CHAPTER I INTRODUCTIONIs there any reason why Dante's poetry should be read and judged differently from otherpoetry? Considering the severe traditional profile of Dante, poet, philosopher, theologian,judge, preacher of reforms and prophet, and listening to the epigrams in which he is said to be"equally great as man and as poet," "more than poet," and his "Divine Comedy" unique inliterature, we would be tempted to say yes !ot only was he poet and thin"er, representative ofthe ideas of the #iddle $ges, but he was also a man of action and shared in his own way in theItalian and %uropean crisis at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenthcenturies &is greatest boo" is very comple', opus poeticum being intertwined with opusphilosophicum and opus practicum In it we find sentiment and imagery, acts of faith andreligious acts, instruction, censure of the politics of (lorence as wellas those of Church and %mpire, and of all Italian and foreign sovereigns, condemnations andvendettas, announcements and prophecies) and in each case allegorical and otherwiseconcealed meanings are superadded to the obvious and literal Indeed, the tendency to put hispoetry in a class by itself is very natural*ut we shall do well to be on our guard here against e'aggeration) if Dante were not, as he is,a very great poet, there would be little importance to the details of his life and wor" +herewere many theologians, philosophers, publicists, utopians, and political partisans in his, as inall times (urthermore, if much of the subject matter is important it cannot be unique,cientific and philosophical thought and practical tendencies and ends are discoverable inevery poet and in every poetical production -e can also find in many wor"s hidden allusionsand intentions In fact, since a poet is a human being, it is always possible to give to anypoetical wor" a distinct philosophical and practical interpretation, such as is made so much ofin the case of Dante +his interpretation is different from, and additional to, the true poeticstand to the other in the relation of "historical" to ".sthetic") both interpretations arehistorical, only one is concerned with the history of poetry and the other with another anddifferent "ind of history +o it, Dante's wor", in its admittedly significant philosophic andpractical aspects, affords rich material, far richer than the wor" of most poets, some of whompresent almost no material at all for such interpretation *ut the difference between him andthe others in this respect is always simply one of quantity, and there is nothing "unique" abouthim along these lines at all/hilosophical, ethical and religious interpretation of Dante's wor" began in his own time withthe notaries, friars, and professors of the university, and with the sons themselves of the poet,and would probably have begun with the poet himself had his life been long enough +hecommentator of his own poetry in the "Convivio" would hardly have left the "sacred poem"without commentary /erhaps he would have developed it along the lines of the muchdisputed epistle to ,caliger $t any rate it would not be easy to imagine a wor" of greaterusefulness than such a commentary would have been It would have spared posterity serious, and in great part useless, labours in the shape of the many great commentariesof the fourteenth, fifteenth, and si'teenth centuries, and saved us from the appalling bul" ofItalian and foreign e'egesis which scholars have been engaged upon from the seventeenthcentury to the present day +here was a lull of about two centuries, from the early si'teenth tothe late seventeenth, but the last ten years have seen the greatest activity of this "ind yet"nown+he future historian of Dantean e'egesis will succeed better than his predecessors if hemeasure the progress of criticism by the growth and elaboration of historical methodInterpretation has become and tends to become more scientific and critical $t first it waschiefly moral and religious, as it sometimes threatens to become again in ascetic andmeditative minds It has, at various times, assumed that political and national importance,especially in the period of the Italian 0isorgimento, which it now enjoys almost solely amongprofessorial and political speechifiers $t all times it has served as an academic e'ercise fordirection was ta"en when 1incen2o *orghini recognised in the si'teenth century that it wasessential to the methodical study of Dante to see" out the authentic documents relating to thethought and "nowledge of his time and to study the language and customs of his period(ollowing the students of the eighteenth century, Carlo +roya, one of the most fruitful of Dantescholars, in the early nineteenth century lin"ed Dante with the history of the #iddle $ges andcleared the