Gustav Dore, Dante and Virgil gazing at heavens.
"Into the yellow of the eternal Rose that slopes and stretches and diffuses fragrance of praise unto the Sun of endless spring." - Dante, Paradiso 30: 124-126
The soul's journey - from the Dark Wood to the Eternal Rose with the Heart of Gold.
The endless Love on the 'unending road' (‘la infinita via’ Purg 3: 34-39).
“Eternity”, said Boethius, “is the perfect and simultaneous possession of unending life”—unending, not in the sense of endless prolonging, but in the sense that a sphere in three-dimensional space has neither end nor beginning—and the entering into this eternity is beatitude.
If Dante's journey is ours, then so too is his refuge, that dream of rational freedom in which Dante outreads his readers, spellbinding by words, conjuring the meanings between the lines and beyond them. I should know, I have tried mapping the man and his vision by words. It can't be done. There is an anarchic excess at work, something core, something beyond enclosure by reason and language. Dante told us all along that ultimate reality was beyond words. Hence my interest in the musical model at the heart of Dante's work - and the universe.
I have 3,167 pages 1,019,703 words on Dante. My eyes have turned red in editing, and I have been strongly advised to rest. I spent the last two weeks of editing with one eye closed, causing strain and headaches. I have to rest in any case, without instruction, given that I have reached the point of exhaustion. I now need an editor, someone who, with a table of contents in hand, is able to go through this text and select the best passages.
Here is what I had in mind:
1) Introduction – theoretical and practical reason, freedom as appreciation of necessity (reconciling subjectivity and objectivity); the desire for knowledge and the desire for communion; human beings as truth-seekers and meaning seekers.
2) Why read Dante today? Freeing Dante from his fourteenth century intellectual and institutional determinations.
3) The problem - Disorder : The loss of social and moral connection – moral, social, and civic bonds (trust relations). The infernal world of contemporary society and politics. Dante’s Florence.
4) The solution - Order: Music and Numbers –the well-tempered order –Dante’s music of the spheres.
5) Modes of Persuasion – rhetoric, language, and poetry. Dante’s poetry, the De Vulgari Eloquentia
6) Rational freedom - Politics and ethics – theoretical reason – Dante’s formal works of political philosophy, the Convivio and the Monarchia.
7) Inferno – the city of dismisura
8) Purgatorio – a transitional community of conversion and change
9) Paradiso – the ideal city/truly human society
10) Walking and Talking with Dante – Dante dialogues across time and place
Basically, there is a tripartite structure, with ideals (theoretical reason, first principles, Convivio, Monarchia) and realities (practical reason, The Comedy) mediated by modes of persuasion (rhetoric and poetics, the De Vulgari Eloquentia).
That’s what I aimed at, and missed by some 900,000 words. I can appreciate why some prefer numbers to words. There is an economy to numbers and an inflation to words, an invitation to an escalation beyond the realities we need to cleave to. Reason and reality so easily part company and as a result we end up mired in a sophist world of endless linguistic engineering and manipulation, with truth no more than a function of power, interest, and identity. That’s the very thing Dante is trying to turn us away from.
I have broken the material up into five books:
1) The Sweet Symphony of Paradise - Music and Metaphysics 554 pages 178,916 words;
2) Dante's Politics of Love - Politics and Ethics 689 pages 218,709 words;
3) From the Dark Forest to the Eternal Rose with the Heart of Gold - The Comedy 1063 pages 318,122 words
4) Rational Freedom - to be partners in the ceaselessly creative universe 634 pages 228,956 words
5) Walking and Talking with Dante - The Endless Love on the ‘Unending Path - ’Dante Dialogues - 210 71,186 words.
