Dante (1265-1321): The New Life. On World Government, the Paradisio, and Virgil and Beatrice as Spirit Guides
Presented on: Thursday, October 6, 1983
Presented by: Roger Weir
Italian Renaissance
Presentation 1 of 13
Dante (1265-1321): The New Life, On World Government, The Paradiso, and Virgil and Beatrice as Spirit Guides
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, October 6, 1983
Transcript:
October 6th, 1983 Roger Weir's lecture on Dante.
I have to keep track of so many things, I, if I don't start right. I skip like a record. The old classical memory system in Greece was to create a memory grid and then to position your cues in a certain mnemonic geometric form. And as you sweep through the form and you just read out by the muse the content. And unfortunately, I had to teach myself that. And it was about 25 years ago, and I didn't do a very good job. So, I have sort of a tinker toy model of the classical Greek memory system, and I've never repaired it. So sometimes if I pause when I start it's because I can't find the beginning.
Our Saturday and Sunday school continues to progress over here on Hyperion - 2029 Hyperion. I'm teaching two courses there on Saturdays. One from 9:00 to 11:00 and the other from 11:00 to 1:00. And they are courses which, one course is about scientific nature - what we know about nature as of late 20th century. Which is the outer realm of what we have to deal with. The second course is on symbolic consciousness, which is the inner. The two courses are the beginnings of a two-year cycle of eight quarters of progressive development. Which I worked out for over an 18-year span to try and develop the type of education that would be parallel and consonant with the actual historical development of consciousness in man.
So, the first courses are to set up the primordial Tai Chi relationship. The inner and the outer nature and symbol, mine. And then the next level is rituals. And then comes the addition of language with mythology and on up to the eighth course which is called explorations. So that's going on. And Sunday from 4:00 to 6:00 we have a course on Byzantine civilization being offered by the director of the Fowler Museum in Beverly Hills. A very good friend of mine, Basil Jenkins. We are serving food and so forth, Radha so you might stop by. I think we've kept our costs down, it's $5 per person per class and that's a bare minimum to run anything these days as you know.
This course begins and for those who are coming for the first time or are coming somewhat sporadically forgive me for another minute of introduction. But I have to position this for many who have been coming for quite some time, some years. This is going back in time to the 14th and 15th century. And I've been developing for the last four years the old Chronologica Mystica. The mystical history of man's development. And the last time that this was sufficiently done was by the good Abbot Trithemius [Johannes Trithemius] some 400 years ago. And we have gotten up to the 18th century. To the age of the Enlightenment in terms of the development. And Tuesday night at the Gnostic Society I'm continuing that series on the enlightenment. We've gotten up to, let's see, path, this past Tuesday was the Comte de Saint-Germain. Appropriately lightning and thunder came just at the moment I began. And so, with the semi terrified veracity I delivered everything I knew the truth is possible.
This course is catching up a whole development that was sidestepped in the original plan last year. And so, I will catch this up. And in January, February, and March here I will catch up another sidestep which will include Shakespeare and Cervantes, Spinoza, Descartes, Rembrandt. That crowd. Which had to be left out because they form a different matrix, as it is from the one that I was following at the time.
So, we have now the creampuff in the works. The Italians are, as you know, always lovable. And at this period in their history, they were tremendous. They were just more than anyone could bear or stand and so we have to look again and again. And they never cease to amaze us. This series will have to no lectures in the sequence. There is no lecture on November 21st, 24th, and no lecture on December 29th. But because of the fullness of the course, I will give lectures on those days but not here. I will give lectures at the Gnostic Society. And on the 24th of November the lecture will be on Botticelli's mythologies. And on the 29th of December the lecture will be on the great Raffaello. Raffaello deserves a lecture by himself, as does Botticelli and he will get it. A third artist who deserves a lecture by himself was Michelangelo and he will obtain it here in a special Saturday morning lecture on page 11 of this series. So, Saturday November 19th in this room will be a special presentation on Michelangelo. So those three lectures go together with this sequence and should provide some basic acquaintance. Not an overview but an excursion through the spinal fluid of the Italian Renaissance. And appropriate to that because we're not taking an overview. We are not freshmen in a university looking at a survey. We are somewhat matured spiritual focuses, and we have every intention to stay at that level of maturity. And to move with a little elegance through the neural fluid of the Italian Renaissance.