supporter of &enry 1III from much untimely ideology,tudies of the philosophy of Dante, and of all the speculative currents which he mingled withhis usually +homistic views, belong to the "allotrious" researches above described, as also dothose relating to his political ideal +he same may be said of the resemblances to, and thedifferences from, the other ideals proposed or longed for in his time) his public and privateaffairs) his varying thoughts and hopes) the chronology of his wor"s, and of the different partsof the "Comedy," in connection with their historical inspiration) his literary, classical andmedi.val inheritance) what he "new of past and contemporary history) what he believed to bereal in the facts to which he alluded, and what he held to be simply probable or imagined altogether for his own purposes)his views on allegory in general and that form of it which was particular or incidental to thepoem) whether he considered the end of the poem to be ethico3religious, or political, or both,and so on 0esearch along these lines has now gone very far in the hands of the best scholarsengaged in it *ut, in my opinion, it should go a good deal farther and thus get free of amethodological defect which injures and renders it more or less frivolous throughout,especially where it is concerned with allegoryIt is well "nown that the wor" which has been done and is being done in the sphere of allegoryis as little conclusive or fruitful as it is e'tensive and cumbrous $llegory, for him who does notlose sight of its true and simple nature, is nothing but a sort of cryptography, and therefore apractical product, an act of the will, which decrees that this is to mean one thing and thatsomething else) by "s"y" 4writes Dante in the "Convivio"5 "I wish to mean science and by s"ies,sciences) and by eyes, demonstrations" -hen an author does not leave an e'plicit documentto declare what act of will he has accomplished, supplying thereader with the ""ey" to his allegory, it is useless to see" or hope to fi' definitely the meaning of his wor" +he"true meaning" cannot be seen unless the author tells it, as is also remar"ed in the "Convivio." -anting the "ey,which is the e'press declaration of the composer of the allegory, we may, by basing our conclusions upon otherpassages in the author's wor"s, and in the boo"s we "now him to have read, arrive in the most favourable case ata probable interpretation *ut we can never be certain (or certainty we need, strictly spea"ing, the ipse dixit Ifin the matter of poetry the author is often the worst of critics, in the matter of allegory he is always the best *utthe majority of the students of Dante's allegories forget this principle, which is proper to the matter of which theytreat, and claim to reach the hidden meaning by acuteness of intelligence and industrious reasoning, which theywould do better to reserve for other arguments +hus they enter, often without being aware of it, upon amisleading highway of conjectures 4though, and indeed because, it is so very wide5 &ere one destroys the otherand convinces no one, e'cept perhaps its author, who has allowed himself to be fascinated by his own conjectures,and thenhas reinforced them with his self3love 4with "the affection which binds the intellect"5, and has put faith in them allthe more passionately, the more an obscure consciousness has warned him that he cannot found them on solidground

+he overvaluation referred to above, or the misunderstanding of the particular importance of Dante asphilosopher and politician, is to be referred to this error of method, which gives a truly dilettante character to agreat part of such researches *ut indeed, even where it at first seems possible to spea" with the greatest truth ofthe originality of Dante's thought, that originality, under proper criticism, becomes gradually attenuated, or ceasesto e'ist ,uch is the case with the treatise "De Monarchia." +he much praised conception of a world monarchywith universal peace proves to have been a pious hope entertained in all ages +he other original idea believed tobe discoverable in it, the idea of a lay state, proves to be only a dualism of the spiritual and temporal powers,implying due reverence for the former by the latter, and ultimately a certain subordination In fact, the "DeMonarchia" is rather the wor" of a publicist than of a political scientist, although it reveals in its verycontradictions thedifficulties and the e'pedients in which the mind of the #iddle $ges was engaged, and which paved the way forthe future political science of #achiavelli $ppro'imately the same is to be said of the "De Vulgari Eloquentia"which did not inaugurate modern philology, though it is a wor" of great importance for the account of the variousdialects of Italy which it contains #odern philology is due, on the contrary, to modern historical sentiment +he"De Eloquentia" contains nothing of a revolutionary character or even of importance for the philosophy oflanguage It is to be loo"ed upon as a document of value for the study of the artistic formation of Dante, who usedit to lay down an ideal of language and of style in conformity with his own way of feeling, the "illustrious commonspeech" 4just as the (lorentine speech was the ideal for #an2oni in recent times and in a different sense5 +he li"eis true of his metaphysics and ethics in general, where it is only possible, by the e'ercise of much good will, to findhere and there some detail not derived from the boo"s which he had studied0esearches into the thought and doctrine of Dante consequently, and of necessity, centre around minute details,to which are attributed agreater value than really belongs to them +he eagerness with which studies of the Dantean allegories are pursuedis the most evident proof of this tendency to e'aggerate %ven if it were possible to determine the allegories withcertainty, as it is not, and if the elements of an authentic interpretation did at last ma"e them selves evident,what else could be revealed but repetitions or, if you li"e, slight varieties of concepts, beliefs, designs,e'pectations, already "nown from those places in his wor"s where Dante spea"s without allegory, and from othercontemporary or anterior te'ts? It is not to be believed that we should obtain astonishing revelations, of the "indannounced by 0ossetti and some of his followers *ut even if we did, such revelations would be interesting merelyas historical curiosities +hey would, too, reveal a Dante by no means healthy in a certain region of his mind -eowe it in part to these inflations, to these subtleties, to this disputing about trifles, and still more to the emptyconjectures of the allegory3hunters, that "Dantist" has come to mean in ordinary Italian speech "Dantomaniac",uch things are certainly inevitable, and are always found in the cult which gathersround a great man) but we should be glad to dispense with themIt remains true nevertheless, after ma"ing this necessary protest against the too much that is too much, andagainst partial defects of method, that the "allotrious" interpretation of Dante is not only legitimate, as for anypoet, but possesses in his case a particular appropriateness %qually legitimate is the .sthetic or .sthetico3historical interpretation Its rights have not, as a matter of fact, been disputed, and could not be disputed save bythose who intentionally or involuntarily do not admit art as a reality and treat it as though it were an appearance,resolving it into other spiritual forms or into altogether materialistic conceptions It too has its long history, whichthis time does begin with Dante, that is to say with the theory by means of which he e'plained and judged poetry,and with the definition which he gives of himself as the poet of "rectitude," or the "sacred" poet In its course itflows into the history of .sthetic and of .sthetic criticism from the #iddle $ges up to the present time) and heretoo progress was effected by means of the perfecting of the concept of art, and the ever greater e'actness and firmness of historical intuition /raise of Dante as the theologian3poet, "nowing dogmas and learned inethics, was succeeded by the discussions of the si'teenth century about the "Comedy," as to whether or not itwould fit into the classification of the $ristotelian /oetic and how it did so, or whether it were not an altogethernew class in itself,33and so on, throughout the eighteenth century, to the refutation, negation, and satirisingdirected against it in the name of rationalistic good taste +hence followed the reaction and correction that gavewarning of the necessity, before judging the "Comedy," of first placing it in the medium of the ideas and customsand passions of the times when it appeared) and this again was followed, in the romantic period, with a more loftyand free consideration of the poem, in conformity with a loftier and more liberal conception of artIf the "allotrious" and .sthetico3historical modes of interpretation are both legitimate, their conjunction is on theother hand illegitimate, although a scholastic formula often repeated and here directly refuted, asserts that thecondition and foundation of the aesthetic interpretation of the "Comedy" is its philosophic, moral, political and otherwise allegorical interpretation +his formula once assumed an appearance of truth owingto the false identification which, as we have observed, used to be made of the "allotrious" with the historicalinterpretation in general) and the .sthetic interpretation used to be made to follow this, conceived as non3historical