicion, he needs another screen. In chapter 9, he rides, pondering this problem, with a large company (perhaps for military purposes) away from Florence and toward the lady’s new abode.53 Then, in a waking fantasy, he sees Amor come before him, dressed as a pilgrim, and looking more like an exiled ruler than a current one. This pilgrim Amor tells Dante that the lady in question will not soon return, and that therefore he is bringing back Dante’s heart from her, to be given to another lady whom he names. The motif of the lover’s heart in Amor’s custody seems a survival from the original Roman/Fiore symbolism, rather than from La Vita Nuova, but of course this predates the prose account and in devising a poem to inform Florence’s poetic community, he needed to use familiar symbolic language. After giving his instructions, Amor seems to fuse with Dante, which constitutes the poet’s admission that he has usurped the divinity’s authority. To usurp a deity’s power can be blasphemous, but, for Jungians, to identify with an archetype is “inflation,” an invitation to trouble. But such troubles, when weathered, can lead to growth, even if painful.54 Before the Screen Lady’s departure, Dante’s situation was already morally dangerous. Still, he had not deliberately chosen to be in love with one lady while feigning love for another. The situation had come about by accident. The lady evidently tolerated or even enjoyed his attentions. When, after her departure, Dante finds life hard without a screen, his choice to take action could be a positive thing. The device of the poem, however, has mixed success. People believe him but are not pleased. Fickleness in courtly lovers was not celebrated, though not always severely

53 Del Lungo, “Beatrice nella vita,” pp. 15–17, suggests that Florentine horsemen were mustered because of Pisan troubles, around 1284–1285, although ultimately war between the cities was averted. Perhaps the lady had been in Florence in connection with intercity diplomacy. 54 Edinger, Ego and Archetype, pp. 11–13.

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condemned.55 But beyond that, there was trouble about the new lady. Perhaps she was offended, or perhaps she responded too enthusiastically, provoking public scandal. As Dante remarks (chapter 10), “[T]oo many people began talking about it, beyond the limits of courtesy, so that many times it was bitterly troubling to me.”56 But the catastrophe was that Beatrice grew angry. One day when they met, she refused to greet him. Only then (chapter 11) does Dante describe the mystical blessing the greeting had imparted to him: I say that whenever she would appear from any place, because of [my] hope for her miraculous salutation, I had no enemies anymore, because such a flame of charity sprang up that it made me pardon anyone who had offended me; and toward whoever at that time had asked me about anything, my response would only have been “Love,” with [my] face clothed in humility. (Dico che quando ella apparia da parte alcuna, per la speranza de la mirabile salute nullo nemico mi rimanea, anzi mi giugnea una fiamma di caritade, la quale mi facea perdonare a chiunque m’avesse offeso; e chi allora m’avesse domandato di cosa alcuna, la mia risponsione sarebbe stata solamente “Amore,” con viso vestito d’umilitade.)

After suffering this rebuff from Beatrice, Dante goes to his room, no longer the arrogant youth who impersonated the deity, and calls out “Amor, help your faithful one!” Then he falls asleep “like a beaten child, weeping” (come un pargoletto battuto lagrimando) (chapter 12). Amor then appears once more in a dream, but so different from the “fearful lord” of chapter 3 that Dante does not at first recognize him. Compensating for Dante’s attempt to seize control, he has become more youthful (giovane) and humble, closer to Dante’s age. Compensating for Dante’s entrapment in his own viewpoint, Amor wears pure white clothes, the same color Beatrice wore at her first greeting. Only when he speaks, addressing Dante in Latin as “My son” (Fili mi), does Dante remember him as one who often spoke to him in sleep. Amor advises Dante to cease making use of counterfeits (simulacra) (12.1–3). He is weeping, and when Dante asks why, he answers in Latin, “I am like the center of the circle, to which all parts of the circumference have the same relationship; however, you are not thus” (Ego tanquam centrum circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentie partes; tu autem non sic) (12.4). Amor thus confirms his close alliance with the unknowable Self or

55 In Epistola 3, to which he appends Rime 111, Dante agrees with Cino da Pistoia that Love can indeed drive lovers to different love-objects. In Rime 114, Dante warns Cino that if he continually changes his love-object, he will be considered insincere. 56 My translation of “troppa gente ne ragionava oltre li termini de la cortesia; onde molte fiate mi pensava duramente.”

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god-within, and its wish to draw ego-consciousness into harmony with it. Dante’s conduct has not been harmonious with the love that Amor represents; he should not be shaken by anything Beatrice does or does not do.57 Dante, indeed, finds this speech obscure and asks for elucidation. Amor then abandons Latin and speaks in the vernacular. He explains that Beatrice has snubbed Dante because she heard unpleasant gossip about the new “screen” lady and did not approve of whatever she thought was happening. Since she has long guessed Dante’s feelings for her, Amor advises Dante to reveal himself to her, if to no one else, writing a poem that explains “the power I have over you through her” (la forza che io tegno sopra te per lei) and that he has been hers since his childhood (12.7). Dante writes and sends forth the poem, which evidently produced no noticeable change. Now Dante starts to become visibly distressed in Beatrice’s presence, and once, accompanying a friend to a wedding celebration where he unexpectedly sees her, he suffers a fainting fit or a spell of disorientation, obliging his friends to lead him away. Later, he writes a poem explaining how love drove out all his senses and possessed his eyes in order to gaze at Beatrice (chapter 14). In two poems, he writes in slightly different ways about how he feels compelled to go see her, only to lose his senses when he does (chapters 15–16). In these fits of near-unconsciousness, Dante resembles some amorous knights of chivalrous legend, especially Lancelot in the thirteenth-century prose romance, who after winning a castle and inviting Guinevere there, becomes so absorbed in watching her approach that he forgets to command that the gate be opened for her, until she gives up and leaves.58 If Dante’s plight seems ridiculous, it has its noble side. But in La Vita Nuova, Amor will not bring Venus to Dante’s aid, nor does he promise that Beatrice will ever greet him again. That Beatrice is a distinct individual, even though Dante’s Anima takes her form, and that as a lady with a soul of her own she has distinct claims to respect which are not always convenient for Dante, is a hard truth he must accept. A turning point comes (chapter 18) when Dante is approached by a group of ladies, not including Beatrice, though Dante perceives them as intermediaries. One of them, speaking for the rest, asks him to tell them, since it must be something very novel (novissimo), what point there is (che fine) in his love for his

57 Williams, Figure of Beatrice, p. 19 (chap. 1), discusses this. 58 Lancelot of the Lake, trans. Corley, p. 136. Also the knights Peredur and Parzival experience love-trances, when each catches sight of blood on the snow and is reminded of his lady’s crimson and white complexion. See Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, pp. 153–63 (bk 6, stanzas 283–302); and “Peredur, son of Efrawg,” in Mabinogion, pp. 199–202.

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chosen lady, since he cannot bear (sostenere) her presence. Dante declares that once, the greeting (saluto) from his lady had made him joyful, but now that she refuses it, Amor has placed his blessing (beatitudine) in something that cannot be taken from him, namely, words praising his lady. The ladies confer, and their spokeswoman comments that Dante’s latest poems about his own condition (la tua condizione) seemed to have some other purpose. Dante suddenly understands that she is right. He resolves, from then on, to write only in his lady’s praise. His first poem on this theme (chapter 19) is “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore” (Ladies that have intelligence in love), which Guittone d’Arezzo will later quote back to him in Purgatorio 24.51.59 “Donne ch’avete” has an interesting parallel among the lyrics of his that Dante did not add to his Vita Nuova. In Rime 68, “Lo doloroso amor che me conduce” (The painful love that leads me),60 the poet declares that he is wounded and dying because of Beatrice’s continued rejection.61 He imagines his soul leaving his body, going to God for judgment, hoping for God’s pardon but recognizing that it might be denied. But even if he is sent to Hell, he declares, the memory of his lady’s beauty will so enthrall his soul that he will hardly notice his punishment. Thus, one way or another, he will be given a reward (trebuta) in the next life for his sufferings in this one. Dante touches on some of the same themes in “Donne ch’avete.” First, he speaks of the sweetness of his love, then of how the angels wonder at his lady,

59 Translation by Rossetti, Dante and His Circle, p. 53, also quoted by Longfellow in Purgatorio 24.52. 60 Rime 68; Lansing’s translation, from Barolini, ed., Dante’s Lyric Poetry, p. 168. Since Dante himself never offered a collection of all his Rime (lyric poetry), there is much variation in the content and arrangement of the collections published by others; see Barolini’s review in her edition, pp. 9–17. The comprehensive edition of De Robertis (2002) significantly changes the order given in the Barbi edition of 1960, but Barbi’s numbers are still widely used for reference, as they are on Danteonline and PDP. 61 It is noteworthy that Dante here names Beatrice, in violation of Courtly rules of secrecy. However, the name by itself gives nothing away, since it was clearly popular. Many women named Beatrice are mentioned in Toynbee’s Dante Dictionary, including King Manfred’s first wife, Beatrice of Savoy (“Manfredi,” pp. 358–60) and Charles of Anjou’s first wife Beatrice, youngest daughter of the Count of Provence (“Beatrice [2],” p. 73); the daughter of the Angevin King Charles II (the Lame), whom he gave in marriage to Azzo d’Este (“Beatrice [3],” p. 73); a daughter of Charles Martel, the king of Hungary (“Carlo [3],” p. 127); a daughter of Farinata degli Uberti, who married Dante’s friend Guido Cavalcanti (“Cavalcanti, Guido,” pp. 141–43); the wife of Ugolino d’Azzo, daughter of Provenzano Salvani (“Ugolino d’Azzo,” p. 65); the widow of Nino Visconti, daughter of Obizzo d’Este, “Beatrice [4],” p. 73); and the wife of Guido Guinicelli whom Dante meets in Purgatorio 26.92 (“Guido Guinicelli,” pp. 297–98). This is not an exhaustive list.

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and how they desire to bring her to join them in Heaven. But God will not grant their request at once and asks them to be patient: My beloved ones, now bear it peacefully That the one you hope for remains [down] there, as long as I please, Where someone waits, expecting to lose her, Who will say in Hell, “O ill-born ones, I have seen the hope of the blessed.” (Diletti miei, or sofferite in pace che vostra spene sia quanto me piace là ’v’è alcun che perder lei s’attende, e che dirà ne lo inferno: O mal nati, io vidi la speranza de’ beati.)62

Superficially, this might seem an early sketch for Dante’s Inferno: he will journey through Hell, boasting to the tormented souls about Beatrice’s beauty, before ascending to Heaven. But the Inferno we have is not like that. There only Virgil speaks Beatrice’s name. With Rime 68 (“Il doloroso”) before us, it is easier to see that in “Donne ch’avete” too, Dante imagines his own damnation, that he is imprisoned with the other souls in Hell, but different from them because Beatrice’s memory is with him. Perhaps this youth has not yet seriously tried to imagine what eternal damnation could be like. Teodolinda Barolini speaks of his “exuberant theological immaturity.”63 The poem was well received; at least, Dante reports that one friend began to regard him as an expert on love and asked him to write defining love’s nature, which he did in chapter 20. For chapter 21, he adds a poem praising Beatrice and describing how she “makes noble” (fa gentil) those whom she encounters, causing them to regret and presumably to amend their faults spontaneously. Through all this, Dante has learned that he is not dependent on Beatrice’s greeting. The experience of blessedness which he attributed to her actually came from his own love. This experience broadens his understanding and brings him closer to his inner god. But this happy period of enlightenment is cut short by the death of Beatrice’s father, an event which happened (although Dante does not give the date) on December 31, 1289.64 Deeply sympathetic, Dante watches Beatrice mourn, though convention does not permit him to offer condolences directly (chapter 22). Shortly

62 My translation. 63 Barolini, ed., Dante’s Lyric Poetry, p. 182. 64 Del Lungo, “Beatrice nella vita,” p. 5.

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after the funeral, he becomes ill himself (chapter 23), takes to his bed in his pain, and dreams, first, that he is dying, then that Beatrice is dead, and then that he is standing by her bier. Amor’s changing role is noteworthy. In the poem, written before the prose account, an unnamed pale hoarse man (omo . . . scolorito e fioco) announces Beatrice’s death (23.24–26). Then Amor confirms the news and brings Dante to see Beatrice on her bier. In the later prose account, a friend (amico) within the vision announces to Dante that Beatrice is dead, and then Dante believes it in his heart, where “there was such love” (ove era tanto amore). The prose account clarifies that Amor in the poem is indeed a literary device, a personification which dramatizes Dante’s feelings and intuitions, not an archetypal figure leaping into his dream from his unconscious as the imposing lord Amor did in chapter 2. There, Amor had almost been an autonomous complex, but now, he has largely been absorbed into Dante’s conscious personality. Love remains an emotion. When Dante recovers from this illness, a light-hearted episode follows when he, sitting by himself, feels his heart stir and Amor appears coming from the direction of Beatrice’s home, joyously claiming praise for what is about to happen. Beatrice then appears, preceded and accompanied by another lady, Giovanna, nicknamed “Primavera” (Spring), the beloved of Dante’s friend Guido Cavalcanti (or so Dante believes, until Guido tells him that his feelings have changed). For Dante, this episode is like a predestined event: Beatrice’s triumphant resurrection from her imagined death, an analogy for Christ preceded by John the Baptist. Both versions of her companion’s name serve his purpose: Primavera can be heard to mean prima verrà (she will come first),65 and Giovanna is the feminine of John (chapter 24). Amor claims that Beatrice should be called by his name, since she is in his image. This is a reverse of Dante’s earlier inflation, since Amor, while reclaiming some miraculous powers, associates the divine image with Beatrice rather than with Dante. When, in the next chapters, Beatrice actually dies, Dante declines to describe the event on three grounds: (1) it is not the theme of the current book (which apparently is his poetry), (2) it is beyond his power, and (3) it would necessarily involve praising himself (chapter 29). The last excuse suggests that before Beatrice’s death, he became reconciled with her; why else would he be in danger of praising himself?66 Their relationship is, in the end, an individual one with hidden dimensions. 65 Reynolds (p. 71), Musa (PDP 24.4), and Appelbaum (p. 60) all translate the phrase this way. 66 Charles Dinsmore, Life of Dante, p. 82, speculates: “What occurred at Beatrice’s death of which Dante could not write without self-praise? The most plausible answer seems to be that Beatrice . . . now in her last hours expressed interest in him and his future.”

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Dante writes several poems of mourning, first on his own initiative (chapters 30–31), then at the request of Beatrice’s brother (chapters 32–33). As he commemorates the anniversary of her death by drawing angels on tablets, he is so absorbed in the task that he fails at first to notice distinguished visitors who call on him (chapter 34). But then follows the episode of the compassionate lady (pietosa donna) looking kindly at him, tempting him for several poems and chapters to think of her as a new love, even with Amor’s backing in chapter 37. Finally, in chapter 39, there comes, “about the ninth hour,” as Rossetti renders the passage, “a strong visible phantasy” (una forte imaginazione) of Beatrice as the child she was at their first meeting, wearing the same “crimson raiment” (vestimenta sanguigne).67 This happens in daylight, about three o’clock in the afternoon, the same time as her first greeting, though Dante does not point it out. The crimson color, being associated with their first childhood meeting, avoids both tawdry associations with adult passion and the renunciation suggested in the “whitest” of garments which Beatrice wore when she first greeted him. Now Reason gains Dante’s loyalty once more, finally triumphing over Amor, but only because of Beatrice’s strength, a strength calling both on her unconscious childhood innocence and her mature beauty. Soon, at the request of two ladies who were Beatrice’s friends, he makes a copy of some of the poems he wrote for her, and on his own initiative composes another, “Oltre la sfera” (Beyond the sphere) (chapter 41). In chapter 42, he has a “marvelous vision” (una mirabile visione) which, as we have seen, made him resolve to write no more until he could write something truly great and unique about Beatrice. However, worldly cares and perhaps worldly pleasures will intervene, and when his masterpiece finally comes to him, it will be different from anything he could yet imagine.

67 Dante, Vita Nuova, chap. 39; Rossetti, Dante and His Circle, p. 90.

Chapter 3 The Anima and Divine Eros: Beatrice, Lady Philosophy, and Gemma Donati In the Commedia, Divine Eros guides Dante through Paradiso wearing Beatrice’s image. That Dante’s wife Gemma contributed some nuances to her personality is also likely.1 The Anima does tend to draw upon all the important women in a subject’s life, and though Beatrice’s status, first as an unobtainable lady, and then as a blessed soul in Paradise, gives her the strategic position that Dante needs in his crisis, he did live more intimately with Gemma, sharing with her the joys and burdens of being a parent. A small cohort of readers takes the pietosa donna (compassionate lady) of La Vita Nuova to be Gemma Donati;2 after all, she appears at about the right time, and tries to comfort Dante, which is just what Boccaccio said Dante’s family wanted his bride to do. When, in 1902, scholars discovered evidence of the 1278 marriage contract,3 it undercut Boccaccio’s authority, but does not quite destroy the theory. If Gemma were a child-bride in 1278 and reached nubile age around the time of Beatrice’s death, the hypothesis connecting her with the pietosa would make as much sense as it ever did, perhaps more. Along with natural interest in a famous poet’s life, a Jungian question of individuation arises here. In the end, it is not Boccaccio’s account but Dante’s own autobiographical La Vita Nuova which creates interest in this compassionate lady and makes readers want to associate her with some known person, perhaps Dante’s wife. This is a facet of Dante’s unique accomplishments as a love-poet and visionary who wrote somewhat autobiographically and influenced his culture’s understanding of love and God. His early writings were only a prelude to his account of his dream-journey, a masterpiece which combined the classical epic, which celebrated heroes and kings, with the Christian salvation narrative, in which an ordinary man’s soul is as important as a prince’s. But no protagonist is truly ordinary. Dante’s individual experiences become those of his readers as soon as they accept him as someone like themselves. Thus, to assume that Dante’s account of his growth as a lover and a poet could cover the years when

1 Sayers, “Dante and Milton,” p. 162, suggests this idea. 2 Toynbee, “Gemma Donati,” Dante Dictionary, p. 263, writes, “D. makes no direct reference to [Gemma] in his works, but some think she is identical with the ‘donna pietosa’ of the Vita Nuova (§§ 36–39) and Convivio.” See also Scartazzini, A Handbook to Dante, pp. 65–66. 3 About the document discovered in 1902, see Chabot, “Il Matrimonio,” p. 285. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-004

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he also became a husband and father without even hinting at the latter concerns is to attribute to him less rather than more insight on love than ordinary people have. This will hinder readers otherwise ready to relate to him. But indeed, the fragmentary evidence can easily be read to indicate that Dante had no wife until after he completed La Vita Nuova. It generally was read that way until 1902, when evidence of the 1278 contract was discovered. A Jungian reading of the events in light of this new evidence seems worthwhile. However differently Dante’s culture defined Courtly Love and marriage, both required a significant investment of Eros in the Jungian sense – that is, practical love, psychic energy directed toward relationships. In medieval society, marriage was understood as a kind of amicitia (friendship)4 which itself was “a subset of love.”5 Writing sensitively of courtly love, Dante necessarily revealed its interaction with other emotional connections. In La Vita Nuova, Dante makes Beatrice’s emotional attachments his concern, writing a poem about the death of a lady he once saw in her company (chapter 8), sympathizing deeply with her grief at her father’s death (chapter 22), and seeking to comfort a brother of hers who requests a poem of mourning after her own death (chapters 32–33). He reveals even more connections of his own: Guido Cavalcanti, for example, who became his “first friend” (chapter 3); an unnamed friend who brings him to see beautiful ladies at a wedding, meaning to do him a favor, though it causes him pain (chapter 14); and the lady Giovanna, nicknamed Primavera, a friend of Beatrice whom Dante mistakenly thought Guido still loved in 1290 (chapter 24). But perhaps most strikingly, in chapter 23 he reveals that the member of his own household who cared most about him, shortly before Beatrice’s death in the early months of 1290, was his young sister.6 Specifically, Dante relates that shortly after Beatrice’s father died (December 31, 1289), he himself fell ill, took to his bed, suffered nine days, and then fell into feverish dreams, imagining his own death approaching. The thought suddenly struck him that Beatrice, too, would die some day. He falls into more dreams and sees mournful disheveled (scapigliate) women who tell him, first that he is dying, and then that he is dead. The sun darkens, stars seem to weep, birds fall from the sky, and the earth quakes. When a friend tells him that his wonderful lady (mirabile donna) has died, he looks up to Heaven and sees angels

4 C. S. Lewis, Allegory, p. 16 (chap. 1), citing Aquinas, who draws on Aristotle. 5 Barolini, ed., Dante’s Lyric Poetry, p. 113 n45, citing Cicero’s De Amicitia. 6 Santagata, Dante, pp. 21, 29, judges that both of Dante’s known sisters were probably married and out of the house by 1290, and decides that Dante here transposes the memory of an earlier childhood illness.

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ascending with a small cloud, extremely white (una nebuletta bianchissima), evidently her soul. After the angels sing Hosanna and some half-audible words, Dante sees Beatrice’s body on her bier, with an expression suggesting that she is reaching “the source of peace” (lo principio de la pace) (23.8). Grieved and comforted simultaneously, he weeps – and not only in his dream-vision, but in physical reality, on his bed. At his bedside, watching him, there happens to be a young and compassionate (pietosa) lady, but not Gemma, since this lady is his nearest blood-kin (propinquissima sanguinitade congiunta) – that is, presumably a sister (chapter 23.12). To her, Dante’s weeping means that he is in terrible pain, so she weeps in sympathy. This attracts the attention of other women in the room, who approach and send away the weeping sister, who is evidently under their authority. But no one among them is clearly in charge and they discuss among themselves what to do. Presumably, unmentioned options include calling for a priest or physician if they think his condition serious, or simply leaving if they do not. Instead, they decide to comfort him (23.14), and their voices enter his dream just as he is about to say, “O Beatrice, may you be blessed!” (O Beatrice, benedetta sie tu!) Because they interrupt, he gets no farther than “O Beatrice!” and wakes, somewhat disoriented when he realizes that he is ingannato (deceived); that is, he is not standing by Beatrice’s bier. With the women present, he feels ashamed for having spoken her name, but he guesses that he spoke unintelligibly. At their gentle questioning, Dante recounts his dream, omitting only Beatrice’s name. All this is in his retrospective prose account; the original poem covers the same experience, but begins from the young sister’s point of view, making her, at first, the center of emotional concern. Had he been married, readers would expect his wife to be at his bedside. But if his wife were unavoidably elsewhere, readers would expect that she, as mistress of the house, would ultimately learn anything he said to any women attending him, and would expect some tactful reticence not only about the name of the deceased lady, but also about Dante’s having suffered such agony for her rival. As it stands, poem and prose are consistent with the situation described in La Vita Nuova, chapter 4, where he says that everyone knows he is in love with someone, but he keeps her name secret. This fits the hypothesis that in 1290, Dante had no wife; Gemma may have been a contracted child-bride, but they did not yet cohabit. If the pietosa who almost tempts Dante away from Beatrice’s memory was indeed Gemma Donati, Dante’s child-bride, by then nubile, Dante’s later claim that this person represented Philosophy becomes somewhat more coherent, though not in the most obvious way. When it comes to treating of philosophical issues, the heavenly Beatrice of Paradiso outdoes the still mortal Gemma Donati by any measure. From her first appearance in Purgatorio 30 to her final speech in Paradiso 30,

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Beatrice constantly expounds scientific and theological ideas. After all, she can see God’s judgments mirrored in the heavens (Paradiso 9.61). Any deficiencies in her earthly education have been rectified. Still, her overall role, until she leaves Dante for her throne in the Heavenly Rose, is that of a Courtly Beloved taking on important maternal responsibilities for a time. She is sometimes stern (as in Purgatorio 30. 79–81), sometimes tenderly protective (Paradiso 22.1–18), and sometimes concerned to inspire Dante’s best efforts (Paradiso 25.52–62). Lovers and mothers both do all these things. But the historical Beatrice had not behaved like a lover toward Dante. On the other hand, Dante had seen Gemma behave as a mother, and perhaps as a lover too. Might some nuances of the poem’s Beatrice come from Gemma? In all probability, the answer is yes, but as a practical matter, it is hard to get much further without more information. How old, for example, was Gemma when the marriage was solemnized? If she were newborn in 1278, she would have been fourteen years old by 1292 when Dante finished La Vita Nuova. Dante, at twentyseven, would thus have been thirteen years older than she, about the average age difference which Kirshner and Molho discovered between brides and grooms in their study of the Florentine dower fund which flourished in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.7 The canonical age of consummation for women was twelve years old, but families would not necessarily regard that as optimal. Dante’s commentators suggest that fourteen years seemed more reasonable but still on the young side.8 Chabot cites evidence that from 1350 to 1450 in Tuscany, the average age for women to marry was around fifteen.9 In the Kirshner and Molho study, the brides, on average, were just short of eighteen. Benvenuto da Imola, looking back on Cacciaguida’s twelfth-century as a moral golden age, said that in those days, Florentine women did not marry until they were twenty or twenty-five.10 But at some point, if Gemma were at a suitable age and Dante delayed, her family might grow impatient. Dante would have to fulfill the contract or seek release from it. There were legal ways, though perhaps

7 Kirshner and Molho, “The Dowry Fund,” p. 432, state that average age-difference between bridegroom and bride was thirteen years and eleven months. 8 Chabot, “Il Matrimonio,” p. 278, gives the canonical age and some legal ramifications. Francesco da Buti, DDP, on Paradiso 15.97–111, states that to have girls marry at the age of ten or less is “to mock and torment nature” (fare scempio e strazio de la natura) and that below the age of fourteen girls are not likely to conceive. 9 Chabot, “Il matrimonio,” p. 278. 10 Kirshner and Molho, “The Dowry Fund,” p. 413. Benvenuto da Imola, DDP, on Paradiso 15.103–5.

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complicated,11 and the dowry would have to be paid back.12 The Donati would probably have accepted it graciously if Dante had decided to renounce the world and become a monk, as heartbroken lovers sometimes did, including the famous Sir Lancelot, as Dante mentions in Convivio 4.28.8.13 But Gemma herself, whether fourteen or twenty, probably had some thoughts about what she wanted and whether she liked Dante. Her family’s house was in the same district as Dante’s; some say the properties were “back to back.”14 He might well have seen her at a window, as he does the pietosa in La Vita Nuova, where, in chapter 35, he describes her as “young and very beautiful” (giovane e bella molto). It strikes him that her manner makes her seem like a personification of compassion. He assumes that she knows about and sympathizes with his grief for Beatrice, not an irrational supposition where a close neighbor is concerned, particularly one who has him in mind as a bridegroom, but perhaps pathological if applied to all the ladies in Florence who could look out of windows. In any case, Dante begins to enjoy seeing the lady looking through the window and goes often to that house hoping to see her there, which, apparently, he does. But he never suggests that she is too flirtatious or forward. In chapter 38, in a poem addressed to her, he mentions that a “noble thought” (gentil pensiero) of his tells his soul that this is a new love. In the prose, however, he undercuts this message, stating that the thought’s connection with the lady was the only noble thing about it, since otherwise it was “most base” (vilissimo).15 If he is to blame for disloyalty to Beatrice, the pietosa is nevertheless innocent.

11 Santagata, Dante, pp. 42, 52–53, suggests that the marriage took place sometime between 1283 and 1285. He estimates, without saying how, that Gemma was about four years younger than Dante. 12 Davidsohn, Firenze ai tempi di Dante, pp. 637–43 (bk 8), states that while the relevant Florentine records for this period are lost, in nearby Fiesole ecclesiastical courts annulled many marriages because the wife complained that she had been below the canonical age when married. Moreover, in Florence, though not elsewhere, persons from important families sometimes got marriages annulled by claiming that godparenthood created kinship and thus forbidden relationships (p. 643). 13 Francesco da Buti, DDP, on Inferno 16.106–23, interprets the cord Dante hands to Virgil in Inferno 16.108 as his youthful intent to become a Franciscan, since such cords were part of the Franciscan habit. Relinquishing the cord meant abandoning hypocrisy, since his heart was not sincere. 14 Fraticelli, Vita, pp. 108–9 (chap. 5); Toynbee, Dante Alighieri, p. 67 n1. 15 Both Musa (PDP chap. 38.4) and Barbara Reynolds (p. 93) translate the phrase this way. Barolini, ed., Dante’s Lyric Poetry, p. 280 (no. 54), notes the discrepancy between the prose account and the earlier poetic version.

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Although Roman de la Rose and Il Fiore imply that families kept close watch over maidens, no one seems wary about the window-gazing of the pietosa. For this reason among others, one scholar suggests that she is “phantom-like,” maybe not human but an allegorical figure for Philosophy, just as Dante later claims.16 But if the pietosa were Dante’s contracted bride, her family might well consider the flirtation a positive development, not to be harshly checked. Despite Dante’s later claims, the poems originally addressed to the pietosa are not easily read as addresses to personified Philosophy. In the first of them (chapter 35), Dante tells the lady that, seeing her watching him with such compassion, his soul told him that she, too, must feel the kind of noble love that caused his grief. What would Philosophy’s action, watching Dante, signify? In the second poem, “Color of love” (“Color d’amore”), Dante describes how the lady turns pale out of sympathy for him, forcing him to look away so as not to weep in her presence (chapter 36). After centuries of watching over humanity, why would Lady Philosophy be turning pale just now? In chapter 37, Dante’s heart reproaches his eyes for disloyalty to the dead Beatrice, since they admire the pietosa. If Lady Philosophy’s visible form were Dante’s own invention, his heart should reproach his mind for designing such a seductive fantasy. In the last poem on this subject, in chapter 38, Dante’s heart pleads the new lady’s cause to his soul, which still supports Beatrice. In the prose account, Dante identifies his heart, allied with Amor, as l’appetito (Appetite) and his soul, allied with Beatrice, as ragione (Reason). Noticing that his heart (along with Amor) has apparently switched sides between one chapter and the next, Dante explains there is no real contradiction, because, although he was drawn to the pietosa, his greatest desire was still to remain true to Beatrice (38.6–10). But surely Reason would be more likely than Appetite to side with Philosophy. What really happens here might be a Jungian conflict of opposites: Beatrice and Reason oppose Amor, Appetite, and the pietosa, from a kind of conservatism; the new love may be worthy, but somehow, it does not yet feel right. However, the balance of forces within the psyche will make its adjustments in time. Philosophy may emerge as a synthesis between Reason and Amor, Logos and Eros, suitable for practical human life. Dante admits to Beatrice in Purgatorio 30.121–29 that some episode of which he was ashamed followed her death. Perhaps a liaison with the Stony Lady (petrosa) succeeded his initial rejection of the pietosa. On the other hand, in Convivio 2.12.2, Dante says that after Beatrice’s death, he read Boethius’s On the Consolation of Philosophy, in which Philosophy comes to console the imprisoned

16 Carpenter, “The Episode of the Donna Pietosa,” p. 66.

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narrator. This, he said, had comforted him and inspired him to imagine Lady Philosophy consoling him as well, in the image of a compassionate lady. Perhaps Dante, finding himself both bereft of Beatrice and incapable of loyalty to her memory, discovered the inherent attractions of intellectual inquiry joined to an ethical life, along with respectable marriage to a lady of good family, the prospect of legitimate children, and concern for his city. This was far better than endless grief and domination by lawless passion. In Jungian terms, it involved deliberate choice of a “willed relationship” as Harding puts it, demanding commitment rather than simply a private love-relationship.17 Though Gemma Donati did not personify Philosophy, she might have been Philosophy’s human messenger, a winsome and appealing symbol of what a virtuous life could include. The claims of the old marriage contract also mattered, as did friendship with the Donati family. Sometime before or during 1294 – Dante supplies the dates in Convivio 2.9.12 and 2.12.7, in terms of revolutions of the planet Venus in her epicycle – he composed the canzone “Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete” (You that by understanding move the third heaven),18 which reworked the themes from La Vita Nuova’s chapter 38, except that new love has triumphed, instead of being gently renounced. In Convivio 2.1 Dante explains that this poem does mark the triumph of his second love, Lady Philosophy, and that he had only rejected her before because love takes time to grow. “Voi che ’ntendendo,” however, seems originally to have been written for a flesh-and-blood woman with whom Dante became angry, since he tried to retract its message in Rime 84, “Parole mie che per lo mondo siete” (Words of mine which have gone about the world).19 The entire poem is the poet’s address to the poem as messenger, a style usually reserved for the last verse or congedo.20 She (the poem) is to approach “that lady about whom I was mistaken” (quella donna in cui errai) in writing “Voi che ’ntendendo.” The lady’s precise offense is not stated, but after informing her that there will be no further verses coming her way, the messenger-poem is to depart, since “Love is not there” (non v’è Amore). If, however, the poem should find a “worthy woman” (donna di valore) elsewhere, she may remain with her. There must, then, at least have

17 Harding, The Way of all Women, p. 249 (chap. 7). 18 For detailed calculations, see Vernon, Readings on Paradiso, 1:258. 19 Rime 84, translated by Foster and Boyde. 20 The poem is often addressed as a messenger its last verse, the envoi or congedo, as in the “Montanina” canzone (Rime 116). Another striking example is Rime 103, one of the “stony” poems, where in the congedo, Dante urges his verse to drive an arrow through the stony lady’s heart. In La Vita Nuova, the poems in chapters 19 and 31 also end with a congedo, while the poem in chapter 12 is, like “Parole mie,” almost entirely a congedo.