And so, we are beginning today with Dante. But I have already covered the basic beginnings of Dante in a previous lecture. That is the inferno and the purgatorio aspects of his life. And so today I will concentrate on, The New Life [La Vita Nuova], On World Government [De Monarchia], and on the Paradiso. And those three works will position Dante for us, in position the whole course for us, on a level that I think we deserve to have in our excursion.
Dante, of course, looms always as one of the world's greatest poets. He is in fact one of the four or five greatest poets in the Western tradition. He is always mentioned with Homer and Virgil and Shakespeare, and occasionally Goethe, as being one of the seminal voices of poetic language in the several civilizations that have made the Western world, hat have made our situation. Dante in the contemporary scene of early 14th century Florence, of course died in exile. His tomb is in Ravenna on the Adriatic coast. And one of the earliest lives of Dante was written by his great successor Giovanni Boccaccio. And Boccaccio in beginning his short life of Dante disclaims the tragedy of Florence trying to mimic the ancient times of Greece and Rome. And yet casting out its most famous son into exile. And how can they do this. And he begins in here by giving us a basic look at Dante's life. And he says, "Although what has been said above could be verified by countless cases of ingratitude and by instances of shameless indulgences playing to all. It will suffice for me to instance one case alone, in order that I made the less exposed our faults and that I may come to my principal purpose. Nor is the case in point an ordinary or slight one for I'm going to record the banishment of that most illustrious man Dante Alighieri. An ancient citizen and born of no mean parents who merited as much through his virtue, learning and good services as is adequately shown and will be shown by the DT rot. If such deeds had been done in a just republic, we believe they would have earned for the highest rewards." And he goes on to give us the sad details of his life leading up to the exile.
He points out to us that the Lord of Ravenna, Ravenna a good friend Guido, who contacted Dante gave him protection towards the end of his life. And in fact, when there was a difficulty with the city of Venice. And the city of Ravenna was in danger at the very end of his life Guido turned to Dante to be his emissary. And Dante was sent, the grand old man, the great voice, the excellent character, the great juggler of language went to Venice. And the Venetian noble aristocracy were so afraid of Dante's persuasiveness that they barred him from having an introduction to court. And so, Dante for weeks on end waited in his apartments in Venice for a hearing. And meanwhile everyone in Venice was talking about the great poet who was waiting with the case of Ravenna.
Finally, Dante grew sick in Venice. Easy to do. And began to cough and ask for ship passage home, which the Venetian aristocracy denied him. And Dante had to take the land way back and of course he got very ill and after approaching Ravenna was on his deathbed and several days later died in 1321. At the time it was a great scandal, and the city of Venice was just castigated by the literature's of the 14th and 15th century for having done this to the greatest poet since Virgil.
Boccaccio after finishing this great detailing of his life then describes Dante for us and he gives us, I think in this paragraph the best short description of the man. "Our poet was of moderate height and after reaching maturity was accustomed to walk somewhat bowed, with a slow and gentle pace. Clad always in such sober dress as befitted his riper years."
You've all seen the Gustave Doré engravings of the cowled Dante with the sharp featured deep line, etched face. Salvador Dali once did a beautiful sculpture of Dante that has this eagle-like capacity. And when we get to The Paradiso, you'll see how fitting and accurate it was to portray Dante as the ancient Greeks portrayed Aeschylus, as an eagle. And we'll see that the eye of the eagle in Paradise contains for Dante the secret of man's destiny.
"His face was long, his nose aquiline and his eyes rather large than small. His jaws were large, and the lower lip protruded beyond the upper. His complexion was dark. His hair and beard thick black and curled. And his expression ever melancholy and thoughtful." Melancholy here does not refer to a sentiment but refers to one of the classic four humors. That is to say he was a pensive individual from structural temperament. Given to philosophic musing at all times.