The breakdown of these books into their headings gives some idea of the content:
1) The Sweet Symphony of Paradise - Music and Metaphysics 554 pages 178,916 words;
Contents
Dante and Rational Freedom – Rationale and Overview 1
The Musical Model – The Foundations of Dante’s Rational Freedom 2
*[music and numbers 2
Introduction: the right order of things 4
((Objective reality and objective morality)) 8
Transcendent Standards 22
Music and Numbers 22
The Way of Love – Trinitarian Communion 25
The Threefold Pattern 25
((numbers – Pythagoras)) 38
[truth and beauty 44
The One and the Many 49
((numbers – ratio and proportion)) 53
((numbers – Plato)) 55
((numbers - the Pythagorean tradition)) 57
((numbers – numerology – St Augustine)) 58
((numbers – Boethius)) 61
((numbers – the virtue of numbers)) 63
((numbers – Bonaventure)) 65
((numbers – numerology in Dante)) 68
((numbers – numerological thinking)) 71
((numbers – Dante beyond numerology – innate love)) 75
The Musical Model 95
The Metaphysics of Music 95
((Music measures the relation to God)) 96
The well-tempered harmony 97
((the musical journey)) 98
Philosophical and Religious Perspectives on Music 113
The Origins of Music 126
Music as the Profoundest Expression of Nature 137
Walking with Dante 140
[the music of poetry 140
[the musical origins of language and poetry 141
[the Singing Neanderthals 141
[the singing body 146
The Physiological and Psychological Effects of Music 146
The Spirit of Song 150
[the attunement of mind and body 153
((The musical anthropology)) 154
[music, responses, emotions 156
[music and responsiveness – the failure to hear the music 156
Dante and Music 158
Dante’s love of music)) 158
((The structure of the musical transition in the Comedy)) 162
((The musical structure of the Comedy)) 169
((The structure of the musical transition in the Comedy)) 172
((The centrality of music to the universe)) 178
Dante and the Music of the Spheres 181
The Fathers of the Church 203
Aristotelianism, or the Silent Cosmos 212
The Music of the Spheres and Dante’s Works 214
Harmony and Political Order 236
Platonic Ecology 238
Dante’s Physics and Politics of Harmony 242
Ancient Chinese views of Harmony 249
[music and good connotation - Confucius 253
[Confucius, beautiful music and the harmonious society 253
[attunement as harmony 257
Ethical Definition of Music 258
[deep harmony as open 261
The inner music of the Comedy 269
The inner music of the Comedy – Dante’s Musical Model 269
((The music that is beyond rational comprehension)) 270
[the metaphysical attributes of music - notions of true order, relations and reality 287
[distinction between the natural and the human, and the artificial and the instrumental 288
[the diabolic music of the Inferno 295
The Inferno 308
[a world of disorder and disharmony, chaos and cacophony 317
Purgatory 320
[poetry comes back to life - the renewal of life 321
Purgatorio: Musical Liturgy as Pharmakon 324
Healing Songs: Music as Pharmakon 332
[In exitu Israel de Aegypto 334
Casella’s Song 337
The Siren Song 348
Poetry in Purgatory 354
Purgatory as the place of dreams 356
Hymns in the Valley of the Princes 358
[Te lucis ante is sung as part of a twilight mass 360
[Te Deum laudamus 363
Entrance into Purgatory proper 365
Beatitudes and the Songs of the Earthly Paradise 367
The Earthly Paradise 373
The restoration of Earth to Edenic Golden Age 374
((The mystic procession)) 380
The Paradiso: The Attuning of the Sky 388
The Impenetrable Song 389
[Paradise – Plato creation of the universe 390
[emanation in Paradise 392
[the idea of a heavenly harmony setting a template for harmony on Earth 392
[polyphony as an allegory of harmony on Earth 395
[Paradise as a realm beyond the normal senses 396
Polyphony as Political Harmony 396
Cosmological reality 396
