The Uncanonical Dante: the Divine Comedy and Islamic Philosophy

Notes [^1]: See Teodolina Barolini,The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 6, 267­68 (note 9).

[^2]: For an excellent treatment of the heretical character of Dante, see the chapter "The Strangeness of Dante: Ulysses and Beatrice" in Harold Bloom'sThe Western Canon (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994), pp. 76­104.

[^3]: See Edward W. Said,Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978).

[^4]: All quotations from theDivine Comedy are taken from the translation of Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam, 1982).

[^5]: I will be dealing solely with the issue of the impact of Islamic philosophy on Dante. Thus I will avoid the even more complicated issues raised by Miguel Asín Palacios in his bookLa escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia , first published in Madrid in 1919, and available in English translation under the titleIslam and the Divine Comedy , trans. Harold Sutherland (London: Frank Cass, 1926). Asín Palacios touched off a heated controversy by arguing that Dante's conception of the other world was heavily influenced by Muslim mythology and theology. For a good review of the controversy, see Vicente Cantarino, "Dante and Islam: History and Analysis of a Controversy," A Dante Symposium, eds. William de Sua and Gino Rizzo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), pp. 175­98.

[^6]: On the idea of Limbo, see Kenelm Foster,The Two Dantes and Other Studies (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1977), pp. 169­71, Amilcare A. Iannucci, "Limbo: The Emptiness of Time,"Studi danteschi 52 (1979­80): 72­73; hereafter abbreviated "LET," and Amilcare A. Iannucci, Commentary on Canto iv, Lectura Dantis Virginiana (1990), ed. Tibor Wlassics, vol. 1, pp. 43­44; hereafter abbreviated LDV.

[^7]: See Barolini, p. 39, Iannucci, LDV, p. 45, and Gino Rizzo, "Dante and the Virtuous Pagans," A Dante Symposium, p. 119.

[^8]: Foster, p. 171, finds this development "vastly . remarkable." See also Barolini, pp. 39­40, Iannucci, "LET ," pp. 74, 90, 104, and Iannucci,LDV , pp. 42, 44. Asín Palacios finds precedents in certain Islamic writers for including pagans in paradise; see pp. 56, 61­63, 65, 81­84.

[^9]: Rizzo, p. 121, writes of this moment: "One wonders if we are still in the same Limbo. The darkness is gone, the sighs and sadness are no longer to be seen or heard. As we progress from the throngs of infants, women and men who live in 'longing without hope' to the castle inhabited by the poets, philosophers and heroes of the classical world we find 'neither joy nor sorrow' in the appearance of these figures surrounded by light. Obviously, if these sages display 'neither joy nor sorrow' in their countenance, they can hardly be said to live 'in longing without hope.'" Iannucci, "LET," p. 75, note 13, recognizes this anomaly, but tries to explain it away: "It is true that unlike the unbaptized children and the flock (l. 66) of the virtuous but obscure souls whose sighs fill the air of Limbo (ll. 25­27), the illustrious virtuous pagans within the gates of thenobile castello show no emotion. . But this apparent impassability before their fate is due not to any substantial difference in the degree of their suffering in comparison with that of the rest of the souls in Limbo, but rather to Dante's conception of the savio who can exert absolute control over his passions. The virtuous pagans also suffer and perhaps even more for, being wise, they are more aware of what they have lost, but their dignity and self-esteem prevent them from expressing their anguish openly." This is a very interesting view of the situation; for Iannucci's sake, one only wishes Dante had made it explicit in the poem.

[^10]: SeeInferno , xix, 19­21. Here Dante offers a perfectly innocent explanation for having broken the baptismal font in the San Giovanni Church in Florence, as if more sinister explanations of his action had been circulating.

[^11]: For Dante's view of the need for circumspection and even indirection in writing, seeConvivio, III , x. See Christopher Ryan, trans.,Dante: The Banquet (Stanford French and Italian Studies, 1989), p. 104: "It is highly commendable, and indeed necessary to use this figure of speech, in which the words are directed to one person and their intention to another, for while admonishment is always commendable and necessary it is not always

appropriate that it be voiced by anyone whomever. So when a son is aware of a fault in his father, or when a subject is aware of a fault in his lord, or when a person knows that to admonish a friend would increase his shame or diminish his honour, or when he knows that his friend is not receptive to admonishment but is angered by it, this is a most graceful and useful figure, to which we may give the name dissimulation. Its strategy is similar to that of a wise soldier who attacks a castle on one side in order to draw off the defences from another." See also Convivio, IV, viii, p. 141, note 14 in Ryan's edition: "if, when discussing something, the trained speaker knows that there is someone hostile in his audience, he has to be very careful in what he says."

[^12]: The figures in Limbo are "great-hearted souls" ("spiriti magni")--iv, 119. See Rizzo, p. 122, and John D. Sinclair, trans.,Dante's Inferno (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 69: "Dante's description of them is a reminiscence of Aquinas's account of Aristotle's 'magnanimous'--great-souled--man."

[^13]: Cf. Dante's description in theConvivio, III , xiv (p. 114 in Ryan): "Through these three virtues men rise to philosophize in that heavenly Athens towards which, through the dawning of eternal truth, the Stoics, the Peripatetics and the Epicureans hasten together, united in the harmony of a single will." Though adjacent to hell, Dante's Limbo more closely resembles this "heavenly Athens."

[^14]:Apology , 41a­41c. Quoted in the translation of Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West,Four Texts on Socrates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 95­96.