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been a tiff with this model or messenger for Philosophy. Repentance and reconciliation might have come later. That the two could quarrel and then make up would be a hopeful sign for the future. If 1294 was the year of their marriage, it was made more splendid by the visit of the young Charles Martel, king of Hungary and heir to the kingdom of Naples in the March of that year.21 When they meet in the Third Heaven, Charles Martel greets Dante with the opening words of “Voi che ’ntendendo” (Paradiso 8.37), implying that he had heard it when they met on Earth. Beatrice listens, smiling, making it clear that the poem proclaiming the triumph of Dante’s second love is not offensive to her. The Third Heaven, or Heaven of Venus, might also be called the Heaven of Courtly Love. Souls who reveal themselves there include the hearty lady Cunizza da Romano, beloved of the poet Sordello (Paradiso 9.13–66), and the love-poet turned monk, then bishop, Folco of Marseilles (Paradiso 9.67–142). From there, Dante addresses Martel’s queen, Clemenza, whom he imagines as still living, implying that she was her husband’s beloved during life and assuring her that the wrongs done her family will be righted (Paradiso 9.1–12).22 If in 1294, newly married, Dante dreamed that Florence might become an earthly reflection of the Heaven of Venus, the dream soon faded. Charles Martel died before August 31 that very year.23 Meanwhile, after months of papal interregnum, the hermit-pope Celestine was elected, only to be pressured into resignation a few months later by the man who became Boniface VIII. The next year, 1295, a great upheaval in Florence, with Corso Donati behind it, expelled a leading statesman and reformer, Giano della Bella.24 As Giovanni Villani tells it, 21 Del Lungo, Dino Compagni e la sua Cronica, 2:503–4, cites a document from March, 1294, showing that Florence paid 116 lire of small florins (di fiorini piccolo) to defray the cost of six golden canopies (sex drapporum deauratorum) used in honorable entertainment during the recent visit of Charles II of Naples and his son Charles, king of Hungary (Charles Martel). 22 Scholars dispute the date of Clemenza’s death. Toynbee (“Clemenza,” Dante Dictionary, p. 167), places it in 1301. Robert Hollander, DDP, on Paradiso 9.1–6, notes that some think she died as early as 1295. Some argue that Charles Martel’s daughter, who married Louis X of France, is the lady whom Dante addresses, rather than her mother. Arguments favoring the wife include the reference to the king as tuo Carlo (your Charles), which does not fit a daughter as well. Benvenuto da Imola, DDP, on Paradiso 9.1–3, identifies the lady addressed as Carlo’s wife and glosses tuo Carlo with the paraphrase, “your handsome beloved husband” (vir tuus pulcer dilectus). 23 Toynbee, “Carlo(3), Charles Martel,” Dante Dictionary, pp. 125–26. 24 Giano della Bella helped pass the reforms of the “Secondo Popolo” (Second Republic) in February, 1293. These excluded the powerful “Magnate” families from elected office; that is, the aristocrats, roughly speaking – not only the proud old landed families but also new, ambitious, and mercantile ones. As Giovanni Villani, Chronicle, bk 8, chap. 1, explains, these “magnates” had made other citizens mistrust them because of their murderous quarrels with each other.

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Corso Donati bribed the Podestà (chief officer for justice and military action) to acquit a friend of his who had murdered an opponent in a brawl, and then to falsely condemn an ally of the murdered man for the crime. The Podestà was, as customary, the citizen of another city, chosen for a brief term to ensure impartiality, and perhaps too easily duped by local personalities.25 Infuriated by the blatant injustice, a mob assembled. Trying to calm them, Giano della Bella appealed to the Council of Priors and the “Gonfaloniere of Justice,” but lacking patience for legal niceties, the mob attacked the Podestà, then in his palace with Corso Donati. Corso escaped by climbing over the roofs of several buildings, “for then was it not so walled as it is now.”26 The Podestà also saved his life by flight, but chose to leave Florence without finishing his term. Corso Donati meanwhile accused Giano della Bella of fomenting the violence, and soon the latter was condemned by a “Council of Judges and Notaries.” Despite the offers of many ordinary citizens to fight on his behalf, Giano left the city, and was, predictably, condemned in absentia, as Dante would be later. He was never able to return.27 On January 23, 1296, aware that Florentines were considering Giano’s recall, Boniface wrote to the city threatening interdict if they did so. Apparently, he mistrusted democratic reformers more than ambitious aristocrats.28 After Giano’s expulsion, Florentine laws were changed so that Florentines could join trade guilds (the only way they could be eligible for elective office) without proving that they supported themselves from the trade. Dante accordingly joined the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries (Arte dei Medici e degli Speziali).29 From then on, he was eligible for office, and from time to time, he would be summoned by various government councils to give information and advice. His three-month term as one of the Council of Priors, from June 15

25 Compagni, Chronicle, bk 1, chap. 16, says that the Podestà himself was honorable but was misled by a certain “doctor of law,” who recorded the facts incorrectly. 26 Giovanni Villani, Chronicle, bk 8, chap. 8, Selfe/Wicksteed, pp. 309–310. Villani puts this in 1294, but he is using the Florentine calendar in which the New Year does not come until March 25. See also Hyett, Florence, p. 59, and Santagata, Dante, p. 94. 27 Giovanni Villani, Chronicle, bk 8, chap. 8, Selfe/Wicksteed, p. 312, reports that “he died in exile in France (for he had affairs to attend to there, and was a partner of the Pazzi); . . . and he was a great loss to our city.” 28 Villari, I primi due secoli, p. 419; also, Plumptre, ed., The Commedia 1:lxviii. 29 Fraticelli, Vita, p. 122, writes that Dante’s entrance into the guild is recorded for 1297, but he thinks this an error in the surviving copy, made around a century and a half later (1445–47). He believes that Dante entered the guild in 1295, as soon as he was thirty years old and eligible for public office, because other records show that he belonged to councils on which he could not have served without being a guild member. Santagata, Dante, pp. 77–79, 171, also reviews Dante’s connections to this guild.

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to August 15 in 1300, represented the height of his career, which would be interrupted by his exile. He knew that the situation was dangerous – for him, for his city, for Gemma, and for their children. Only Beatrice, safely in Heaven, offered any balance, or any possibility of sending help, but perhaps he thought he had forgotten her.

Chapter 4 Three Beasts or Four in the Dark Wood: Dante and the Shadow of His Civilization In the Commedia Dante’s first lines (Inferno 1.1–9) convey his sense of lostness, and also his retrospective belief that something good came of his adventure in the end:1 In the middle of the pathway of our life I found myself again in a dark forest, Since the right way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to say what it was like, That savage forest, harsh and overpowering, Of which the very thought renews my fear! So bitter it is that death seems little worse; But still, to tell about what good I found there, I’ll speak about the other things I saw. (Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura. ché la diritta via era smarrita. Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura esta selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte, Che nel pensier rinova la paura! Tant’ è amara, che poco è più morte; ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai, dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte.)

Vernon sees the “dark forest” as “the path of sin,”2 but Longfellow interprets it more broadly as “the dark forest of human life, with its passions, vices and perplexities of all kinds.”3 In Jungian terms, it represents alienation. Dante as narrator does not remember arriving in the dark forest, being too “full of sleep” (pien di sonno), at the time (Inferno 1.11), but soon, when he arrives at the foot of a hill, he notices that the sun is rising. After the anguished night he had spent in the forest, this cheers him. The Oelsner/Carlyle (Temple Classics) translation captures both the image and the emotional sense (19–21):

1 My translation. 2 Vernon, Readings on the Inferno, 1:3–4. 3 Longfellow, DDP, on Inferno 1.2. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-005

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Then the fear was somewhat calmed, which had continued in the lake of my heart the night that I passed so piteously. (Allor fu la paura un poco queta, che nel lago del cor m’era durata la notte, ch’i’ passai con tanta pieta.)

Though his heart is a lake full of fear, once he reaches the shore, he turns back for a last look at the violent water (all’ acqua perigliosa) which had nearly overcome him. Then he starts climbing the hill, but his thoughts remain at sea, since the phrase he applies to the landscape, piaggia diserta, would do equally well for “desert shore” and “desert slope.”4 The sea represents the unconscious, with Dante’s personal memories and aspirations swirling and nearly overwhelmed by the collective unconscious.5 The dark forest, once he reaches it, offers at least some solid ground for deliberate motion under the sun’s rays, though with difficulty and peril. The protagonist now notices that stars are in the same position they held at the world’s creation (1.37–43), meaning, as learned commentators tell us, that the sun is in the sign of Aries.6 But symbolically, the morning sun represents Christ and the power of Logos. The stars beginning their new cycle signify the chance for rebirth and redemption, encouraging him to climb. Still, ascent is difficult, and his feet move in a pattern described in appropriate symbolic detail by Vernon’s translation (Inferno 1.28–30): After that I had for a while rested my weary body, I resumed my way over the lonely steep, in such wise that the lower foot was always the firmly planted one. (Poi ch’èi posato un poco il corpo lasso, ripresi via per la piaggia diserta, sì che ’l piè fermo sempre era ’l più basso.)

Dante’s intent to attach some symbolic meaning here is widely understood, but his meaning is much disputed. Freccero, relying on Aquinas’s theory that motion begins on the right (dexter) side while the left (sinister) foot remains planted (firmior)

4 Singleton, DDP, on Inferno 1.29, explains that the passage deliberately evokes both seashore and hillside as part of its “Exodus pattern,” symbolically reenacting the escape of the Israelites from the Red Sea (Exodus 14). 5 C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12:48 (par. 57): “The sea is the symbol of the collective unconscious.” C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:18–19 (par. 40), indicates that water often represents the unconscious in general. 6 DDP on Inferno 1.37–43: Jacopo Alighieri, Jacopo della Lana, Pietro Alighieri (1 and 2), L’Ottimo Commento, and Guido da Pisa.

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to propel motion forward, ascertains that the firm lower foot is the left foot. Pietro Alighieri says that Dante is dragging a “halting” (fermo) or lame foot, which represents his attachment to worldly things. With the lagging foot planted, he steps upward with his other foot, which represents “righteous” (rectus) love – that is caritas. Then he draws up the lagging foot, which represents “crooked” (curvus) love – that is, greed (cupiditas).7 Thus, Dante’s climbing foot brings him higher, but the lower foot, representing disordered emotions, concupiscence,8 slows his progress. Hence, Freccero says, Dante “limps toward the summit, as a man wounded in the left leg.”9 In Jungian terms, Dante tries to escape from alienation by using his conscious mind, over which he has direct control, to climb upward. He attempts to draw his unconscious afterwards, and it follows, but lagging and troubled by contending issues which will soon manifest themselves visibly. Jung once explained that someone departing from “an unconscious condition” tends to be “instantly confronted with his shadow.”10 Indeed, just when Dante reaches the place where serious climbing starts, a beast, the fast-moving, spotted lonza, usually translated “leopard,” comes to meet him. Medieval-Renaissance taxonomy was less precise than the modern system, and early commentators envision this creature rather variously. Francesco da Buti states that lonza is the female form of pardus (panther), and not much larger than a hare.11 Perhaps more helpfully, Benvenuto da Imola supplies an anecdote where one such exotic cat was brought through Florence, causing excited children to run to see it, crying, “See the lonza!” (Vide lonciam!). This particular animal might have been a cheetah, which wealthy nobles or kings sometimes kept and used (at least partly tamed) for hunting.12 Dante may well have seen such animals, perhaps even when Charles Martel visited Florence in 1294, at the height of Dante’s social and worldly success. In any case, the commentators who focus on Dante’s description of the animal – swift, light, and dappled – have no trouble associating it with lust (lussuria), taking

7 Pietro Alighieri (1, 2, 3), DDP, on Inferno 1.30. Vernon, Readings on the Inferno, 1:12, paraphrases and explains Pietro. 8 Singleton, DDP, on Inferno 1.30. 9 Freccero, “Firm Foot,” p. 37. On pp. 44–46, Freccero connects the right foot with intellectus, and the left with affectus; thus, on seeing the sun, Dante has a “conversion” permitting intellectual progress, although disordered emotion holds him back. 10 C. G. Jung to Father Victor White, 24 November 1953, Letters 2:133–38, at 135. 11 Francesco da Buti, DDP, on Inferno 1.32–42: “poco maggiore che la lepre.” 12 Benvenuto da Imola, DDP, on Inferno 1.31–33. Holbrook, Dante and the Animal Kingdom, pp. 101–3 (chap. 7), translates Benvenuto’s anecdote, and states that the “leopard” used for hunting, as mentioned in Frederick II of Hohenstaufen’s Art of Falconry, p. 5 (bk 1, chap. 1), was probably a cheetah.

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some hints from literary passages where Venus, Cupid, and some of their favorites wear the skins of lynxes and panthers.13 Thus, as he climbs the hill, Dante is confronted by a spotted cat somewhat smaller than a lion, dangerous but attractive, and perhaps capable of being tamed. Though alarmed, he does not panic, and though he turns back once or twice, he keeps on instead, hoping, because it is spring and the sun is shining, not merely to evade the beast, but to overcome it, perhaps to tame it, or perhaps to slay it and wear its “gay pelt” (gaetta pella) (Inferno 1.36–43).14 The lonza represents whatever drags on Dante’s lagging foot – that is, some aspects of his personal Shadow. Though people generally feel repelled by their personal Shadows, the Shadow does not in all cases represent moral evil. At times, Jung suggests, individuals should change their ideas about what they can or cannot accept, rather than deny their Shadow sides. He writes, “[T]he shadow is merely somewhat inferior, primitive, unadapted, and awkward; not wholly bad. It even contains childish or primitive qualities which would in a way vitalize and embellish human existence, but – convention forbids.”15 This somewhat murky discussion can be clarified by Jung’s accounts of his own personal Shadows. In Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Jung describes a vivid waking dream where “the primitive shadow,” manifesting himself as “a small brown-skinned man, a savage,” first instigates, then acts as his accomplice in the murder of the Nordic hero Siegfried. Within the vision, Jung feels terrible remorse, though consciously, while awake, he considers the murder a necessary and positive act. Siegfried, though “great and beautiful,” rode “a chariot made of the bones of the dead,” and represented Nazism on the rise in Germany, seductive and destructive. The dream-murder signified Jung’s definitive rejection of the movement.16 Why the remorse, then, and why was it Jung’s Shadow that instigated the killing, rather than some more heroic messenger

13 Pietro Alighieri (3), DDP, on Inferno 1.31–35, mentions Aeneid 1.323–24. Benvenuto da Imola, DDP, on Inferno 1.31–33, mentions that passage and adds that Homer describes Paris, seducer of Helen, as wearing the skin of a panther. 14 Francesco da Buti, DDP, on Inferno 1.31–42, declares that Dante meant to kill the lonza for its skin and would have succeeded if the other beasts had not arrived. If female, the lonza could involve a mingling of Dante’s Anima and Shadow, which is not uncommon in males; see C. G. Jung, Integration, p. 73 (chap. 4). The early Jungians did not observe a similar alliance between Animus and Shadow, because while males might confuse the weakness in the Shadow with gentleness in the Anima, the powerful Animus figure did not seem to blend as easily with the female Shadow; see Emma Jung, “On the Nature of the Animus,” p. 23; Harding, The Way of all Women, pp. 53–54 (chap. 2). C. G. Jung, in AION, CW 9.2:10 (par. 19), states that the personal Shadow “is always of the same sex as the subject.” 15 C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion, CW 11:78 (par. 134). 16 Jung and Jaffé, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 179–81.

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of the Self ? Jung casts some light on this elsewhere, discussing the Nazis: “[Hitler] was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”17 Jung does not here explain why the Shadow, usually rejected by ego-consciousness, won adherents in this case. But if for “inferior” we read “conscious of inferiority, and therefore envious,” the point becomes clear. Pride (the desire to dominate) and envy (fear of the powers and virtues others have), can motivate groups with no positive affection for one another to unite for the destruction of a common object of fear and envy. Jung’s dream-imagery indicates that he experienced his own motives for killing Siegfried as envy and fear, based on inferiority, even if he could justify the act consciously. Jung labels the Shadow-figure in this dream as “primitive” because its qualities are not specific to any particular culture or kind of personality; everyone has them. However, the personal Shadow can develop into more complex though deficient and rejected versions of the subject’s own personality. For example, Jung kept in his waiting room a bust of Voltaire, and one of his correspondents mentioned that it wore a “cynical superior smile,” in contrast to the “benevolent, warmly human doctor” whom patients came to see. Could the bust, asked his correspondent, represent Jung’s Shadow? Responding, Jung admitted the aptness of this interpretation, and added, “I like to look at the mocking visage of the old cynic, who reminds me of the futility of my idealistic aspirations, the dubiousness of my morals . . .. That is why Monsieur Arouet de Voltaire still stands in the waiting room, lest my patients let themselves be deceived by the amiable doctor.”18 On balance, the accomplished and witty Voltaire must be admired, but C. G. Jung rejects his disdainful detachment from human suffering while, at the same time, seeing it as a real temptation for himself. Hence, he keeps the bust in view to remind him of how he means to progress in his individuation or selfrealization process. Because of this ambivalence, a personal Shadow can sometimes be friendly. Gawain (or Gauvain) is a “shadow brother” to Parzival on the quest of the Grail. He seeks the same goals, shares some quests, learns similar mysteries and develops some of the same virtues, but not as perfectly as the protagonist must.19

17 C. G. Jung, Civilization in Transition, CW 9:223 (par. 454). 18 G. G. Jung to Theodor Bovet, 9 November 1955, in Letters 2:277. 19 Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, Grail Legend, pp. 214, 217 (chap. 12); p. 243 (chap. 14).

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When C. G. Jung corresponded with Father Victor White, the two of them discussed the Shadow as something evil, but Jung does not consistently define evil as its main characteristic. As he states, “To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle.”20 In other words, the Shadow’s inferiority can only be judged in relation to the individual’s unique potential and circumstances. There is danger, however, that the subject may actually fall into the power of his own Shadow and be unconscious of it. Jung writes, “A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps.”21 In relation to the Shadow, Jung recognizes moral conflict and the need to reject immoral acts, but he also demands that humans discern between actual wrong and aspects of themselves which they would rather not perceive. This is necessary for any kind of progress. As an explanatory metaphor, Jung uses the image of Christ on the cross between two thieves: “Just as the serpent stands for the power that heals as well as corrupts, so one of the thieves is destined upwards, the other downwards, and so likewise the shadow is on one side regrettable and reprehensible weakness, on the other side healthy instinctively and the prerequisite for higher consciousness.”22 Here specifically Jung refers to Luke 23:39–43,23 where one “malefactor” apparently wants Christ to rescue the three of them from their crosses and then join his outlaw band. The other acknowledges Christ’s righteousness and his own guilt (and that of their companion), only asking for Christ to “remember” him when Christ achieves his “kingdom.” Christ ignores the first and assures the second that they will soon be together “in paradise” (KJV). Thus, some Shadows seek determinedly to draw their subjects into their own wicked ways, while others desire to be friends and make positive contributions, if only it could be managed. In sifting through their Shadows, people must discern which is which and act accordingly. Dante’s discernment of his Shadows, traveling through the Inferno, will be an important part of his individuation process.

20 C. G. Jung, Civilization in Transition, CW 10:463 (par. 872). 21 C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:123 (par. 222). 22 C. G. Jung, AION, CW 9.2:255 (par. 402). 23 While Christ’s crucifixion between two other condemned men is mentioned in all four Gospels, Luke’s version is the only one in which the two “thieves” have distinct attitudes and the only one in which Christ replies to either of them.

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Thus, the lonza, at the opening of the poem, represents some qualities of a primitive or personal Shadow, obstructing Dante, but not with implacable hostility – something that might be tamed or used positively. On meeting it, Dante continues climbing, partly evading, and partly pursuing it. But suddenly a lion arrives, fiercely hungry (con rabiosa fame) and with him a preternaturally wasted she-wolf (lupa), visibly full of insatiable greed. At this, Dante loses his courage and flees back toward the dark hollow which he had just escaped (Inferno 1.44–60). The lion and the she-wolf are clearly more dangerous than the lonza. Also, they are not merely personal but belong both to the collective unconscious and the human political world. A range of commentators see the lion as the sin of pride and also as “the French Royal House,”24 then allied to Pope Boniface. The she-wolf represents rapacity, a vice joining the deadly sins of avarice and envy, added to habits of lawless action. Her shrunken state (magrezza) shows that no matter how much she devours, she only grows hungrier, as Virgil later points out (Inferno 1.49–51, 97–99).25 She is the direct cause of Dante’s immediate crisis, but beyond that, she and the lion are Shadows of Dante’s culture and of humanity itself. Modern commentators now customarily connect the three beasts of Inferno 1 with the three main division of Hell, which Virgil reveals in Inferno 11.33–83. Combining what Virgil says and what successive cantos reveal, we find that categories of sins in Hell are divided as follows: Incontinence (Circles 2–5), Violence (Circles 6–7), and Fraud (Circles 8–9). Of these three levels, readers easily identify the lion with Violence (Circles 6–7). But there is some dispute about the respective placement of the she-wolf and the leopard/lonza.26 Some see the shewolf as representing incontinence; after all, she is hungry and Virgil later says that she mates with other animals (Inferno 1.100). On the other hand, she is the beast that throws Dante into a panic, which indicates that she is the worst of them. Also, she wields power beyond herself, since the lion seems to be her mate (hence, he receives little independent attention here). This goes beyond “incontinence.” In fact, among the three, her symbolic form is the one most purely associated with evil in the Christian culture, where the savior is a good shepherd and the people are his sheep. Even Graeco-Roman pastoral poetry, including Virgilian Eclogues, written in the voices of shepherds and shepherdesses,

24 Jacopo Alighieri, DDP, on Inferno 1.44–48. Longfellow, DDP, on Inferno 1.45. 25 Dante suggests a connection between envy and avarice in Purgatorio 15.47–57, as he leaves the terrace where envy is purged. Virgil there says that people tend to become envious when they focus on earthly things which diminish when divided among people. 26 Hollander, DDP, on Inferno 1.32–54, outlines the controversy.

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reinforces a hostile view of the wolf. A wolf disguised as a sheep or a shepherd represents treachery at its purest.27 But the she-wolf has a tradition all her own.28 In Latin, lupa (she-wolf) is an idiom for “prostitute”; the related word lupanar means “brothel.” Perhaps the image of the she-wolf conveyed the ambiguous status of the Roman prostitute, halfway between wild and domestic, skillful at appeasement when it suited her, but equally capable of other tactics, and ready to put herself (and perhaps her offspring) first, to the detriment of the Roman family. That Dante’s she-wolf mates with other animals is not evidence of “incontinence” but of Eros used deceptively for her own purposes, for she is a shadow-Eros, one who makes use of relationships to lure and direct wrongful actions and impulses. She is powerful in driving souls toward lower Hell (the walled City of Dis), but Medusa, a still more negative version of Eros, will be responsible for holding them within. The lion, being a creature which can, as Jung observes, symbolically represent both Christ and the devil,29 here represents distorted Logos. If the she-wolf represents the lowest division of Hell, for Fraud, the lonza must represent the least serious sins, the incontinent ones. This fits well enough. The creature moves fast, and besides the association with lust, which the early commentators easily saw, there are suggestions of gluttony, since a “loin of mutton” is also called a lonza.30 As Pietro Alighieri explains, “incontinent” sins, according to Aristotle, are motivated by appetite, while reason remains unimpaired. Dorothy Sayers calls them “impulsive” sins; however, it is clear from the souls we meet in these levels (Circles 2–5) that appetite’s victory is more than momentary.31 Many cantos later, Dante mentions that he once hoped to capture (prender) the lonza with “the painted pelt” (la pelle dipinta), making use of a certain cord he had with him. But at that point, he rolls up the cord and gives it to Virgil, who throws it down to the next level of Hell, where it alerts the monster Geryon of their passage further downward (Inferno 16.106–36). This cord is often interpreted as a strategy of moral self-discipline, by which, perhaps, impulses might have

27 For example, Matthew 7:15 where Christ warns of “false prophets” who though masquerading as sheep, are “inwardly . . . ravening wolves.” 28 Some benevolent she-wolves appear in folk-traditions, for example the one who suckles the abandoned twins, Romulus and Remus, later the founders of Rome, who were born to a Vestal Virgin and exposed at the decree of their cruel uncle. Virgil alludes to the story in Aeneid 1.274–76, 6.777–80, and 8.628–34. 29 Carl Gustav Jung, AION, and CW 9.2:72 (par. 127): “Christ has a number of symbols or ‘allegories’ in common with the devil. Of these I would mention the lion, snake (coluber, ‘viper’), bird . . . raven . . . eagle and fish.” 30 Rime 75, line 3; Foster and Boyde translation. 31 Pietro Alighieri (3), DDP, on Inferno 11.76–90. Dorothy Sayers, introduction to Inferno, p. 75.

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been tamed, suggesting the garb of a Franciscan friar.32 It might also perhaps have been penitential garb which Dante put on during his pilgrimage. Handing the cord to Virgil, Dante acknowledges that such strategies are insufficient, and such incontinent impulses cannot be handled by mere will but only by an increase in wisdom aided by will. Meanwhile, after his initial sight of the she-wolf, Dante flees headlong back toward the darkness. As Jung said, being confronted with Shadows can be overwhelmingly perilous. The subject needs to draw on the power of the god-within, or as Jung put it, addressing Victor White, Christ. “Nolens volens [willing or not],” Jung explains, the subject “‘imitates’ Christ and follows his example . . .. [Y]ou have got to cling to the Good, otherwise the devil devours you.”33 Thus, before the fleeing Dante is quite driven back into the dark valley, he sees a stranger approaching, one with an air of long-disused authority, for with visionary synesthesia, Dante perceives that he “looked hoarse” (parea fioco) from long silence (Inferno 1.63). He calls out his appeal, which Jean and Robert Hollander render effectively into modern idiom (Inferno 1.64–67): When I saw him in that vast desert, “Have mercy on me, whatever you are,” I cried, “whether shade or living man!” He answered: “Not a man, though once I was . . . . (Quando vidi costui nel gran diserto, “Miserere di me,” gridai a lui, “qual che tu sii, od ombra, od uomo certo.” Rispuosemi: “Non omo, omo già fui . . . .”)

When Virgil reveals that he is a shade, a disembodied soul, just as Dante imagined in his terror,34 Dante is still heartened to learn his identity, which he discloses with hints and clues: that he was from Lombardy and Mantua, born sub Julio (under Julius Caesar), lived in Rome under “the good Augustus” (’l buono Augusto), and sang of Aeneas, “that just son” (quel giusto figliuol) of Anchises who had fled from the destruction of Troy (Inferno 1.67–75). Delight momentarily overcoming his despair, Dante calls Virgil by name, acknowledges him as his poetic teacher, and

32 See Carroll, DDP, on Inferno 16.106–8. 33 C. G. Jung to Father Victor White, 24 November 1953, Letters 2:133–38, at 135. 34 Dante uses the word ombra – that is, “shadow” or “shade” – not only for souls in Hell but also for those in Purgatory and Paradise. In Purgatorio 25.88–108, it is explained that when people die, their souls are separated from their bodies and become “shades” until they receive new bodies on Judgment Day. Meanwhile, the various afterlife environments (Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise) provide them what they need for most purposes of perception and communication.

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once more asks his help against the she-wolf. Virgil then explains that “Envy” (Invidia) originally sent the she-wolf from Hell, that she “marries” (s’ammoglia) many other animals, and that she will prevail until the Veltro (Greyhound) drives her back to Hell (Inferno 1.100–111). As John Carroll says, “every interpreter of Dante tries to slip his own collar on to the famous Greyhound.”35 The animal Dante had in mind was apparently larger, heavier, and more pugnacious than today’s greyhound, and thus will be called “the Hound” from now on.36 Virgil provides riddling hints about this Hound’s expected coming (Inferno 1.103–6; 109–11), and Longfellow renders their ambiguities as effectively as anyone could hope: He shall not feed on either earth or pelf, But upon wisdom, and on love and virtue; ’Twixt Feltro and Feltro shall his nation be; Of . . . low Italy shall he be the saviour, . . . . Through every city shall he hunt her down, Until he shall have driven her back to Hell, There from whence envy first did let her loose. (Questi non ciberà terra né peltro, ma sapïenza, amore e virtute, e sua nazion sarà tra feltro e feltro. Di . . . umile Italia fia salute . . . . Questi la caccerà per ogne villa, fin che l’avrà rimessa ne lo ’nferno, là onde ’nvidia prima dipartilla.)

Clearly the Hound is some virtuous ruler, successful in war. Modern critics see these lines as a bit of flattery addressed to Dante’s patron, Can Grande della Scala, who ruled Verona from 1311 to 1329,37 and whom Dante praised through the words of his ancestor Cacciaguida in Paradiso 17.76–81. Yet Can Grande was not a favored identity for the Hound among early commentators, not even Dante’s sons, both of whom ultimately settled in Verona. Dante’s early readers all knew that the Hound, in order to drive the she-wolf out of Italy and into Hell, must be much greater than Can Grande, admirable though the latter was, even though clues in the verses

35 Carroll, DDP, on Inferno 100–111. 36 Holbrook, Dante and the Animal Kingdom, p. 118, illustration and n1. The veltro (veautres in Old French) “was a heavily built dog, probably between our great Danes and the greyhound . . . . They were strong enough to kill bears and wild boars.” 37 Toynbee, “Can Grande della Scala,” Dante Dictionary, pp. 115–16.