The special love of each in their natural movements 399
Creation 420
The craftsman 429
Imagery of Water, Light, and Bow 447
Unity and diversity 464
Rational and Libertarian Freedom 470
Polyphony in Paradise 472
((Song and dance)) 488
Polyphonic performance 505
The Sphere of Saturn 507
[Dante balances individual speech and a greater harmony 509
The Eighth Sphere (The Fixed Stars: Faith, Hope, and Love) 512
[Gabriel's song to Mary surpasses any earthly melody 513
((Music as liquid light)) 528
The Prime Archer 528
The Primum Mobile : The Ninth Sphere : The Angels) 535
((Music as liquid light)) 551
[Love permeates the multitude of spheres constituting the universe 555
The God of Love 558
[the Love that brings eternal joy 558
Climate Accord 565
((fire and ice – Dante’s Inferno and Max Weber’s ‘iron cage’ of capitalist modernity)) 566
[attunement with the grammar of harmony – the ordered world 589
((Dante and Climate Accord)) 590
Love Beyond Proof 616
Physics, Facts, and the Greatest Love of All 625
Physics and the Mind of God 625
((Beyond the empire of fact)) 625
2) Dante's Politics of Love - Politics and Ethics 689 pages 218,709 words
Contents
Preface 1
The Interconnection of Ethics, Politics and Justice in Dante 4
Introduction 6
Thoughts on Dante 6
Introduction to Politics and Ethics 16
Dante and Rational Freedom. 23
Dante’s Politics of Love 23
Poetics and Persuasion 26
The Ecology of the Heart 31
Bridging theoretical and practical reason 34
Dante’s Politics of Hope 40
The Politics of Love 41
Human Beings as truth-seekers 43
Free Necessity 50
Love and wholeness 63
The Desire for Communion 63
Quest for community 69
The Way of Love – Trinitarian Communion 82
The way of love is the invitation to hope 82
The Political - Holding justice in the heart 83
City citizen and community 88
Popular art and political intention 93
Modes of Persuasion 107
Rhetoric, Poetics, and Politics 107
Marvel and wonder 107
Wonder and knowledge 117
The Desire for Knowledge – Dante’s philosophy of truth-seeking 117
Knowledge and causation – the search for root causes 124
Philosophical anthropology – the search for man 127
From Poetry to Philosophy 132
Dante as love poet - ordering love to its true object 132
Dante’s influences 133
From Poetry to Philosophy 135
The philosophy of courtly love 136
Boethius’ Lady Philosophy 145
Beatrice and the Vita Nuova 158
Lady Philosophy 167
Politics and the Florentine Background 175
Dante and his City 175
The Florentine Experience - The Urban Example of Florence 175
Dante: the political background 175
The Myth of Community: Political Rhetoric and concepts of the city 178
Civics 178
Political Career and Exile 188
The ideal seen in exile 196
Poetics and Politics 201
The Curial Conception of Poetry 202
De Vulgari Eloquentia 205
Natural Language 207
From Edenic Unity to Babelic Diversity 207
LINGUISTIC CHANGE, BABELIC FRAGMENTATION, AND POLITICAL CONFLICT 213
POETRY AND POLITICS 214
THE POETRY OF RECTITUDE 221
Tre Donne 222
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 227
Politics and Ethics 227
Dante and Rational Freedom 227
[Rational freedom in ancient philosophy 228
[Rousseau 230
[From Hegel to Marx 231
[Habermas and rational freedom 232
Factionalism and Tottering Thrones 241
The Need for Public Authority 247
The Diabolic and the Symbolic 253
The Infernal Politics of Separation and Division 255
Dante, politics and the city 262
The Civic Politics of Imperial Rule 263
The Principles of the State 271
City and Civics 271
Political Philosophy 278
The Public Intent of the Convivio 284
Invitation to a Banquet 287
The Right Path 304
Cosmology 309
Natural and Rational Love 312
The True Definition of Nobility 320
NOBILITY, VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 320
Injustice and Avarice 332
Dante and the Empire – redemption from within 346
