Thursday
John Reishman in my Dante discussion group made an excellent point this past Tuesday as we were discussing Canto X of Purgatorio: as the poet sees it, art is essential if we are to grasp sacred truths. Religious doctrine and moral reasoning, while important, are not enough.
As one who believes that literature is essential for better living, I perked right up. John, who is a Victorianist, noted that 19th century art critic John Ruskin also saw art as having a moral mission.
In Canto X, Dante and Virgil have just passed through the gates of Purgatory and are confronted by an imposing zigzag path up a tall mountain:
“Now here,” the master said, “we must observe Some little caution, hugging now this wall, Now that, upon the far side of the curve.” These labors made our steps so slow and small That the diminished moon from out the sky Back to her restful bed had time to fall Before we’d threaded through that needle’s eye. But when we had come up and out to where The hill’s face was set back, there he and I Stood still, I weary, both quite unaware Which way to turn us, on a level place Bare as a desert track, and lonelier.
The knowledge that he is on the road to salvation is not enough. As with Percy Shelley’s traveler, “the lone and level sands stretch far away” so that the poet who once found himself lost in a dark wood again finds himself floundering. If he is fully to grasp and internalize his quest, he needs help, and that help comes from art—in this case, sculpture:
Now, while we stood up there, and ere we went
One step, I saw how that rock-bastion
Which, rising sheer, showed no means of ascent,
Was pure white marble, and had carved thereon
Sculptures so rare, that Polyclete—nay, more--
Nature might blush there, being so outdone.
The first sculpture, which surpasses the artistry of even the legendary Greek sculptor Polykleitos, is of the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary. It is so realistic that Dante imagines he hears it speaking:
The angel that to earth came down and bore
The edict of the age-long wept-for peace
Which broke the long ban and unbarred Heaven’s door,
Appeared to us, with such a lively ease
Carved, and so gracious there in act to move,
It seemed not one of your dumb images;
You’d swear an Ave from his lips breathed off,
For she was shown here too, who turned the key
to unlock the treasure of the most high love;
And in her mien those words stood plain to see:
Ecce ancilla Dei [Behold the handmaid of God], stamped by art
Express as any seal on wax could be.
Subsequent sculptures of David dancing before the recovered Arc of the Covenant and the Emperor Trajan putting off a battle to aid a distressed widow reinforce the joy that is welling up in Dante. In fact, he is so enthralled with the art that Virgil must remind him of the journey ahead:
The image of the great humilities
Still held me thralled—a sight beyond compare
And for the Craftsman’s sake, beyond all price,
When, “Look!” the poet murmured, “over there
Comes on, but very slowly quite a throng;
They will direct us to the upward stair.”
Group participant John Gatta, a musician as well as English professor, noted that music also plays an important role in the pilgrim’s spiritual journey. When Dante passes through Purgatory’s gates, for instance, he hears “Te Deum Laudamus—God, we praise you—“sweetly interwound with music”:
Methought a voic sang, like some chorister’s,
Te Deum laudamus, sweetly interwound
With music; and its image in my ears
Left such impression as one often catches
From songs sung to an organ, when one hears
The words sometimes and sometimes not, by snatches.
Of course, The Divine Comedy itself takes us on a powerful journey, from the hells in which we entomb ourselves to the joys that an open heart will bring. Never modest, Dante informs us what his own art is capable of. The moment occurs immediately after he passes through Purgatory’s gates:
Like one consoled, released from the dull pressure
Of doubt, who changes all his former fright,
When the glad truth is told him, into pleasure,
So my face changed; and when he saw me quite
Carefree, my leader moved and so did I,
Up by the rampart, onward toward the height.
Look, Reader, how my theme would scale the sky!
Marvel not, therefore, if with greater art
I seek to buttress what I build so high.
When I was teaching, I would tell my students that there are three stages for getting the most out of literature: immersion, reflection, and action. There’s an emotional connection, an intellectual connection, and then, hopefully, an incorporation of the work into one’s active being. The throng that Virgil points to are people weighed down with stones, their sins from life. Art in the form of a literary metaphor names the condition and the way forward, but these souls and Dante himself must work to bring it about. Virgil points out,
Don’t you see
That we are worms, whose insignificance
Lives but to form the angelic butterly
That flits to judgement naked of defense?
Why do you let pretension soar so high,
Being as it were but larvae—grubs that lack
The finished form that shall be by and by.
No single poem, essay or formulation can do justice to the myriad ways that literature, and art in general, deepens our souls and makes us better people. I fell in love with the blog form when I realized that, with each daily post, I could touch on a tiny aspect of the process at work. Dante’s Canto X reminds me that I am in good company.