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could be made to fit him.38 The Hound must at least be a Holy Roman Emperor, if not the second coming of Christ.39 For most of the early commentators, the Hound represents an unknown hero who will restore justice to Christendom at an unknown time – but the sooner, the better. Pietro Alighieri linked the Hound to another enigmatic prophecy, this one made by Beatrice in Purgatorio 33.43, about the coming of un cinquecento diece e cinque (a five hundred-ten and five), a name which, Pietro points it, could be written in Roman letters as DXV, and would thus be an anagram for DUX, “leader.” Both it and the Hound prophecy, Pietro explains, refer to an imperator et dux (emperor and leader) who like a nuntius Dei (messenger of God) will take away the temporal goods and power of the avaricious clergy, thus restoring peace and virtue to the political world.40 As the Inferno begins, the Hound is the natural enemy of the she-wolf. Humanity’s most loyal friend opposes its most determined foe. In truth, the Hound need not embody a particular figure so much as the concept of good human government, represented in part and at times by various regimes, but just now not by anyone who can help Dante in his worldly troubles. In Jungian terms, however, the Hound, not currently present, is the missing fourth member of the Jungian quaternity of which the trio of beasts constitutes the other members. 38 “Hound” might seem an allusion to the cognomen Can Grande, which can mean “Big Dog.” “Feltro and Feltro” could fit Can Grande, whether nazione means “nation” or “birthplace,” provided the reference is to some location between two places with “feltro” in their names; there are a number of possibilities. See, for example, Longfellow, DDP, on Inferno 1.101. However, most early commentators take the double “feltro” as a reference to felt cloth and interpret it variously, often as an allusion to humble birth, since felt was, they thought, cheap cloth. Jacopo Alighieri, DDP, on Inferno 1.100–102, 105 proposed that “between felt and felt” meant the same as “between heaven and heaven” (tra cielo e cielo), signifying that at a time chosen by divine providence and heralded by signs in the heavens, the Hound would appear and drive away the she-wolf. Pietro Alighieri (1, 2, 3), DDP, on Inferno 1.101–5, leans toward the idea that “felt” indicates humble birth; perhaps (in his second commentary) illegitimate birth. Further possibilities are summarized by Martinez and Durling, in Durling’s Inferno, pp. 38–39 (on Inferno 1.101–5), and by Robert Hollander, DDP, on Inferno 1.101–5 and on Inferno 1.105. 39 Boccaccio, DDP, on Inferno 1.101–11, considers and rejects the idea that the Veltro is Christ, because, as he points out, even if the Second Coming was meant, Christ had already been born. Tozer, DDP, on Inferno 1.101, mentions Christ among a range of possibilities, including Can Grande and Henry of Luxembourg (Henry VII). Hollander, DDP, on Inferno 1.100–105, supports the “Can Grande” identification, but admits that the early commentaries did not. 40 Pietro Alighieri (1, 2, 3), DDP, on Inferno 1.101–5. Davis, “Dante’s Vision of History,” p. 38, points out that Pietro is following the writers Adso and Methodius, who predicted that a great emperor would come just before the Antichrist. They still desired his coming because they thought that the Antichrist’s reign would be “momentary in comparison with the much longer reign of the just emperor.”

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The four represent all sides of the situation, which is still a near-disaster, since the three beasts are bent on destruction, while the Hound is only foretold. Yet Virgil offers an immediate plan. Since the beasts make ascent impossible, Virgil proposes to lead Dante on a reasoned retreat through the menacing but ultimately logical and even mandala-like structure of Hell, a retreat which is an imitation of Christ. The descent will reveal the defeat of evil, and thus paradoxically the triumph of God. This will better prepare Dante to perceive the Hound – that is, the mode of Christ’s action in a world torn by evil. After Purgatory, Virgil says, Dante may find a worthier guide than he (Inferno 1.118–20). After Dante passes through Purgatory and reaches the Earthly Paradise, this quaternity will assemble again in Purgatorio 32. The lonza, representing Dante’s failings, has been disposed of, perhaps tamed (at least for now), by the long journey. Beatrice is present, representing the Anima and Divine Eros. Dante himself has matured enough to represent the Hound party – that is, one of the Hound’s friends and messengers – though Beatrice clarifies his individuated function as observer and recorder, appropriate for a poet. She instructs Dante to keep watch while a swift series of images conveys the creation of the world, the fall of man, and Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. More images show the interactions of the early Church with the Roman Empire, until the Church, a damaged chariot, is occupied by a Harlot (putana), a version of the she-wolf, now more consciously understood as the corrupt papacy. Her jealous mate or lover, a giant, is the transformed infernal lion, understood as the French king, Philip IV. When the Harlot makes eyes at Dante, thus showing that, for the right price, the Harlot would indeed bargain with the Hound party, her suspicious paramour beats her viciously and drags her off into the forest, a symbolic representation of political conflicts Dante will witness (Purgatorio 32.154–56).41 Beatrice tells Dante that he can look forward to a better home at the end of what is, after all, only a temporary assignment in a rough world (Purgatorio 32.100–102). As Longfellow renders her words: Short while shalt thou be here a forester, And thou shalt be with me for evermore A citizen of that Rome where Christ is Roman.

41 The giant’s hauling off the harlot represents the beginning of the Avignon papacy. The harlot’s glance at Dante might represent Pope Boniface’s recognition of Albert of Hapsburg on April 30, 1303, part of an attempt to prop up the Holy Roman Emperor against French power. See Gregorovius, City of Rome, 5.2:576. In that case, the giant’s attack on the Harlot alludes to the assault of Philip’s henchmen on Boniface in September of 1303. However, it was Clement V who moved the papacy to Avignon, and he never visited Rome. The Harlot does not stand simply for one pope.

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(Qui sarai tu poco tempo silvano; e sarai meco sanza fine cive di quella Roma onde Cristo è romano.)

Thus, after coming to himself in the dark forest, Dante sets out on a journey under Virgil’s guidance to understand and deal with the Shadow, both in himself and in his world. This is the first step toward new life, where hopes are adjusted for the better, toward seeing the world from a larger and more loving perspective, developing his individual capacities for the best within it.

Chapter 5 Neutrals, Acheron, Limbo, Infants, and Virtuous Pagans Though Dante immediately agrees to Virgil’s proposed journey through Hell and Purgatory (Inferno 1.112–23), he tries to back out in the next canto, suddenly remembering that such extraordinary undertakings are reserved for heroes like Aeneas or apostles like St. Paul.1 What, he asks, qualifies him? This is the paradox of the Big Dream. Though its significance transcends the individual dreamer, it will reach the human community through him – archetypal imagery filtered through his unique experience. Virgil, responding to Dante’s objection, tells him that cowardice (viltate) is what holds him back. To hearten him, he explains how he was sent to help Dante in the first place. Biancolli’s translation renders the gist (Inferno 2.52–54):2 While I was with those souls who wait in Limbo, A blessed lady summoned me, one so fair That I implored her to commission me. (Io era tra color che son sospesi, e donna mi chiamò beata e bella, tal che di comandare io la richiesi.)

Virgil tactfully withholds the fact that Beatrice was weeping (piangendo), as she later tells the saints and angels assembled in the Earthly Paradise (Purgatorio 30.141). He does mention that after acknowledging his courtesy (O anima cortese), she tells him that her unfortunate friend is lost and endangered on the deserted slope (diserta piaggia), perhaps even beyond help. Longfellow effectively captures the mixture of appeal and instruction in what she says (Inferno 2.67–74): Bestir thee now, and with thy speech ornate, And with what needful is for his release, Assist him so, that I may be consoled.

1 Dante could have known an apocryphal account of St. Paul’s journey to Hell which dates from the third century AD, see Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory, p. 35. For an English translation, see “St. Paul’s Apocalypse,” in Gardiner, ed., Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante, pp. 13–46. In canonical Scripture, Paul alludes only to a heavenly journey (2 Corinthians 12:2–5). 2 Thus the discussion of the key usage “suspended” (sospesi) in Inferno 2.52 is postponed for the next chapter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-006

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Beatrice am I, who do bid thee go; I come from there, where I would fain return; Love moved me, which compelleth me to speak. When I shall be in presence of my Lord, Full often will I praise thee unto him. (Or movi, e con la tua parola ornata, e con ciò, c’ha mestieri al suo campare, 1’aiuta sì, ch’i’ ne sia consolata. I’ son Beatrice, che ti faccio andare; vegno del loco, ove tornar disio; amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare. Quando sarò dinanzi al segnor mio, di te mi loderò sovente a lui.)

Beatrice has said that by using his ingenuity and powers to help Dante, Virgil may console her and gain her praise in Christ’s presence. Virgil assures her that he is eager to do her errand, but asks how she could bear to leave her blessed abode and descend to Limbo. She replies that Hell cannot harm her, and that two greater heavenly ladies prompted her action: the Virgin Mary (mentioned elliptically) and St. Lucia (2.92–114). In short, Beatrice, representing Dante’s Anima and thus the link between his conscious ego and his partly unconscious Self or godwithin, is herself linked more closely to the transcendent divine by these emissaries of Divine Eros. Virgil is the chosen Wise Old Man because his wisdom, though limited, is uncompromised by anything Pope Boniface has done. Though not Christian, he is friendly toward Beatrice and appreciates the difficulty she endures in coming to Limbo. Also, Virgil’s wisdom is a poet’s wisdom, suitable for guiding Dante, the aspiring poet, toward fulfillment of his individual destiny. Encouraged, Dante again resolves upon the journey, but finds another reason to pause the moment they start. Over the gate of Hell is an inscription, worded as if the gate itself were speaking and claiming authority from each person of the Trinity, referenced by the traditional attribute of each: Power for the Father, Wisdom for the Son, and Love for the Holy Spirit.3 It imparts a terrible command (Inferno 3.1–9):4

3 Benvenuto da Imola, DDP, on Inferno 3.4–6, explains that “the divine power” applies to the Father (la divina potestate, idest Pater); the “highest wisdom” means the Son (la somma sapientia, scilicet Filius) and “First Love” or “Primal love” is the Holy Spirit (e ’l primo amore, idest Spiritus Sanctus). Similar statements are made by Boccaccio on Inferno 3.4–6, Guido da Pisa on Inferno 3.5–6, and Francesco da Buti on Inferno 3.1–12. 4 My translation.

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Through me goes the way to the suffering city Through me goes the way to eternal sorrow, Through me goes the way among the lost people. Justice moved my sublime maker: Divine Power made me, The highest Wisdom and the first Love. Before me nothing was created except eternal things, And I endure eternally. Abandon all hope, you who enter. (Per me si va ne la città dolente, per me si va nell’ eterno dolore, per me si va tra la perduta gente. Giustitia mosse il mio alto fattore; Fecemi la divina podestate, La somma sapïenza e’l primo Amore. Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create, Se non eterne, e io eterno duro. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.)

On reading this, Dante declares the meaning duro (hard), implying, simultaneously, “severe,” “difficult,” and “repugnant.” But Virgil admonishes Dante that he must “abandon all doubt” (lasciare ogne sospetto), and lays an encouraging hand upon Dante’s (3.10–21). The gate of Hell ambiguously expresses two wills: the rebellious power imprisoned within, and the divine power which imprisons. However, the inscription directly acknowledges only the divine creator, while the Shadow-power hides behind or within it; Dante’s task (and Virgil’s) will be to discern the two and the conflict between them. For now, Virgil knows that his assigned task supersedes the writing on the gate, and that Dante must trust and hope. Later we learn that for all these ominous words, the gate is unbarred (sanza serrame) and has remained that way ever since Christ’s Harrowing of Hell (Inferno 8.126–27). Beyond the gate, Dante finds himself some distance from the river of death, the Acheron, and among a lamenting throng of human souls who did neither good nor evil all their lives. If they have not abandoned hope, they make no use of it either, since they run in pointless circles, stung by flies and wasps, forever chasing banners which never halt to make a stand. Mixed with the human company are the cattivi (wretched) angels who, at Satan’s rebellion, favored neither side but were “by themselves” or “stood aloof.”5 These neutrals were cast out along with the rebels in order to preserve Heaven’s perfection, but they are kept

5 Inferno 3.39. The phrase “per se fuoro,” is variously translated. Freccero, “Neutral Angels,” p. 112, has “were by themselves,” while Vernon, Readings on the Inferno, 1:99, has “they stood aloof.”

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out of Hell to prevent infernal arrogance from swelling further.6 Virgil directs Dante to not discuss them further, only to look briefly and pass on (guarda e passa). This place, often called the Vestibule,7 expresses a more conscious experience of the sea of chaos from which Dante emerged into the dark woods. There, no possibility of choice or action arose. Here we see the spirits who chose not to participate in life. Among them, Dante recognizes – that is, “saw and knew” (vidi e conobbi) – a personal Shadow, a rejected version of himself, one who because of viltà (vileness or cowardice) made “the great refusal” (il gran rifiuto) (Inferno 3.60). This was the former hermit Peter Murrone, whom cardinals had elected as Pope Celestine V, hoping that his pure character might reform the corrupt papacy.8 The hermit-pope’s resignation, only months after his election, cleared the way for the greater corruption of Pope Boniface VIII. Presumably, Dante never saw Celestine in life, but intuitively recognized him because of their inner kinship, the temptation to shun worthy action from cowardice.9 Leaving indecision behind, Dante starts toward the Acheron. Here he sees a great crowd of souls has gathered at the shore, and he asks Virgil why they are apparently so eager to cross (Inferno 3.71). Virgil tersely answers that he will learn this only when he reaches the shore. Ashamed and fearing that he has somehow annoyed his formidable guide, Dante walks silently on. Meanwhile, Charon’s ferry

6 Literally, Virgil says that Hell does not receive them (né . . . Inferno li riceve), to prevent the guilty (rei) from glorying over the neutrals (Inferno 3.40–42). But clearly the guilty would glory inappropriately if they could, so divine will evidently determines what Hell does not receive. 7 Vernon, Readings on the Inferno, 1:xxxii, calls this reception-area of Hell “the Vestibule,” perhaps from its partial analogue in the Aeneid. The usage is more distinctive in English than the Italian “antinferno,” and has caught on. 8 Amari (War of the Sicilian Vespers, 3:7–14) and Milman (History of Latin Christianity, 5:130–42) indicate that Celestine was the unhappy pawn of unprincipled men during the whole length of his brief pontificate. 9 Both Dante’s sons put forward Celestine’s identity. Jacopo Alighieri, DDP, on Inferno 3.58–60, declares that this pope resigned because of a cowardly heart (per viltà di cuore). Pietro Alighieri (1), DDP, on Inferno 3.31–69 identifies Celestine without qualification. In (2), on Inferno 3.29–69 and (3), on Inferno 3.21–69, Pietro acknowledges that for a pope to resign his office is not necessarily wrong. He then proposes, as a possible alternative identity, the Emperor Diocletian, since the latter may also have resigned his office. Pietro’s indecision here may be motivated by the fact that Celestine was canonized, secretly in 1313 and publicly in 1328; see Hollander on Inferno 3.58–60. Although it is not impossible that Dante saw the hermit-pope in life, it seems unlikely. Gardner, Dante and the Mystics, pp. 326–27, suggests that Dante’s unexplained recognition of Celestine is a satirical allusion to stories told by Tommaso da Sulmona, who says that as the expope fled in disguise from agents of Pope Boniface, his identity was miraculously revealed several times to people who had never seen him before. Celestine died May 19, 1296, a few months after Boniface captured him; see Milman, History of Latin Christianity, 5:149–50 (bk 11, chap. 7).

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lands and the ferryman calls the “wicked souls” (anime prave) to come aboard for their journey to “eternal darkness” (tenebre etterne). Seeing Dante, Charon orders him, as a living man, to get back (3.82–87). When Dante does not obey, he adds that this crossing is not for him, cryptically suggesting that he might go some other way, and that “a lighter vessel” (più lieve legno) must carry him (3.91–93). Interposing, Virgil counsels Charon not to trouble himself, since Dante’s journey is ordered “where that can be done which is willed” (dove si puote/ ciò che si vuole). Apparently conceding, Charon resumes his task. As Virgil and Dante watch, a great crowd of weary (lasse) and naked (nude) souls hurry aboard, like leaves falling in the autumn, all the while weeping and cursing God and everything in their own lives. Though Charon strikes some to hurry them, no compulsion is needed to get them aboard. Then, as the ferry starts out, more souls gather for the next load (3.100–120). As the ferry recedes, Virgil addresses Dante, calling him, for the first time, “my little son” (figliuol mio) and answering his earlier question. In doing so, he implicitly reassures Dante that he had never been annoyed and his delay was merely for pedagogical reasons, so that the whole picture would be before them while he explains. The souls they have just watched, he says, died under God’s wrath (ira di Dio) and are eager to board because divine justice spurs them, and their fear is turned (si volve) to desire (Inferno 3.122–26). In other words, their consciences drive them,10 or, in Jungian terms, their negative psychic orientation directs them. They have thus chosen the suffering of alienation and psychic dismemberment over the constructive suffering which Dante must accept, “the suffering necessary for individuation.”11 Now Virgil tells Dante that no “good soul” (anima buona) crosses with Charon, hence the latter’s objection to him. While Dante ponders this, the ground shakes, and the vapory wind flashes with a crimson light (una luce vermiglia). He falls like “a man seized by sleep” (come l’uom cui sonno piglia) in the canto’s final line, and revives in the next canto to the sound of the associated thunder (truono). But Charon and the Acheron are gone, along with the problem they represent. He finds himself overlooking a dark steep slope into Hell (Inferno 4.1–7). How did Dante cross the Acheron? Or did he cross? Is there really a River Acheron?

10 Vernon, Readings on the Inferno, 1:113 explains that for justice to transform fear to desire means for conscience to drive the damned souls. 11 Kalsched, “Wholeness and Anti-wholeness,” pp. 182–83.

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The Acheron, as archetypal imagery, has river-like qualities, but it need be like no other river.12 As a water-boundary, it represents a brief shift toward unconsciousness, but not a devouring, chaotic unconsciousness like the dreamocean in which Dante struggled before the first canto. It represents a touch of death – in a sense, a sacrifice – corresponding to Dante’s choice to act and take some consequences, which he confirmed when he turned away from the neutrals. This is the Acheron’s manner with those souls whom Virgil regards as good (buona), since Dante experiences it just after Virgil tells him that such souls do not ride with Charon. It confirms his regression to a childlike state, and that he has now put himself into the hands of a master and teacher who exercises a father’s authority, though in the waking world Dante is a father himself, as well as a mature man helping to guide his city’s fortunes. Dante never explains the manner of his crossing, which leaves early and modern commentators choosing between two main theories: that Charon conveys Dante over in his unconsciousness, or that that an angel, like the one who intervenes in Inferno 9.73–101, carries him.13 But from a Jungian perspective, the real reason must be that the dream itself carries Dante across. After all, this passage is within the first seven cantos, the ones Dante wrote shortly after his vision and before his exile. In his first attack upon the dream’s meaning, Dante would have followed the patterns closely, pondering what they meant. Later, active imagination would doubtless become bolder about filling in such blanks, and he would be answering questions from his eager and articulate audience. First, however, it was himself and the dream. The scene at Charon’s crossing faded and shifted because of influence and interference between Dante’s own, partly unconscious, vision of Hell, and the one in Virgil’s Aeneid, now very familiar to him. In Aeneid 6.388–416, Charon at first denies passage to Aeneas because he is alive, but the Sibyl then displays the golden bough which Aeneas had obtained from Persephone’s grove, signifying divine permission for the hero’s journey. Charon then cooperates. But in Dante’s Inferno there is no Persephone, no divine bride of Dis, with power in both the upper and lower realms, nor could there be. Beatrice, backed by divine

12 Similarly, Thomas Aquinas had to explain whether disembodied souls, being immaterial, could exist and move in specific locations, which Boethius and other ancient authorities denied. Aquinas answered that souls were “as if in a place” (quasi in locum). See Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory, p. 268. 13 Pietro Alighieri (3), DDP, on Inferno 3.70–136, suggests that Charon transported the unconscious Dante; Francesco da Buti, DDP, on 3.130–36, favors the angel. Benvenuto da Imola, DDP, on 3.90–93 proposes that the whole journey is mental. Of course, all are more concerned with exploring the meaning than with determining the mechanism.

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power, has arranged the journey, and as Virgil knows (in both the ancient and the medieval poem), the underworld must ultimately obey the heavens, even if reluctantly. But the nuances of that reluctance and that obedience differ. In the Aeneid, the reluctance is a misunderstanding: the upper and lower divinities are bound by kinship and loyalty, different though their subjects may be, and they will do each other favors and keep pledges. But Dante’s Dis is also the biblical Satan, whose pledges cannot be trusted. Obedience in Dante’s Hell is not as voluntary as in Virgil’s, perhaps less voluntary the further down one goes. Dante’s Charon also differs from Virgil’s in that the latter ferried all the dead, including those destined for the delightful Elysium, or for reincarnation. Therefore, for most passengers in the Aeneid, crossing the river was better than staying unsheltered on the far side. By contrast, Dante’s Charon ferries only the damned, who know that they are going to punishment. Their eagerness to cross is guilty madness. Should Dante share that? Evidently not, since unconsciousness takes him instead. But Dante is not the only witness. Virgil, if Charon’s ferry was indeed the conveyance, presumably put the sleeping Dante aboard, since Charon would not. (If an angel carried Dante across, it is inconceivable that Virgil would not have mentioned this to encourage Dante during their frightening standoff before the City of Dis.) But the Acheron is no ordinary river, and perhaps now it doubles with Limbo itself as the border or “hem” (limbus) of Hell. The Harrowing of Hell, after all, changed the character of Hell’s boundaries after Virgil’s death in 19 BC, when presumably he crossed by Charon’s ferry, until then the usual mode of crossing.14 But at the Harrowing, in AD 33 as Malacoda’s dating specifies (Inferno 21.112–14), Hell lost much of its population, and from then on, many of the more civilized souls would be diverted to Heaven or to Purgatory.15 Besides, the diabolic powers which once guarded Limbo and defied Christ have been withdrawn, and the outer gate is left unbarred. Perhaps the souls not driven by bad conscience to Charon’s ferry are absorbed unconsciously into the river. Perhaps, in contrast to what the theologians of the era said, the Limbo of Dante’s unconscious is not quite across the death/damnation boundary. In Inferno 4.24, Dante enters Limbo, which is a gloomy wood (selva), but a better place than the one where he first found himself in Inferno 1.1, not frightening, but sad, with sighs from “crowds . . . many and great/ of infants and of women and of men” (le turbe . . . molte e grandi,/ d’infanti e di femmine e di viri) 14 Vernon, Readings on the Inferno, 1:109, expresses skepticism that souls bound for Dante’s Limbo would cross with Charon, at least under the conditions shown in Inferno 4. 15 Souls bound for Purgatory board the angelic ferry at the mouth of the Tiber (Purgatorio 2.100–105).

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(4.29–30). These, as Virgil explains, are, like him, guilty only of original sin, which requires Christian baptism for its removal. The infants, before their deaths, lacked capacity to commit any sin for which they could be held responsible, and the adults chose virtue as they understood it. Though doubtless, like everyone, they fell short of their own standards at times, they presumably tried to defeat bad tendencies in themselves and develop their good ones. Virgil wishes Dante to know that neither he nor his companions are guilty of terrible crime (rio) (4.40). However, they live desiring (in disio) but without hope (sanza speme), separate from the divine presence (4.34–36). Moved, but wishing to connect Virgil’s information with what he learned in childhood, Dante asks whether anyone in Limbo has ever found salvation. Virgil responds with a brief description of Christ’s triumphant rescue of the Old Testament believers at the Harrowing of Hell (4.37–63). This encourages Dante. Perhaps in the end Virgil will learn hope from Dante, since it is a virtue in which, Beatrice will later say, he is well experienced (Paradiso 25.52–62). The many infants represent not only the traditional (by then) inhabitants of Limbo, but also Dante’s psychological state, regressed to childhood. For Jung, the abandoned child represents the need for new life and rebirth, when it is not yet clear what form it must take.16 The multitude of the infants also represent the extremity of Dante’s regression, his temporary loss of personal identity, since “plurality” of the child motif can mean “[a] personality . . . still in the stage of unconscious identification with the plurality of the group.”17 Here also there are not only infants, but also a great crowd of undistinguished adults. Perhaps Dante’s unconscious brought them all from the Aeneid 6.426–93, where souls whose lives were cut off incomplete – infants, those who died unmarried, unhappy lovers, and people executed because of false sentences – are housed in gloomy places, though not punished.18 In Dante’s Limbo, they perhaps represent a ragged overlap between the infant and pagan populations; infants who have grown posthumously, without finding constructive outlets for their thoughts, and pagans whose choice for virtue is sincere but confused.19 In Jungian terms, this is yet a higher elaboration of Dante’s transition, first through chaotic unconsciousness to danger, then through neutrality to choice, then from hesitation to determination.

16 C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:167–68 (pars. 285–86). 17 C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:165 (par. 279). 18 R. Deryck Williams, in his edition of the Aeneid (notes on 6.426–93), even calls this place “Limbo,” although it does not have that name in Virgil’s text. 19 Pietro Alighieri (2), DDP, on Inferno 4.30–35; (3) Inferno 4.25–36, takes them for catechumens, adults being instructed for baptism who died before the ceremony. Bottagisio, Il Limbo Dantesco, p. 62, notes that Aquinas specifies that people in this category might be saved through baptism “by desire.”

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But Virgil is already guiding Dante from this gloomy place. Leaving the forest, they see a shining light ahead which overcomes “a hemisphere of shadows” (un foco/ ch’emisperio di tenebre vincia) (4.68–69).20 There he is greeted by four great poets of ancient times: Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan (4.82–105). These now accept Dante into their group, and he enters the Noble Castle (nobile castello) which they inhabit, with seven gates and seven walls. Mandala-like in shape, the castle is also surrounded by a beautiful river (bel fiumicello), which they cross as if it were firm ground (terra dura) to the fresh green meadow within (prato di fresca verdura), where virtuous souls gather and divert themselves (4.106–11), presumably as they did in Virgil’s Elysium, with athletic games, dancing, music, and philosophical discussions (Aeneid 6.477–664), though Dante’s description emphasizes quiet and thoughtfulness. Dante’s conscious crossing of this river-moat complements his unconscious passage through the Acheronborder, and is a step in his individuation process. No longer a mere waif, he is now Virgil’s disciple, committed to becoming, like Virgil and his companions among the ancient poets, a bearer of wisdom to his own culture. The castle’s symmetrical structure is within Limbo but not aligned to the concentric downward funnel of the Inferno, showing that it belongs to another dynamic. In the castle, they find excellent company, including many famous people of ancient Greece and Rome, along with Moslem scholars of more recent times such as Avicenna and Averroes (Inferno 4.143–44), and one twelfth-century sultan of Egypt and Syria, Saladin (4.129).21 These show themselves to be “neither sorrowful nor joyous” (nè trista nè lieta) (Inferno 4.84). Their serenity neutralizes Limbo’s only torment: sorrow for the loss of heavenly bliss. As Scipio Africanus the Younger said, consciousness of having done well is its own best reward.22 Their varied achievements are sometimes in opposition to one another. Aeneas and Camilla (Inferno 4.122–24) had fought against each other in Virgil’s Aeneid. Julius Caesar represents the Imperial side of the Roman Civil War, while Marcus Tullius Cicero represents the Republican side.23 However, they seem to 20 Or else the light is bound by the shadows, depending on the translation. Grandgent, DDP, on Inferno 4.69, notes that the meaning of vincia is disputed, some deriving it from vincere, “to overcome,” others from vincire, “to bind.” If the latter, the light is bound or contained by the darkness, instead of overcoming it. 21 Grandgent, DDP, on Inferno 4.127. Saladin appears in two stories of Boccaccio’s Decameron, 1.3 and 10.9. 22 Macrobius, Commentary, p. 93 (chap. 4). 23 Cicero was reconciled to Julius Caesar after Pompey’s death and was not among the assassins. He was later among those murdered by the second triumvirate, which included the future Caesar Augustus; however, Mark Anthony reportedly was the triumvir who demanded Cicero’s death. See Plutarch’s Lives, p. 613 (“Cicero,” pp. 598–614).

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have found harmony with one another, with no ruler, human or demonic, to settle disputes. Although walls and the river set the castle apart from the rest of Limbo, there seem to be no struggles and no guards, and no one is ejected or repulsed. Do souls pass in and out at will, or are they, perhaps, unable to see or find the castle without guides? Dante’s focus, of course, is on his own journey, but concern about the dissonance between his images and what the authorities taught might have motivated some of his reticence. A look at Limbo and its changing image in his culture will make this clearer.

Chapter 6 Limbo and Change Dante’s mind and unconscious no doubt formed images of Limbo during childhood, before any distinctions between instruction and storytelling mattered. By the year of his birth, the name Limbo, from the Latin limbus, for “hem” or “border,” had only been applied to an “abode of souls” for less than half a century.1 The concept, of course, was much older. The early Christians conceived that, before Christ’s incarnation, all human souls were housed in an underworld governed by demons, because all were alienated from God due to original sin; however, the virtuous and the faithful according to the Old Covenant were exempt from great suffering. Christ, at his crucifixion, descended into Hell and released the Old Testament believers as well as other people who had acted rightly without specifically knowing of any covenant (virtuous pagans, in Dante’s terms). These ideas about salvation, rooted in Scripture, were continuously reaffirmed well into the fourth century AD, when Christianity, previously outlawed, became the official religion of the Roman Empire.2 However, as time stretched on, with the whole population theoretically Christians, fewer were in the first enthusiasm of their conversions, looking forward to a joyous meeting with their savior, while more and more, with years of indifference, sins and backsliding on their consciences, dreaded their final summons before a stern and discerning judge. This view of Final Judgment is vividly evoked in the famous thirteenth-century hymn, “Dies Irae,”3 which long remained part of the Latin funeral Mass. The first stanza makes it clear that both biblical and pagan prophecies had given warnings. Here King David, singer of the Psalms and ancestor of Christ, represents biblical prophets, while the Sibyl, whose prophecy Virgil proclaims in his Fourth Eclogue, represents the pagans: Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla, teste David cum Sibylla. (The day of wrath, that day, The world will dissolve in flame, Witness David with the Sibyl.)

1 Iliescu, “Will Virgil Be Saved?” p. 99. He draws his information from Dictionnaire de theologie catholique, which credits Guillaume d’Auvergne with the first relevant usage, in 1230. 2 Iliescu, “Will Virgil Be Saved?” pp. 94–98. 3 Henry Dwight Sedgewick, Italy in the Thirteenth Century, 2:310–2, prints the poem and his literal translation. Stanzas 1, 6, and 7 are given here. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-007

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The Final Judgment centers on revealing and punishing wrongs: Judex ergo cum sedebit, quidquid latet apparebit, nil inultum remanebit. (Therefore when the Judge shall sit, Whatever is hid shall appear, Nothing shall remain unpunished.)

The notion that even the righteous will be in suspense has clear scriptural basis,4 so a sinner’s terror might well be beyond expression: Quid sum miser tunc dicturus, quem patronum rogaturus, cum vix Justus sit securus? (What shall I, wretched man, then say, What protector call upon, When the righteous man shall scarce be safe?)

But as years stretched on without Final Judgment coming, it began to seem that for souls of the dead to wait so long without knowing whether they were damned or saved would be torture in itself. The problem could be solved by imagining that they slept, oblivious – an older view5 – but (perhaps influenced by dreams in which dead saints appeared and spoke), the Latin Church instead chose to regard the souls as wakeful and waiting somewhere. In fact, the status of Final Judgment became a matter of contention between East and West, with Albertus Magnus declaring it “an error of certain Greeks” to believe that salvation and damnation would not be decided until then. Pope John XXII (Clement V’s successor, who reigned from 1316 to 1334) espoused the older (or Greek) view. However, the Church councils of Lyons in 1274 and of Florence in 1439 rejected it.6 Thus, the matter was not everywhere and in all ways settled by Dante’s time. However, by the time “Dies Irae” was written, Latin Christianity had settled on the view that souls would learn their fate in preliminary judgments immediately after death. Long before Final Judgment, the dead would be sorted

4 1 Peter 4:18, “And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” (KJV). 5 Dorothy Sayers, ed., The Divine Comedy 2: Purgatory, p. 54 (Introduction). 6 Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory, p. 262, reports the words of Albertus Magnus (from his Commentary on the De Sententiae of Peter Lombard). Dyer, Limbo, pp. 58–59, discusses John XXII and the councils of Lyons and Florence. John XXII, a native of Cahors, famous for usury, receives an unfavorable allusion in Paradiso 27.58–59; see Toynbee, “Giovanni XXII,” Dante Dictionary, pp. 278–79.

