I
am writing this essay in the interstices of a busy week, one destined to become
busier still with the crescendo of the Princeton University reunions at week’s
end. I have spent most of the
daylight hours of the past few days at Palmer House, the elegant mansion
usually used by the University to feed and water visiting trustees and other
big-shot guests, engaged in elevated thinking about the central section of
Dante’s Divine Comedy, the Purgatorio. The occasion is the current gathering of Professor Robert
Hollander’s remarkable “Alumni Dante Seminar” that used to hold biennial
meetings in Tuscany. I don’t
expect even those “loyal readers” of my vain imagination to recall a post of June 30, 2010
dedicated to this amazing event, but its consultation would provide some useful
background.
Palmer House: Not a Tuscan castle, but still not too shabby
In
my not infrequent forays out of the ivory tower during my active career—to post
offices, sports events, religious services, etc.--I soon learned that “real
world” people had very little idea of what an English professor does for a
living—if anything. A common
reaction to learning that I was an English professor was, “Well, I’d better
watch my grammar.” It’s very
touching that many people still believe that someone is invigilating grammatical usage in the Republic—touching,
but as even a cursory review of the public press will demonstrate, hopelessly
naïve. What English professors do,
or at least did, was to attempt to teach people to read well.
The
truth is that many commonly shared experiences of daily life—cooking a meal,
driving a car, mowing the lawn, having sexual relations, playing a game, using
a computer—can be done more or less well, with superior or inferior competence,
and with greater or less satisfaction.
The variable factors include native ability, formal training, the
clarity of volitional investment, and the amount of experience or
practice. All these elements, and
others, come into play in reading a book, especially if the book has been
written by a genius who makes serious demands upon his readers. Such a man is Dante, and such a book
his Divine Comedy.
Most
people, if they think about medieval Christianity at all, are likely to think
of it as a tissue of irrationalities.
In fact much of what seems strangest and most extravagant to many
follows remorselessly from the typical medieval obsession with logic. Take the doctrine of the Immaculate
Conception of Mary, for example—not
to be confused, as it often is even in the middlebrow press, with the Virgin
Birth. Though the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception was formalized only in the nineteenth century, the idea
had been around for a long time and became especially popular among the
Franciscans of the thirteenth century.
The Immaculate Conception became necessary in order to neutralize
another teaching, never officially dogmatized, concerning the inheritability
and transmission of original sin.
If Jesus was to be free of it, his human parent must likewise be free of
it.
Something
very similar probably accounts for the roughly contemporaneous birth of
Purgatory, which was a logical necessity of developments in twelfth-century
moral theology. It was nearly
impossible that a human soul, however strenuously mortified by ascetic
practice, could move directly from the sordid hurly-burly of human life to the
experience of the Beatific Vision.
For souls in hell it was too late.
They were doomed for eternity, and time had for them no meaning. But souls destined for salvation needed
a time-based place where they could clean up their acts, a kind of spiritual
decompression chamber. The
theologians called this place “Purgatory”. There were dozens of classical and early medieval literary
visions of heaven and hell, but Dante was on his own in devising an imaginary
geography of Purgatory—a tall mountain with encircling pathways of ascent,
at the top of which was the biblical earthly paradise!
Purgatory
did not survive in the churches of the Reform. One of the thirty-nine “Articles of Religion”
minces few words in expressing the Anglican opinion: “The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory…is a fond thing,
vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather
repugnant to the Word of God.” So
far as Dante is concerned you would have to say that it is brilliantly invented. The
same might be said of Robert Hollander’s alumni seminars. A scholar of international reputation,
Hollander is one of the most erudite and productive students of Dante in the
world. But he is also a
master-teacher whose students often want to continue reading with him decades
after their graduation.
Il professore in action, May 2013: photo Maryanne Maletz
A
few years ago he and his wife Jean—both of them poets themselves—published a
new three-volume edition of Dante’s poem that combines a graceful and
scrupulous English version with what is in effect a discreet encyclopedia of
annotation. It is a format that
can encourage a beginner, yet satisfy a hardened veteran. Medieval spiritual writers were keenly
aware of the variety of gifts and capacities displayed by the human
condition. Speaking of the human
soul’s thirst for divine grace, Thomas Aquinas says roughly the following: it
doesn’t matter what size bucket you have so long as your bucket is full. Gregory compares the sacred text to a
watercourse. It is a gentle stream
in which the lamb can safely wade; it is a deep river in which the mighty
elephant can frolic.
Translators at work
It
is sufficiently obvious that Dante intentionally set out to weave a web of
similar complexity. I suppose it
is possible to enjoy the Purgatorio
as a fast-paced “buddy flick” in which in which two poetic sidekicks, Dante and
Virgil, share some pretty far-out adventures. By all means do so if you are so inclined. But then you might want to drop by the
Home Depot to pick up a larger bucket.