Political Peace 346
The social philosophy of the Political Peace 347
THE ORIGINS OF THE STATE: ARISTOTELIAN ENQUIRY 347
The empire and the church 357
Truth and Freedom 386
Intellect, Will, and Freedom 387
The Human Likeness to God 395
The Radical Uniqueness of the Human Person 400
The Monarchia 404
Justice and Free-Will 419
The Principles and Institutions of the Political Peace 424
Peace and government 424
Citizens of the World Monarchia 439
Universal Empire ruling in peace 448
The divine origins of imperial peace 457
Dante and Maritain on World Government 470
The Church and State as communion and community 480
Covenant and contract 480
Church and state as communion and contract – The restoration of communion and community 483
The Political Letters and Dante’s Religious Radicalism 494
3) The Comedy 1063 pages 318,122 words
Contents
Introduction to The Comedy 1
FROM THEORETICAL TO PRACTICAL REASON 2
Dialectic of Heaven and Earth 2
The religious inspiration of The Comedy 3
The Comedy – Structure and Design 18
Practical Reason 20
Dante as inherently political being 36
From disconnection to reconnection 39
cognitio experimentalis Dei 39
Old moral maps, the same moral geography 41
Happy homecoming 43
The Comedy 45
The Structure and the Story 45
[the architectonics of the poem 47
Communion, Community, and Communication 51
Poetic leadership 51
Sacred Poem educate by power of language 52
Justice 56
Exile and separation 67
The education of desire 69
Political concerns in The Comedy 70
The Critique of the Church in The Comedy 75
Commerce and communication money and language 88
THE INFERNO 102
Introduction to the Inferno 102
ORDER AND STRUCTURE WITHIN HELL 104
The structure of the Inferno 104
In the Enclosure of Hell 109
The moral system 110
The loss of right relations 115
The anarchy of Hell 116
Socio political framework of sin 117
Disordered love 121
The Politics of the Inferno 122
The Dark Wood 125
The Three Beasts 131
Virgil – The Public Guide 135
Beatrice’s concern for a friend 141
Paul and Aeneas – the nature of guidance 144
The structure of Hell 148
The Gates of Hell 150
Discord and Disorder 152
((The Inferno – the world of anti-music)) 156
The neutrals 156
The Great Refusal 162
Boniface and the Great Refusal 163
Limbo 165
Dante and Averroes 174
[the philosophers in Limbo 176
The Taxonomy of Moral Order – Virtues and Vices 184
Dante the Moral Taxonomist 185
Punishment and Penalty 186
Lust 190
The incontinent 190
Francesca and Paolo 191
Gluttony and greed 199
Gluttony 202
Greed 205
The Love of Money 205
The City of Dis 206
Dis and Inorganic Wealth 211
The Seventh Circle – Violence 214
Descending into the Depths 214
Descent into aggression towards others 215
Heresy 216
Heresy and factionalism 218
Violence 221
Violence Fraud and Treachery 228
Projection of violence 229
Hell is the place of petrified powers. 230
[alienation and inversion 232
The Old Man of Crete 234
Sodomy 237
Sterility 239
Usury - Violence against possessions 241
The Eight Circle – Fraud 242
Fraud and Geryon 242
Geryon and the rope girdle 242
Fraud and commerce 247
The Malebolge 248
Punishment 249
Hell as penalty 250
Seducers pimps and flatterers 255
Simoniacs 258
False prophets 265
Barrators 269
Hypocrites 272
Theft 274
Counsellors of Fraud 278
Ulysses 278
Guido and evil counsel 285
Eighth Circle, Ninth section of fraud - schism 287
Falsifiers 295
Treachery 296
The Towering Giants of Pride and Power 297
Towers of alien power 298
Treachery 305
Ugolino 305
Lucifer and the closed cold heart of Hell 314
The Frozen Lake 314
THE PURGATORIO 331
Introduction to the Purgatorio 331
The highest mountain 333
The System of Purgation 335
The order of sin 336
Mount Purgatory as Church 336
Mercy forgiveness freedom 337
Confession as truth telling 338
The Structure and Design of Purgatory 341