And thus writes Boccaccio, "Yet chanced one day in Verona, when the fame of his works had spread everywhere." Particularly that part of his comedy, commedia, entitled The Inferno. And when he was known by sight to many, both men and women. That as he was passing before a doorway, where sat a group of women. One of them softly said to the others, but not so softly that she was, but that she was distinctly heard by Dante, and such as accompanied him. Do you see the man who goes down into hell and returns when he pleases and brings back tidings of them that are below.' To which one of the others naively answered, You must indeed say true. Do you not see how his beard is crisp-ed and his color darkened by the heat and smoke down there.' Hearing these words spoken behind him and knowing that they came from the innocent belief of the women. He was pleased. And smiling a little, as if content that they should hold such an opinion, he passed on." After all he was Italian.
His life became for him a geometric mandala based on the hierarchy of nine steps leading to an infinite tenth. So that for Dante, increasingly as he grew older, it occurred to him that he is very living essence. His chronological, biological, development as a person as a being, held a universal pattern which if he could decipher, would yield to him a perfect cross-section of the universe.
And because he lived at the epitome of his age. He lived at a time when the great mystic insight in man was just Western man, was just rising to the surface just breaking the surface. The Cloud of Unknowing was just being perceived. Saint Francis was just receiving his divine life pattern. And just so Dante was receiving this divine life pattern. But instead of it being given wholly at once, as in the stigmata for Saint Francis, yet came revelatory to him in historical sequence. And in order to compute, yet his mind, in his imagination, what this might be. What it would turn out to be. He began looking for correlations. And so constantly in Dante's mind there were four levels of reality that seemed to hold the four quarters of wholeness. And that some movement here, had a counter movement here. And movements balancing it in such a way so that there was a movement of wholeness. And in this wholeness, there were, noted by him, every nine years in his life a massive change of tone.
And in his experience, he recalled, later in life, in a book called The New Life, La Vita Nuova. In The New Life he recalled that at the age of nine, that is at the end of the first nine-year cycle in his life, he had an experience which woke him up. That he was suddenly turned inside out from what he had been. Even though he was just nine years old, he was thrust into an experience of wholeness. And he says it was such that the slightest beat of his heart almost pushed him over the edge in trembling. We would call it today a hyperventilating, neurotic attacked. A seizure of anxiety and we would look to his crib days to find out what was the origin of this.
But Dante tells us it's quite understandable because the origin of this was the fact that he had seen Beatrice. Beatrice and she was also nine. She was just entering her ninth year and he was just leaving his ninth year. So, at the opposite ends of nine they looked across time space and a primordial correlation in Dante's soul woke. And of course, because the soul is not fragmented, because it is whole, it awoke all at once. And a flaming mirror of glare, stark wholeness. Which at nine Dante was unable to do anything about except cringe. He found in Beatrice the anima, the soul, the essence of what was covered in him as a man, in the feminine.
He noticed nine years later at the age of eighteen that there had been a maturation of this situation. And in The New Life, he is trying to recount this to himself. And the form that he chooses in The New Life, rather than writing a series of short essays or a diary. He chooses a form which is very akin to the form that the great haiku poet Basho chose in The Narrow Road to the Deep North, the Oku no Hosomichi. The combination of prose and poetry together. So that the prose forms a setting, and the poetry sits jewel-like in the midst of the setting and illuminates the whole. Ibn Arabi used the same form in The Bezels of Wisdom, when he took the chronology of saints through man's history, saying that these settings were the settings for divine inspiration that illuminated. Dante chose to have a series of poems, quite a few poems. And there are many sonnets. There are some ballads. But in the sequence which seems quite random when one makes a list. And you have to realize that there are whole libraries of Dante. There are libraries of 10,000 volumes and Dante. So, this has all been canvassed.