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into categories of those eternally damned, those undergoing a finite (even if protracted) term in Purgatory, and those immediately received into Heaven. No one suffering torment could fear he was in Hell, while actually in Purgatory. This, in general, is the situation in Dante’s Commedia, though certain passages emphasize matters that will change on Judgment Day, preserving some of the old drama. Strictly interpreted, this reassurance offered to souls destined (in the end) for Heaven came somewhat at the expense of the unbaptized infants and virtuous pagans in Dante’s Limbo. The need for an infant Limbo was discovered during a theological controversy in Latin Christianity, in which Augustine of Hippo took a prominent part. To emphasize the significance of original sin, Augustine declared that infants would “go to eternal fire with the devil” unless baptized. The Pelagians, opposing him, made light of original sin and asserted that people in this world could be morally perfect, if they tried. Augustine prevailed, but so did the consensus that infants, though tainted by original sin, would suffer no punishment from divine justice for crimes they had no power to understand, let alone commit. Augustine conceded that such infants would receive only “the mildest” of punishment, so that, after all, they would be better off having been born, rather than not.7 Twelfth-century canon law specified that such infants would be punished only by “darkness” (in tenebris perpetuo) and by being unable to see God.8 Aquinas later added that they would have “a certain enjoyment of God by natural knowledge and love”; and that they would not mourn the loss of a supernatural vision beyond their capacity.9 Limbo, then, was understood as an abode for unsaved souls, but in popular imagination it had a protective function, preserving babies from adult and diabolical wickedness further down in Hell. This made it appealing to those who led hard lives. Thus, as Kalsched explains, psychologically speaking, when infant trauma causes dissociation of a developing personality, an innocent childpersonality may take refuge in a Limbo-like place, sheltered from unbearable experience, while a tougher, seemingly more knowledgeable personality takes control and makes decisions. Somehow an unconscious bargain has been struck allowing the main personality to give up some perceptions and experiences in submission to a tyrannical protector who, in return, wards off complete destruction. What Kalsched says of Limbo is to some degree true of all of Dante’s Hell. All the way down, Hell functions both as prison and protection. As C. S. Lewis puts 7 Dyer, Limbo, pp. 15; 187 n13. Iliescu, “Will Virgil be Saved?” p. 98. 8 Pietro Alighieri (3), DDP, on Inferno 4.25–36. This is also stated in the twelfth-century Elucidarium of Honorius of Autun; see Dyer, Limbo, pp. 5, 39. 9 Carroll, In Patria, p. 500 n3; see also Thomas Aquinas, Summa, suppl. app. 1, art. 2; p. 4020.

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it, in Hell (Limbo as well as the rest) eternal punishment is like a “tourniquet,” to prevent further degradation of the soul.10 Throughout the Inferno, souls are, at the decree of their own consciences, subjected to the sentence of Minos, and nothing worse; mostly (at least until the very bottom) they are permitted some actions which, to an extent, divert their minds and modulate their punishment. However, Dante’s journey did not begin from Limbo and does not seem rooted in infant trauma. His crisis overwhelmed him as an adult. We first find him, not in prison but nearly drowning in unconscious chaos. After finding himself in the dark forest and trying to climb the sunlit mountain, he is obstructed by personal and civilizational Shadows, in the form of three beasts. Then the personality preserved in Limbo comes to help him: Virgil. But Virgil and his fellow virtuous pagans have brought light to Limbo in the form of their own Elysian fields, among the more pleasant afterlives envisioned by the ancients. True, as Dorothy Sayers notes, it is “at its best . . . noble, reasonable and cold.”11 But it is better than anything nearby in Dante’s Inferno. Dante needs Virgil because his own contextual Logos strategies have been swept away in his personal crisis. Virgil and his wisdom emerged from Dante’s unconscious to supply their place. His unconscious noted a correlation between Virgil’s status and that of unbaptized infants. Virgil’s wisdom has roots in a culture older than Dante’s, but capable, perhaps, of helping him find his way forward. It was, after all, a Western culture, a forerunner to Christianity from some perspectives. As Jung saw it, good and evil aspects of all archetypes coexist in the primal versions of the collective unconscious, without an overwhelming sense of contradiction. In Eastern cultures, this toleration of ambiguity remains. But Western Civilization insisted on separating good and evil among the archetypes, a process well underway in Virgil’s Graeco-Roman culture, in which “the Olympians” had been “devalued” and then given “philosophical interpretation”; that is, pagan thinkers dared apply moral judgments to their gods and sometimes found them wanting, leading to allegorical interpretations of myths, which affirmed moral philosophy and made the gods more remote.12 This gave consciousness a greater scope, and more duties too. Christianity accelerated this polarization by ascribing all goodness to one God, and all evil to rebels – first, an angelic rebel, Satan, and then to human beings, somehow associated at least passively with Satan.13 Jung remained uncertain whether such polarization was ultimately sustainable, or whether it would

10 C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress, pp. 180–81. Elsewhere (“Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” p. 54), Lewis’s demonic narrator describes Limbo as a state of “more or less contented sub-humanity.” 11 Sayers, in commentary within her translation of Dante’s Hell, p. 95 (Canto 4). 12 C. G. Jung to Father Victor White, 10 April 1954, Letters 2:163–74, at 172. 13 C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:103 (par. 189).

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doom the world to self-destruction, but he saw that people could not simply shrug off the way their inner gods were aligned. Instead, they must struggle through thought and experience to achieve better alignment. Kalsched suggests that the child-soul which chooses to leave Limbo may need to acknowledge the good intentions of the ostensibly tyrannical personality which imprisons it.14 This partly applies to Dante’s Commedia: God is likely regarded as a cruel tyrant by all the souls below Limbo, even though only the blasphemers (Inferno 14.25–75) say so directly. To succeed in their journey, Dante and Virgil must recognize qualities of their own in the damned souls, while also perceiving divine justice. But continuing the polarizing Western tradition, Dante and Virgil must also distinguish between divine will and the defeated demonic rebellion. To believe and obey every infernal minister they meet would be to fail. But though this made sense for Dante in Jungian terms, it made less sense for the religious authorities in Dante’s culture. The trouble was less with Dante than with Virgil, and Virgil’s Limbo. Before Dante’s Commedia, virtuous pagans had not been imagined as in Limbo, at least not since the Harrowing of Hell. The idea caused offense. Shortly after Dante’s death, Dominican monks in Florence and Bologna denounced the Divine Comedy, largely because of Limbo, and in the next century, a Florentine archbishop, Antonino Pierozzo, also denounced this concept. However, by that time, Florentine Dominicans had changed their minds, and were “teaching [the Commedia] in their Studium.”15 Why the offense, and why did it fade? Early Christians, like Dante, assumed that Christ had rescued some virtuous pagans along with Old Testament believers at the Harrowing of Hell. After that, Christ was presumed to continue caring about pagans. However, concern for the virtuous pagans collided with concern for the importance of Church authorities in advancing Christianity. In the fourth century St. Jerome asserted both that Christ’s saving deeds were meant “to fulfill other plans of salvation” (alius quasdam ocultas dispensationes) – that is, for “virtuous infidels”16 – and also that “There is no salvation outside the church” (extra ecclesiam nulla salus).17 Within Christ’s famous Great Commission to make disciples of all nations, the notion that Christ and his teachings made no difference was hardly a key point.18 Aquinas attempted to resolve such matters by postulating that

14 Kalsched, “Trauma, Transformation,” esp. pp. 154–55. 15 Barański, “Early Reception,” pp. 528, 532. Giorgio Padoan, “Il Limbo Dantesco,” p. 379. 16 Iliescu, “Will Virgil Be Saved?” p. 97. 17 Iliescu, “Will Virgil Be Saved?” p. 97. 18 The Great Commission: Matthew 28:16–20. Carroll, DDP, on Purgatorio 3.34–39, mentions Aquinas’s opinion (Summa Pt 3, q1, art. 3; pp. 2693–94) that Christ would not have been incarnated if original sin had not made it necessary.

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when children of cultures which had never heard of Christ reached the age of reason (about seven years old),19 they would, by virtue of their human nature, understand their moral duty to dedicate themselves to their creator. If they took proper heed of their natural insight, they would be granted an individual revelation and might be saved. If not, they would be guilty of sin too serious to place them in any Limbo like Dante’s.20 Here Aquinas seems to conceive, as Jung does, of a hereditary archetypal structure in the human psyche, configured as conscience or godwithin. But where Aquinas perceives an uncomplicated connection between the inner god or Self and the transcendent God, Jung imagines an obscure or tenuous one, given the variety of religious understandings which have arisen among human beings. Jung avoided either confirming or denying “metaphysical” connections to any deities external to the individual psyche.21 Aquinas, thus, seems to disallow Dante’s Limbo for virtuous pagans; nevertheless, after some initial controversy, consensus grew that Dante’s concept was not outrageous enough to warrant condemnation; the work was admirable poetry despite some theological inexactness.22 Virgil’s statement (Inferno 4.32) that his companions in Limbo “did not sin” (non peccaro), can only be relatively true, in terms understood by Dante’s cultural authorities, a fact which Pietro Alighieri concedes before pointing out that God in his mercy might choose to spare such souls all physical suffering because of their virtuous lives, though not granting them salvation. For this he cites excellent authorities, Augustine and Gratian (canon law).23 Thus, tolerance prevailed for the Commedia. But cultures do change, if slowly, and within the next two centuries, the view developed that after Final Judgment, Limbo’s inhabitants (still imagined mostly as unbaptized infants) would be given a new Earthly Paradise as their habitation. Their inability to see God would not distress them at all. In subsequent centuries, some commentators suggested that Dante might have imagined this for the virtuous

19 Delany, “Age of Reason,” Catholic Encyclopedia. 20 Bottagisio, Il Limbo Dantesco, pp. 112–26. Iliescu, “Will Virgil Be Saved?” p. 100. Aquinas, Summa, Pt 2.1, q89, art. 6; pp. 1327–28. The Supplement to the Summa was “compiled probably” by Reginald of Piperno, making use of Thomas’s commentary on the Fourth Book of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, which Thomas produced when he was “under thirty years of age”; see Editor’s Note in the edition, p. 3425. See also Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory, p. 267. 21 C. G. Jung to Pastor Walter Bernet, 13 June 1955, in Letters 2:257–64, at 260. In his early years, Jung may have experimented with the idea of shaping psychoanalytic theory into a religious movement or meta-religion, which may, Kalsched suggests, have led to Sigmund Freud’s break with him; see Kalsched, “C. G. Jung’s Divided Self,” pp. 256–61. 22 Guido da Pisa, DDP, on Inferno 3.34–42. 23 Pietro Alighieri (2), DDP, on Inferno 4.67–78, and (3) on 4.37–42.

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pagans as well.24 In the twentieth century, Iliescu argued that Dante’s Limbo seems to be “a place of transition . . . a temporary dwelling place for some souls.”25 After all, what is recorded of Limbo shows it to be a changing place. Old Testament believers went there but were rescued. Why would not more recent inhabitants be released, say, on Judgment Day? In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, other views have been advanced, arguing that souls once thought destined for Limbo may be saved, after all.26 That Dante’s culture had by then (in some quarters) invested powerful energies on the principle of pre–Judgment Day damnation is shown in the evolving story of the Emperor Trajan, discussed both by Aquinas and Dante. Trajan, a pagan and persecutor of Christians, died in AD 114 and presumably went to Hell, but an old tradition held that the sainted Pope Gregory the Great (r. AD 590–604)27 intervened some three hundred years later and had his sentence reversed. Since by the thirteenth century Christian authorities had long since rejected such possibilities, Aquinas tried to bring Trajan’s story into line with current views when it came to his attention as part of an argument, put forward in the Sentences of Peter Lombard, that prayers can help damned souls. Unfortunately, the idea seemingly had support from a sermon by the seventh-century St. John of Damascus. As Aquinas’s imagined interlocutor put the matter:

24 This is the concept of Ambrose Politi [Ambrogio Catarino Politi], “the distinguished Dominican theologian of the Council [of Trent]”; see Dyer, Limbo, pp. 64–68. Politi’s views, given in his treatise “On the Future State of children deceased without the sacrament” (De statu futuro puerorum sine sacramento decedentium), were accepted by many including the Jesuit Francisco Suarez. However, a backlash against these ideas developed during the Reformation and CounterReformation. Some commentators suggest (DDP, on Inferno 2.52) that Dante’s virtuous pagans might join the unbaptized infants in the Earthly Paradise; these include Baldassare Lombardi, Luigi Portirelli, and Francesco Mazzoni. 25 Iliescu, “Will Virgil Be Saved?” pp. 104–5. 26 Dyer, Limbo, pp. 127–29, summarizes some ideas of the Jesuit Vincent Wilkin, who hypothesized that unbaptized infants would necessarily be saved on Judgment Day, since then the regeneration of the human race, made possible by Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice, would be completed. Infant souls, having done nothing to disqualify themselves, will receive this free gift. Also, on April 19, 2007, the Vatican’s International Theological Commission stated that “there are theological and liturgical reasons to hope that infants who die without baptism may be saved and brought into eternal happiness, even if there is not an explicit teaching on this question found in Revelation”; see “The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised,” par. 3. 27 Carroll, DDP, on Paradiso 20.94–117.

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Gregory, while praying for Trajan, heard a voice from heaven saying to him: “I have heard thy voice, and I pardon Trajan”: and of this fact the Damascene adds . . . “the whole East and West are witnesses.” Yet Trajan was in hell, since “he put many martyrs to a cruel death.” . . . Therefore the suffrages of the Church avail even for those who are in hell.28

Gregory had been moved to pray for Trajan when a story of his diligence and humility came to his attention. As the story is told allusively in Purgatorio 10.73–97, the emperor was riding to battle one day when a widow presented herself and demanded justice for her murdered son. Trajan tried to put her off, saying he would deal with it on his return. Instead of accepting this, she asked what would happen if he did not return. Admirably, Trajan refrained from rebuking her persistence or her tactless reminder of his possible death in battle. He recognized her concern as valid and postponed his battle to attend her case. In Dante’s version, Pope Gregory prayed for Trajan when he heard the story. Trajan was then restored to life, became a believer in Christ, was saved, and died. He appears in the Sphere of Jupiter among the just rulers (Paradiso 20.106–17). Dante’s account does not mention, though some commentators do, that in granting the Pope’s request, God also punished him for praying for the damned. Such prayers had not always been forbidden. Once so stern a man as Augustine of Hippo had thought that Christian prayers could perhaps move God to grant a more “tolerable damnation” to souls in Hell.29 But earlier accounts of Trajan’s salvation did include the motif. In Paul the Deacon’s version, Gregory, though granted what he asked, is told not to pray again for “an unbaptized dead person.”30 In the thirteenth-century Golden Legend, Gregory hears the voice of God telling him that Trajan is “spared . . . from the pain perpetual,” but later an angel offers him the choice between lifelong illness and two days in Purgatory as a punishment for making the request. Gregory chooses lifelong illness, thinking two days of Purgatory will be worse. Meanwhile, the author expresses doubt that Trajan was actually released from Hell, suggesting that perhaps his torments were simply suspended.31 Aquinas, too, was troubled at the idea of damnation being reversed and suggested that instead of being moved simply from Hell to Heaven, Trajan had

28 The sermon cited for John of Damascus, “Concerning those who sleep in faith” (De his qui in fide dormierunt), is not now considered an authentic work of this author; see Smith and Wace, eds., A Dictionary of Christian Biography, 3:409–22 (“Joannes Damascenus”), here 416. 29 Augustine of Hippo, The Enchiridion, chaps. 109–10. Commentators on DDP who report Pope Gregory being punished for his intervention include Jacopo della Lana on Purgatorio 10:73–78 and Francesco da Buti on Purgatorio 10.70–96. 30 James Root Hulbert, “The Sources of ‘St. Erkenwald,’” p. 486 n4. 31 Jacobus de Voragine, “The Life of S. Gregory the Pope,” pp. 60–69.

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been raised from the dead, which allowed him, once more a living man, to repent and believe. Thus, he retained Hell’s status as a holding place where no repentance could happen, even before Judgment Day. But evidently the idea of reversing damnation still troubled him, so he further suggested that Trajan had not been “finally” damned, since God had foreseen Pope Gregory’s prayer.32 Aquinas added that the issue was “a matter of great uncertainty,” and that “it is safer to say simply that suffrages profit not the damned, nor does the Church intend to pray for them.”33 But if Trajan could be damned only provisionally, there might be other merely provisional damnations, until Final Judgment. When Virgil recounts his meeting with Beatrice (Inferno 2.52), he states that he is among “those who are suspended” (color che son sospesi). Dante himself speaks of admirable souls “suspended in Limbo” (sospesi in Limbo) (Inferno 4.45). What does the expression signify? Some early commentators say that the inhabitants of Limbo are suspended between happiness and wretchedness, neither in glory nor suffering pain.34 But others, even among the earliest, perceived that “suspense” suggested something impermanent and unstable, and might mean that a soul stands in doubt (sta in dubbio) whether he will be saved or damned.35 In his first introduction, Virgil also mentions Beatrice’s offer to praise him before God. Naturally, as a poet, he desires praise, especially praise before the greatest power of the Universe. But Dante’s readers recognize that if Virgil can do anything worth Beatrice’s praising him in God’s presence, he can be saved, or already is saved. Iliescu takes this to mean that Beatrice will speak on Virgil’s behalf on Judgment Day.36 For Dante to openly assert that Limbo was not quite within Hell and that perhaps some inmates might be saved, on Judgment Day or even before, would put him conflict with religious authorities. Nevertheless, subtle points in the imagery – the unbarred gate, the unconscious crossing of the river, the noble castle, and the very fact that Beatrice came to Limbo – suggest a Limbo not as static as his culture regarded it, a place where incomplete growth and choices might be finished, as souls moved from gloom to human wisdom to union with the divine. Perhaps Dante still pondered these things while at work on the last cantos of his Paradiso.

32 33 34 35 36

Aquinas, Summa, suppl. q71, art. 5, obj. 4–5; p. 3792. Aquinas, Summa, suppl. q71, art. 5, obj. 5 and reply; p. 3794. Jacopo della Lana, DDP, on Inferno 2.52. L’Ottimo Commento, DDP, on Inferno 2.49–54. Iliescu, “Will Virgil Be Saved?” pp. 111–13.

Chapter 7 Shadows in Upper Hell: Francesca and Paolo, Ciacco, and Filippo Argenti After leaving Limbo, Dante and Virgil proceed to the Second Circle, where Minos, once an ancient king of Crete, now presides as judge (conoscitor), in the form of a part-human monster with a long tail, who snarls (ringhia). He had seemed a dignified judge in Virgil’s underworld, semi-divine son of Jupiter and Europa, but his beastly traits here reveal his alignment with Satan, performing the work of a condemning conscience,1 and limited by the structure of divine law. Damned souls, driven by the same inner compulsion that made them board Charon’s ferry, come before him and confess their sins. Minos, having judged, coils his tail around himself in as many loops as needed to indicate the malefactor’s assigned circle of Hell (Inferno 5.11). Later, in Inferno 11, Virgil tells more. There are nine circles in all. Limbo is not in Minos’s jurisdiction. Down to the walls of the City of Dis (Circles 2–5), souls are assigned for “incontinent” involvement with the seven deadly sins.2 Within the diabolic City and downward to the bottom (Circles 6–9), with more hardened sinners, in whom, as Dorothy Sayers puts it, “acts of sin produce their cumulative effects,” souls are sorted according to Aristotelian moral principles, and each is placed at “the lowest point of degradation to which it has unrepentantly willed to descend.”3 However, Dante’s journey, to gain insight into all this, is at best an irritant to infernal authorities, so Minos turns from his duty, trying to discourage Dante with a warning (aimed at Virgil) to be careful whom he trusts (di cui tu ti fide), and suggesting that it is easier to go in than out. Dante remains silent, letting his guide answer that the journey has been willed by one with congruent power (vuolsi così colà dove si puote/ ciò ch si vuole). Minos says no more (Inferno 5.19–24). The travelers proceed. Restless winds toss the lustful about, just as carnal passions tossed them during life. Some move in flocks like circling starlings and cranes (5.40–46), but Dante takes most notice of a couple who fly close together, like a pair of doves (colombe). At Virgil’s prompting, he appeals to them in the

1 Carroll, DDP, on Inferno 5.4–6. 2 In the time of Pope Gregory the Great, there was still debate about whether there were seven or eight deadly sins. By Dante’s time, the traditional seven had become established and reinforced by the regular practice of confession. See Moore, “Classification of Sins,” pp. 183 and 208a. 3 Dorothy Sayers, introduction to her translation of Purgatory, p. 15. Sayers is explaining the system of Dante’s Hell, but what she says applies most directly to infernal Circles 6 to 8. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-008

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name of their love to descend and speak with him (5.73–81). From their words and from intuition, Dante soon realizes that they are Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, lovers who were murdered together, when he himself was about twenty, by Francesca’s jealous husband Gianciotto, Paolo’s brother.4 Speaking for both while Paolo listens, weeping, Francesca acknowledges that (as Dante perceives) the joy of their love has not left her. At his request, she relates how she and Paolo first kissed while reading together from the story of Lancelot and Guinevere (5.105, 127–38).5 He mourns that such “sweet thoughts” (dolci pensier) led to their doom, then faints with pity (Inferno 5.113). His request for their story and his reaction reveals that these lovers are Shadow-figures for him, recalling the poetry of his youth when he imagined be might be sent to Hell and hardly mind it because of love.6 Yet this couple’s residual joy in Hell is an exception. Of the other lustful souls named there, only Helen of Troy and Paris were once a famous couple, but they, seemingly, are not together, probably separated by mutual recriminations about Helen’s subsequent betrayal of Paris’s city and family.7 The ungoverned passion which makes people forget everything but one relationship ultimately destroys that relationship as well. Despite his sympathy, Dante sees that this sin, in itself, brings neither joy nor glory. Dante does not describe rising from his faint, but in the next canto, he is following Virgil further down in Circle 3, where the groaning and torpid gluttons suffer not only from endless cold rain and mud, but also from Cerberus, the threeheaded dog of the underworld, who tears at them with his claws (Inferno 6.16–18). Cerberus apparently represents the discomforts and diseases which accompany

4 Toynbee, Dante Dictionary, pp. 247–48 (“Francesca da Rimini”), places the murder in 1285. 5 About the deaths of Francesca and Paolo, no historical account survives apart from Dante and his commentators. Boccaccio (Esposizioni, DDP, on Inferno 5.97–99) transmits the liveliest story, perhaps subversive to Dante’s meaning, since it shows the maiden Francesca being tricked into the marriage, not realizing that she had married Paolo’s brother instead of Paolo himself until “Gianni” rose from the bed beside her the next morning. Also, Gianni killed her accidentally when she leaped to shield Paolo from Gianni’s sword, while Paolo hung suspended in a passageway, having attempted to flee the bedroom quickly through a trap door, where his clothes had caught on some protruding metal. Seeing his wife dead, Gianni killed his brother too. Pietro Alighieri (3), DDP, on Inferno 5.97–107, tells the story briskly: “this lady Francesca and lord Paolo, her brother-in-law, were found together in adultery and killed by her . . . husband” (my translation). 6 See Chapter 2, especially discussion of “Donne ch’avete.” 7 In Virgil’s Aeneid (6.495–530), Paris’s brother Deiphobus, who had married Helen after Paris’s death, appears to Aeneas with a mutilated face and tells how Helen had betrayed him to the Greeks, to regain the favor of her husband Menelaus.

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overeating and drunkenness. Before Dante seeks interaction with these souls, one of them greets him and asks if Dante recognizes him. When Dante admits that he does not, with all the changes in time and place, the soul reveals himself as Ciacco, a witty freeloader widely tolerated at the tables of rich Florentines in Dante’s youth. Dante expresses sympathy but quickly turns the conversation to public affairs, on which Ciacco, whose perceptions and talents extend beyond his damnable vice, soon waxes eloquent, prophesying civil strife and informing him that the souls of the prominent Florentines about whom he has asked are much deeper down in Hell. Ciacco then falls unconscious. Virgil informs Dante that he will not wake again until Final Judgment (Inferno 6.94–99). Ciacco represents Dante’s personal Shadow less than he does a warning about the limits of worldly pleasures and the troubles that affect human society. In Circle 4 for the avaricious (Inferno 7), Dante neither recognizes nor is recognized by a soul, and Virgil confirms that, indeed, their sin makes them unrecognizable (Inferno 7.52–54). They are divided into two camps, hoarders and wasters, since these two approaches to material possessions are opposite sides of the same vice. They engage in an unrelenting but orderly conflict, rolling heavy weights to clash against each other, with each side shouting in turn what is for it the most important question in the universe: “Why hoard?” and “Why squander?”8 After passing them, Dante and Virgil reach the muddy bank of the swampy River Styx – the second loop of the infernal river which began above as the Acheron (Inferno 14.115–17). Within the shallows of the Styx, the wrathful bite and tear at each other while the sullen slothful nurse their secret grievances below, known only by the bubbles they send to the surface. Here ends the seventh and last canto Dante wrote before his exile. However, we are only at the edge of Circle 5, where the “incontinent” or impulsive versions of four more deadly sins – wrath, sloth, envy, and pride – are all housed together. The sins punished above – lust, gluttony, and avarice – each had its own circle. Pietro Alighieri calls these “the carnal sins,” and as Virgil will later explain (Purgatorio 17.85–139), they involve seeking to excess a thing good in itself. The lovers loved other people, though wrongly; the gluttons indulged a natural appetite shared by everyone; the avaricious valued possessions excessively but still recognized them as part of a system with rules. People might live mostly civilized lives marred only by a confirmed tendency toward one such sin. But the remaining four sins, Pietro explains, are “diabolic and spiritual.”9 One leads to another, all exacerbate each other, and offenses pile

8 This is Sinclair’s translation for “Perché tieni?” and “Perché burli?” (Inferno 7.30). 9 Pietro Alighieri (3), DDP, on Inferno 7.106.

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up. The swampy river in which they are punished leads all the way to the walled City of Dis, where willful embrace of these sins is compounded by demonic involvement, degrading human nature still further. Within the City of Dis, those who sinned with malitia (malice) are kept, which means in Aristotelian terms (as Pietro Alighieri explains), that their “appetite” has overcome “reason” (rationi dominetur). In the lowest part of Hell, Virgil will explain, “mad beastliness” (matta bestialitade) prevails.10 Meanwhile, Dante resumed writing, after his exile, with Inferno 8. As it begins, Dante and Virgil stand at the banks of the River Styx and observe two small flames shining from a tower above. Then, across the water, another flame answers, like a signal. At Dante’s query, Virgil directs his attention to a little boat speeding across to them. Its infernal pilot, Phlegyas, exults aloud at the thought of seizing a wicked soul, but when Virgil explains to him that his task will be merely to ferry the two of them across, he yields at once, though sullenly. This time, in contrast to what happened at the Acheron, Dante enters the ferry and makes the crossing consciously. This shows that in Jungian terms, his ego-consciousness has been “strengthened” and “consolidated” to deal with menaces lurking within unconsciousness.11 Dante is about to meet more aggressive sinners, and then more malicious ones. Aboard the ferry, Dante notices now that his living body weighs down the boat,12 meant for disembodied souls, while Virgil’s does not. As he rides low in the water, conspicuous, a soul challenges him more brusquely and officiously than any has before. The wary Dante returns a brusque counter-question, which his unknown challenger evades passive-aggressively, withholding his own identity (though he had demanded Dante’s), and insisting instead on his obvious misery. As the Carlyle/Oelsner translation renders the exchange (Inferno 8.31–36): Whilst we were running through the dead channel, there rose before me one full of mud, and said: “Who art thou, that comest before thy time?” And I to him: “If I come, I remain not; but thou, who art thou, that hast become so foul?” He answered: “Thou seest that I am one who weeps.”

10 Pietro Alighieri (3), DDP, on Inferno 11.76–90. The state of “mad beastliness” (matta bestialitade), Pietro says, means that the excesses committed have passed the boundaries of human nature. He gives, as an example, “tearing pregnant women open and devouring children” (qui pregnantes rescindebant et pueros comedebant). 11 C. G. Jung, “A Study in the Process of Individuation,” CW 9.1:352 (par. 621). 12 This echoes Aeneid 6.412–16.

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(Mentre noi correvam la morta gora, dinanzi mi si fece un pien di fango, e disse: “Chi se’ tu, che vieni anzi ora?” Ed io a lui: “S’i’ vegno, non rimango; ma tu chi se’, che se’ sì fatto brutto?” Rispose: “Vedi che son un che piango.”)

Confronting, not entreating, this soul, withholding information about his name or deeds, allows clear discernment only of his suffering, which must, in itself, out of context, seem unjust or excessive. But Dante recognizes the inquirer and resists the trap. Outraged at the repulse, the muddy soul attacks with habitual viciousness, but Virgil drives him off. Affirming the rightness of Dante’s action, Virgil even embraces Dante and praises him as if he had passed a test. As the Carlyle/Oelsner translation again conveys this (Inferno 8.37–45): And I to him: “With weeping, and with sorrow, accursed spirit, remain thou! for I know thee, all filthy as thou art.” Then he stretched both hands to the boat, whereat the wary Master thrust him off, saying: “Away there with the other dogs!” And he put his arms about my neck, kissed my face, and said: “Indignant soul! blessed be she that bore thee.” (E io a lui: “Con piangere e con lutto, spirito maledetto, ti rimani; ch’ i’ ti conosco, ancor sie lordo tutto.” Allora distese al legno ambo le mani; per che ’l maestro accorto lo sospinse, dicendo: “Via costà con gli altri cani!” Lo collo poi con le braccia mi cinse; baciommi ’l volto, e disse: “Alma sdegnosa, benedetta colei che ’n te s’incinse.”)

“Filippo Argenti,” the name of this muddy soul, is later shouted by a crowd of his damned companions, while they attack and tear at him. This Florentine nobleman got this nickname from his vainglorious habit of shoeing his horses with silver.13 Evidently his perception of Dante’s special status as a living man in Hell

13 Guido da Pisa, DDP, on Inferno 8.61; Boccaccio, Esposizioni, DDP, on Inferno 8.62–64. Guido sees Filippo as proud, wrathful, envious, and slothful. Pietro Alighieri (1), DDP, on Inferno 8. 61–63, states that he is both proud and wrathful, but those who attack him are the envious. However, Pietro adds, pride naturally gives rise to envy, so doubtless he is envious too. See also Carroll, DDP, on Inferno 8.31–63.

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first excited his envy; then pride impelled his brusque inquiry (implying an authority he did not possess), and Dante’s sharp reply awoke his wrath. When the other sinners attack Filippo, no doubt resenting his self-assertion, he turns his teeth against himself in frustrated pride, to punish himself for his helplessness.14 Dante and Virgil watch, satisfied. Argenti’s challenge had to be countered firmly. But for what lies ahead they will need still more courage and wit.