[^15]: See, for example, Convivio, III , v, for knowledge of theTimaeus .

[^16]: Quoted in the text of J. B. Steane, ed.,Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Plays (Harmonsdworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1969),Doctor Faustus , I.v.141­142.

[^17]: In his very detailed discussion, Iannucci keeps forgetting that Muslims appear in Dante's Limbo. At one point ("LET," p. 77), he defines the inhabitants as "born too early or too far away" to become Christians. On p. 84, he writes: "To be sure, Dante's Limbo contains A. D. men as well, who for spatial rather than temporal reasons lived in ignorance of Christ." On p. 107, Iannucci writes: "Dante's Limbo, therefore, is a summa of B.C. history." In such statements as these, Iannucci thus provides a good measure of how odd the presence of Muslims in Dante's Limbo is; he cannot accommodate them in his attempts to formulate Dante's principles of inclusion.

[^18]: For Dante's positive evaluation of Saladin, seeConvivio , IV, xi (p. 150 in Ryan). See also Asín Palacios, p. 262.

[^19]: For biographical details, see Dominique Urvoy,Ibn Rushd (Averroes) , trans. Olivia Stewart (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 29­38. The best essay I know on Averroës is Muhsin Mahdi's "Averroës on Divine Law and Human Wisdom," in Joseph Cropsey, ed.,Ancients and Moderns (New York: Basic Books, 1964), pp. 114­31. I first studied Averroës with Professor Mahdi in Arabic 147 at Harvard University, and wish to acknowledge my great debt to his instruction on the subject.

[^20]: For a recent general account of Averroism, see Oliver Leaman,Averroes and his Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 163­78.

[^21]: See Asín Palacios (p. 262) on Dante's placing of Avicenna and Averroës in Limbo.

[^22]: Asín Palacios (pp. 252­54) points out one probable means of transmission of the Islamic thought of Spain to Dante: his teacher, Brunetto Latini, was sent in 1260 as Ambassador of Florence to the court of Alfonso el Sabio in Toledo and Sevilla.

[^23]: The first time Dante was publicly charged with Averroism appears to have been in 1327, six years after he died, when Guido Vernani made the accusation in hisDe Reprobatione Monarchiae . For brief excerpts from this work in English, see Michael Caesar, ed., Dante: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 110­14. For further excerpts in English, see J. F. Took,Dante: Lyric Poet and Philosopher (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 167­68. On this subject, see Ernest Fortin, "Dante and Averroism,"Actas del V Congreso International de Filosofia Medieval (Madrid, 1979), vol. 2, pp. 739­46. This essay is the best treatment I know of the relation of Dante to Averroës; in general Fortin's writings and conversations about Dante have been a great help to me in trying to understand theDivine Comedy .

[^24]: For some relatively clear discussions of the subject, see Urvoy, pp. 99­109 and Leamon, pp. 82­103.

[^25]: Cf. Brunetto Latini's comment atInferno , xv, 119­20.

[^26]: For this story, see Beatrice Zedler's preface to her translation of St. Thomas Aquinas'sOn the Unity of the Intellect Against the Averroists (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 1968).

[^27]: As an example of the hostility against Averroës, Aquinas calls him the "perverter" of Aristotle's philosophy (Zedler, p. 73). In the conclusion of the treatise, Aquinas becomes uncharacteristically belligerent as he challenges an unnamed Averroist opponent: "But if there be anyone boasting of his knowledge, falsely so-called, who wishes to say something against what we have written here, let him not speak in corners, nor in the presence of boys who do not know how to judge about such difficult matters; but let him write against this treatise if he dares; and he will find not only me who am the least of others, but many other lovers of truth, by whom his error will be opposed or his ignorance remedied" (75).

[^28]: As an example of Dante's use of the idea, seeConvivio , IV, xxi (p. 174 in Ryan). Karl Vossler also suggests that the idea of the Possible Intellect functions in the love poetry of the dolce stil nuovo, including Dante's Vita Nuova. See Karl Vossler,Medieval Culture: An Introduction to Dante and His Times , trans. William Cranston Lawton (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929), I, 305­8. This suggestion is supported by the fact that Dante's friend, Guido Cavalcanti, explicitly mentions the Possible Intellect ("possibile intelletto") in his famous canzone "Donna mi priegha" (7th stanza). On this subject, see George Holmes, Dante (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 8­10.

[^29]: See Dante Alighieri,On World-Government (De Monarchia), trans. Herbert W. Schneider (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1949), p. 6. On the Averroism of this passage, see Vossler, I, 309, Holmes, pp. 68­69, Took, pp. 166­67, and Larry Peterman, "An Introduction to Dante's De Monarchia," Interpretation 3 (1973): 174­75.

[^30]: This consideration may explain why inPurgatorio , xxv, 61­66, Dante takes pains to dissociate himself from Averroës's conception of the Possible Intellect. On this subject, see Holmes, p. 75.

[^31]: See Peterman, p. 174 (note 15). For the condemnation ofDe Monarchia , see Chapter XVI of Boccaccio'sLife of Dante .

[^32]: Among many others, see, for example, Vossler, I, 107, Ricardo J. Quinones,Dante Alighieri (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979), p. 150, and Took, pp. 113­17.

[^33]: "The Decisive Treatise, Determining the Nature of the Connection Between Religion and Philosophy" in George F. Hourani, ed. and trans.,Averroes on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy (London: Luzac, 1961), pp. 46­47.