Paura e Desiderio in Dante
Keywords: Dante
Mysticism

This thesis proposes a theological and mystical interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I read the Commedia as a text of spiritual practice, much like Saint Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum or Saint Bernard’s De Diligendo Deo. In doing so I concentrate my study not primarily on the philosophical and theological structures of Dante’s journey, but on the feeling or the affectus that informs it. The pilgrim of the Commedia –like Dante’s spiritual masters Saint Bernard, Hugh and Richard of Saint Victor, Saint Bonaventure and Saint Thomas Aquinas—believes that a sincere spiritual undertaking takes hold of someone not because of a great idea or a theological doctrine, but because of the intensity of feeling that provides him with the strength and passion to follow his path of purification. When Dante, following his spiritual masters, speaks of the primacy of feeling in the spiritual path, he refers to two specific movements of the soul: fear and desire. Dante points out that fear and desire are the first emotions of man, both in his earthly and in his divine perception of reality. Aristotle, Saint Bernard and Saint Thomas are the main authorities on these affects in Dante’s poem. The spiritual path conceived by Dante is the result of a perfect union between human and divine will, which is to say between nature and grace, or between philosophy and religion, and between fear and desire as instances of earthly and divine feeling. Supplementary Abstract This thesis proposes a theological and mystical interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I read the Commedia as a text of spiritual practice, much like like Saint Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum or Saint Bernard’s De Diligendo Deo. In doing so I concentrate my study not primarily on the philosophical and theological structures of Dante’s journey, but on the feeling or the affectus that informs it. The pilgrim of the Commedia –like Dante’s spiritual masters Saint Bernard, Hugh and Richard of Saint Victor, Saint Bonaventure and Saint Thomas Aquinas—believes that a sincere spiritual undertaking takes hold of someone not because of a great idea or a theological doctrine, but because of the intensity of feeling that provides him with the strength and passion to follow his path of purification. Dante expresses this fundamental truth through Beatrice’s words: “non voglio che dubbi, ma sia certo, / che ricever la grazia è meritorio / secondo che l’affetto l’è aperto” (Par 64-66). And again, in the final verses of Paradiso XXXII, through the words of Saint Bernard this time, Dante reiterates the importance of affect in the search for union with the divine: “tu mi seguirai con l’affezione / sí che dal dicer mio lo cor non parti” (149-150). Dante’s attention to the emotional aspect of pilgrim’s journey leads me to focus on the perceptive dimension of the pilgrim’s senses, both physical and spiritual. The distinction between sensual and spiritual feeling is in fact a distinction with regard to the object towards which the soul opens itself, and not with regard to the movement of openness itself, which is the same. Nor is it a distinction with regard to the principle of any possible contact and union with what is loved. In this sense the spiritual path will be a marvelous journey through human feeling, from sensual to spiritual, or from natural to divine. Saint Bernard also describes the complete journey to God as a journey from bodily to spiritual senses (Csi V:3). As Aquinas maintains, grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it (ST II-II Q 2 art. 4). Dante himself reminds the reader that, in the light of grace, the human senses will finally be able to experience the divine directly: “li organi del corpo saranno forti / a tutto ciò che potrà dilettare” (Par XIV 59-60). When Dante, along with his spiritual masters, speaks about the primacy of feeling in the spiritual path he refers to specific movements of the soul: fear and desire. Dante points out precisely how fear and desire are the very first movements of the soul in the relationship between man and God in the earthly paradise. For Dante, the earthly paradise marks the beginning of human history as we know it, man having lost direct contact with God and, since then, living in “pena e desio” (Purg XXXIII 61): pain in the absence of the origin of happiness, and desire for a renewed encounter with what has been lost. The spiritual path does not emerge from an ecstatic vision, but from fear, sorrow and pain. It is fear, however, specifically the fear that “fa tremar le vene e i polsi” (Inf I 90) that is the first emotion man perceives in his relation with God: fear of one’s own limits before God, but also fear of dying without directly experiencing “il Sommo Bene” (Par VII 80). Fear is considered the beginning of wisdom, in accordance with the Bible, Saint Bernard, Richard of Saint Victor and Aquinas. Aquinas maintains that fear is the beginning of wisdom with regard to the effects of a divine presence in man, but not to its essence, which is faith (ST I II Q. 68 art. 7). Fear is thus the beginning of wisdom in a very specific sense, because it makes man feel the primary presence of God in his affection, rather than as intellectual or theological content. As I mentioned above, it is only in the heart of man that God will eventually reveal Himself. This divine presence, however, is at first operative as fear and as sorrow for the absence of the most precious love. It is when the divine is perceived in the affective side of the soul that the spiritual quest begins. The first two cantos of the Commedia are steeped in fear, to the extent