Dante's Philosophical Life by Paul Stern

Author:Paul Stern
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Dante’s Central Dream

With the time for prophetic dreams approaching, the moon possessed an unusual brightness as it ran “along those paths which the sun inflames when the Roman sees it set between the Sardinians and the Corsicans” (XVIII. 79–81). But Dante seeks the sun not the moon, the original light of philosophic insight, not its reflection. So, while Virgil “had put off the burden I had laid upon him,” Dante “harvested an open and clear discussion of my questions” (XVIII. 84, 85–86). His questioning does not cease.

Dante notes the formerly slothful penitents “gallop” toward him (XVIII. 96). They enact the distinction between human and nonhuman motion that Virgil had left unexplained. Dante likens these galloping penitents to “Is-menus and Asopus,” the rivers that “once saw fury and trampling alongside them in the night, whenever the Thebans felt the need of Bacchus” (XVIII. 91–93). Unlike the rivers, the Thebans danced unpredictably, “on any night” they felt the need (XVIII. 92). Dante further underscores the difference by attributing the dance to the Thebans’ choice rather than the demonic possession cited in his sources. Desire and thought together somehow generate motion, as they most emphatically do in the Thebans’ orgiastic rites.

The lead runner cries out, “Mary ran with haste to the mountain!”; the next, “Caesar, to subdue Lerida, struck Marseilles and then hastened to Spain!” (XVIII. 100–101). The first instance occurs in Mary’s visit to Elizabeth immediately following the Annunciation; the second refers to an episode in the war between Julius Caesar and Pompey.38 Judging only by appearances we would not know that Mary rushes to Elizabeth who was at that time pregnant with John, while Caesar hastens to engage in a bloody civil war, struggling for power. Judging only by the manifest deeds, their intent is obscure, Mary’s mission indistinguishable from Caesar’s. Appearance alone does not suffice to explain a being capable of intent.

The need to pierce this veil is evident in the one exchange Dante has with a penitent on this Terrace. Largely a creature of the poet’s making, little is known about this abbot of San Zeno. The punishment of the slothful requires endless physical motion; among the penitents in Purgatorio only they do not pause even to pray. For the abbot, however, psychic motion replaces physical. To engage in the former, he ceases the latter. Given the difference between human and all other motion, the abbot’s sort of motion rather than the penitents’ is more productive of the kind of zeal Dante encourages. Dante reports that the exchange with the abbot pleased him (XVIII. 129). By stopping to talk, the abbot distinguishes himself from the “galloping” herd. He demonstrates the intrepidity and even ferocity of spirit required to make an independent judgment. What drives him is a deep concern for who should rule and the principles by which they rule. More so than his fellow penitents, he cares zealously about what is truly good, beyond mere appearance. Asking forgiveness for the constant motion their punishment demands of him and his fellow penitents, the abbot tells Dante, their “justice seems boorishness to you” (XVIII.

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