Clearing the mind and opening the heart 342
The Desire for Communion 342
Penalty 343
Reeducation – The Discipline of the Mountain 344
Learning to become citizens 349
The restoration of community 350
The social components of love 352
Purgatory place and structure – The Moral geography of the Earthly Paradise 354
The highest mountain 355
Poetry and the arts 359
Cato and the Moral Law 370
Entrance into Purgatory proper 373
Cato and Casella 374
Ante-Purgatory 377
POETS AND POLITICIANS IN THE COMMUNITY OF ANTE-PURGATORY 378
Sordello and Farinata 378
Farinata and factionalism 381
Sordello and the unifying force of language 381
Restoration of fellowship 382
The Restoration of Peace and Community 383
The Excommunicate 383
Peter’s Gate and the Seven P’s 392
The Seven Sins 394
The seven p and purgation as a social process 394
The Three Divisions of Purgatory 402
Pride envy wrath social sins of disordered love 403
Pride 403
Pride countered by humility 404
Envy 406
Envy countered by love 406
Mutual support over factionalism 407
Beyond Possession – the covetous and the gluttonous 408
Sloth 415
Virgil on Love and Free Will 417
The need to properly order love 418
Disordered love 420
The shift to spiritual wealth 421
Marco Lombardo and Free Will 437
Commerce and greed in a public context 438
[the need for law and the supreme good 449
Language and Money – Marco Lombardo 452
[The idea of words functioning as guides 454
The Community of Virtue - the habitus of virtuous practice 456
The Insubstantial Nature of the Soul 466
God as measure 467
Avarice 474
Statius earthquake 477
The Gluttonous and the Lustful 477
POETIC ENDEAVOUR AND THE INSPIRATION OF LOVE 479
GUINIZELLI AND ARNAUT 479
The Meeting at the Two Rivers 485
Leah and Rachel at the two rivers 486
Dante’s Crowning in the Earthly Paradise 488
Matelda 494
The Earthly Paradise 495
The Mystical Pageant 498
The departure of Virgil 507
Justice 523
Mystical Procession - church and state relation 534
The Two Rivers 538
Transcendence and reality 542
The Paradiso 544
((the challenge of the Paradiso)) 544
Paradise hard to visualize and conceptualize 545
((the impossibilities of Paradise)) 547
Hell and Paradise as opposites 554
Uncharted waters and transgressive poetry 559
Love and justice in the ideal society 565
Transcendent standards - the otherworldly world of the Paradiso. 568
Secular and spiritual life 577
Beatrice in Paradise 581
Cosmological reality 590
The special love of each in their natural movements 593
[sacred poem transformation as transposition and transfiguration 607
Interweaving within the Transcendent 614
[the theological questions of Paradise 614
Formative Principles 629
Polyphony in Paradise 643
Trasumanar 645
Grouping of the souls 664
The Sphere of the Moon 670
Wishing on the Moon 670
Trasumanar beyond words 671
Piccarda 685
[the peace of voluntary submission 687
The Sphere of Mercury 708
Fame and glory for a just cause 708
The fusion of beings through justice 708
Roman Apologetics in the Paradiso 708
Rebutting the charge that Dante is an atheist and Caesar’s man 716
Justinian in Mercury 721
The Sphere of Venus : The Lovers 733
[venus and diversity 733
The fusion of beings through love 734
Charles Martel 737
THE BONDS OF CIVIC FELLOWSHIP 748
The Sphere of the Sun : the thinkers 755
The leaders responsible for the common good in the higher heavens 755
Apostolic poverty 771
Solomon 771
The Sphere of Mars – the fighters 771
The Fighters for Justice in the World 771
Cacciaguida’s Florence 774
The Sphere of Jupiter : the Just Rulers 799
Love Justice – the Foundations of Loving Authority 799
Jupiter loving authority 801
The Sphere of Saturn : the contemplatives 810
The contemplative life 810
The Eternal Rose with the Heart of Gold - fulfilment 816
The Eighth Sphere (The Fixed Stars: Faith, Hope, and Love) 826