And it occurs to several individuals of great repute, that in this sequence of poems and their prose settings. There are several that are most important. And the first poem called A Canzoni contains the very phrase that Dante wishes finally to fix upon. And he says in his prose that he was walking along. He was stewing about this. All of his capacities were brought to the fore. He was naked to himself. And in this he heard in his mind's ear the words, "ladies that have intelligence of love".
And just as the ancient Sanskrit poet Valmiki, who wrote the original Ramayana, he realized that the cadence and the content of the words together formed some basic primordial unity of expression. Which was expressive of an energy form implicit in man's spirit. That it comes out in this form in just this cadence. And that these words have a significance which is jewel-like in that they all come together exactly to the right point. Dante in order to assume the responsibility for this jewel like intelligence bursting into his experience. Pursued it in the only way that can, to go along with the form as presented.
So, in keeping the cadence and keeping the tone of the first line he let the muse finish the poem for him. And it came out like this, in translation. This is Charles Eliot Norton's translation of The New Life. This is from part 19 of The New Life. "Ladies that have intelligence of love. I have my lady, wish with you to speak. Not that I can believe to end her praise, but to discourse that I may ease my mind. I say that when I think upon her worth, so sweet doth love make himself feel to me. That if I then should lose not hardihood speaking, I should enamor all mankind. And I wish not so loftily to speak, as to become through fear of failure vile. But of her gentle nature, I will treat in a manner light compared with her desert."
This tone that Dante is searching with in The New Life is to try to find some way to explore further. And in the poem, he is saying here that he has a feeling, an intuition that the culmination of what he is going into is going to lead to something of importance for all mankind. And because this occurred to Dante increasingly. That is to say these kinds of deep reverberations come like volcanic shockwaves in nature. They come in in clusters and in cycles and phases. And as they increase in intensity, they lead to the expectation that will be some outbreak or revelation. Or as Carl Jung called it, enantiodromia, reversal of values. Where what is unconscious becomes conscious and our conscious focus slips into the unconscious regions.
And of course, Dante, intuiting that this could well happen to him, began to prepare himself. He began to school himself as much as he could in world history, in literature, in personal capacity. The kinds of developments that we today would see in the New Age journals page by page. He went into all the disciplines that he could. And preparing himself to be a setting for this impending volcanic upsurge of the ancient muses energy. In other words, Dante was preparing himself to be an Oracle in poetic nature for his time. And this is how the Italian Renaissance begins.
In preparing himself, he wrote The New Life in a way to try to bring out clearly to him what his assignment was. And as he developed The New Life, as he wrote, he realized that what he was dealing with, as he says in one of his last poems, "was beyond the sphere that widest orbit hath passed the sigh (?), which issues from my heart. A new intelligence doth love in part. In tears to him which leads him on his path." There are something new coming for him and he realizes that just as he is preparing himself in all the classic antiquity and all the possibilities that have existed before him. That he must also do an almost impossible task. He must prepare himself for the unknown. That there is something new in this. And he searches around in his life and in The New Life he is saying I am having trouble finding a way to prepare myself for something new. So that the only tack that he can take, in all honesty to himself, and the one that he did take was to assume that if he prepared himself towards some focus. Some apex of understanding and achievement. That from that apex he would begin to have the capacity to intuit what was new and what was unknown.
And so, he held a part of himself, a fragment of insightful intelligence in suspension. Carrying it like a sacred burden to the top of the pyramid of understanding. There to open that eye to whatever he may see from that pyramid. And so, carrying this secret capacity of openness with him Dante began to build. He began to build in terms of his writing. But realized that his writing was an emotional manifestation and expression of his living current. And so, his life became exceedingly complex. Exceedingly dense in its capacity to absorb experience in its fullness.
And as he did this Dante began to realize that his writing was leading him to a construction rather like a Gothic cathedral. Only instead of building in stone he was going to build in words. And his Cathedral is The Divine Comedy. As he was working on the Commedia, it occurred to him that the triad of levels was going to carry all the way through and that there would be three parts to the work. And that they would yield as three times three makes nine. That they would yield finally to a culmination of 100 cantos. This development was to be the perfection of his pyramid. And he was hoping from the top of this...he was hoping from the top of this to be able to have his, as we would say today, epiphany.