14 Benvenuto da Imola, DDP, on Inferno 8.61–63.

Chapter 8 Deeper Shadows: Brunetto Latini and Ugolino of Pisa At the gates of the City of Dis, more than a thousand demonic guards refuse entrance to Dante, the living man. When Virgil proposes a private conversation with them, the terrified Dante fears abandonment. Nevertheless Virgil, after offering assurances, draws apart to parlay, only to return soon, rejected, while the demons close the gate in his face (Inferno 8.82–102). Now Virgil can only assure Dante that help will come, and that these same bold demons should know this, since they had once been defeated at the gate outside Limbo. A rescuer, he predicts, is already on the way from within that gate (Inferno 8.115–30). But then he utters broken phrases which sound to Dante like expressions of doubt. Longfellow’s translation renders the nuances (Inferno 9.7–9): “Still it behoveth us to win the fight,” Began he; “Else . . . Such offered us herself! . . . O how I long that someone here arrive!” (“Pur a noi converrà vincer la punga,” cominciò el, “se non . . . tal ne s’offerse, Oh quanto tarda a me ch’altri qui giunga!”)

At this, Dante asks Virgil whether he knows the road they are traveling. Virgil begins an answer and explanation (reserved for the next chapter), but breaks off as furies, blood-stained and snaky-haired, appear on the ramparts. When they shout for Medusa to come and turn Dante to stone, Virgil commands Dante not to look, turns him around, orders him to cover his eyes with his hands, and covers Dante’s hands with his own, to fend off this irreversible petrification (Inferno 9.34–63). As Tozer explains it, “The Furies represent the recollection of past sins, and the Gorgon’s head which turns men to stone, is the despair produced by that recollection, which permanently hardens the heart.”1 Beyond that, Medusa, along with her sister furies, represents a destroying anti-Eros, the freezing of consciousness upon sin and malice, bringing an inward death of desire. Her influence defines the circumference of the Satanic city, and along with the three-faced Dis at the center of the earth, she helps form Hell’s internal quaternity, drawing and holding its inmates. She cannot be comprehended, and thus can only be overcome by insight from other sources. In contrast to Aeneid 1 Tozer, DDP, on Inferno 9.19–21. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-009

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6.563, where the Sibyl tells Aeneas that no virtuous person is allowed to enter Tartarus, where the truly wicked are punished, and thus he must be content with her account of what happens there, Virgil must now lead his pupil to explore the depths and take responsibility for directing and protecting consciousness as necessary. When Virgil hears their angelic rescuer approach, he uncovers Dante’s eyes and turns him to watch the messenger walking over the Styx, fending the swampy air from his face, while the damned souls scatter like frogs. Silently the travelers bow as the angel passes them, opens the gate, rebukes the demons, and departs (Inferno 9.79–99). The event shows that although ego-consciousness must do its work, for success in inner struggles, the individual ultimately depends on help from the god-within, with its possible link to the transcendent God. Immediately inside the city, Dante and Virgil find the Epicurean heretics lodged in Circle 6. Perhaps influenced by Medusa-despair, these souls have seemingly lost conscious interest in continued life, since they believe that the soul dies with the body, and yet their unsatisfied libido or life-energy burns in the walls of the tombs where they are lodged. The real Shadow in this scene, Dante’s old friend Guido Cavalcanti, is not present physically. Dante does have a dramatic and poignant encounter with Guido's father-in-law (Farinata degli Uberti) and father, Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti, who shared and perhaps formed Guido’s thinking. Dante tells Cavalcante that Guido is still alive, as indeed he was in Holy Week 1300, though he died before summer was out that year. Dante must often have wondered how he and Guido came to agree on so little, whether Dante and the other priors had been right in placing Guido and the other faction leaders under temporary banishment in their efforts to keep the peace, and what his friend was thinking in his last hours.2 Farinata predicts that Dante, like himself, will be an exile, but makes it clear that the foresight of the damned is imperfect (Inferno 10.100–101). Further on, in Circle 7, souls damned for violence are placed in three subcircles or turns (gironi). In the first sub-circle, where tyrants and murderers (violent against their neighbors) are submerged at various depths in the boiling blood of the River Phlegethon (third loop of the infernal river system), from ankle-depth to total submersion, depending on the level of guilt, Dante remains emotionally detached, while Virgil does the talking, evades the dangers, and arranges for the necessary help (Inferno 12.55–139). But the next sub-circle touches him more. Medusa’s despair marks the suicides (violent against self) more deeply than the heretics above. Instead of willing

2 Toynbee, “Cavalcanti, Guido,” Dante Dictionary, pp. 141–43.

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the end of their consciousness, they strive to abandon their human form. This is revealed to Dante by degrees. They pass through a gloomy and twisted forest, filled with mysterious wails from no obvious source. Virgil prompts him to break a twig from among the thickly growing trees, so Dante chooses “a great blackthorn” (un gran pruno),3 and is startled when the tree bleeds and speaks, rebuking him for injuring what once was a man (Inferno 13.32–39). After Virgil’s apology, and on his invitation, the tree reveals itself as the soul of Piero della Vigna, once the chief minister of the Emperor Frederick II, and a famous man of letters who killed himself after he was ruined and imprisoned because of false accusations. Like other suicides, he was doomed by Minos to be cast as a seed, to take root and grow in this forest. Thus, suicides seemingly escape human nature to become passive plants. Nevertheless, restless Harpies haunt their forest like remnants of smothered instinct and unsatisfied ambition, perching in and tearing at the trees, giving them wounds which cause pain but which also provide temporary mouths for the mourning they must somehow express (Inferno 13.94–102). After the Last Judgment, Piero explains, the bodies of the suicides will be hanged, still rejected, from the tree each has become (Inferno 13.103–8). Dante no doubt saw aspects of himself in Piero della Vigna, but the third sub-circle, for the violent against God, will prove yet more harrowing. The forest gives way to a burning sandy waste, with flakes of fire raining over it. Sinners come subdivided into three further categories: blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers. Blasphemers, fewest in number, lie flat upon the ground, fully exposed to fires above and below, cursing and screaming continually. Their persistent direct assault upon divine invincibility brings them continual pain and defeat. Medusa’s petrification fixes them forever in their futility. The other two groups mitigate their despair with chosen forms of idolatry. Usurers sit or crouch on a cliff overlooking the long steep descent to the lowest level of Hell. Unlike the blasphemers, they can squirm and wriggle to fend off the fiery rain and burning sand by turns. Each has his money bag around his neck, adorned with his family crest, and all take some pleasure in these (Inferno 17.46–65). Their fate is less horrible than that of the blasphemers, but hardly desirable. The Sodomites get more of Dante’s attention than the other two subcategories put together. Will Durant calls Dante’s portrayal of Brunetto Latini a “tasteless doom for a guide, philosopher and friend.”4 Here the dream’s unconscious 3 Piero’s story requires us to imagine the suicide’s body hanging from the pruno after Final Judgment (Inferno 13.32, 108), so probably the Latin prunus, “blackthorn, sloe-tree” is meant; see prunus in Lewis and Short, Harper’s Latin Dictionary, p. 1482. 4 Durant, The Age of Faith, p. 1072.

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meaning strained against Dante’s conscious literary intent. On the one hand, the Sodomites seem neatly categorized according to the standards of the time, assigned a punishment suggested in the scriptural account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18:17–19:29. (True, the passage also owes something to Cato’s crossing of the Libyan desert in Book 6 of Lucan, to which Dante alludes in Inferno 14.15.) Brunetto himself had succinctly explained, in both his French and Italian works, that sodomy was sinful.5 To affirm his teaching could not be disrespectful, and since he was dead, it could not harm him. Besides, Dante’s later conversation with Cacciaguida (Paradiso 17.127–42) makes it clear that Dante thought he was not generally revealing new scandals in his poem. Presumably Brunetto’s lifestyle had been no great secret and no shock to the Florentines. Thus, Brunetto’s reputation would not really suffer. Early commentators praise Brunetto as a statesman and scholar, and refrain from comment about his sexual practices unless they perfunctorily confirm what the poem implies.6 They more willingly mocked his companion in damnation, Bishop Andrea di Mozzi of Florence, whom even Brunetto calls “scum” (tigna), adding that he left behind mal protesi nervi (“sin-strained sinews,” as Vernon translates).7 Benvenuto da Imola enumerates some of Andrea’s witless and inappropriately suggestive public utterances, but does not discuss any sexual affairs.8 Benvenuto also relates that some Bolognese law scholars were angry that Brunetto mentioned a jurist of their city, Francesco d’Accorso, among his companions (Inferno 15.120), and that he had been angry himself until he learned by experience how influential men with such tastes could be. He then reported what he knew to the relevant ecclesiastical authority, despite fears for his own life.9 Still, so few details of Brunetto’s life survive that later generations at times doubted not only whether he was homosexual but whether Dante meant to say he was. Holloway argues that Brunetto’s punishment is really for usury. Brunetto Latini, Bishop Andrea, and others in this circle did belong to prominent

5 Brunetto Latini, Trésor (bk 2, chap. 33); also, his Tesoretto, lines 2859–64. 6 Anonimo Selmiano, DDP, on Inferno 15.31–33, tentatively dated 1337, declares, “This Master Brunetto did not care for his soul, was a very worldly man, and sinned greatly through sodomy” (Questo ser Brunetto non curò dell’anima, fu uomo molto mondano; e molto peccò in soddomia). Benvenuto da Imola, DDP, on Inferno 15.22–24, affirms that Dante’s account was based on knowledge. 7 Vernon, Readings on the Inferno, 1:576 (on Inferno 15.114). See also Toynbee, “Andrea de’ Mozzi,” Dante Dictionary, pp. 33–34. 8 Benvenuto da Imola, DDP, on Inferno 15.110–14. Partial English translations of Benvenuto’s remarks are given by Toynbee, “Andrea de’ Mozzi,” Dante Dictionary, pp. 33–34; Vernon, Readings on the Inferno, 1:566–67; and Hollander, DDP, on Inferno 15.106–14. 9 Benvenuto da Imola, DDP, on Inferno 15.110–14.

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banking families and did practice usury, as financing was central to Florentine politics at this time.10 Nevertheless, the overview in Inferno 11.46–51 already stated that, besides blasphemy, the sins of Sodom and of Cahors (usury) would all be punished together in the third “circuit” or sub-circle for violence against God. Capaneus clearly represents the blasphemers (Inferno 14.43–72), while the usurers are identified by money bags around their necks (Inferno 17.55–57). Thus, the troops of naked men running over the burning sand, under the rain of fire, must be the Sodomites. When they see the naked runners approaching, Dante and Virgil are themselves moving along a wall that reinforces the Phlegethon’s banks, because steam rising from the river quenches the burning flakes immediately above it, affording some protection. Then one of the runners approaches and seizes Dante’s hem (lembo) with an exclamation of wonder. Dante, recognizing him, cries out, “Are you here, Master Brunetto?” (Siete voi qui, ser Brunetto?) Brunetto, addressing him as “my little son” (figliuol mio), asks to walk with him briefly (Inferno 15.30–33). Courteously sympathetic, Dante offers to stop and talk, but Brunetto declines, explaining that the penalty for him (or anyone else in his group) to pause would be a hundred years lying on the burning sand, unable even to fend off the fiery flakes (Inferno 15.37–39). That is, he will be treated like a blasphemer. Brunetto has internalized the rules of the place, and also does not want to hinder Dante. As they continue walking and conversing, Brunetto encourages his former pupil to persevere with his impressive undertaking, but also predicts Dante’s exile with more specificity than any other soul has yet done (15.61–78). In turn, Dante expresses gratitude, remembering how Brunetto taught him “again and again” (ad ora ad ora) how “man makes himself eternal” (l’uom s’etterna) (Inferno 15.85–86).11 Then Brunetto suddenly announces that another group is coming with whom he is forbidden to mix, and departs at a speed fit to win a race (Inferno 15.124). Their encounter was poignant but somehow truncated. As Jungians would know, Dante’s unconscious had more personal than theological reasons for sifting through Brunetto Latini’s life and his influence on Dante. As Dante faced his crisis, his thinking went in directions other than what Brunetto had taught, and then encountered resistance from Dante’s reverence for his mentor. The unconscious, performing its compensatory function, pointed out graphically how following Brunetto’s teachings too uncompromisingly could lead straight to Hell. But Dante’s understanding of Brunetto’s good

10 Holloway, Twice Told Tales, p. 35. 11 Tommaso Casini and S.A. Barbi, DDP, on Inferno 15.84, point out parallel passages for “ad ora ad ora” in Purgatorio 8.101 and Paradiso 15.84.

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side also manifested itself. It emerges that, in truth, Brunetto desires neither to seduce Dante nor divert him from his path, nor to impose outdated views on him. Instead, he wishes Dante to continue on his individuating way, though remembering Brunetto and the valuable part of his teachings where appropriate. In the end, he remains a friendly amalgamation of Shadow and Wise Old Man, but gives up his status as Dante’s Wise Old Man to Virgil, who will better exercise the responsibility. Brunetto does not explain why the Sodomites are in different groups. One scholar suggests that here they mimic their social organization in the world, where persons of similar status go about “cruising” for sexual partners.12 As a social matter, Florentine authorities of Dante’s time did apparently assume that sodomy usually involved pederasty, sex between a mature male and a youth, a relationship idealized (under some circumstances) in ancient Greece and more or less tolerated in classical Rome.13 As Franke says, “Through amorous liaison with a youth, the pederast perhaps seeks an illusory escape from his own mortality.”14 The scholar D’Arco Avalle, in reviewing a poetic exchange between Brunetto and another Florentine poet, Bondie Dietaiuti, points out a rivalry between military men and scholars for the affections of attractive youths in a homoerotic context, analogous to the rivalry between knights and clerics for the love of ladies. He finds evidence of this in Bondie’s tenzone, or poetic contention, with Rustico di Filippo, which suggests that Bondie has chosen the scholars, and by implication, Brunetto.15 In fact, as Brunetto leaves, the arriving troop contains his natural rivals, the nobles and warriors. Thus the competition between cavaliers and scholars seems more enduring than their sexual relationships, for we see no couples here.16 Brunetto and those whom Dante meets of the next group represent mature males

12 Pequigney, “Sodomy in Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio,” p. 29. 13 Rocke, Forbidden Friendships, p. 21. C. G. Jung, in Two Essays, CW 7:106 (par. 173), explains that a fatherless boy may seek male role models through homosexual relationships with older men, following a pattern known in ancient and primitive cultures. 14 Franke, Revelation of Imagination, p. 338 (chap. 5). 15 Rustico asks which of two lovers a lady should choose, if both were equally devoted. Would it be one who is “courteous, educated and wise” (cortese ed insegnato e sagio) or one who is “valiant and well supplied with supporters” (prode e . . . dottato da giente)? He adds, “If I were a woman, I know well which I would want” (s’ io fosse donna, bene so quale voria). Bondie replies that a man of wisdom and courtesy possesses all true nobility (tutta gientileza). This rationale gives Brunetto Latini the advantage over nobles and warriors. See Avalle, “Nel terzo girone del settimo cerchio,” pp. 87–106, esp. 87–88. 16 Few details are given about the Sodomites in Inferno 16, except that Jacopo Rusticucci vaguely blames his “savage wife” (la fiera moglie) for his predicament (Inferno 16.45). Pietro

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against whom the law was most severe. Both groups, however, share a statesmanlike love for Florence. Possibly, for both groups, beautiful young men represent their ideal of the vigorous polity to which they wished to unite themselves. Beautiful youths are absent here, but some form of polity remains as, with commendable ingenuity and teamwork, the three approaching warriors join themselves into a wheel (una rota) and keep it turning while they ask for news of their city, thus avoiding the punishment for holding still. The admiring Dante declares he would have thrown himself down among them were he not afraid to burn (Inferno 16.19–47). Of all the damned souls below Limbo, they are the best organized, with the best camaraderie. However, the fires above rain down and the sand burns their feet, indicating that the god-within remains unsatisfied. Leaving Circle 7, Virgil arranges for the monster Geryon to carry Dante and himself down the great chasm to the lowest level of Hell, containing Circle 8 (Simple Fraud) and Circle 9 (Treacherous Fraud).17 The hardened sinners and their guards offer more scope for satire than pathos, with some exceptions, such as Guido da Montefeltro, in Circle 8, moat 8 (Inferno 27.61–131). But it is among the traitors in Circle 9 that Dante has one last moving encounter with a version of his Shadow, Count Ugolino of Pisa. Deep though we find him, he retains one sympathetic quality, his fatherly feelings, which reveal the depravity of the place far more vividly than a mere accumulation of atrocities could. Not that atrocities are lacking. Neither Ugolino nor anyone else tells us why exactly he is damned. Dante mentions but fails to confirm the report (Inferno 33.86–88) that Ugolino treacherously surrendered some Pisan castles for his own advantage during war. If he did, Dante acknowledges, that might justify Pisa’s cruel treatment of Ugolino

Alighieri (1), DDP, on Inferno 16.34–45, offers an anecdote about this couple’s unhappy life together (he does not repeat it in his second and third versions): Lord Jacopo Rusticucci of Florence claimed that his bad wife harmed [him], more than his disordered appetite did, because said wife was a woman of such extreme bad temper that he could not live with her peacefully. Therefore, he swore never to lie with her or with another woman but instead to satisfy his desire foully with males. It happened that once when he had brought a certain boy into his chamber for this purpose, his wife, wishing to make him notorious, hurried to the windows of the house, loudly shouting, “Fire! Fire!” Because of this noise, the whole neighborhood came running. But her husband heard it and left his chamber, shouting at his wife that he wanted to kill her. Then indeed his wife, seeing him leaving the chamber, called out again to the neighbors, “Don’t come! The fire is out!” 17 Jacopo Alighieri, Proemo, p. 15, provides the designation “Simple Fraud” (semplice froda). (Frode and froda are variant spellings in the Commedia.)

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himself, but not of his sons. However, though Dante does not air this dispute, in chaotic times one man’s treachery is another man’s inspired stratagem to save his threatened city from destruction.18 While Ugolino’s placement in Circle 9 seems to label him a traitor, the unconscious origin of Dante’s dream complicates the possibilities. Might Dante’s unconscious have been bold enough to allow exchanges between Circles? What if Ugolino otherwise belonged farther up – say, in the boiling blood among the murderous tyrants in Circle 7 – but is permitted to descend lower, to exact eternal vengeance on his enemy Ruggieri? For him, this might be a more “tolerable damnation” in Augustine’s sense, a consensus between Shadow and god-within; personal and divine anger coinciding in the depths. In general, the sin of Circle 9 is violation of trust; the more solemn, intimate, or voluntary the bond, the worse the treason. All traitors are punished by being embedded in ice of the frozen Cocytus, lowest loop of the infernal river; the worse the treachery, the more their human feeling – their Eros – is degraded, and the more completely they are embedded. Four subcategories of the treacherous are named: first, Caina, for betrayal of family, after the biblical Cain, who murdered his brother Abel in Genesis 4:8. Family relationships are involuntary but important. Next comes Antenora, named for Antenor, a legendary survivor of ancient Troy, reported in post-classical accounts to have betrayed his city.19 Betrayal of one’s city causes harm to many and generally involves someone with public responsibilities taken on voluntarily. Ugolino’s secret transfer of castles might put him in this category. Next comes Ptolomea, probably named for Ptolemy, the captain of Jericho in 1 Maccabees 16, who invited his father-in-law and brothers-in-law to a banquet and murdered them there. Thus, he simultaneously violated family relationships and the obligations of a host, on a festive occasion of his own devising, in the

18 Pignoti, History of Tuscany, pp. 381–83, explains the background: a Guelph league, with Florence as a key member, planned to destroy Pisa, historically a Ghibelline city, for the benefit of its maritime rival, Genoa. Ugolino, a Guelph, allied himself with the Ghibelline bishop Ruggieri, and subverted the Guelph league with the help of Guelph connections, persuading Florence to wriggle out of its commitments. Reportedly, gold florins hidden in a cask of Vernaccia wine helped cement the deal, as did castles yielded to Lucca, originally a partner in the Guelph league. Thus, Ugolino saved Pisa, became its chief citizen, and made it Guelphaligned, all the while thwarting Genoa. Giovanni Villani’s Chronicle describes the events without stating that the castles were deliberately yielded; however, the Selfe/Wicksteed edition does not translate the relevant passage (bk 7, chap. 98). 19 Carroll, DDP, on Inferno 32.0 (proemio).

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most voluntary way possible.20 Two other souls whom Dante introduces here did much the same.21 Souls in Ptolomea also have a special “privilege”: they descend to their eternal punishment immediately after their damnable deed, while devils inhabit their bodies. This signifies that some treacheries so destroy the soul that repentance may be impossible (Inferno 33.121–47). The last and worst place, the Judecca (Inferno 34.117), is named for Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Christ, the ultimate in human treachery. But Count Ugolino and his eternal enemy the archbishop are, if not in a category all their own, either in Antenora or (as some think) between Antenora and Ptolomea.22 At the end of Canto 32, Dante first sees the two men trapped together, heads protruding from the ice, one of them slightly above and gnawing the head of the other, reminding him of a scene in the Thebaid of Statius.23 Dante urges the gnawing man to explain himself, promising to make the story famous if he can justify his savage behavior (Inferno 32.136). In the next canto, Count Ugolino raises his head, protests how painful the memory is (Inferno 33.4–9), and tells his story. But most facts, he declares, would be known to Florentines, particularly how he, Ugolino, trusted Archbishop Ruggieri, only to be betrayed and destroyed by him (Inferno 33.10–18). He need not explain how, for reasons best understood by crafty aristocrats in complex times, he, though a Guelph, conspired with the Ghibelline Archbishop of Pisa to drive out Ugolino’s former ally and grandson, Nino Visconti. This weakened the local Guelphs, Ugolino himself with the rest, since Pisa was still essentially a Ghibelline city. Ruggieri then arranged for Pisa to rise against Ugolino, who was obliged to surrender to the archbishop, along with two sons and two grandsons. Ruggieri held them prisoner

20 Pietro Alighieri identifies this Ptolemy in all three commentaries, (1, 2), DDP, on Inferno 33.124 and (3) on 32.58 and 33.109–120. The other Ptolemy to whom some refer (see Singleton, DDP, on Inferno 33.124) is the Egyptian king, brother of the famous Cleopatra, who murders the fleeing Pompey after Julius Caesar’s victory. Since this Ptolemy was partly trying to save his skin, his treachery is not quite as pure as that of his namesake in Jericho. See Lucan’s De bello civili 8.536–712 and 9.1018–93. 21 Fra Alberigo murdered his brother and nephew at a banquet to which he invited them. Branca D’Oria, with an accomplice, murdered a brother-in-law, also at a feast. See Toynbee, Dante Dictionary, “Alberigo, Frate,” p. 18, and “Branca D’Oria,” pp. 95–96. 22 Sforza, Dante e i Pisani, p. 43. 23 Statius, Thebaid 8.758–66. The dying Tydeus gnaws the severed head of Menalippus, who inflicted his mortal wound. Minerva comes with Jupiter’s permission to grant Tydeus immortality (decus immortale), but when she sees what he is doing, she departs in disgust.

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for some months, then chose to starve them all to death.24 This might be treachery to a “guest and companion,” as some define the sin of Ptolomea.25 Ugolino describes the four who surrender with him as “little sons” (figliuoli) and Dante echoes him (Inferno 33.38, 33.48, 33.97). However, “son” (figlio) and “little son” (figliuolo) are often interchangeable in Italian. Neither Ugolino nor Dante actually states their ages – Dante only mentions that they are of novella età, vaguely equivalent to “young” in English.26 Even some early commentators know that some of the captives were grandsons, but close relatives need not explain the details of each relationship in every sentence.27 Dante may have felt constrained to keep references vague. He had been in his early twenties in 1289 when these Pisan captives died, and probably knew their approximate ages and relationships. At least he could hardly help knowing that Ugolino’s sons were grown men, already acting as their father’s lieutenants.28 But as a father, he also knew how fathers see their children, even when they become adults. Readers unaware of the history generally accept that Ugolino’s fellow captives are sons and get the impression that they are small boys. Chaucer, for example, writing some decades later, has his narrator report that “Hugolino’s” eldest son was hardly five years old.29 That Dante’s children were probably no older at the time of the vision explains his bond with Ugolino. Dante knew that calumnies aimed at him would also strike his children, just as, in fact, his exile would extend to his sons. Hence, the Ugolino of the Commedia is another of Dante’s Shadows,

24 As the archbishop does not speak, we do not learn his motives. The plan was carried out just as the Pisans chose a new military captain, Guido da Montefeltro (the same who spoke in Inferno 27. 61–132). An obvious inference is that Ruggieri feared that Guido would accept ransom or political concessions in return for releasing the prisoners. Therefore, he took advantage of confusion during the administrative handover to starve them. However, some contemporaries and historians attribute the murder to Guido rather than to Ruggieri; see Holloway, Twice Told Tales, p. 78. Sforza, Dante e i Pisani, pp. 115–22, reports that Nino Visconti accused the archbishop to Pope Nicholas IV, who made some effort to pursue the matter but died in 1292 without succeeding. Ruggieri died in 1295. 25 Toynbee, “Tolomea,” Dante Dictionary, p. 529. 26 Dante himself twice defines the phrase “novella età” to mean “young” (giovane): in Vita Nuova chap. 23, and Convivio 4.19.8–9. 27 Sforza, Dante e i Pisani, pp. 88–89, reports that it was common usage to call grandsons in the male lineage “sons,” when speaking casually. 28 Toynbee, “Ugolino, Conte,” in Dante Dictionary, pp. 543–44, mentions documents suggesting that Anselmuccio could be as young as fifteen. However, in the early twenty-first century, paleontologists examined the skeletal remains and decided that none was younger than twenty. The eldest was 70–80 years old; two others were 45–55, and the other two were 20–30. See Mallegni and Lemut, eds., Il conte Ugolino Della Gherardesca, pp. 80–82. 29 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, ed. Robinson, p. 194 (“The Monk’s Tale”): “his litel children thre;/ The eldest scarsely fyf yeer was of age” (lines 3601–2).

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and his children are vulnerable like Dante’s. Dante’s bitter cry of reproach, holding the whole city responsible for the deaths of Ugolino’s sons, expresses his anxiety for his own children too. John Ciardi captures its emotional force in his translation (Inferno 33.85–88): For if to Ugolino falls the censure For having betrayed your castles, you for your part Should not have put his sons to such a torture: [. . .] Those tender lives you spilt – Brigata, Uguccione, and the others I mentioned earlier – were too young for guilt! (Che se ’l conte Ugolino aveva voce d’aver tradita te de le castella, non dovei tu i figliuoli porre a tal croce. Innocenti facea l’età novella, [. . .] Uguccione e ’l Brigata e li altri due che ’l canto suso appella.)

Dante calls upon two islands in the bay of Pisa (one of them named Gorgona, thus evoking Medusa) to block the Arno, flood the land, and drown the whole population (33.81–83), a smaller-scale imitation of the flood in Genesis 7:5–6 which nearly drowned the entire human race (Genesis 6:6). Though Ugolino’s eternal gnawing of Ruggieri’s head exemplifies the “mad beastliness” (matta bestialitade) which Virgil mentioned (Inferno 11.82–83) as characteristic of the worst sins, it also justly punishes Ruggieri’s beastly behavior; hence Ugolino’s engagement in it seemingly continues by divine permission, giving Ugolino a sense of purpose that to some degree relieves his own suffering in the “eternal chill” (l’etterno rezzo) at the lowest depths (Inferno 32.75). This is a grotesque analogy with Francesca da Rimini, who retains some joy of her love (Inferno 5.73–142). Ugolino clearly was far from a perfect father. Like other nobles, proud of his blood, he probably valued his offspring, at first, mostly as extensions of himself, limbs of his political power. But even such feelings grow from natural emotion. His connection with his sons haunts his sleep. He tells how, near morning some months after his capture, he has a dream in which Ruggieri and some Pisan supporters hunt a wolf and his cubs (lupo e lupicini), with hungry and eager hounds.30 The dream reveals that he and his sons, seen as outlaw “wolves” by Ruggieri, will be killed like animals. He wakes and hears the children crying in their sleep for food, implying that they had more literal dreams about the famine that

30 Carroll, DDP, on Inferno 33.20–74.

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would soon threaten them (Inferno 33.25–39). Later, in the morning, while awake, they all hear the tower being shut up.31 At the sound, Ugolino reports, “I became stone” (impetrai). In short, Medusa’s despair has claimed him. When Anselmuccio, the youngest, notices his strange expression and asks what is bothering him, he does not answer (Inferno 33.49–54). But after a day and a night drag on in silence, they all understand their doom, and the count gnaws his hands in helpless anger. The children then unite in an innocent gesture of horrible generosity. Interpreting this gnawing as a sign of hunger, they offer him their own flesh as if to their creator and God (Inferno 33.61–63; Carlyle/Oelsner translation): Father, it will give us much less pain, if thou wilt eat of us: thou didst put upon us this miserable flesh, and do thou strip it off. (Padre, assai ci fia men doglia, se tu mangi di noi: tu ne vestisti queste misere carni, e tu le spoglia.)

Their offer grotesquely imitates Christ’s sacrifice, but it also mimics pagan idolatry, an idolatry which Ugolino’s own inflated ego encouraged. Together, his own pride and Medusa’s despair made him forget the divine image except in himself, thus usurping divine rights over others.32 He could not remind his offspring of the real Christ, true image of the god-within, who might yet send them rescue or, in any case, save their souls. He makes no answer, from inertia allowing his claim to deity to stand, a miserable status which gives him no power to save, only to suffer and desire vengeance. Yet some remnant of paternal love restrains him from gnawing himself any longer and making their pain worse. For three

31 Since chiavar (Inferno 33.42) could mean either “locked” or “nailed,” there is much debate over what Ugolino heard. Francesco da Buti, a Pisan with local sources, states (DDP, on Inferno 33.10–22) that the tower was locked, and the keys were thrown in the Arno. He also states (DDP, on Inferno 33.67–78), that after eight days the bodies were removed, covered by mats, and buried in a Franciscan church. His accuracy on the last point was confirmed when an urn containing the bones of five individuals answering to the descriptions of Ugolino and his sons was found near that site in 1899. See Mallegni and Lemut, eds., Il conte Ugolino Della Gherardesca, pp. 81–82. (Nailing the door would have made a more distinctive sound but might have attracted more attention than Bishop Ruggieri wanted.) 32 C. G. Jung to Father Victor White, 10 April 1954, Letters 2:163–74, at 168: “Through the negation of God one becomes deified.” Also, in Psychology and Religion, CW 11:84–87 (par. 141–44), he explains that archetypal imagery of some kind will manifest itself as the god-within, and if no transcendent God is acknowledged, or no pantheistic philosophy, then a human government will take that position, or a “collective” such as Nazism or Communism, or the individual’s own ego, as with Nietzsche, who “himself became a god” when “his God died” (p. 85, par. 142).