The Cult of Mary. Cantos XXIII to XXXIII 832
Theological examination 835
St Peter’s question 836
[Dante sees the universe smile 854
The Trespass of the boundary - Adam 857
St Peter’s denunciation 859
((Music as liquid light)) 869
The Prime Archer 870
[combining intellect and love in the One 872
The Primum Mobile : The Ninth Sphere : The Angels) 876
The Primo Mobile 876
The Departure of Beatrice 894
The Empyrean 895
The Eternal Rose with the Golden Heart 895
Bernard the final guide 895
Mysticism – the final one hundred lines 895
The Vision of the Trinity 895
[The entire universe is contained in all its diversity in God. 895
((the end of the poem – into the light – the failure of geometry)) 895
((conclusion on love as the answer)) 895
Knowledge prior to love 895
What it is that Dante sees 895
Paradise language conveys a vision beyond words 895
Love and Light 895
((the spiritual centre of the universe – the end of Paradise)) 895
Dante’s Heartleap 895
((heartleap - love as the unifying force)) 895
The Ecology of the Heart 895
The Eternal Love of the Living Liquid Light 895
Dante’s Poetic Invention 895
SACRED POEM – THE REAL AND THE RATIONAL 895
The Poetic Creation 895
Poetry as real – the power of Dante’s poetry 895
HAPPY ENDING 895
The Happy Ending Without End 895
COMING HOME TO THE ENDLESS LOVE 895
The Politics of Love 895
The Ideal Polity 895
The cry of justice from the wilderness 895
Rome the ideal city of Paradise 895
The vision of the Rose 895
Empyrean church and state 895
Paradise is conviviality. 895
The Eternal Feminine 895
Homecoming to a Divine Ecology 895
4) Rational Freedom - to be partners in the ceaselessly creative universe 634 pages 228,956 words
Contents
Dante and Transcendent Standards 1
Enlightenment 12
Metaphysics and Politics in Hobbes and Locke 13
Locke 32
The Ontology of Locke’s Natural Law 37
MATERIALISM AND PLATONISM 45
Transcendence and Contingency in Relation to the ‘Real World’ 45
Rousseau 64
Metaphysics and Morality 69
The Platonism of the Savoyard Vicar 69
Free Will 76
The Soul 80
Transcendent standards and eternal ideas 83
Transcendent Truth, Power, and Representation 91
Power, truth, representation 91
((Reason, Culture and Transcendent Truths)) 91
((Culture, Power, and Truth)) 98
The Best Account 116
((Rational Freedom, Right Relationships, alienation and idolatry)) 123
IDOLATRY FETISHISM 123
DANTE AND MARX 136
Contextualizing Marx's Criticism of Commercial Society 139
[Dante’s sins as capitalist imperatives 139
The metaphor of the orchestra conductor 155
DANTE AND RATIONAL FREEDOM 169
Order Unity Diversity 170
The Danteum – Medievalism, the Hierarchical order and Fascism 170
((the Danteum – the freezing of the music)) 200
((frozen music as immobility of the Inferno – Paradise as music, light and love – critique of the Danteum)) 202
Dante’s Heartleap 208
Love Beyond Proof 215
**The Physical and Moral Universe - ‘God,’ for short. 233
((putting fact and value together)) 234
Against naturalism and scientism 236
The Apocalyptic Dream of Rational Freedom 243
((The Danteum – the petrification of Paradise)) 253
((numbers – physicist and Dantista Margaret Wertheim against Platonism)) 255
The Two Concepts of God 273
The Physical and Moral Universe as One 273
[the dissolution of morality into value judgements – the simplicity and unity of God 274
[disenchantment and despiritualization 287
Creator God or Natural Creativity? 300
[the Einsteinian "God" 327
Forbidden Knowledge 357
[Dante the transgressor 357
[the sacred beyond human invention 367
[Dante the transgressor in desire to see the face of God 367
[Bacon and science 376
[apprehending our invented symbols – living as if we knew 376
[philosophical reason undercuts itself 376
((the secret – against reinventing the sacred)) 384
[Nietzsche, enveloping illusion, and disenchanting analysis 388