On the way to writing the Commedia, Dante became embroiled in politics in his day. But for a man of his capacity, when he became embroiled in the politics every capacity was brought into play. And in the year 1313 he finished a work which is even today exceedingly advanced in its thought. He wrote a small work which was called De Monarchia - On World Government. So, some seven hundred and seventy years ago Dante wrote on world government. And it was an exceedingly advanced theme even for our day. He begins De Monarchia with the statement that mankind needs unity and peace. And remember now this is sort of towards the culmination of his life. He is working on The Divine Comedy. He is building his apex. He is building his Gothic cathedral to get to the light at the presence of the spire. And on the way up, right near the top, just before he begins writing The Paradiso, he writes on world government.
And so that his phrase mankind needs peace and unity is full of significance. Full of meaning. And he begins by saying the knowledge of a single temporal government over mankind is the most important and least explored of all man's capacities. That almost no one has written upon this subject. That it has occurred to no one in its actual absorptive experience penetrating to every capacity that man has. And so, he takes us very quickly into statements like, this is not a theory, but this is a practical endeavor which man needs. He needs because of the very nature of man. Because of the structural quality of man. Because of the purposes which Dante himself is nearing to the point of being able to see. That is to say he is very close at the time that he is writing De Monarchia to begin The Paradiso.
And of course, The Paradiso assumes on the surface and in all of its ramifications that Dante is ready to step off the known into the unknown. He's ready to ascend as a mortal man into heaven. It brings to mind the most fabled capacity and antiquity of Odysseus, was that he was able to visit the dead and come back to life. But Dante who has been to hell and been through purgatory and great Florence is now ready to go to heaven while still a man. While still mortal. That is to say he is ready to begin his oracular descent into the infernal regions in order to sweep up again, past the great forests of purgatory and leap into the heavens. And the heavens for Dante will be nine levels. The moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars and so on up to the fixed stars and into the imperium level.
I talked about in the Dante lecture about four months ago of how at the end of The Purgatorio, Dante's guide and all this time has been the great poet, Virgil. And Virgil has come to him because in De Monarchia he asserts that the basis of world government for men actually has occurred already in history as a prototype. That the Roman Empire was in fact one on the principle of historical and spiritual ordeal. And that the Roman Empire brought together all the forces of mankind into one temporal holding and the confirmation of that being a legitimate setting for revelation was the fact that that was the time when Christ was born. And that because man had prepared a world government legitimately at the time of Augustus. This was the occurrence of the Epiphany of the birth of Christ, who was that oracular voice at that time. Who held that form together, the form of the Roman Empire. It was not Augustus, great though he was. Strong though he brought it together. But it was his appointed poet laureate Virgil. And it was the mind in character of Virgil that made the Augustine era the spiritual unity that enabled the birth of Christ to happen.
So then in the mind of Dante there was a correlation, a universal primary correlation, between Virgil and Christ. The integrity of Virgil's honesty of spirit and capacity of language is what Dante is hoping to parallel in his time. And in paralleling in his time, he is hoping to create some unity of spirit and voice, which will hold a new epiphany. A new revelation.
So, he is working towards this and De Monarchia he says in order for us to have a world government, we have to look back to the Roman Empire and we have to trace world history. And we find that there is an overriding goal among all men regardless of their differences. And that this goal is proved to be the realization of man's ability to grow in intelligence. That this is the purpose of mankind. So regardless of whatever political anglings there are, of any age. The overriding purpose and goal of mankind as a unity, the universal humanity, is to grow in intelligence. And that intelligence is to be brought together into a unified form which could hold the divine revelation for that time. And he says this is the purpose for which I have finally realized that I am living. That I am working. That I am writing.