that fear is the only sign of vitality in the reader’s initial encounter with Dante’s masterpiece. Fear of death (Inf I 6) because of the lost “diritta via” (3) and fear of being devoured by beasts impede the pilgrim in his escape from the “selva oscura” (2). In the obscurity of the Inferno however, fear nourishes another feeling: desio, desire for Paradiso (Inf II 136). Only a direct experience of the divine can alleviate the great fear experienced at the beginning of the journey; only an impression of the divine on the soul can have an impact similar to fear. Complete and final joy is as powerful as the desperation it replaces. Fear will accompany the pilgrim for the first two books, along with the desire for a new encounter with “il primo amore” (Par XXXII 142). Fear will disappear only when the pilgrim reaches earthly paradise, after Beatrice’s forgiveness and the first experiences of a life without sin. From then on it is the desire for God that moves the pilgrim on his journey: Beatrice invites the pilgrim to walk close to her (Purg XXXIII 19-21) and to free himself from fear: “da tema e da vergogna / voglio che omai ti disviluppe, / sí che non parli piú com’om che sogna” (31-33). II My thesis takes as its primary object of study the progression, transformation, “trasumanar” (Par I 70) of the pilgrim’s feelings in his journey from sensual to spiritual experience. Fear and desire are the two fundamental feelings in this great quest, and the central areas I explore. In the first part of the first chapter I consider the meaning of the terms fear and desire, primarily in the introductory cantos of Inferno. In dealing with fear and desire in this chapter, I have kept in mind not only the mystical literature dear to Dante, but the reading of the Commedia by two great poets of the past century: Giuseppe Ungaretti and T.S. Eliot. Their interpretations of Dante’s journey in the Commedia have influenced my reading in two ways. Ungaretti has helped me understand the senses that propel the pilgrim towards his journey, while Eliot’s insight into the purpose of Dante’s writing has proven invaluable. Ungaretti’s reading of the first canto of Inferno underlines in a masterly fashion that fear is the source of Dante’s quest. The beginning of the Commedia, according to Ungaretti is: “intriso di notte e tutto echeggiante e intimidito di notturno orrore” (10). Only in this tremendous fear and loneliness will the pilgrim find the way of grace; in the first canto of Inferno, Ungaretti writes: “sono progressive apparizioni in solitudini che preparano alla grande solitudine dell’anima la quale, nel secondo canto, sentirà la propria debolezza, e, nel segreto suo smarrimento accoglierà la Grazia, e potrà sentirsi preparata alla sacra iniziazione” (20). Eliot parallels Ungaretti in tracing the prominence of the senses as the basis of the Commedia, and of poetry itself. He focuses on the aim of Dante’s masterpiece. Eliot maintains that the Commedia “has to educate our senses as he goes along;” its first purpose is make the readers feels the state of souls in the afterlife: “the insistence throughout is upon states of feeling; the reasoning takes only its proper place as a means of reaching these states” (52). Ungaretti and Eliot have guided my writing: Ungaretti in considering the philosophical and theological sources of fear; Eliot in the study of the progressive evolution of the pilgrim’s experience from sensual to spiritual. In the second part of this first chapter I deal with the structure of desire in the Commedia. What I mean by “structure of desire” is the specific nature of this human passion, which has two main aspects: desire as a force that moves man to act, and the extinction and ending of desire itself in the realization and attainment of the object of one’s love. In the Convivio (IV xii 16-17) and the Commedia, Dante delineates this essential law of desire. At the core of Purgatorio, which is also the centre of the Commedia, Dante details the nature of this passion, the bringing-into-action of man towards a specific and concrete enjoyment: “Poi, come ‘l foco movesi in altura / per la sua forma ch’è nata a salire / là dove piú in sua matera dura, / così l’animo preso entra in disire, / ch’è moto spiritale, e mai non posa / fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire” (XVIII 28-33). In this part of my thesis I analyze the passages in which Dante describes the movement of desire and its realization, both sensual and spiritual. I use the structure of desire as a means of interpreting the sins and rewards of the souls in the afterlife. Inferno’s sins are nothing but the representation of a desire wrongly addressed. The damned are those who have closed their hearts to the desire for the divine, those who have forgotten that the desire that impels man to action was born as desire for the divine, and that it should always have God as primary object of its quest. They have instead been blinded by the multiplicity of sensual desires, be it in the form of wantonness or in the turbulence of violence, or in the deception of fraud, which is the worst sin according to Dante. During their lives, the souls that are now in Purgatorio experienced attraction towards the divine; they did not, however, have the strength and determination to follow this desire to its realization. Thus they must undergo purification in purgatory in order to restore the spiritual presence weakly perceived during their earthly lives. Paradiso’s blessed souls are those who have been living according to Christian ethics in distinct forms and in the constant presence of the desire for God. Paradiso is where desire has found its ultimate rest, having exausted its task as a means for returning