Transcendent Reason and Pragmatism 405
((fulfilment of the soul’s desire – eccentricity beyond control)) 413
((the illusions of being in control and of being in charge – letting go of neurosis)) 429
((Be still and know)) 456
((the dancer and the dance – getting in tune)) 458
the musical model in politics 458
Unity and Diversity 460
[a world in union and in motion 463
((P.B. Shelley – unity and diversity)) 463
Poetic Invention and Real Fiction 472
The Politics of Love and Justice 476
((functional order – differentiated power)) 479
[the ascending theme of power and government 479
[diverse ranks coming to render sweet harmony 486
((functional order – the just society and love divine)) 488
((unity in diversity – the politics of the common good)) 489
ALIENATION AND RATIONALISATION 509
((Dante and Marx)) 509
FREEDOM RATIONALIZED 556
((Dante and the disenchanted world of Max Weber)) 556
From Corporeal Usury to Spiritual Usury 576
Alienation Rationalisation and Religion 576
The Poet of Popes - Dante’s Catholicism 580
[Dante’s Catholicism invites non-believers to return home 580
5) Dante Dialogues - Walking and Talking on the ‘Unending Path’ 227 pages 75,000 words
Contents
The centennial of Dante’s death approaches in 2021. 2
Exile and homecoming - Quest for Meaning, Calling back the Soul 4
Quest for soul and meaning 7
Introduction – Why Read Dante Today? 18
Why Dante? Which Dante? 18
((the human comedy – existential crisis)) 39
Dante’s invention)) 58
Dante’s devotion to impossibility)) 63
Responses and Reactions 67
*Dante’s Poetics of Love as an Ethics of Friendship 74
((the impossibilities of the Paradiso – Wilde vs Beckett)) 84
Dante’s Fortuna: An Overview of Canon Formation and National Contexts 96
Oscar Wilde in Paradise 98
Dante Between the Wars 120
Osip Mandelstam’s conversation with Dante 126
The Distinction Between Authority and Authoritarianism 157
Word Return to Music 165
The Creative Universe 178
[Dante’s influence on TV – arsy versy world 191
Word, Return to Music 192
Mikhail Bakhtin 192
[Bakhtin and the dialogical nature of artistic creation – language an expression of social identity 192
Dante Now 214
I need an editor who is able to cope with all of that and has the ability to select the most relevant, the most readable, passages that fit a clear and coherent plan. I can promise that it will be an education.
There is no capturing Dante. It is the easiest thing in the world to trace Dante’s influences - Neoplatonism, Aristotle, Aquinas, Boethius, Cicero etc. But it’s not where you take things from that counts, it’s where you take them to, and why. One of the many fallacies of the age is the fallacy of origins. People think that if they can trace an idea or an institution or a tradition to an earlier source they have thereby proven its artificiality and therefore its error. The problem with that game is that if you look hard enough and long enough, you will find it’s all ‘made up,’ everything is a social and cultural construction, including your own beliefs and opinions, which you may be inclined to be true in the sense of corresponding to reality. This is child’s play. Dante does more than this. Dante is creative with his sources: he changes things, adds, blends. He does so because he proceeds from the understanding that source and end are one. The result is a creative movement that comes to rest, stillness, and silence. It takes a poet to understand the energy of Dante's poetic dynamism. Osip Mandelstam, who wrote:
"Dante is an antimodernist. His contemporaneity is inexhaustible, measureless, and unending. … It is unthinkable to read the cantos of Dante without aiming them in the direction of the present day. They were made for that. They are missiles for capturing the future. They demand the commentary of the futurum."