in itself and finding its premise or historical basis in the other *ut since both are in their own wayhistorical, that is to say, correspond to different and complete histories or forms of history, it is clear that theirconjunction as desired is without the necessary justification +he history of Dante's poetry and that of hisphilosophy or his politics have their roots equally in all the history preceding that .sthetic creation, thatacceptance or reform of doctrine, that practical action) but each one of them completes its own synthesis ofhistorical material, in conformity with its own internal principle, ad modum percipientis or appercipientis6et truth prevail In the history of philosophy the doctrines of Dante must be rethought in their logic and dialecticand lin"ed with anterior and posterior doctrines, in such a way as to cause their truth and error to becomeapparent and to ma"e clear the place they held and the function they e'ercised in the general development ofthought *ut in the history of poetry, as in the simple reading and enjoyment of poetry, this does not matter) wereit introduced, it would cause disturbance, because those doctrines are there, not in so far as thought, but only in sofar as they are imagined, and cannot therefore be dialecticised as true and false+hey should be "nown, but in thesame way as we "now a myth or fable, or any other fact, that is to say, as elements or parts of poetry, from whichand not from logic, they derive their significance3In li"e manner, in a history of culture in the #iddle $ges and in the age of Dante especially, it is important to learnwhat was "nown and believed as to certain personages and certain myths, and to discern in the judgmentsregarding them what comes from criticism, more or less well directed, and what from traditions or fancies or,indeed, misunderstandings7 the 0oman %mpire, C.sar, *rutus, Cato, 1irgil, #inos, /luto *ut in poetry, andtherefore in the history of Dante's poetry, these facts and personages become images or metaphors of thedifferent modes of feeling of the poet It is certainly necessary to "now how he thought them, but only in relation to the use he made of them, their colouring ofreverence, admiration, love or terror Dante, either ill3informed or forgetful, may have confused the characters ofCato of 8tica and Cato the Censor) but the figure of the guardian of /urgatory is not the fruit of a confusion, it is apoetical creation +he name and certain traits are ta"en from a remembered 0oman hero, who thus contributes asort of aureole to the character In this same way we give a name full of dear memories or propitious augury to abeloved daughter +he history of the name certainly does not affect the reality of the person to whom it has beengiven3In a political history of (lorence, it is indispensable to start from economic and juridicial conceptions and to followthe industries, the commerce, the class struggles, the treaties and the wars, the actions of the 9ing of (rance, ofthe %mperor and of the Church, and to understand what problems of a social and international character werethen debated, what were the institutions that were losing ground and what were the new ones arising and growingstronger, and on which side lay the greater political sagacity and wisdom It is also possible to touch upon the personal actions of Dante, to the e'tent allowed by e'tant documents -e say he wasinscribed as prior of the $rt :uild, was an orator, was condemned to e'ile, that he was both actor and sufferer inthat process of demolition and construction, of offence and defence *ut all this has no direct connection with thepoetry of Dante +he passionate e'pressions which seem to be due to the historical events, and therefore to beintelligible and capable of being judged only in relation to them, are in the poem in the same way as what isderived from philosophical and historical culture +hey are essential parts which we may not abstract from theimages to which they belong, and e'amine as social and political history, unless we wish to destroy rather thanthrow light upon the whole +he "new fol"" and the "une'pected gains" are not in the verse of Dante, as in politicalhistory, cause and effect of the industrial and commercial rise of (lorence, but an e'pression of disgust andabhorrence in the mind of the poet /olitical history will judge "the boor of $guglione and he of ,igna," as +royasuggested, to have been more sensible or instinctively better directed than the factious white :uelf, $lighieri, andthe"shameless (lorentine women" to have been more patriotic than he) but in the poetry, whatever those charactersmay have been in reality, they are the object of contempt and indignation, and the boor of $guglione and he of,igna certainly have "a sharp eye for cheating" and