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days they do not speak, and then all his sons die, one by one, starting with Gaddo (a contraction for Gerardo) who cries out, asking why his father does not help him, a reproach Dante hopes never to hear from his children and also an echo of Christ’s cry from the cross (as Singleton points out).33 All sons are dead by the sixth day. Finally, on the seventh day, when Ugolino is blind from famine, still groping for and calling to his sons, “fasting could do more than grief” (più che ’l dolor, poté ’l digiuno), and he dies (Inferno 33.75). The plain meaning is that starvation finally killed Ugolino when grief could not, though he wished it could.34 Some commentators, though not the earliest, interpret Ugolino’s words to mean that he cannibalized the dead bodies of his sons,35 a view which has become widespread in modern times,36 possibly because, to modern minds, Ugolino seems unworthy of the lowest depths of Hell without it. Perhaps what impeded the popularity of such a reading in the beginning was the fact that in the chaotic Medieval-Renaissance conditions Dante knew, cannibalism during sieges and among the starving was not an unimaginable horror but a grim, mundane possibility, described in the Bible and in various chronicles.37 A contemporary chronicler indeed suggested that somebody cannibalized somebody in Ugolino’s sealed prison.38 However, early readers tended not to get that idea from Dante’s account. 33 Singleton, DDP, on Inferno 33.69. 34 Sforza, Dante e i Pisani, p. 64, points out that as some early commentators conceived it, Ugolino’s grief prolonged his life. This idea, he suggests, comes from the physician Galen, who taught that sorrow concentrates the body’s humors and suppresses appetite. 35 Guglielmo Maramauro, on Inferno 33.46–78, dated 1369–73, is the earliest DDP commentator to mention this interpretation, but he does not claim it as his own. 36 Franke, Revelation of Imagination, p. 371 n33, cites Jorge Luis Borges, who asserts that readers ought to “suspect” that Ugolino cannibalized his children’s bodies. 37 Deuteronomy 28:53–57 declares that if Israel fails to abide by the covenant of Moses, then, among the curses to fall upon the nation will be sieges during which both fathers and mothers will eat their children and quarrel over the division of the flesh. Such an event is described in 2 Kings 6:28–30. Josephus, in The Wars of the Jews 6.3.4.l, recounts another instance during the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70. Dante alludes to the latter passage in Purgatorio 23.30. Kostick, “The Early Historians,” pp. 53–54, compares the tone of two chronicles, Gesta Francorum and Historia Hierosolymitana, which both recount how crusaders in 1098 cooked and ate the bodies of their dead (Turkish) enemies. 38 An anonymous contemporary chronicle, once attributed to Brunetto Latini, states that when the bodies of Ugolino and his sons were removed, “it was found that they ate of one another’s flesh” (si trovò che ll’ uno mangiò de le carni all’ altro). See Cronica Fiorentina, pp. 250–51. Holloway, Twice Told Tales, pp. 153–54, quotes a similar passage from a manuscript. This source does not single out Ugolino as the cannibal. Mallegni and Lemut, eds., Il conte Ugolino Della Gherardesca, pp. 82–83, 114, point out that Ugolino’s teeth were bad. They suggest that as the oldest prisoner, he would have died first instead of surviving to cannibalize the others.

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Granted, as the last survivor (in Dante’s account), Ugolino had the best opportunity. Granted, his story that his children invited him to eat their bodies might be a rationalization. Granted, his gnawing on Ruggieri’s head shows that he has developed a taste for human flesh, at least Ruggieri’s. On the other hand, Ugolino probably understood that if his merciless captors opened the prison door expecting to find him dead and instead found him crunching on his children’s bones, they were unlikely to spare him. To be sure, if a cannibalistic fit came upon him during a spell of madness, and then, after coming to himself, he realized what he had done, Ugolino would be ashamed and even more set on revenge.39 He would still have the reader’s horrified sympathy.40 In any case, Ugolino’s infernal placement slightly above Ruggieri, well positioned to continue his gnawing indefinitely, shows that his ferocious vengeance is inflicted by divine permission. Cannibal or not, he is more in the right than his murderer.41 Dante’s denunciation of Pisa also echoes divine wrath, but to echo the divine only in wrath suits only the depths of Hell. Dante must learn another orientation to make his upward journey in Purgatorio and Paradiso.

39 Carroll, DDP, on Inferno 33.75–78, tentatively considers this possibility. 40 Vernon, Readings on the Inferno, 2:637, asserts that Ugolino would be too weak in his last hours to chew raw meat, but cites medical opinion (from “Quain, Dictionary of Medicine, London, 1882,” on “Fasting”) which leaves open the possibility of a spurt of maniacal energy at the end: The countenance assumes a pale and cadaverous appearance, and a look of wildness is presented about the eyes. Emaciation becomes more and more marked, and with it there is a decline of the bodily strength. There is also failure of the mental power. Stupidity may advance to imbecility; and a state of maniacal delirium frequently supervenes. Life terminates either calmly, by gradually increasing torpidity, or, it may be, suddenly in a convulsive paroxysm . . .. The usual duration of life under complete absence of food and drink may be said to be from eight to ten days. 41 Martinez and Durling, in Inferno, ed. Durling, pp. 578–80 (“Additional Note 15: Ugolino”), point out the justice in Ugolino’s vengeance.

Chapter 9 From Satan, to Cato, to Christ: Virgil and the Reconciliation of Reason As Dante reaches the lake of ice at the bottom of the cone-shaped pit of the Inferno, Virgil announces that Satan is visible, in words which satirically embed the first line of Fortunatus’s “Passion Hymn.” Biancolli’s translation (Inferno 34.1–3) renders this fluently:1 “The banners of the king of Hell are moving Towards us,” my master said to me. “Look straight ahead and maybe you will see him.” (“Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni verso di noi; però dinanzi mira,” disse ’l maestro mio, “se tu ’l discerni.”)

The satire heightens the question that Virgil must be pondering: in what sense can this fallen angel be the ruler here? Though the being that Virgil calls Dis supposedly motivates acts of obstruction and defiance throughout Hell, though the walled city enclosing lower Hell is named for him, though we are told that his seat or headquarters is on “the point of the Universe” (’l punto/ de l’universo) (Inferno.12.64–65) – that is, the bottom of Hell2 – we never see messengers who purport to carry out his will, or sense any particular strategy he has put in motion. Yet in Inferno 34.28, he is called “the Emperor of the woeful kingdom” (Lo ’mperador

1 In the hymn’s title I have italicized where Biancolli capitalized. Fortunatus was a sixth-century bishop of Poitiers. Longfellow, DDP, on Inferno 34.1, supplies the first stanza of the Latin hymn (my translation below): Vexilla regis prodeunt, Fulget crucis mysterium, Quo carne carnis conditor, Suspensus est patibulo. (The banners of the king advance, The mystery of the cross shines forth, Where in the flesh, the author of flesh, Is hanged from the gibbet.) 2 Longfellow and Durling translate il punto as “point,” while Grandgent, Singleton, and Hollander translate it as “the center.” Satan is at the center of the earth, but God is the center of Dante’s universe; punto appropriately emphasizes the smallness of Satan’s realm. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-010

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del doloroso regno).3 However, in Dante’s universe, as we have seen in various ways, Christ is the real ruler of Hell. Captive Dis (also called Lucifer or Satan), with his six beating bat-like wings, could indeed be a kind of banner, marking Christ’s victory over the infernal powers. Dante, however, at first mistakes the sight for a windmill, perhaps because it does not advance, although the wings propel forward the icy wind that freezes the water of the Cocytus, pooling at the bottom of Hell.4 Satan’s gigantic body protrudes from the breast through the floor of ice, presumably where his fall from Heaven lodged him. His three faces, debased reflections of the divine trinity, are joined at the crown (la cresta), each with a mouth to gnaw on one of the three great traitors: Judas, who betrayed Christ, and two murderers of Julius Caesar, Brutus and Cassius (Inferno 34.42–67). These notorious three achieve an eternal fame, perhaps still envied by the neutrals in the Vestibule, or perhaps by the still more denatured souls embedded under the ice, barely seen, “like straws in glass” (come festuca in vetro) (Inferno 34.12). This implacable devouring of his sincerest imitators reveals that for him Eros is completely absorbed into the will for power, a characteristic of bad relationships.5 Just as Medusa represents a soul turned inward in self-hate, Satan represents hatred convulsively directed outward to destroy, without discretion. Satan has no strategy, or the strategies he uses lack unity and thus come to nothing. No Satanic Eros or Logos binds Hell together. Dis and his confederates instead are bound and in a fashion supported by strategies and structures of Divine Eros and Logos, confining each distorted being to its place and permitting it such outlet for its energies as might, in context, be consistent with divine will. Such is, idealized, the organization of the more dangerous aspects of the psyche within the human personality, determined by the inner god or Self, and in Dante’s universe, also by the transcendent God, in whose image humanity is made. “Ecco Dite” (Behold Dis), Virgil says (Inferno 34.20). In his Aeneid (6.630–36), it is at the palace of Dis, near the Elysian Fields, that Persephone’s golden bough, token of divine permission to enter the underworld, is finally surrendered, though Aeneas had no audience with Dis. In contrast, permission to visit the Commedia’s underworld came from Heaven, while the hostility of the Dantean Dis, manifested in the subtle resistance of Charon, Minos, and Malacoda, and also the overt obstruction of the demons and furies on the walls of the City of Dis, would have

3 Robert and Joan Hollander translation. 4 All the infernal rivers, the Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, and Cocytus, are connected, as described in Inferno 14.116–88. 5 C. G. Jung, Archetypes, CW 9.1:88 (par. 167) and n4: “[W]hen love is lacking, power fills the vacuum.”

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prevented the journey. There is no need to thank Dis, who is finally revealed here in all his malice and futility. But Virgil presumably has never before seen Dis so clearly. Of course, Aeneas’s experience, though Virgil envisioned it, cannot be taken as Virgil’s own, but by his own account, he descended once before to the circle of Judas (cerchio di Giuda), the lowest place. He told Dante so (Inferno 9.22–30) when they were forestalled by demons before the walls of Dis, and Dante wanted to know whether someone from Limbo, like Virgil, actually knew the road. Virgil explained that he had not been dead long (he died in 19 BC) when the “cruel” (cruda) Erichtho, famous Thessalian sorceress, summoned him to fetch a spirit from the lowest depths. Then Virgil’s account is interrupted by the threat from the furies, so we never learn what Erichtho wanted, either from the spirit she summoned, or from Virgil.6 But such a witch (in Jungian terms, a shadow-Anima) would no doubt be canny enough to demand a human sage as witness in some transactions, to put a brake on demonic deceptions.7 Not that even a sage could penetrate all deceits. Virgil’s understanding apparently grows during his journey with Dante, though the poem only occasionally notes this. Between Virgil’s first descent and his second, Christ harrowed Hell and made some changes. For when Erichtho summoned Virgil, the universe was still in the charge of “false and lying gods” (dei falsi e bugiardi) as Virgil puts it, even though “the good Augustus” (’l buono Augusto) ruled at Rome (Inferno 1.71–72). Virgil’s epic had articulated a warily optimistic vision of the interactions between the Graeco-Roman pantheon and human beings, even though the Aeneid was never quite finished and, as it stands, ends on a sour note.8 Perhaps, on reaching Limbo himself, Virgil became gloomier, since things became worse for

6 Erichtho, in Lucan’s De bello civili 6.616–17, boasts that resuscitating a newly dead corpse is merely one of the easiest ways for sorceresses to learn the future. Virgil’s mention of Erichtho here bothered the early commentators; for an overview, see Hollander, DDP, on Inferno 9.19–27. Dante’s son Pietro rejects the story decisively in all three commentaries, (1) on Inferno 9.22–30; (2) on Inferno 9.16–30; and (3) on Inferno 9.22–27. He demonstrates from Christian authorities that necromancers cannot call souls back from the dead and that even scriptural accounts of such things, for example, 1 Samuel 28, must involve demonic illusions or impersonations. But Pietro allows that Virgil told the story for a good motive – to prevent Dante from succumbing to terror and abandoning the necessary journey. Dante’s word, “spirit,” could mean a “demon” as well as “soul,” not that we are shown lesser demons in Inferno 34. 7 On the “witch” as the shadow-Anima, see C. G. Jung to Albert Jung, 20 May 1947, Letters 1:462. 8 Virgil left instructions for the Aeneid to be destroyed when he died, but Augustus Caesar “countermanded” his will; see R. Deryck Williams, introduction to Virgil’s Aeneid I–VI, p. xi. Also, Vita Suetonii Vulgo Donatiana, pp. 193–94.

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Roman civilization before they got better. Erichtho, known to us only through Lucan’s still less finished epic, inhabits a more disturbed universe than Virgil’s. She lives in tombs, practices cannibalism, and freely plunders the offerings of others for use in her rites, which involve human and animal corpses, herbs, and poisons. Her incantations taunt and bully the underworld divinities; she even threatens to call upon the mysterious Demiurgus, an unknown divinity supposedly dwelling in an underworld beneath the underworld, who dares even to swear upon the River Styx and break his word, something the greatest of the Olympians feared to do.9 Certainly she seems willing to destroy all civilization to get her way. The underworld deities nevertheless grant her wishes, whether from fear or to silence her obnoxious voice for a while (De bello civili 6.27–28; 732–49). The human souls placed at her disposal presumably must be commanded or permitted by infernal powers, and so must Virgil have been. That is how he gained direct acquaintance with infernal ministers and mythological figures, where the Dantean Hell differs from the version in his Aeneid. But though Virgil no doubt regarded infernal ministers as legitimate authorities, he did not hold them all in equal esteem, even if, virtuous pagan that he was, he mostly cooperated for the sake of civilization. Erichtho probably had to promise him a reward for his help, perhaps immunity from further incantations, the gift she granted the corpse she reanimated in Lucan’s poem (De bello civili 6.762–67). Nevertheless, much about the relationship between heavenly and infernal authority was still unclear to Virgil. When Christ appeared in Limbo to free the believers of the Old Covenant, a great earthquake struck, so that “everywhere this deep foul valley trembled” (da tutte parti l’alta valle feda/ tremò) and he thought “the universe/ had felt love, by which, some believe,/ the world has been turned to chaos many times” (l’universo/ sentisse amor per lo qual è chi creda/ più volte il mondo in caòsso converso).10 Virgil mentions this in Inferno 12.31–43, as he stares at a massive landslide on the slope leading down into Circle 6, which had not been there on his previous trip and which presumably was caused by the same quake. From Dante’s perspective, Virgil is both right and wrong here: the earthquake, caused by love, did begin a new age, but not by turning all to chaos. Still, though chaos did not then consume the universe, Virgil and his companions found that in Limbo, their tolerable habitation, they were no longer the

9 Lucan, De bello civili 6.749; also, Duff’s n1 on p. 332 and n5 on p. 355. 10 My translation. Dante’s sons affirm that Empedocles was the philosopher who believed that love periodically returned the universe to chaos; see Jacopo Alighieri, DDP, on Inferno 12.37–43, and Pietro Alighieri (1, 2, 3), DDP, on Inferno 12.31–34. The Stoics also believed in a cycle of destruction and renewal, though not for the same reason, and Virgil seemingly alludes to this in his Fourth Eclogue; see Coleman, ed., introduction to the Eclogues of Virgil, pp. 130–31.

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most favored human souls in the universe but merely the least damned of the damned. Nevertheless, they might have perceived the removal of demonic guards from the outer gate of Hell as an improvement. About then, if not before, Virgil must have heard that his culture’s story about Dis, chief deity of the underworld, was not merely inexact, but a lie. The supposed ruler of Hell, instead of being the brother of the glorious Olympian king, was a rebellious daemon. However, sibling divinities could and did sometimes clash with each other in the Graeco-Roman pantheon and nevertheless achieve a stable political situation, so the different version might not have struck him as profoundly significant. Virgil, when he guides Dante, expects infernal ministers to obey divine commands, perhaps with some reluctance. He is surprised by the defiance in Inferno 9, but expresses confidence in divine help. In fact, we have seen that for Dante’s sake, his expression is stronger than his actual feeling, but he is proven right. Clearly he understands that demonic resistance will flare up from time to time. Yet in the last two circles of Hell, he is surprised by the extent of the demonic investment in fraud and treachery. His most critical lesson comes in Circle 8, when he and Dante learn that the earthquake accompanying Christ’s crucifixion destroyed the bridge on which they are traveling before it crosses the fifth circular moat (bolgia) (where hypocrites are sent). Malacoda, head of the demon-band guarding sinners of the fourth moat (sellers of public office), tricks both Dante and Virgil into thinking that another nearby bridge is still standing, which they can cross, and assigns an unwanted demonic escort to show them the way. Dante himself, warned either by instinct or by his religious upbringing, mistrusts and wishes to dispense with the escort, but Virgil apparently really believes that Malacoda is trying to do his duty. But when, in their overzealous pretense at helping Dante’s researches, the demonic escort gets dunked in burning pitch while matching wits with human fraudsters, Virgil and Dante escape into the next moat to avoid demonic revenge. Here they meet a file of slow-moving hypocrites, weighed down by glittering golden garments lined with lead beneath. Hearing Dante speak Tuscan Italian, Friar Catalano introduces himself and his partner as the two “Jolly Friars” who had been exercising the office of Podestà jointly in Florence when Dante was an infant, benefiting themselves and exacerbating quarrels instead of bringing about peace, which was their duty.11 Dante begins an ironic retort to Catalano’s self-introduction but interrupts himself when he sees a naked man staked out on the ground in the pattern of a crucifixion. This man, Catalano

11 The so-called “Jolly friars,” actually “Friars of the Order of the Knights of Our Lady,” imposed few austerities on themselves, certainly not celibacy or poverty, hence their nickname; see Carroll, DDP, on Inferno 23.91–108.

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explains, counselled the Pharisees that it was right (convenia) to make one man suffer (porre . . . a martìri) for the people (Inferno 23.115–17). In short, it is Caiaphas, the high priest who demanded Christ’s death.12 At this (in Carlyle/Oelsner’s translation, Inferno 23.124–26): Then I saw Virgil wonder over him that was distended on the cross so ignominiously in the eternal exile. (Allor vid’ io maravigliar Virgilio sovra colui ch’era disteso in croce tanto vilmente ne l’etterno essilio.)

Though Virgil must know the story by now, no doubt he is startled to see its aftermath so vividly before him. The cruel and humiliating Roman form of execution he also knew of, though that he avoided direct sight of it might be suggested in his account of Aeneas, who was told about but not shown the torture-house of Tartarus, and was warned not to concern himself too much about such things (Aeneid 6.548–627). Most amazing, though, was recognition that this punishment of the dignified man with a sacred office was a lesser wonder than the deed it punished, the crucifixion of the immeasurably greater and holier Christ. Until then, Virgil had seen Christ only in triumph, shattering the gates of Hell. This is his first glimpse, by indirection, of the suffering saviour. When he asks the way to the intact bridge, Virgil learns that all bridges over that moat fell at the time of the crucifixion. It is, however, easy enough to clamber out of the moat by way of the heaps of ruins. When Virgil shows his angry surprise at Malacoda’s lie, Friar Catalano needles him with a folksy platitude about how, in his own city, Bologna, he had learned about the devil, especially that he was a liar (bugiardo) and “the father of deceit” (padre di menzogna) (Inferno 23.145–48). Virgil leads Dante away, discontented, but knowing that the Harrowing of Hell, and the collapse of bridges over the moat of the hypocrites, has stripped away some illusions in the depths of Hell. Now for the first time, he will see Dis’s real situation. At the sight of Dis, Dante states that he himself was neither quite dead nor quite alive (Inferno 34.25). But Virgil suddenly knows the way forward. He tells Dante that they must depart, “for we have seen everything” (ché tutto avem veduto) (Inferno 34.68). It is not that Virgil has shown Dante everything, but that they have 12 According to Josephus, Antiquities 18.4.3, Caiaphas was first appointed high priest in AD 18. His words here, taken from John 11:49–53, apparently offer a divinely inspired understanding of Christ’s death, but do not accurately convey his own motives or feelings; hence his hypocrisy. Benvenuto da Imola, DDP, on Inferno 23.114–17, states that he acted from envy (invidia).

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seen it together. By seeking to deny all patterns, Satan lodged himself within the narrowest limits, beating his wings to reinforce his own ice-prison. The travelers go the opposite way, to liberty and friendship with the transcendent divine. Moreover, Satan lies at the center of a mandala, a mandala cut in half, with half of it reversed and displaced on the surface of the earth, forming Mount Purgatory, on the summit of which lies Earthly Paradise. From there, the heavens, in their spherical wholeness, are accessible. Satan’s body itself, marking the limit of possible evil and thus paradoxically the triumph of good, provides the path between the broken parts of the mandala pattern. Virgil instructs Dante to grip him around his neck, then waits for a moment when the beating wings are distant. With Dante clinging, he leaps upon Satan’s body, which is covered with fur that he can grip. Virgil then climbs downward, through the passageway to the center of the earth, and reverses his position on the other side. Next, he climbs upward and finally sets Dante down at the bottom of a rocky cavern. Disoriented, Dante sees Satan planted head downward now, only his legs and feet sticking in the air.13 Dante’s moral reversal and rebirth is completed in the upward climb through the earth, guided by the sound of a running streamlet (un ruscelletto), which can only be heard, not seen. This leads them back to the sight of the stars (Inferno 34.129–30).14 All three cantiche of the Commedia end with the word “stars”; here the word indicates that their goal is ultimately Heaven. When they emerge on Mount Purgatory, they are immediately challenged by Cato of Utica, one of Virgil’s former companions in Limbo, whom Christ brought away at the Harrowing of Hell, placing the lower slope of Purgatory under his governance (balia) (Purgatorio 1.66). At Cato’s demand for an explanation, Virgil flounders between assertions of innocence and personal appeals for good will. A lady, he says, descended from Heaven and he guides Dante at her request (Purgatorio 1.53). Besides, no laws have been broken; Minos laid no sentence on Virgil; and Dante seeks liberty (libertà), which Cato himself chose to die for at Utica. Cato’s wife Marcia sends her love and greetings (Purgatorio 1.49–80). Cato brusquely tells Virgil that flattery is not desired, Marcia no longer matters to him, and that he is immune to the concerns of the unsaved, but the blessed lady’s request is sufficient argument for Dante’s journey (Purgatorio 1.85–93).

13 Mount Purgatory is on the opposite side of the globe from Jerusalem. This geography is described in Inferno 34.106–126 and Purgatorio 4.67–71. Vernon, Readings on the Inferno, 1:xxix– xxxi, explains Dante’s geometrical concept. 14 Longfellow calls the ruscelletto the Lethe; Hollander, DDP, on Inferno 34.127–32, mentions the interpretation without supporting or refuting it.

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Cato’s presence on Mount Purgatory, both a link to Virgil’s pagan wisdom and a personified rejection of it, startles and puzzles. Like Brutus and Cassius (both now in Satan’s jaws), the historical Cato was an opponent of Julius Caesar who committed suicide when his cause was lost. Cato, it is true, avoided treachery. He never submitted to Caesar after fighting him, accepted no pardon, and feigned no friendship, all things which the other two did. Thus, Cato’s moral reputation survived him and even his suicide was accepted as positive, despite the great Plato’s having articulated a case against that act.15 For Cato, it was seen as a sacrifice, a step on his quest for purity. However, in his last hours, he did not seek to impose this renunciation upon others, but offered those around him the best advice he could for their future.16 Despite Cato’s coolness toward Virgil, his presence as Purgatory’s guardian actually provides endorsement for Virgil’s wisdom, since Virgil shared the high esteem which other literate Romans had for Cato. In the Aeneid, Cato is depicted on Aeneas’s divinely crafted shield as the lawgiver in Elysium.17 Lucan portrays Cato as a morally upright man willing to suffer to save his people from destruction, if only the gods would agree to lay the punishment intended for his people on him: So let it be: may the unmerciful gods carry off in plenty The Roman expiation; let us not cheat the war of any bloodshed. Oh, if only the gods, both of heaven and the world below, would allow This head [of mine, alone], to be condemned to bear all punishments! (Sic eat: inmites Romana piacula divi Plena ferant, nullo fraudemus sanguine bellum. O utinam caelique deis Erebique liceret hoc caput in cunctas damnatum exponere poenas!)18

15 Plato, Phaedo 62B–C, suggests that suicide involves abandonment of duty. So does Cicero in chapter 3 of “Scipio’s Dream” (Macrobius, pp. 71–72). Cato’s own choice influenced later generations, however, and Seneca, with Cato’s example before him, excused and even celebrated suicide; see The Epistles of Seneca, 2:168–80 (Letter 77). Dante, De Monarchia, 2.5.16, paraphrases Cicero in De Officiis (1.31.112), saying that for Cato, suicide might have been virtuous because it was consistent with a sincerely austere life. For more frivolous (levior) persons, it might be wrong. 16 Plutarch’s Lives, pp. 549–52 (“Cato the Younger”). 17 Aeneid 8.670: dantem iura Catonem. The god Vulcan, at the request of Venus, his wife, made the shield for his stepson Aeneas. See also Carroll, DDP, on Purgatorio 1.13–21. 18 De bello civili 2.304–8, my translation. Here is Duff’s translation for this passage: “So be it! Let Rome pay atonement in full to the pitiless gods, and let no man’s life be denied to the claim of war!/ But would it were possible for me, condemned by the powers of heaven and hell, to be scapegoat for the nation!” The allusion to the mysterious rite of the scapegoat (Leviticus 16–26), presumably unknown to Lucan, illuminates little here.

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Despite his austerity, fellow-feeling led him to attend the deaths of all who asked for him during a two-month journey which he led across the Libyan desert after Pompey’s defeat, enduring the same harsh conditions as the common soldiers (9.379–410; 500–510; 587–593; 606–18). When Cato is with them for their last moments, soldiers die bravely. As Duff renders Lucan’s words (De bello civili 6.885–87): [W]henever they call him, he hastens and confers a mighty benefit, greater even than life, by giving them courage to die; and the soldier is ashamed, when watched by Cato, to die with a groan upon his lips.

Presumably, this unconsciously Christ-like and priest-like attitude was what made him part of the flock which Christ rescued from Limbo. Witnessing Dante’s break with the past and his intention to grow to a new adulthood, Cato instructs Virgil to bathe Dante’s face in fresh water and gird him with one of the reeds that grow there (Purgatorio 1.112–36). This reed, suggesting the humble discipline of a new life, replaces the cord with which Dante failed to catch the leopard in Inferno 1, and which Virgil later threw down to Geryon (Inferno 17.106–36). Yet, in his prophetic role, predicting the renewal of the world, in the Fourth Eclogue, Virgil may be in some ways ahead of Cato, who seems dissociated from Eros, urging the climb on others, but not doing it himself. But Virgil, briefly taking up his prophetic role, alludes to Cato’s future glorification, evidently among the saved (Purgatorio 1.74). Purgatory Proper,19 the walled enclosure containing the seven terraces where the seven deadly sins are purged, remains a long climb ahead of them. In the newly sun-bathed surroundings, Dante sees his own shadow on the mountainside ahead of him, alone, without Virgil’s, and is frightened, feeling deserted. This echoes his childhood bereavement and also foreshadows the coming time when he will be alone, responsible for singular political and moral choices which will set him apart from others and send him into exile. Virgil reassures him, but reminds him that he, Virgil, is, after all, the soul of a man who died and was buried long ago (Purgatorio 3.27). His guidance, though it will last a while more, will finally end. Signifying their new closeness, Dante addresses Virgil as “father” (padre) for the first time (Purgatorio 4.41).20

19 Vernon, Readings on Purgatorio, 1:viii, invents or is an early user of the handy term, Purgatory Proper. 20 Previously, Dante had likened Virgil to a father (Inferno 8.10), and to a mother (Inferno 23.38), but he first addresses him as “father” here. After this, he does it often: Purgatorio 13.34; 15.25, 124; 17.82; 18.13; 23.13; 30.50. The last is an apostrophe to Virgil when he is no longer present.

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Inevitably, as they climb and converse with friendly souls, Virgil’s apparent exclusion from the heavenly kingdom (and by extension, that of the others in Limbo) becomes more troubling both to him and to Dante. Puzzling over the obscure purposes of the Trinity, Virgil remembers his companions, the philosophers Plato and Aristotle, still in sorrow (lutto) over their inability to understand them (Purgatorio 3.31–45). Later, after meeting his admirer the poet Sordello, like him a citizen of Mantua, Virgil explains that he has been kept from Heaven “not for doing, but for not doing” (Non per far, ma per non fare) (7.25). Sympathetically, he also speaks of the little innocents (pargoli innocenti) who are “bitten by death’s teeth” (dai denti morsi de la morte) before they can be cleansed of original sin (7.31–33). He and the other sages in Limbo, he explains, did not know the theological or holy (sante) virtues (faith, hope, and charity), but they knew and followed the four natural or cardinal virtues (Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, and Temperance).21 Thus, guiding Dante, Virgil struggles to understand an unfamiliar moral system, but without knowing it, he is also mastering it. Taking on the task of helping Dante was surely an act of charity, and his perseverance, despite dangers and obstacles, shows faith and hope. As one scholar remarks, “[T]he hour of Virgil’s salvation was near and he was unconscious of it.”22 They do not need to walk all the way. From the valley of the neglectful princes, where Sordello has led them (Purgatorio 7 and 8), Dante is carried in his sleep by St. Lucia to the gates of Purgatory Proper. There, an angel holding authority from St. Peter gives Dante permission to enter, and marks seven P’s on his head, one for each of the seven deadly sins. As the mental and spiritual work of understanding the sins and their expiation takes precedence, troubles about Virgil’s status recede into the background for a time. On each terrace, souls undergo a punishment representing the sin in question, and practice an exercise intended to develop the opposing virtue. Examples of the sins and virtues are depicted as sculpture, painting, or bas-relief (Purgatorio 12.13–69) or expressed by sound and voice (Purgatorio 13.29–36). Later, visions simply arise in Dante’s mind (Purgatorio 15.86–117). But Dante, a living man whose experience is visionary, generally is permitted to converse with souls and perceive the process of purgation without experiencing the punishment except through empathy. He understands that he may undergo such penalties later (Purgatorio 13.133–38), although on the other hand, his life may be such as to expiate his offenses before death.

21 Hollander, DDP, on Purgatorio 1.22–24. 22 Earle, introduction to Shadwell’s translation, p. lxvi.

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When Dante is used to the ways of the place, Virgil’s status once more becomes a concern. As they leave the fifth terrace (for avarice) and are proceeding to the sixth (for gluttony), the mountain suddenly shakes and all souls cry “Gloria in excelsis Deo” (Purgatorio 20.136). Neither knows what this means, but soon another soul joins them and explains that this happens when a soul has completed its purgation and is ready to rise to God, which has just happened to him, Statius, author of the Thebaid, about twelve hundred years after his death. Virgil knows of Statius and that Statius is an admirer of his because the poet Juvenal had already arrived in Limbo with this information (Purgatorio 22.13–18). However, since Statius died during the reign (AD 81–96) of the Emperor Domitian, a persecutor of Christians,23 Virgil is puzzled to find him among the believers. Statius explains that Virgil’s own Fourth Eclogue, with its mention of the Sibyl and its prophecy about the wonderful child who would bring back the golden age, had moved him to listen to Christian preaching. He kept his conversion secret, however (Purgatorio, 22.64–91), for which he later spent four hundred years on Terrace 4, expiating his sin of sloth (accidia). Then he proceeded to Terrace 5, where avarice and prodigality are punished as opposite sides of the same sin. At Virgil’s query, he admits that his guilt was in prodigality, more common among poets (Purgatorio 22.31–47). As for Statius, he puzzles over how Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue led others to salvation, but not himself, and compares him to a man carrying a torch behind him, lighting the way for others rather than himself (Purgatorio 22.64–73). But the analogy seems unconvincing: the torch might shed more light behind than in front, but if it did not illuminate the ground before its bearer’s feet at least a little, he could not keep walking. The three poets continue together through Terrace 6 (for Gluttony). But leaving the seventh and last terrace, for lust, they meet a crisis. It starts, deceptively, with a ceremony by then familiar to Dante: the angel of the terrace pronounces a blessing in Latin (Purgatorio 27.8), based on the Beatitudes from the Gospels, indicating the end of penance. The words Beati mundo corde, “Blessed are the pure in heart,” seem fitting for those just purified of lust, but the Gospel implies something more profound: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8 KJV). Cleansed of all sins, souls leaving Purgatory are ready for the beatific vision. But this passage is also to be an ordeal for them, and the angel suddenly makes another announcement, of which Longfellow aptly renders the blend of formality and shock (Purgatorio 27.10–12):

23 Toynbee, “Stazio,” Dante Dictionary, pp. 509–11.

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“No one farther goes, souls sanctified, If first the fire bite not; within it enter, And be not deaf unto the song beyond. . .” (“. . . Più non si va, se pria non morde, anime sante, il foco; intrate in esso, ed al cantar di là non siate sorde . . .”)