to God. It is where: “perfetta, matura e intera / ciascuna desianza” (XXII 64-65). In the second chapter of my thesis I study the depiction of earthly paradise considered to be the origin of human feeling. This place defines man as human and divine, and determines the perception of time and space: “eletto / a l’umana natura per suo nido” (Purg XXVIII). In the earthly paradise man lived in the presence of God, without fear or desire, without being subject to the natural laws of birth and death (Par VII 64-148, XIII 79-142). Because of original sin man has been deprived of the direct presence of the divine, subjected to “la virtute delle cose nove” (Par VII 70). With the first sin the human heart was marked in its most intimate nature by two emotions, the only ones able to return man to divine presence: “pena e disio” (Purg XXXIII 63). Dante underlines the central importance of these primary feelings not only through biblical references, but also through the unique and personal story of his sin, which took him away from the joy of paradise until he was able to regain faith and “la dritta via” (Inf I 3) by rediscovering the memory of Beatrice. Beatrice incarnates the sign and means of the desire for the divine. The second part of this chapter considers some aspects of the metaphysics of light. Perhaps the most important teaching of the entire section on earthly paradise is the realization that desire for God is concrete. The pilgrim of the Commedia in Eden begins to feel the joy of a life without sins. The first experiences of Paradiso are under the sign of a renewed and transformed sensoriality, which is able now to sense the divine. In the first canto of Paradiso the term “trasumanar” (70) underlines the new degree of experience gained by the pilgrim after the purifications of the Purgatorio. These new experiences are expressed in the form of an universe of light. Light becomes a structuring principle of the entire universe and a guide to the possibility of seeing the divine in the human form of the most perfect of men, Christ (Par XXXIII 131). The aim of the pilgrim’s journey is not the vision of a disembodied God, but that of human nature finally completed and fulfilled in the direct experience of the spirit, as Dante will demonstrate in the candida rosa (Par XXXI 1), where the pilgrim will finally see the blessed in their human body as they will be after the last judgement. During the pilgrim’s ascension in the Paradiso the angels and the souls will appear to Dante only as light, not because they do not have a body —even a shadow body like those of the souls in the Inferno and Purgatorio— but because the pilgrim is not yet ready to see them as they really are. The pilgrim’s senses are not yet strong enough for him to perceive the perfection of humanity living in the presence of God. Only after further purifications and with Beatrice’s help and love, the pilgrim will be given the grace to see the Empyrean. In the last part of the second chapter I trace the philosophical and theological roots of bodily and spiritual senses. Earthly paradise underlines the beginning of the pilgrim’s spiritual experience, living according to the laws of the spirit and not only of the sensual body. I trace the philosophical and theological sources of such a distinction in Aristotle’s De Anima and in relevant parts of Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. Aristotle considers man as founded by his sensual nature, while on the contrary Aquinas discovers the immortal presence of God as the very essence of man’s life. The third chapter of my thesis, which is the most complex, is a practical application of the first two chapters. It is a further study of what has been the central aspect of my thesis: the distinction and harmony between sensual and spiritual feeling in the pilgrim’s journey. In the first part of the chapter I return to fear and desire from a broader perspective, with textual references from the spiritual and theological literature dear to Dante. I study fear as the ever-present possibility of physical harm and death within Aristotle’s psychological philosophy, and in a theological and mystical context in which the fear of God is considered as one of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost and the first effect of God’s love. Fear of the Lord in fact opens the door to spiritual experience, while bodily fear leads to death. Fear of God is so fundamental that, without it, the desire for God would not even be possible. Dante summarizes the importance of fear of God for the spiritual journey in the condition of the damned : “poi [the souls] si ritrasser tutte quante insieme / forte piangendo, a la riva malvagia / ch’attende ciascun uomo che Dio non teme” (Inf 106-108). The study of desire has a similar development to that of fear in tracing a distinction between sensual and spiritual experience. Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas are authorities in matters of desire. Aristotle explains desire in the De Anima (414b) as the natural tendency of all animals towards their own realization and rest. Aquinas deepens the Aristotelian conception, characterizing desire not only as an animal tendency towards a specific end, but that of everything towards its place in God’s universal order. Aquinas maintains that everything is hierarchically ordered towards God, who is the end and cause of all things (CG lib. III cap. 17). All are ordered distinctly according to their specific nature (ST I-II Q. 94 art. 3). The specificity of man’s desire for the divine is that such a desire can never be realized in the natural order; on the contrary it impels man to go beyond himself (CG lib. III cap. 50). Thomas Aquinas often comments on the apparent contradiction between a longed-for perfection of the divine in man, and its elusiveness without the gift of grace (CG lib III cap. 50, ST I Q. VI art. 1, Q. XXIV art. 4, I-II Q. II art. 3). I explore the fate of desire in the Commedia in light of Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s considerations. Dante describes the fundamental law of desire as a tendency to movement within Virgil’s explanation of the doctrine of love (Purg XVIII 16-75). Man tends towards pleasure, or rather he is “dest[ato]” to life by pleasure (21). This instinctual and natural tendency is already a form of love because it represents the possibility of union between man and the object of pleasure (Conv IV i 1-2). However, if the natural tendency of man is to “volger face” (Purg XVII 24), to turn all the faculties of the soul —not only the primary appetites — towards the good, this “piegare” is called love (26). Man’s longing to possess the object of love characterizes man as such, because he has been created for loving: “è creato ad amar presto” (19). The complete movement, from the first manifestations of attraction to pleasure to the conscious choice that is the proper human act of reason, directing the faculties of the soul to the object of love, is called ‘desire’ by Dante: “Poi come ’l foco movesi in altura / per la sua forma ch’è nata a salire / là dove dove piú in sua matera dura / così l’animo preso entra in disire / ch’è moto spiritale, e mai non posa / fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire” (28-33). The soul, caught by what it considers its desired realization, enters into the logic of desire and once in it, only contact with its beloved end will be truly important. It is in the very nature of desire to consume itself in union with the loved object. In the third part of this chapter I deal directly with the nature of the spiritual senses. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux is the guide par excellence in this undertaking, as Dante himself suggests in the last cantos of Paradiso. I consider three aspects of the nature of the realization of desire for the divine. First I underline the importance of free will in the spiritual path, as Dante himself often reminds the reader (Purg XVI 70-81, XXVII 130-142 e Par V 19-84). Secondly I study the nature of spiritual achievement in the context of the tradition of spiritual senses. The essence of trasumanar reveals itself by a renewed sensoriality, a spiritual sensoriality, which Saint Bernard, but also Aquinas and Bonaventure, discuss. Dante repeatedly emphasizes the novelty of the experience in Paradiso, of a grace received directly on “gli organi del corpo...forti / a tutto ciò che potrà dilettare” (XIV 59-60). A third aspect of spiritual experience is the union between human and divine will. Saint Bernard is the indisputable master on this point. The Abbot of Clairvaux explains that the most complete and intense moment of mystical union is not the loss of one’s individuality in the divine essence, but rather, the union between a purified, perfected and reformed human will into the divine image and will. In the last canto of Paradiso the pilgrim of the Commedia can cry out with delight: “giunsi l’aspetto mio col valore infinito” (80-81). What the pilgrim experiences in this new divine state is not some kind of abstract essence, but human nature, “la nostra effige”, in its utmost perfection, in the person of Christ (131). III A systematic study of the degrees of transformation and evolution of the pilgrim’s feelings in the Commedia, from sensual to spiritual, has not been undertaken in Dante scholarship. I have found traces, inspiration and interpretive suggestions for my thesis in numerous scholars, above all those who have studied the mystical aspect of Dante’s work: Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Romano Guardini, Bruno Nardi, Eric Auerbach, Joseph Anthony Mazzeo, Francesco Mazzoni, Egidio Guidubaldi, to name only those who have had a larger impact on my study of Dante. Mystical interpretations of the Commedia have the advantage of inducing the reader to “rivivere la visione” (Guardini 71) of Dante’s pilgrim. There are of course many ways of reliving the pilgrim’s experience according to the reader’s temperament. However, all of them should end up in a testimony and incitement to the direct experience of the divine. It is difficult to see, in fact, any other explanation for Dante’s words in the Epistola a Cangrande della Scala on the practical and moral aim of the Commedia other than this constant call to action and will. The visionary autobiography of chapter XXVII of the Epistola introduces the reader to the mystical reality of the Commedia, both as direct experience and with precise references to mystical autors such as Saint Bernard and Richard of Saint Victor. My thesis is far from being an exhaustive study of the pilgrim’s spiritual growth. The study of fear and desire within an Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective is a starting point to understand the difference as well as the continuity between bodily and spiritual senses in order to clarify the process, il trasumanar, of the pilgrim’s experience of his journey. My own process in writing this thesis has in some ways paralelled that of the pilgrim in seeking to find the framework and style that presents the Commedia as a guide to spiritual practice. The scholarly nature of my work opens towards another aim: to follow the path of the Commedia’s viator in his spiritual understanding, and to embody in this study the words San Bernard addresses to Dante in the last canto of Paradiso “e tu mi seguirai con l’affezione, / si che dal dicer mio lo cor non parti” (Par XXXII 149-150).