the (lorentine women continue to show "both breast andnipples",33let the priest shame them by pointing to them from the pulpit; In writing history or anecdote, weshould e'amine the truth of the tragic death of the lovers of 0imini, or of the greatness and ruin of Count 8golino,as recounted by the poet) and it may be that in judging them, as one of the interpreters suggests, Dante allowedhimself to be to some e'tent dominated by his hatred of the /isans and of the #alatestas, "those blac" :uelfs"*ut when reading the episodes, beware of separating what cannot be separated and substituting the results ofsuch researches for the living qualities of Dante's characters; If you do, whatever the characters have of piteous orof tragic disappears at once &orror at the ferocity of the /isans vanishes before the recorded crimes of 8golino,and the love of a (rancesca over thirty for a cousin over forty, appears, as indeed it has appeared to one critic, to be nothing but an ignoble intrigue It appears connected withan intrigue which Dante is supposed to have begun, or to have wished to begin, with his own sister3in3law7 andthis of that (rancesca about whom the god3li"e power of poetry has woven a new history, a history which made*yron in 0avenna feel such "een delight to breathe the air and made Carducci long for the cypressed hill whereshe "softened her ardent eyes to smile;"(inally, to dwell for a moment upon a point that is wont to cause the greatest difficulties, allegory certainly e'istedamong the forms of e'pression or rather of communication and writing, usual or preferred, during the #iddle$gesIt was a hidden mode of communication and writing, a propounding and guessing of riddles, and in order tounderstand certain thoughts, it is sometimes necessary to decipher allegorical cryptograms, if the means at ourdisposal permit of their being deciphered *ut whatever the investigators and conjecturers as to Dante's allegorymay boast or claim, e'planations of the allegories are always entirely useless, and in so far as useless, harmful,when considered in connection with the enjoyment of history orpoetry In poetry, allegory never occurs) it is certainly tal"ed about, but when one goes in search of it and hopesto find it, one does not find it, since it is a vain shadow even in appearance, much more as reality $llegory is foundin connection with poetry in two cases (irst, when allegory is joined to poetry ab e'tra, when it has been decreedby an act of will, as we said, that certain personages, certain actions, certain words, contained in the poem, shouldalso bear the meaning of a certain fact that has occurred or will occur, or of a religious truth, or moral judgment, orwhatever else it may be In this case, it is clear that the poetry remains intact, and that it alone can concern itsown history+he whole of the other, or secondary sense in which it may be understood33on the basis of which thepoetry would mean nothing in itself but would be simply an object serving as a sign 33belongs to the sphere andhistory of the practical activity +he second case is when the allegory does not let the poetry e'ist or does notallow it to appear, replacing it with a crowd of discordant images, poetically frigid and mute, which for that reasonare not true images, but simple signs) and in this case, since there is not poetry, there is no object whateverfor the history of poetry, but only a confession of its limits, of poetic failure, of nothingness and ugliness $ thirdpossible case would be one where allegory e'ists, but allegory so completely translated into images that it doesnot remain outside the poetry, as in the first case, and does not destroy or impede it, as in the second, but co3operates with it from within *ut such a case would be a contradiction in terms, because if there be allegory, it isalways by definition outside of and distinct from poetry, and what is really within the poetry, fused and identifiedwith it, can be no allegory, but only poetic imagery, which is not limited in signification to material finite things,but always has an unbounded spiritual value In all these cases, he who reads poetically should never find theallegorical sense within reach) he navigates in other, sweeter waters (urther, it is impossible to see side by sidetwo things of which one appears only when the other disappears$nd it is a sophism to suppose it necessary first toobtain the allegorical e'planation, in order to understand certain poetical passages -hat should necessarilyprecede is only the "nowledge of the elements of language, of living language, which attain to a new synthesis inthose pas3sages $nd it is a further sophism to suppose that the allegorical meaning adds a vague and pleasing or elevating"suggestion" to the poetry $ suggestion of what?