Hearing this, Dante is terrified, remembering how he has seen men burned alive,24 and apparently he fears not merely pain (which his companions would also experience) but also death (which both of them have already experienced).25 Though Virgil reminds him that he has guided him safely through many dangers and assures him that he will be unscathed (Purgatorio 27.25), Dante still seems paralyzed. Then Virgil, remembering what made Dante make the journey in the first place, adapts his approach. As Longfellow’s translation continues (Purgatorio 27.35–44): Somewhat disturbed he said: “Now look thou, Son, ’Twixt Beatrice and thee there is this wall.” ... Even thus, my obduracy being softened, I turned to my wise Guide, hearing the name That in my memory evermore is welling. Whereat he wagged his head, and said: “How now? Shall we stay on this side?” then smiled as one Does at a child who’s vanquished by an apple. ([T]urbato un poco disse: “Or vedi, figlio: tra Bëatrice e te è questo muro.” ... [C]osì, la mia durezza fatta solla, mi volsi al savio duca, udendo il nome che ne la mente sempre mi rampolla. Ond’ ei crollò la fronte e disse: “Come! volenci star di qua?”: indi sorrise come al fanciul si fa ch’è vinto al pome.)

Seizing the moment, Virgil decides to enter the fire first, probably recognizing that Dante will not complete the journey unless he leads. He asks Statius, who had been walking beside him for a while, to bring up the rear. Once they enter

24 In 1281, Master Adam (Inferno 30.49–90), probably with an accomplice, was “burnt alive on the public road that leads from Florence to Romena” for forging florins with an admixture of base metal; see Vernon, Readings on the Inferno, 2:533–34. Dante may have witnessed that execution, and others. 25 Robert Hollander, DDP, on Purgatorio 27.17–18.

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the flames, Dante finds it hotter than boiling glass, but Virgil encourages him, saying of Beatrice, “I think I already see her eyes” (Li occhi suoi già veder parmi) (Purgatorio 27.54). The fire blinds them, but from the other side, they hear the song the angel had mentioned and follow the sound. At last, on the other side, they are greeted with words which, though in Latin, Dante’s readers would have understood at once, both because of the similarity between the Latin and Italian vocabulary and from liturgical familiarity; it would also have been clear that in this context, the words could only be Christ’s: “Come, you blessed of my father” (Purgatorio 27.58). This is a quotation from Matthew 25:34: “Venite, benedicti Patris mei.” Dante looks toward the voice, but meets a light so bright that he must turn away. The shining presence speaks again, this time in Italian, “a sort of paraphrase of [Christ’s words in] John 12:35”:26 “Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you” (KJV). The three believe that they are being reminded of the fact, revealed long before (Purgatorio 7.49–60), that they can only climb upward on Mount Purgatory during the day. They hurry on. However, in their Gospel context, these words are an admonition to heed Christ while he is present, since his continued presence is not inevitable. The travelers obey, but the sun soon sets, so they must stop. Each lies down to sleep on a step of the stair they are climbing (Purgatorio 27.73). Commentators generally do not interpret the shining presence who speaks Christ’s words as Christ himself. Many take it as an angel,27 perhaps the cherubim set to guard Eden after the expulsion of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:24.28 But Christ’s words, whether spoken in person or conveyed by a faithful messenger, have the same force. Seemingly, Dante and his companions, Virgil included, have been welcomed into the kingdom of Heaven by Christ. The welcome renders obsolete any previous remarks Virgil made about his exclusion from Heaven. Indeed, for Virgil to lead Dante out of his alienated state, he must leave it successfully himself. Virgil’s acceptance by the divine Self involves, as Jung would put it, conscience, and “the transcendent function”; that is, “the discursive cooperation of conscious 26 Robert Hollander, DDP, on Purgatorio 27.61–63. In Purgatorio, the coming of the dark is not a consequence of failing to walk in the light, as it is in the Gospel context. 27 Jacopo della Lana, DDP, on Purgatorio 27.55–60. Tozer, DDP, on Purgatorio 27.58. 28 Pietro Alighieri (3), DDP, on Purgatorio 27.55–117. Pietro does not gloss this passage in the first two versions of his commentary. If present, such an angel might well blind Dante, who has been overcome by the brilliance of several angels early in Purgatorio; for example, 15.28–29, 17.49–54, and 24.139–42. However, the angel of the seventh terrace, which ought to be as splendid as any of these, excited no such reaction. Christ’s brilliance will exceed Dante’s powers even in Paradiso 23.25–33, where he does not understand what he has encountered until Beatrice tells him (Paradiso 23.34–39).

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and unconscious factors or, in theological language, of reason and grace.”29 Opposites have combined, and the balance of archetypal imagery involving Divine Logos and Divine Eros have realigned to include Virgil as well as Dante. The earliest commentators, it is true, ignore or deny Virgil’s acceptance, mainly because the authoritatively transmitted version of Limbo in those times seemed to exclude the possibility. Later, some scholars acknowledged the implications only to deny them.30 More recently, some accept the passage for what it says and add further evidence.31 Indeed, a closer examination of the welcoming words of Purgatorio 27.58 in their Gospel context only make the case stronger. It is a parable of the Last Judgment, where Christ, the king in his glory, gathers all humanity together and places the good “sheep” on his right and the wicked “goats” on his left. To the sheep he says, “Come, ye blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34 KJV), and praises them for the good things they did for him, such as feeding him when he was hungry, visiting him in prison, and so on. The puzzled sheep ask when they ever helped him in these ways, and he answers that what they did for “one of the least of these my brethren,” they did for him. Though coming to the rescue of a bewildered soul lost in a dark forest is not on the list, it obviously fits. Within Dante scholarship, there is now lively debate about Virgil’s salvation.32 The Jungian perspective is that Virgil, the Wise Old Man, had provided Dante with a pagan wisdom and helped him transform it into a Christian wisdom he could use. Dante’s relationship with his inner divine, or Self, has been mended through Virgil’s guidance. It is both reasonable and intuitively evident that Virgil is included in the reconciliation. We might consider as a counterargument the idea that, with Dante’s regrowth, he has absorbed what Virgil represents into his egoconsciousness, and thus Virgil’s salvation as a separate individual is not a meaningful question. But such an interpretation ignores the Commedia as a work of art. Virgil is a character in the poem.

29 See C. G. Jung, “A Psychological View of the Conscience,” CW 10:453 (par. 854). 30 Carroll, DDP, on Purgatorio 27.55–63, states, “the welcome, of course, does not extend to Virgil, who must return to his place in Limbo.” 31 Martinez and Durling, in Durling’s edition of Purgatorio, p. 467, state that the words addressed to Virgil in Purgatorio 27.22 and 27.58 suggest that Virgil “will eventually be saved.” They cite Iliescu. 32 Barolini, “Does Dante Hope for Vergil’s Salvation,” pp. 156–57, says that while within the poem, “the pilgrim may hope for Virgil’s salvation,” outside it, the poet Dante must leave Virgil unsaved for the sake of the poetry itself, to avoid taking away “the edge, the tension.” On the other hand, Chance, Emergence, p. 71, says that the Commedia is “a redemptive poem” which itself acts as a “figura Christi” to save the virtuous pagans.

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However, Virgil will vanish within three cantos and never be mentioned again in either Purgatorio or in Paradiso, a striking reticence given his importance since he appeared in the first canto of the Inferno. Considering the Commedia’s origin in a dream, it seems inevitable that Dante had strong feelings about Virgil’s disappearance. Virgil is not simply an abstraction he invented and could forget. Dante knows where Virgil went. But surely, Carroll argues, if Dante imagined that Virgil had been saved, he would have alluded to his presence somewhere in Paradiso.33 Indeed, to clarify the fate of so central a character was artistically appropriate, and since Dante did not do it, something outside aesthetic concerns probably restrained him. After all, his comfortable Limbo for the virtuous pagans already did arouse some ire among the authorities.34 Pronouncing the reversal of a damnation would have caused more, since in Virgil’s case (unlike that of the Emperor Trajan), no such story was traditional. Perhaps, considering the delicacy of the matter, Dante intended to make some careful allusion within the last thirteen cantos of Paradiso, which he had not polished to his satisfaction before he died. In any case, at the end of Purgatorio 27, when Dante wakes on the stairs to the Earthly Paradise, Virgil tells him that his instruction is complete, and he must govern himself from now on. As Longfellow renders it (Purgatorio 27.139–42): Expect no more or word or sign from me; Free and upright and sound is thy free-will, And error were it not to do its bidding; Thee o’er thyself I therefore crown and mitre! (Non aspettar mio dir più né mio cenno: Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio, E fallo fora non fare a suo senno: Per ch’io te sovra te corono e mitrio.)

Yet Virgil, Statius, and Dante remain together exploring the Earthly Paradise for the next canto. Then, in Purgatorio 30, a mystical pageant begins to assemble and Dante, suspecting that Beatrice is about to appear, turns confidingly to Virgil, like a child to his mother (mamma), as he says himself, expressing his nervousness with an allusion to the Aeneid and Queen Dido’s growing passion for Aeneas.35

33 Carroll, DDP, on Purgatorio 30.49–54. 34 Barański, “Early Reception,” pp. 528, 532. Giorgio Padoan, “Il Limbo Dantesco,” p. 379. 35 Purgatorio 30.46–48; Aeneid 4.23.

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Only then does he realize that Virgil is gone, and he weeps in the Earthly Paradise, just as his beloved Beatrice arrives, for whose sake he had journeyed all the way through Hell and Purgatory.36 She rebukes him (Purgatorio 30.55–57):37 Dante, though Virgil goes his way, Do not yet weep, do not weep yet, For there’s another sword to make you weep. (Dante, perchè Virgilio se ne vada, non pianger anco, non piangere ancora; ché pianger ti conven per altra spada.)

Beatrice’s words here imply that Dante should weep for Virgil later, but that is sarcasm. If it were ever appropriate to weep for Virgil, it would be the moment Dante misses him. If Virgil were a damned soul, Dante, when his salvation is complete, will be as unaffected by his fate as Cato was, and there will be no occasion to weep for him. On the other hand, if Virgil has been quietly taken aside by other blessed souls for his own individual welcome, there is no reason to weep for him at all; Dante’s tears are for himself. He is disconcerted at suddenly facing Beatrice alone, no longer as an infant in need of rescue but as an adult accountable for the direction his life has taken. For him it is nearly as terrifying as Final Judgment dramatized in “Dies Irae.” Beatrice speaks Dante’s name, and he writes it into the verse, by “necessity” (necessità) (30.61–64), since the rhetorical conventions he follows discourage the use of one’s own name.38 But Beatrice speaks it because the next stage of his journey involves their unique relationship and his individuation. His journey though Purgatory with Virgil has restored his access to the spiritual balance, the archetypal harmonies available to his culture, the loss of which precipitated his crisis, but now he must find his individual way within it. Beatrice here reproaches Dante for disloyalty to her memory, but she is no longer concerned about his sinful deeds but with his failure to follow his own best insights. When Dante faces

36 Benvenuto da Imola, DDP, on Purgatorio 30.49–51, offers his lively impression of what might have happened: Virgil (representing Philosophy) is so terrified (timore territus) at the sight of Theology (Beatrice) approaching with bands of angels, that he immediately flees to Hell (ad infernum) to seek refuge with the poets and philosophers there. He would have liked to tell Dante “I leave you now in the hands of those who speak with God” but his fear did not allow it. 37 My translation. 38 Singleton, DDP, on Purgatorio 30.55, points out that this is the only time his name is mentioned in the Commedia.

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and admits his errors, Beatrice pronounces her pardon. At last he is permitted to drink from the River Lethe, which brings forgetfulness of sins (Purgatorio 31.101–3), and the Eunoe, which brings memory of good things (Purgatorio 33.112–45). After that, he is ready to follow his best insights where they take him, under the guidance of Beatrice, now representing Divine Eros, through Paradiso. But Virgil and the children of Limbo will not be completely forgotten.

Chapter 10 Beatrice, the Heavenly Spheres, and the Rose of Paradise Dante’s Paradiso is not thirty-three cantos of terza rima about changeless eternal bliss. Until the end, it is about change and movement. For the first twenty cantos, changes in Dante’s perception are the focus as he ascends through the spheres under Beatrice’s guidance. From Canto 21 on, the impending changes to the cosmos are increasingly in evidence, as saints and angels prepare for the final overthrow of evil and the Last Judgment. Amid all this movement, balance is kept, and stability suggested by spherical and circular motions, and culminating in the final mandala shape of the Heavenly Rose in the Empyrean, where the pilgrim’s journey ends. The harmonious accord between Dante’s ego-consciousness and his partly unconscious Self is confirmed in a brief glimpse of the beatific vision, mediated by the Virgin Mary. At peace with God, Dante will bring no distinct images of this experience back to waking consciousness. However, attached by Divine Eros to “the love that moves the sun and other stars” (l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle) (33.145), he is now ready to face a troubled world (and worldly troubles) with patience and love. Dante’s journey starts in the Earthly Paradise as he gazes at Beatrice, while she gazes upward. He feels himself transformed to something more than human, and likens himself to the fisherman Glaucus, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, who became a sea-god after eating a certain herb by chance.1 However, Dante notices no motion until Beatrice tells him that they have traveled high above the earth (Paradiso 1.68–90). Presently, Dante sees translucent faces, like reflections in a pool. But when he turns to see what is reflected and finds nothing, Beatrice tells him that these images are themselves blessed souls in the sphere of the moon, who had made religious vows which they did not keep. After he converses with Piccarda Donati, his relation by marriage, who had been removed by force from her convent (Paradiso 3.42–123), Beatrice discloses that blessed souls are not bound to this sphere or to others in which they appear to him, but are all truly in the same Heaven. All souls are as blissful as they can be, since God’s joy in them causes their joy (Paradiso 4.27–39). Still, objectively, there are different degrees of happiness, which are revealed to Dante by the souls’ appearing in different spheres

1 Ovid’s Metamorphoses 13.949–51; see Carroll, DDP, on Paradiso 1.67–75. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-011

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as he ascends. In Jungian terms, there is dynamic tension here, and a harmonious union of the opposing principles of equality and hierarchy. In the next sphere, of Mercury, souls congregate who were motivated by desire for honorable fame, which they earned honorably (Paradiso 6.112–19). Their radiance, greater than that of the previous sphere, mostly obscures their human forms, though some glimmering of eyes and mouth can be seen (Paradiso 5.124–26). In the sphere of Venus and above, blessed souls are so hidden in their own light that Dante can discern neither limbs nor faces. Since this ranked revelation of souls is done for Dante’s instruction, his lesson must be to attach less importance to the physical forms he knows, and instead discern realities revealed in other ways. Paradoxically, he is also several times promised that after he reaches the Empyrean, he will see the blessed souls with the human forms and faces that will appear on Judgment Day (Paradiso 22.58–63; 30.43–45). Presumably, by then his trained perceptions will see more deeply into their forms, so that the bliss will be greater. Dante spends four cantos (Paradiso 10–14) with theologians in the sphere of the Sun, and three (Paradiso 15–18) among the warrior saints in the sphere of Mars. The soul-lights within these two spheres combine into shapes communicating their preoccupations: three garlands in the Sun; in Mars, a red cross. Dante’s visit to the Just Rulers in the Sphere of Jupiter ends the portion of the Commedia which he showed to readers before he died. The soul-lights of the Just Rulers not only join to shape an eagle, but that eagle speaks with one voice, expressing the thoughts of them all in unison. In Paradiso 19, this Justice Eagle censures the faults of current Christian rulers, many of whom, at the Last Judgment, would call Christ’s name but find themselves farther from him than those who did not know it (Paradiso 19.106–11).2 Then in Paradiso 20, the Eagle names and tells the story of some individuals composing it. Two of the greatest are reputed pagans now revealed as Christians. One is the Emperor Trajan, whose brief miraculous resurrection for purposes of conversion was a story with a long history in Dante’s time.3 The heavenly presence of the other, Ripheus of Troy (Paradiso 20.68), is told here by Dante for the first time. Ripheus is otherwise known only from Virgil’s Aeneid, where, as ancient Troy was falling to the Greeks, he joins Aeneas in a desperate last attempt to save the city, and dies in the action.4 Though this, the Eagle explains, was long before Christ’s incarnation, Ripheus still died a Christian, because he sought justice so earnestly that divine grace revealed the true faith to

2 Matthew 7:22–23. 3 See Chapter 6. 4 Virgil, Aeneid 2.339; 394–428.

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him, and the three theological virtues baptized him (Paradiso 20.68–72; 118–38). Hence his somewhat unexpected presence in Heaven. Indeed, the Eagle declares, even they who already see God do not know all the saved, but they are quite ready for more such surprises, since they will what God wills in every way (Paradiso 20.134–38). Ripheus, known only from Virgil, seems a surrogate for Dante’s literary father and guide, and in fact, the strong tradition taking Virgil as pagan prophet for Christ might even create the expectation that he had received a pre-Christian “baptism” like that of Ripheus, which conforms to Thomas Aquinas’s articulation of how pagans might have been saved in ancient times, or modern ones, when beyond the reach of accredited preachers.5 For Virgil, the problem is his current location in Limbo. Salvation for him would call into question the static nature of the place as defined by religious authorities of Dante's time. As Dante ascends each level, Beatrice grows more beautiful. In the next sphere, that of Saturn, she warns him that if she smiles before he becomes adjusted, he will be burned to ashes, just like the mythological Semele, mother of Dionysus, who demanded to see her lover Jupiter in his divine form (Paradiso 21.4–12).6 Inevitable destruction of the impure by divine purity is a theme of this sphere. St. Benedict’s denunciation of lax monasteries in Dante’s time stirs the assembly to such high indignation that they sweep “like a whirlwind” (come turbo), up Jacob’s ladder into the eighth sphere, that of the Fixed Stars (Paradiso 22.99). There Dante must pass oral examinations, like a candidate for a master’s degree, on the three theological virtues. St. Peter examines him on faith (Paradiso 24), St. James on hope (Paradiso 25) and St. John the Evangelist on love (Paradiso 26). That finished, St. Peter denounces recent and near-future popes who are no true successors of his, being “rapacious wolves in pastors’ clothing” (in vesta di pastor lupi rapaci), (Paradiso 27.55–57). Finally, Dante and Beatrice ascend to the Crystalline Sphere or Primum Mobile, and through it to the tenth, last, and highest heaven, the Empyrean. Perspective shifts monumentally. Until then, the heavens had appeared as ever widening spheres revolving around the earth, but now they appear as widening circles around the unseen God. As Dante’s eyes adjust, he at first sees a river of tawny (fulvido) light (Paradiso 30.62). Then the great Rose of Paradise takes shape before his eyes, shining white (candida), a living amphitheater for the heavenly assembly. Each blessed soul is assigned a throne according to merit. Dante, after observing some of this, turns to ask questions of Beatrice, only to find

5 See Chapter 6. 6 Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.256–315.

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her gone, and in her place an old man. At his rushed question, this elder explains that Beatrice sent him to guide Dante to his final goal, the vision of the Trinity. He points Beatrice out in the Rose, the third row from the top, near the Virgin Mary (Paradiso 31.59–69). When Dante looks, he sees her as clearly as if she were beside him, since distance in the Empyrean is not like ordinary distance (Paradiso 31.70–78). Separated, yet not really, he thanks her for all she has done, and she smiles at him before turning back “to the eternal fountain” (a l’etterna fontana) – that is, the center above from which God’s presence radiates (Pardiso 31.79–93). Beatrice has departed from Dante as Virgil did, and seemingly has sent a Wise Old Man in her place, but the signs indicate that Dante is near to becoming his own Wise Man, receiving his own intuitions directly from the Self or godwithin and deciding what to do about them. The old man reveals himself as the “faithful Bernard” of the Virgin Mary (Paradiso 31.101–2), that is, Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, famous for his songs to the Virgin, and author of mystical writings which Dante recommended to doubters in his letter to Can Grande.7 His knowledge of the Logos is more culturally approved than Virgil’s was, so it is both surprising and not that Bernard appears aged. Age can suggest both wisdom and frailty, but Dante has been told he will see the blessed in the Empyrean as they would appear on Judgment Day (Paradiso 22.58–63; 30.43–45), and that meant, according to the best authorities, including Augustine and Aquinas, that they would be given resurrection bodies in their most perfect form, roughly at age thirty.8 Bernard, in appearing aged and beyond his prime, “an old man” (sene) though “a tender father” (un tenero padre) (Paradiso 31.63), does not follow that pattern. The deviation is significant, part of Dante’s individuation process. He can learn from Bernard, but Bernard’s individual wisdom belongs to another and an older man, and cannot simply be transferred to Dante. Dante must himself gain the individuated wisdom he needs by following his example and seeking the beatific vision, to which St. Bernard is leading him, offering prayers for the intercession of the Virgin Mary. To prepare him, Bernard directs Dante’s attention to the Virgin Mary, describing her as more like her son than anyone else there (Paradiso 32.85). He then points out others among the enthroned, in the process revealing the wholeness represented in the Rose. The Virgin sits with Eve at her feet (Paradiso 32.6) opposite

7 PDP Epistola 13, 80 (par. 27). 8 Carroll, DDP, on Paradiso 31.94–111. See also Aquinas, Summa, suppl., q81, art. 1; pp. 3865–66; and Augustine, City of God, bk 22, chap. 15.

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John the Baptist, and on her right is St. Peter, with Adam on her left. John the Baptist has St. Anna on his right and Lucia on his left; while directly below him sit the saints Francis, Benedict, and Augustine in descending order (Paradiso 32.31–36; 121–26). There are fourteen rows all the way around, with the lower seven occupied by children. Thus, the Rose of Paradise, divided into four quarters, is balanced symmetrically between Old and New Testament, children and adults. These are the first children we have seen since Limbo. They occupy about half of the Rose, filling it with youthful vibrancy, but calling to mind once more Dante’s regression to infancy, the empathy for his own children which accompanied it, and the desolate sighing infants of Limbo. Unavoidably, this creates some perplexity for Dante, and Bernard addresses his unspoken question. Indeed these children are in Paradise, he says, “by no deserving of their own” (per nullo proprio merito si siede), and yet seats are assigned them, higher and lower in their section, not by accident, but because of the natural differences in personality and aptitude, created by God (Paradiso 32.42). Such predestined differences among children, Bernard explains, building on this point, are shown by the scriptural example of Rebecca’s twins, Jacob and Esau, already contending in her womb.9 Warming to his subject, Bernard falls naturally into the sermonizing mode, no longer addressing Dante with the personal “tu,” the heavenly etiquette,10 but speaking as if to an assembled congregation (Paradiso 32.67): “And this is specifically and clearly made known to you [all]” (E ciò espresso e chiaro vi si nota).11 Bernard now speaks in the official mode addressed to all his pupils; puzzling par-

9 Genesis 35:22, Malachi 1:3, Romans 9:2. 10 In general, the souls in Paradiso address each other with the familiar “tu” rather than the polite “voi,” except that Dante consistently addresses Beatrice with “voi,” a remnant of their courtly relationship, until his final thanks to her in Paradiso 31.79–93. One exception occurs when Dante addresses his ancestor Cacciaguida using “voi,” in Paradiso 16.10–12. Beatrice’s smile then reminds Dante of the lady of Malohaut, who coughed at Guinevere’s “first fault” (al primo fallo) – that is, when she first kissed Lancelot. Modern commentators, and some early ones, see the cough as a warning to Guinevere. Other early commentators, more familiar with the story, realize that the lady of Malohaut either wishes to be (see Lancelot, trans. Elspeth Kennedy, pp. 318–24, esp. 318) or already is (see Jacopo della Lana, DDP, on Paradiso 16.13–15, and Francesco da Buti, DDP, on Paradiso 16.10–27) part of a courtly double dating situation, involving herself, Guinevere, Lancelot, and Lancelot’s friend Galehote. Thus, the Lady of Malohaut is encouraging Guinevere, not warning her off. Beatrice therefore might be implying that she enjoys sharing Dante’s excessive esteem with someone else for a change. 11 Singleton, DDP, on Paradiso 32.67–69, notes the plural vi form and interprets it as Bernard’s address to “mortals.”

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adoxes and private musings will be dealt with, if it all, in another setting.12 Bernard reviews the contemporary doctrine about unbaptized infants: in the earliest times, an infant would be saved if its parents had faith, but later (after Abraham) circumcision became necessary for boys, and then finally, in “the time of grace” (’l tempo de la grazia), the requirement became “perfect baptism” (battesmo perfetto). Though once an innocent unbaptized child would go to Heaven, now “such innocence is detained below” (tale innocenza là giù si ritenne) (Paradiso 32.82–84). This incongruous linking of “times of grace” to less mercy for innocents is calculated to arouse the listener’s resistance. But as Beatrice had explained earlier, a mind adult in love (Paradiso 7.115–17) would see more deeply into paradox and mystery. Bernard cannot satisfy him; the answer he needs is from the vision to which Bernard leads him. Recognizing that Dante is ready, Bernard abbreviates his speech, and begins his prayer to the Virgin. Dante then briefly sketches his vision, with allusions to circles, mirrors, and Christ’s human image, apologizing for his inability to express the inexpressible. He sees three circles of light, like rainbows, one generating another and the third generated by the other two: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He strives to understand the connection between the second – that is, Christ, with his human nature – and the other two, but he cannot, until grace in the form of lightning (fulgore) strikes and gives him a glimpse. Although the full vision has departed from memory, he says its sweetness remains (Paradiso 33.63) and he believes that his will and desire are now shaped by “the love that moves the sun and other stars” (l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle) (Paradiso 33.145). By the end of his journey, Dante has, in a sense, outgrown the troubles with which he began. His final perspective is not static; he will change and grow again as he faces what lies ahead. The elaborate circular patterns which he follows on his journey, downward through Hell and then upward through Mount Purgatory, and then through the ascending spheres to Paradiso, show the tenacity with which he pursued his goal. Now he has come to understand his personal Shadows, and to accept them as part of himself, while rejecting their bad ideas and impulses. He is at peace, with a stable center, at peace with his inner god, his Self, and at harmony with the transcendent divine. He is an adult in a dangerous world where he will meet great troubles, but aware of the benevolent powers which underlie and surround everything.

12 Apparently, St. Bernard himself hoped that unbaptized children might be saved by their parents’ faith; see Carroll, DDP, on Paradiso 32.76–84.

Bibliography For citations within this book, the Princeton Dante Project (PDP) is a key source, since it interfaces with the Dartmouth Dante Project (DDP) and also provides Latin and Italian texts of Dante’s minor works, in the versions published by the Società Dantesca Italiana (SDI), formatted with translations which can be viewed simultaneously on the screen. (The Società Dantesca Italiana currently also provides Dante’s works and many translations on its own site, Danteonline.) The critical edition of Dante’s Commedia, edited by Giorgio Petrocchi, is available through the Dartmouth Dante Project (DDP) and through Danteonline. The DDP also provides an enormous selection of Dante criticism and commentary from the earliest times until the present. The PDP, interfacing with the DDP, supplies additional tools for accessing and comparing these resources. Thus, many commentaries cited in this work, are easily available through the DDP. For the reader’s convenience, when a passage of commentary is available through DDP, DDP is cited along with the cantica name (Inferno, Purgatorio, or Paradiso),1 and the canto and line numbers to which they are keyed; for example, Carroll, DDP, on Inferno 1.11. (Proems or general notes on a whole canto are keyed to “0.”) If the reader should prefer instead to consult the printed work, this information will be enough to locate the relevant passage. Certainly the printed editions often contain information not directly available on the DDP, including editorial introductions, summaries, and translations. Apart from the critical Petrocchi edition, other editions and translations of Dante’s Commedia are listed in the bibliography here by last name of editors or translators. Dual language editions include those by Louis Biancolli, Robert M. Durling, Robert and Jean Hollander, John D. Sinclair and the Temple Classics (Oelsner/Carlyle). Other English translations include those by John Ciardi, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Dorothy Sayers. William Warren Vernon’s volumes of Readings on the Commedia involve complete translations, embedded in commentary. C. H. Grandgent’s edition includes copious notes in English, but no full translation. Dante’s minor works are available from PDP, usually with translations aligned. The Italian texts are provided by the Società Dantesca Italiana, which also provides these texts on its website, Danteonline, with details about each editions published under its auspices. Thus, in this bibliography, these editions by the Società are listed directly under Dante Alighieri’s name, and unless otherwise specified, citations from Dante’s minor works come from them. Citations to minor works in the text of this book come, unless otherwise specified, as they appear on PDP and Danteonline, except that in some cases Arabic numerals replace Roman numerals in conformity with Chicago Style. Besides the main edition used by the Società Dantesca Italiana and PDP, other editions and translations of Dante’s minor works are listed by the editor or translator’s last name. These include works by Stanley Appelbaum (La Vita Nuova), Teodolinda Barolini (Dante’s Lyric Poetry [Rime]), Santa Casciani and Christopher Kleinhenz (Fiore and Detto d’Amore), Domenico De Robertis (Rime), Kenelm Foster and Patrick Boyde (Rime /Dante’s Lyric Poetry), Richard H. Lansing (Convivio), Barbara Reynolds (La Vita Nuova), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (La Vita Nuova), Paget Toynbee (Epistolae/ Letters) and Philip H. Wicksteed (Convivio). Material from some of these is (as indicated) also available on Danteonline and PDP.