We, the walking wounded, who are being hammered by these times of mutual indifference to each other’s dreams and visions, gods and goals, which explodes into mutual hatred under stress, are all a part, however small a part, of that future. That's what Dante understood behind the impressive architectonics, the metaphysics, the ethics, the numbers, the music - the centrality of moral agency. Dante sought to restore the power of discernment and the soundness of the intellect. I suspect that Dante was very much concerned to take his place among us. In exile he had lost everything he loved, everything that was familiar. His very identity, his history, was under threat. He wrote passionately to secure his reputation in the present by reminding people of his past achievements as a poet. His Convivio offered prose commentary on his poems, underlining to one and all that he still existed and still mattered. ‘Subsisto.’ He makes the same declaration in The Comedy. He worried that too much truth may offend the readers of his own age. When T.S. Eliot declared that ‘Humankind cannot bear very much reality,’ he wasn’t referring to the bad housing, low-paid jobs, poor prospects, nor even the dull routine of the everyday that is the normal lot of folk, but the altogether more immense, cosmic, reality of the invisible and the intangible. He understood what Dante understood when issuing his warnings at the beginning of the Paradiso that not all will be able to comprehend the truth he was about to put before them. Specifically, Eliot, like Dante, was referring to ‘the heavy burden of the growing soul’ (Animula) and the spiritual illumination that comes with the ‘shaft of sunlight,’ (Four Quartets), a spiritual illumination that described the journey towards God.
Dante’s fears and worries were soon dispelled in his own confrontation with reality. With exile comes objectivity, and for Dante to have compromised his words in the present would have served only to lose him his great public of the future:
I learned that which, if I retell it, must for many have a taste too sharp, too harsh;
yet if I am a timid friend of truth, I fear that I may lose my life among those who will call this present, ancient times.”
The light in which there smiled the treasure I had found within it, first began to dazzle, as would a golden mirror in the sun,
then it replied: “A conscience that is dark— either through its or through another’s shame— indeed will find that what you speak is harsh.
Nevertheless, all falsehood set aside, let all that you have seen be manifest, and let them scratch wherever it may itch.
For if, at the first taste, your words molest, they will, when they have been digested, end as living nourishment.
Paradiso 17: 116-132
And if you want to know what the answer is, Dante is clear that it is Love. And if you think that's a warm and fuzzy concept easily trumped by the hard realities and unwinnable inanities - not to say murderous insanities - of a diabolic politics, then you need the hard course of the one million words above to learn otherwise. It may make your eyes red, though.
Either way, I need an editor Dantista, someone with sufficient madness/enthusiasm to bring the 'living nourishment' to those who thirst and hunger.
Ciaran Carson comments that we rarely, if ever, get a glimpse of the Dante envisioned by the great Russian poet Mandelstam:
"If the halls of the Hermitage were suddenly to go mad, if all the paintings of all the schools and the great masters were suddenly to break loose from their hooks, and merge with one another, intermingle and fill the rooms with a Futurist roar and an agitated frenzy of colour, we would then have something resembling Dante's Commedia."
- Osip Mandelstam
I think I've just written that very thing. Not by design, mind. I aimed at clarity, coherence, symmetry, order, in honour of a poet who valued all of those things as against chaos and cacophony, and instead produced a multi-coloured maelstrom. I shall claim that I was trying to live up to Mandelstam's vision of The Comedy. The text I have is unreadable in present form, but immense all the same. Potent and visionary, it is a beautiful madness. And a mess. Which goes to show why we need poets, and why Dante is peerless, crystalline, and precise.
My advice? Just read Dante. He's the best.
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