1 In his letter to Can Grande (Epistola 13.27, sec. 9, on PDP). Dante calls each major section of the Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) a cantica, cantiche plural. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-012

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Index Abati, Durante (possibly Dante’s maternal grandfather) 26n17 Accidia 151 see also sloth Acheron (river) – Dante’s crossing of 21, 101–107, 124 – other references 123, 142n4 Aeneid (of Virgil) – and Vestibule 104n7 – crossing the Acheron (or Styx) 106–108, 124n12 – and Limbo 108, 109 – and golden bough 142 – and Cato 148 – and Ripheus of Troy 160, 161 – other references 12, 61, 63, 90n13, 94n28, 106, 107, 128, 129, 143, 144, 146, 155 Active imagination (Jungian technique) 13, 42, 47, 50, 58, 106 Albertus Magnus 61n24, 66, 112 Albert of Hapsburg 98n41 Alighieri see individual family members: Alighiero, Antonia, Beatrice, Dante, Jacopo, and Pietro Alighieri, Alighiero (Dante’s father) 25–28 Alighieri, Antonia (Dante’s daughter, perhaps to be identified with Beatrice) 35n53 Alighieri, Beatrice (Dante’s daughter, perhaps to be identified with Antonia) 35–36n53 Alighieri, Dante see Dante Alighieri Alighieri, Dantino 36n53 Alighieri, Durante (Dante’s original name) 26n17, 63 see also Durante, narrator of Fiore Alighieri, Giovanni (Dante’s son?) 36n53 Alighieri, Jacopo (Dante’s son) – and Dante’s last thirteen cantos 2 – death and inheritance 35–36n53 – and Dante’s last eclogue 53n129 – on Pope Celestine V 104n9 – other references 26n20, 88n6, 93n24, 97n38, 133n17, 144n10, 166

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513725-013

Alighieri, Pietro (Dante’s son) – and Dante’s letter to Can Grande 4 – names Beatrice Portinari 33–34 – death and inheritance 35–36n53 – and Dante’s allusion to the smashed font 48–49 – and Dante’s “halting” foot 89 – and the Hound (Veltro) 97 – on Pope Celestine 104n9 – on virtuous pagans 116 – on carnal and spiritual sins 123–124 – on Rusticucci and his wife 132–133 – rejects Virgil’s story about Erichtho 143n6 – other references 1n3, 5n24, 7n24, 25n11, 41n76, 43n83, 61n24, 88n6, 94n31, 106n13, 108n19, 113n8, 122n5, 135n20, 144n10, 166 Alighiero, (Dante’s great-grandfather, son of Cacciaguida) 28 Amor (god of love) 5, 43n88, 52, 55, 56–58, 60–72, 74, 75, 82 Anima (Jungian archetype) – unconscious feminine aspect of male personality 10–12 – as Sophia 15n74 – and Beatrice 16, 32, 56, 57, 71, 77, 98, 102 – and Wise Old Man 16–18 – and right hemisphere of the brain 17 – and mothers 29, 62 – and Magician 56 – and Shadow 90n14 – and Erichtho 143 Animus (Jungian archetype) – unconscious masculine aspect of female personality 11–12, 17–18 – and Shadow 90n14 Angevin (Neapolitan dynasty founded by Charles of Anjou) 31n36, 72n61 Anselmuccio (died with Count Ugolino of Pisa) 136n28, 138 Antenora (second sub-circle of Circle 9 of Hell) 134, 135

180

Index

Antonia Alighieri see Alighieri, Antonia Aquinas, Thomas see Thomas Aquinas Argenti, Filippo see Filippo Argenti Aristotle – his Ethics translated by Brunetto Latini 31 – and soul’s location 61n24 – cited on marriage being a form of friendship (amicitia) 78n4 – on “incontinent” sins 94 – as Virgil’s companion 150 Arnaut Daniel 43n88 Augustine of Hippo – reports March 25 as date for incarnation and crucifixion 1n4 – and Limbo for infants 113 – and “tolerable damnation” 118, 134 – other references 19n93, 58, 66 Augustus (successor of Julius Caesar) 41n76, 95, 109n23, 143 Avarice (deadly sin) – excluded from Garden of Mirth 65 – and envy 93 – and Circle 4 of Hell 123 – and Terrace 5 of Purgatory 151 Avignon papacy 47, 98n41 Baptistery of St. John in Florence 42n81, 48 Barolini, Teodolinda 6n25, 62n26, 72n60, 73, 78n5, 81n15, 154n32 Beatrice (Dante’s beloved) – death of 5n22, 28, 37, 42, 58, 74, 75 – and Dante’s Anima 16–19 – and Divine Eros 20 – Dante’s childhood love for 27–30, 32, 55, 56 – her greeting and its withdrawal 27, 30, 32, 55–57, 68–72 – her father, brother, and husband 33, 34, 68 – and allegorical figure for Theology 34 – and the “Canzone Montanina” 51, 52 – Virgil and 19, 20, 73, 101, 102, 119, 152, 153, 155, 156 – meets Dante in Purgatorio 38, 62, 63, 97, 98 – and Philosophy 80–82

– guides Dante through Paradise 157, 159, 161–164 – other references 35, 45, 67, 69, 74, 77, 78, 86, 106–108 see also Portinari, Beatrice Bella (mother of Dante) – uncertain date of death 25, 28 – possibly daughter of Durante Abati 26n17 Beltrando, Cardinal 2n9 Benedict XI, pope (successor of Boniface VIII) 44, 50n116 Big dream 42, 43, 60, 101 Boccaccio, Giovanni – and Dante’s last thirteen cantos 2 – as Dante’s earliest biographer 23–25 – and Beatrice Portinari 27, 33 – and Brother Hilary’s letter 34 – and Beatrice Alighieri (Dante’s daughter) 35, 36n53 – and Gemma Donati 36, 37, 77 – and accounts of the Inferno’s first seven cantos 42, 46, 48 – other references 4, 23, 24, 97n39, 102n3, 122n5, 125n13 Bolgia (moat in eighth circle of the Inferno) 2n5, 145 Benvenuto da Imola (early commentator) – and Bolognese scholars 130 – other references 6n25, 42n83, 46, 49, 50n116, 80, 84n22, 89, 90n13, 102n3, 106n13, 126n14, 146n12, 156n36 Bologna 34n50, 34, 53, 115, 146 Boniface VIII, pope (r. 1294–1303) – death of 42 – succeeded Celestine V 84, 104 – other references 15, 41, 43, 45, 47–50, 85, 93, 98n41, 102 Bianchi, or “White” faction, at Florence 40, 41, 48 “Black” or Neri faction at Florence see Neri Boethius 5n24, 82, 106n12 Brigata (il Brigata, died with Ugolino of Pisa) 137 Brother Hilary see Hilary, Brother Brunetto Latini (Dante’s mentor) – as Dante’s personal Shadow 21 – role in educating Florentine youth 30–32 – recognizes Dante as he approaches 39–41

Index

– renounces love as a poetic subject 43n88 – buried at the church of Maria Maggiore 44 – among the Sodomites 129–132 – see also his works, Tesoretto and Trésor Bruni (Lionardo Bruni Aretino) 25, 27, 30, 31, 40n733, 48n109, 51n119 Brutus (murderer of Julius Caesar) 142, 148 Caesar Augustus see Augustus Caiaphas 146 Caina (first sub-circle of Circle 9 of Hell, named for Cain) 134 Campaldino, Battle of 40n73 Can Grande della Scala (ruler of Verona) – Dante’s letter to 1n1, 2–4, 162, 165n1 – and flattering references in Paradiso 47 – proposed identity for Hound (Veltro) 96, 97n38 Cantica (plural: cantiche) Dante’s word for three main sections of his Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso) 165n1 Capaneus 131 Casella (Florentine musician) – recognizes Dante as he approaches in Purgatory 39, 40 Cato of Utica (Marcus Porcius Cato) – guardian of Purgatory 20, 147–149, 156 – rhetorical contest with Julius Caesar 31 – crosses Libyan desert 130 – his suicide 148, 149 Cavalcanti, Cavalcante de’ (father of Guido, Dante’s friend) 128 Cavalcanti, Guido (Dante’s friend) 57, 61, 72n61, 74, 78, 128 Celestine V, pope (r. 1294, d. 1296) – as Dante’s Shadow 21 – resigns papal office 84, 104 – formerly the hermit, Peter Murrone 104 – death and canonization 104n9 Chance, Jane – on Boccaccio’s family 24n6, 33n128 – on Dante’s family 36n53 – on the Commedia as a “redemptive poem” 154n32

181

Charles of Anjou (Charles I of Sicily and Naples) – defeats King Manfred 32 – and Beatrice of Provence (his first wife) 72n61 Charles II of Anjou (Charles II of Sicily and Naples) – his daughter Beatrice 72n61 – his visit to Florence 84 Charles Martel, King of Hungary (son of Charles II of Sicily and Naples) – misfortune of his descendants 37n60 – recognizes Dante as he approaches in Paradiso 39, 40 – quotes Dante’s poetry back to him 84 – his daughter Beatrice 72n61 – visit (1294) to Florence 84, 89 – death of 84 Charles of Valois (brother of Philip IV of France) – appointed “peacemaker” by Boniface VIII, engineers Neri coup of Florence 45 Christ – and crucifixion 1, 25n11, 139, 146 – and Harrowing of Hell 2, 14, 103, 107, 108, 111, 115, 144, 145, 147, 149 – bridegroom of Church 11 – and Jungian Self 14, 95, 116, 138 – interactions with Shadow 15n72, 92 – identification with Logos 15n74, 88, 94 – invoked in Courtly Love 18–19 – and Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue 19 – and Veltro (Hound) 97, 98 – his words addressed to Virgil outside Purgatory 20, 153, 154 – real ruler of Hell 142 – other references 3, 29, 44, 64, 74, 102, 117n26, 118, 135, 160, 161, 164 Church – symbolic Bride of Christ, and Jungian Anima 11 – corrupted as Harlot 98 – conflict between the Latin and the Greek 112 – and worldly authority 115

182

Index

– and “suffrages” 118, 119 – church buildings as places of assembly and burial 8, 44, 45n99, 54, 69, 138n31 Ciacco – as a personal Shadow of Dante 21, 123 – recognizes Dante as he approaches 31 – punished for gluttony 39 – Boccaccio’s story about 40 – as prophet 40, 48, 123 Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) – opposed Julius Caesar 32, 10n923 – and “Scipio’s Dream” 58, 5n912, 60n17 – wrote about friendship (amicitia) 78n5 – in Limbo 109–110 – on suicide 148n15 Cino da Pistoia (Dante’s friend) – interprets dream-sonnet 61 – on fickleness 70n55 Circle of Judas see Judecca Circles of Hell – system explained (nine major circles) 93–94, 121 – sub-circles and “turns” (gironi) 128, 134, 145 Circle 1 of Hell see Limbo Circle 2 of Hell 121 see also Lust Circle 3 of Hell 122 see also Gluttony Circle 4 of Hell 123 see also Avarice Circle 5 of Hell 123 see also Wrath, Sloth, Envy and Pride Circle 6 of Hell – and Epicurean Heretics 128 – and landslide 144 Circle 7 of Hell – for the violent (further subdivided) 128, 133, 134 Circle 8 of Hell – and theft 2n5 – and Simoniacs 48 – place for punishing Simple Fraud 133 – and Malacoda 145 Circle 9 of Hell – place for punishing Treacherous Fraud 133 – and Ugolino of Pisa 134 City of Dis 94, 107, 121, 124, 127, 129, 141, 142

Clement V, pope (r. 1305–1314) – prophecy of his death 47, 48 – corrupt bargain with Philip IV of France 50 – moves papacy to Avignon 98n41 – his successor 112 Clemenza (wife of Charles Martel) 84 Cocytus (frozen river or lake of Hell) – end of infernal river system 142n4 – other references 134, 142 Collective unconscious 10, 13, 18n91, 56, 60, 61, 88, 93, 114 see also Personal unconscious; Unconscious Compassionate lady (pietosa donna) of La Vita Nuova – introduced 75 – speculative identification with Gemma Donati 77, 79, 81, 82 – Dante identifies her in Convivio as Lady Philosophy 20, 79, 82 Convivio (Dante’s unfinished work) – and angelic influence on human memory 3n13 – and the “compassionate lady” as Lady Philosophy 20, 77n2, 81–83 – and Dante’s views on human age and lifespan 25n11, 136n26 – rhetorical rules about reticence 36 – work begun after Dante’s exile 9, 45 Constantine (first Christian Roman Emperor) – and Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue 19n93 Courtly Love 18, 30, 32, 33, 62, 65, 67, 69, 72n61, 78, 80, 84, 163n10 Dante Alighieri – birth of 20 – death of 53–54 – life and composition process 23–54, (chapter 1). See also his works: Convivio, Divine Comedy (Commedia), De Monarchia, Fiore, Rime, Rime petrose, Vita Nuova, De Vulgari Eloquentia Day of Judgment see Final Judgement; Judgment Day Della Scala, Can Grande see Can Grande della Scala Dis (Roman god of the underworld)

Index

– Kalsched’s view of 8 – Virgilian name for Satan 19, 141–143, 145, 146 – other references 106, 107, 127 see also City of Dis Dis, City of see City of Dis Divine Comedy (Commedia) of Dante – reasons for title 1 – unique accomplishment of 77 see also the titles of the three cantiche: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso Divine Eros 16, 20, 29, 77, 98, 102, 142, 154, 157, 159 Donati, Corso (Dante’s relation by marriage) 34n51, 40, 84, 85 Donati, Forese (brother of Corso Donati) – recognizes Dante’s approach in Inferno 39 – poetic tenzone with Dante 40 Donati, Gemma (Dante’s wife) – and the pietosa (compassionate lady), who becomes Lady Philosophy 20, 77, 79–83 – dates of marriage contract and marriage 26, 37–39 – children by Dante 35 – death of 36n54 – and first seven cantos of Inferno 41, 46n100 – other references 24, 53, 79, 86 Donati, Manetto (Dante’s father-in-law) 26, 40n75 Donati, Piccarda (sister of Corso and Forese Donati) 159 “Donne ch’avete” (sonnet in chap. 19 of La Vita Nuova) 72, 73, 122n6 Durante (narrator of Il Fiore) 63–67 Durling, Robert M. 6n25, 14n67, 40n71, 48n110, 49n114, 97n38, 140n41, 141n2, 165 Earthquake (accompanying Christ’s crucifixion) 1, 144, 145 Eighth Circle of Hell 1, 145 see also Circles of Hell Eros (Greek deity) 63 Eros (Jungian “principle of relatedness”) 16, 20, 29

183

– associated with the Anima 16 – and Logos 17, 18 – and Courtly Love 32n45, 64 – and Amor 56, 63 – other references 77, 78, 82, 94, 98, 102, 134, 142, 149, 154, 157, 159 Envy (Latin and Italian invidia) – excluded from the garden of Mirth 65 – and the “primitive” Shadow 91 – and the she-wolf 93, 96 – a deadly sin 123, 125n13 – and Filippo Argenti 126 – and Caiaphas 146n12 Exodus pattern in Inferno (observed by Singleton) 88n1 Filippo Argenti 21, 40n70, 125, 126 Final Judgment 111, 112, 116, 119, 123, 129n3, 156 Fiore (poem) 63–69, 82, 165 Florin 37n53, 38n62, 68n52, 84n21, 134n18, 152n24 Fourth Eclogue of Virgil 19, 111, 144n10, 149, 151 Florentine style dating (New Year begins March 25) 1, 26n20, 85n26 Freccero, John 88, 89, 103n5 Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Emperor (d. 1250) 89n12, 129 Frederick III, King of Sicily 34n51, 41n78 Gaddo (Gerardo), starved with Count Ugolino of Pisa 139 Gawain 91 Gemma Donati see Donati, Gemma Ghibelline (Italian political party, traditionally allied with the Holy Roman Emperor) 26n17, 31n36, 32, 48, 134n18, 135 Gluttony (deadly sin) – and Circle 3 of Hell 122, 123 – and Terrace 6 of Purgatory 151 – other references 40, 94 Golden bough of Persephone 106, 142

184

Index

Good Friday, and the date of Dante’s vision 1n4 Gregory I (Gregory the Great, pope) 58, 117, 118, 119, 121n2 Greyhound see Hound Guelph (Italian political party, traditionally allied with the pope) 26n17, 32n41, 48, 134n18, 135 Guido da Montefeltro 21, 133, 136n24 Guido da Pisa (early commentator) 3, 5n23, 50n116, 88n6, 102n3, 116n22, 125n13 Guinevere (King Arthur’s queen) – and Lancelot 71 – and love story read by Francesca da Rimini and Paolo 122 – allusion in Paradiso 163 Hapsburg, Albert of see Albert of Hapsburg Harrowing of Hell 1, 103, 107, 108, 115, 146, 147 Heavenly Rose see Rose of the Empyrean Henry VII (Henry of Luxembourg, Holy Roman Emperor) 34, 50, 51n119, 52, 97 Hilary, Brother 34, 47n106 Hollander, Robert 4, 6n27, 38n64, 43n85, 45n94, 53n128, 53n129, 56, 64n37, 68, 84n22, 93n26, 95, 97n38, 94n104, 130n8, 141n2, 142n3, 143n6, 147n14, 150n21, 152n25, 153n26, 165 Honorius of Autun 58, 113n8 Hound (Veltro, Greyhound) 21, 96–98 Ilaro, Frate (sometimes Ilario) see Hilary, Brother Incontinence (category of sin) – debate whether associated with lonza (leopard) or she-wolf 93 – Aristotle on 94 – other references 95, 121, 123 Individuation – also called self-realization 91 – distinct from individualism 15 – other references 14, 19, 33, 77, 92, 105, 109, 124n11, 156, 162 Indulgence – Pope Boniface offers plenary indulgence in Jubilee year (1300) 41, 42

Inferno (first cantica of Dante’s Divine Comedy) – and Boccaccio’s account of the first seven cantos 34n51, 42–46, 48 – and speculative date of completion 50, 106 Inflation (when ego identifies with Jungian Self) 69, 74 John XXII, pope (successor of Clement V) – plot against 2n9 – favors older view of Final Judgment 112 Jubilee year 41, 42 Judecca – Circle of Judas, fourth sub-circle of Circle 9 of Hell, named for Judas Iscariot 135, 143 Judgment Day 95n34, 113, 117, 119, 160, 162 see also Last Judgment; Final Judgment Julius Caesar 31, 95, 109, 135, 142, 148 Jung, Carl Gustav – on ego and Self 7, 8 – preference for naïve art 9 – his view of Dante 10 – on Anima and Animus, and Self 11, 16, 29, 56, 57, 143n6 – on Brother Klaus 12 – and active imagination 13, 42 – and individuation 14 – and Shadow 15, 56, 89–92, 95 – on Logos and Eros 16–18, 63, 94 – on the mandala in Dante’s Paradiso 20n95 – and “big dreams” 60 – and the collective unconscious 60, 61 – preference for interpreting a dream-series rather than a single dream 62 – on the sea as a symbol of the unconscious 88n5 – on the abandoned child archetype 108 – on eastern vs. western religions 114 – his view of Self compared with that of Thomas Aquinas 116 – and conscience 153, 154n29 – other references 6, 32n25, 58, 67n42, 132n13, 138n32, 142n5 Jung, Emma – on active imagination 13n63 – on self-realization 15n17

Index

– on Logos and Eros 18 – on the Magician archetype 56n7 – on the color white 58n10 – on Animus vs Anima 90n14 – and Shadow 91n19 Jungian Self see Self (Jungian archetype) Kalsched, Donald E. – views on Dis, Limbo, and childhood trauma 8, 9, 105, 113, 115 – on Anima, Animus, and the hemispheres of the brain 17, 18 – observes that psychotherapy stimulates significant dreams 42n82 – associates collective unconscious with “spirit world” 60, 113, 115 – other references 13n59, 116n21 Klaus, Brother (also called Nicholas Flüe) – made patron saint of Switzerland 10 – mandala in his art 11, 12 Lady Philosophy, see Philosophy, Lady Lancelot (Arthurian knight) – subject to amorous trances 71 – becomes a monk 81 – his love story read by Francesca da Rimini and Paolo 122 – allusion in Paradise 163 Langland, William (author of Piers Plowman) 2 Last Judgment 35, 129, 154, 159, 160 see also Final Judgment; Judgment Day Latini, Brunetto see Brunetto Latini Leopard see Lonza Lewis, C[live] S[taples] – defines Eros 32n45 – paraphrases Albertus Magnus 66 – views on Courtly Love 67 – concept of Hell as “tourniquet” 113, 114 – other references 9n44, 78n4 Liberty – Roman and Christian concepts of 20 – Dante’s concept in De Monarchia 32 – associated with the emperor 51

185

– and Cato of Utica 147 Lion – in first canto of Inferno, appears to Dante 5, 93, 94, 98 – can represent both Christ and Satan 94 – associated with giant in Purgatorio 98 Limbo – and Harrowing of Hell 1, 108, 127, 144, 145, 147, 149 – and Kalsched’s view on dissociation 8, 113, 115 – visited by Christ “in essence,” according to Aquinas 14 – Beatrice visits 16, 101, 102 – infants in 19, 108, 150, 157, 163 – and virtuous pagans 21, 108–110, 115–117, 150, 151, 155, 157, 161 – changing concepts of 21, 107, 110, 111, 113, 117, 119 – ancient poets in 44 – named for Latin Limbus, or “hem” of Hell 107, 111 – protective aspects of 113, 114 – and Elysian fields 114 – not under Minos’s jurisdiction 121 – other references 133, 143, 154 Logos (epithet for Christ; also Jung’s term for masculine mode of consciousness, complementing Eros) 15–18, 56, 64–66, 82, 88, 94, 114, 142, 154, 162 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 5, 49n113, 72n59, 87, 94n24, 96, 97n38, 98, 101, 141n1, 141n2, 147n14, 151, 155, 165 Lonza (often called “leopard”) – associated with Dante’s personal Shadow and incontinent sins 89, 90, 93, 94, 98 Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Roman poet) – in Limbo 109 – and Cato 130, 148, 149 – and Egyptian Ptolemy 130n20 – and Erichtho 43n6, 144 Lucifer, Luciferan 8n135, 142 see also Dis; Satan

186

Index

Lupa see She-wolf Lust (deadly sin) – and Courtly Love 33 – and lonza or leopard 89, 94 – punished in Circle 2 of Hell 121, 122 – carnal as opposed to spiritual sin 123 – and seventh terrace of Purgatory 151 Malacoda (demonic official) – gives date of Dante’s vision 1, 42, 107 – subtly resists divine authority 142, 145, 146 Malaspina family 45 see also Malaspina, Conrad; Malaspina, Morello Malaspina, Conrad – in Purgatory, predicts that Dante will enjoy his family’s hospitality within seven years 47 Malaspina, Moroello – Purgatorio reportedly dedicated to 34n51 – returns first seven cantos of Inferno to Dante 46, 47 – and “Canzone Montanina” 51 Mandala – and wholeness 8n36, 11, 12 – and structure of the Inferno 19, 20, 147 – and Rose of the Empyrean 20, 159 – and Noble Castle in Limbo 109 Mary (Virgin Mary) 11, 19, 20, 102, 159, 162 Monarchia (Dante’s work) – burned after Dante’s death 2n9 – makes emperor responsible for human liberty 32, 51, 148n15 – Dante may have laid aside the work for Purgatorio 52 Montefeltro, Guido da see Guido da Montefeltro Mozzi, Andrea di (bishop of Florence) 130 Neri, or “Black” faction, at Florence 40, 45, 48 Nicholas Flüe see Klaus, Brother Nino Visconti see Visconti, Nino

“Oltre la sfera” (lyric in Vita Nuova chap. 41) 28, 35, 75 Ovid (Roman poet) 109, 162n6 Paradiso (third cantica of Dante’s Divine Comedy) – Boccaccio’s story of the last thirteen cantos, discovered only after Dante’s death 2, 53, 155 Parzival 71n58, 91 Peredur 71n58 Perini, Dino 46n100 Personal unconscious 18n91, 56 see also Collective unconscious Phlegethon, third loop of infernal river system 128, 142n4 Piers Plowman (Middle English dream vision) 2 Philosophy, Lady (claimed by Dante as his second love) 20, 39, 45, 79, 82–84 Pietosa donna see Compassionate lady Petrose see Rime petrose Plato 7n29, 16, 32n45, 63, 148, 150 Podestà (judicial and military official) 85, 145 Poggi, Andrea (Dante’s nephew) 26n18, 45, 46n100 Poggi, Leon (father of Andrea Poggi) 26n17 Popolo (Italian for “people,” sometimes used by Villani to mean “Republic”) 83n25 Portinari, Beatrice (daughter of Folco, sister of Manetto) – married Simone de’ Bardi 33 – other references 34, 68 see also Beatrice (Dante’s beloved) Portinari, Folco – father of Beatrice, Manetto, and other children 33 – death of 73 Portinari, Manetto (son of Folco) 33 Pride (deadly sin) 91, 93, 123, 125n1 Primum Mobile (Crystalline sphere) 161 Persephone 106, 142 Ptolomea, third sub-circle of Circle 9 of Hell 134–136

Index

Purgatorio (second cantica of Dante’s Divine Comedy) – reportedly dedicated to Moroello Malaspina 34n51 – speculative date of completion 51, 52 Purgatory (location) – Virgil proposes to guide Dante there 16, 21, 98, 101, 102 – created by Satan’s fall, forms broken mandala with Hell 20, 147 – Dante’s great-grandfather Alighiero still doing penance there 28 – gathering of souls bound for 107n15 – and Cato 148 – Mount Purgatory and Purgatory Proper 149, 150 – departure from 151 – upward progress limited to daylight 153 – other references 95n34, 113, 118, 156, 164 Quaternity (Jungian configuration representing “all sides of the situation”) – she-wolf, lion, lonza and absent Hound 21, 97, 98 – Medusa and the three faces of Dis 127 Ravenna – and Dante’s death and burial 53, 54 – other references 24n9, 25, 35–35n52, 46n100 Rime (Dante’s lyrics) – differences between collections published 72n60 Rime petrose (lyrics) 38, 64n36 Ripheus of Troy (character in Virgil’s Aeneid) 160, 161 Roman de la Rose see Romance of the Rose Romance of the Rose (French poem by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun) 63–65, 66n42 Robert the Wise, King of Naples (son of Charles II) 37n60 Rose of the Empyrean – and mandala 20, 159, 163 – Beatrice enthroned there 80, 162

187

Ruggieri (Pisan Archbishop, former ally of Ugolino) 134, 135, 136n24, 137, 138n31, 140 Satan 142, 147, 148 see also Dis Sayers, Dorothy L. – and Dante’s “Così nel mio parlar” 39 – and Gemma Donati’s contributions to the image of Beatrice 77 – on “impulsive” sins 94 – on the older view of death as sleep 112n5 – on Limbo 114 Sea, imagery in the Inferno 88, 104 Second Circle of Hell 121 see also Circles of Hell Self (Jungian archetype) – and ego 7 – analogy with Freudian superego 8 – the god-within 9 – the total personality, good and bad, conscious and unconscious 10, 12, 92 – androgynous or a couple 11 – and Christ 14, 20 – and self-realization 15, 162, 164 – and Anima and Animus 16, 17, 102 – and Logos and Eros 17, 70 – and the transcendent God 119, 142 – and conscience 153, 154 – and mandala 159 – other references 19, 91 Self-realization 15 see also Individuation Seven Deadly Sins 31, 121, 149, 150 see also Avarice, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Wrath Shadow (Jungian archetype) – rejected as inferior by ego-personality 10, 15 – belongs both to personal and to collective unconscious 18n91 – Dante meets multiple manifestations of 19, 21 – and Satan 19, 103 – and Pope Celestine 21, 104 – and Brunetto Latini 21, 132 – and Ugolino of Pisa 19, 133, 134 – sometimes as autonomous complex 51

188

Index

– confrontation with 89, 99 – and the lonza or leopard 88, 89, 93 – Jung and the “primitive” Shadow 90, 91 – Voltaire as Jung’s personal Shadow 91 – Gawain as Parzival’s friendly Shadow 91 – Christ with the two thieves as variants of the Shadow 92 – she-wolf as shadow-Eros 94 – and Francesca da Rimini with Paolo 21, 122 – and Ciacco 31, 123 – and Guido Cavalcanti 128 – Erichtho as shadow-Anima 143 She-wolf – confronts Dante in Canto 1 of Inferno 13, 93–98 – associated with Harlot in Canto 32 of Purgatorio, and part of a quaternity involving the Hound 98 Sloth (deadly sin) 123, 151 Sodomites 30, 32, 129–132 Statius (Publius Papinus Statius, Roman poet) 20, 135, 151, 152, 155 Stony rhymes see Rime petrose Styx (river) – Dante’s crossing of 124 – second loop of infernal river system 142n4 – other references 123, 128, 144 Suicide – punished in Circle 7 of Hell 128, 129 – and Piero della Vigna 129 – and Cato of Utica 148 Sullen, souls submerged in the Styx 123 Tenzone (poetic “contention”) – Dante and Forese Donati 40 – Dante Alighieri and Dante da Maiano 62n26 – Bondie Dietaiuti and Rustico di Filippo 132 Tesoretto (Little Treasure) – dream vision by Brunetto Latini, perhaps intended as preface for Trésor anthology 31 – describes Brunetto’s exile 32 – Brunetto renounces love poetry 43n88 – condemns sodomy 130

Tesoro (“Treasure,” title applied to both to the Italian translation of Brunetto Latini’s Trésor and to his dream-vision, later called the Tesoretto) 31 Third Heaven – Apostle Paul’s experience of 3 – to be identified with Dante’s First Heaven in his Letter to Can Grande, and the Tenth Heaven in his Paradiso 3 – and various ways to number the heavens 4n15 – and Dante’s Heaven of Venus 83, 84 Thomas Aquinas – identified Paul’s Third Heaven with the Empyrean 4n15 – on whether infants in Limbo regret their status 13n9, 113 – on Christ’s descent into Hell 14 – discussed dreams 58 – student of Albertus Magnus 66 – regarded marriage as a kind of friendship 78 – concept of motion 88 – views on souls and location 106n12 – cited by Bottagisio on “baptism by desire” 108n9 – and salvation of pagans 116–119, 161 – on bodies resurrected on Judgment Day 162 Tolerable damnation – concept of 118 – and Ugolino of Pisa 134 Tolomea see Ptolomea Trajan (Roman emperor) – granted salvation through the prayer of Pope Gregory I 117–119 – differences between his case and Virgil’s 155 – in Dante’s Paradiso, appears among just rulers 160 Trésor (Brunetto Latini’s anthology) – contents of, commended to Dante 31 – sodomy condemned in 130 Tyrants, punished in Circle 7 of Hell 128, 134

Index

Uguccione (died with Count Ugolino of Pisa) 137 Uguccione della Faggiuola 35 Unconscious – and the sea 88 – other references 7, 8, 9, 11–14, 18, 19, 24n9, 28, 29, 49, 52, 56, 62, 67, 74, 75, 89, 92, 102, 106–109, 111, 113, 114, 119, 129, 131, 134, 150, 154, 159 see also Collective unconscious; Personal unconscious Usurers 129, 131 Usury 112n6, 130, 131 Vestibule 104, 142 Veltro (Greyhound) see Hound Vernon, William Warren 38, 44n93, 49n114, 83n18, 87, 88, 89n7, 103n5, 104n7, 105n10, 107n14, 130, 140n40, 147n13, 149n1, 152n24, 165 Verona 96 Villani, Filippo (Florentine chronicler, nephew of Giovanni) 4, 26n17, 53 Villani, Giovanni (Florentine chronicler) 30, 31n34, 32n41, 38n62, 40n74, 41, 42n81, 44n92–93, 50n116, 84, 85n26–27, 134n18 Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) – guides Dante through Hell and Purgatory 1, 15, 16, 19–21, 49, 81n13, 93–96, 97–99, 101–109, 111, 113n7, 114–117, 119, 121–129, 131–133, 137, 141–156 – and his Aeneid 12, 63 – as Wise Old Man 15, 16, 19, 20, 102 – a father figure for Dante 28, 30, 149 – cooperates with Beatrice 73, 101, 102, 119 – addresses Dante as son 30, 105, 152 – death in 19 BC 107, 143 – his Fourth Eclogue 111, 151

189

– and Jungian Logos 114 – controversy concerning salvation of 119, 150–55 – and previous infernal journey with Erichtho 143–146 – and Statius 151, 152, 155 – other references 28n251, 22n7, 46n102–3, 47, 53, 160–162 see also Aeneid of Virgil; Fourth Eclogue of Virgil Visconti, Nino – recognizes Dante’s approach in Commedia 39 – grandson of Ugolino of Pisa 40, 44, 135 – his widow Beatrice 72n61 – complains to Pope Nicholas IV of Ruggeri’s crime against Ugolino 136n24 Vita Nuova (Dante’s youthful work) 5, 16n75, 20, 23n2, 26n17, 27–29, 33, 34, 37, 39, 45, 51, 52n124, 55–64, 67–75, 77–83, 136n26, 165 Virgilio, Giovanni del (Bolognese scholar and poet) 53 Vulgari Eloquentia, De (Dante’s Latin treatise) 45 Whites (political faction at Florence) see Bianchi Wise Old Man (Jungian archetype) – Virgil as 15, 16, 102, 132 – connection with Anima 17 – and Magician 56 – and Brunetto Latini 132 – and Bernard of Clairvaux 162 Wholeness 12n52, 17n85, 18, 20, 21, 29, 58, 105n11, 147, 162 Wrath (sometimes deadly sin, also divine attribute) 19, 105, 111, 123, 126, 140