And in De Monarchia he takes a long time to develop the theme that the Roman people in antiquity, were the noblest in terms of their capacity. He says that many people will argue that Rome was legitimate. But he says that it had won its way by ordeal and that ordeal proves they right. And that the birth of Christ proved the divine authority of Rome. And in this of course, the city of Rome itself becomes a symbolic mandala. And the location where in the Augustine Principate found its focus, and at whose center the mind of Virgil worked it's miraculous magic web.
Dante then in world government says, in the third of the three books, at the very beginning he says, "I know that what I am about to say here is going to anger the Pope." And of course, Dante did find a lot of trouble because of this. He said, "I know this is going to be a great deal of difficulty for me". But he says that the temporal consolidation of man's capacity is separate from the church and preceded the church. And that in fact the Roman Empire in the oracular, magical capacity of Virgil seership was the real focus for the incarnation of the divine into the human realm. And that the church was not the legitimate carrier of this. And therefore, the papacy and the Empire are separate. And that the Empire has every right to exist independently of the church. And then Dante sticking his neck out in 1313 says that the church is in fact not the right form by which the divine revelation carried itself into manifestation. That the church was not the structure of the papacy and the hierarchy of the priests and the Cardinals and so forth. But that the church was in fact the life of Christ. And that any individual following that individual path of the life of Christ was in fact the church at that time, at that moment, in that manifestation. So that the individual Christian life was the church and not the hierarchical structure known to history. And of course, this did not sit very well at that time. This is seven hundred and seventy years ago.
All of this is preparatory because Dante worked in a very careful way and an extraordinary mind. He was laying the foundation for The Paradiso. He had already finished The Inferno. He had finished The Purgatorio. He had come to an understanding of Virgil. Of the city of Rome. Of history of man and now he was having to take a great transcendent leap into heaven. And in order to do this he had to cut the final remaining puppet strings of conception that held him statically frozen in time space on the earth. And the De Monarchia was that wonderful sweep of the intellectual knife cutting all the strings in freeing him to go himself as an individual into heaven.
There are many books that broach this. Two of them I will recommend to you. The best book from the traditional Thomistic Catholic view is Dante and philosophy by the great Etienne Gilson and this is available in paperback. And in here Gilson, who was an extraordinarily brilliant individual, says here that "the De Monarchia presents to us an extraordinary Dante as compared to anything that he had written before. Dante before the De Monarchia is as he rather poorly in this case puts it always contend himself to be the student sitting at the feet of the Masters picking up the crumbs that would drop. He's always deferring to Aristotle. He's always deferring to Aquinas. He's deferring to Virgil. But he says in the De Monarchia for the first time we find Dante lifting his chin. Throwing back the cowl a little bit and standing forth as himself. That from now on Dante is no longer the student but he is the master."
And thus, the De Monarchia sets the stage for The Paradiso. And he is of course creating the conditions whereby he is addressing not the Italian people. He is not even addressing Europe. He is addressing finally as he calls it the humana civilitas, the human community in total. And by this he means the human community at all times and in all places. So, Gilson's book is excellent from the standard Thomistic background. Very, very well presented.
And from a more esoteric and yet Christian background of another... face Charles Williams great book The Figure of Beatrice. Charles Williams was a lifelong friend of JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. The three of them used to read their works together. Charles Williams wrote many supernatural thrillers and several great books he wrote a history of the Christian Church from the standpoint of the Holy Spirit, called The Descent of the Dove. He wrote a great book on witchcraft which is still one of the finest works ever written on that subject. So, he was quite somebody. He was an Arthurian poet in the 20th century. He wrote a great series of poems called Taliesin Through Logres, which carries the Arthurian imagery into the 20th century mind. He was also a very good friend of Dorothy Sayers, the author of the Peter Wimsey mysteries. So, he was quite somebody.
In The Figure of Beatrice, in this book, he brings out the fact that the focus of Virgil and The Paradiso contains an incommensurate. And that this incommensurate proved a problem for Dante because he was making a very crucial transition. You get some idea from what I've presented just how much it meant to him and how much it has meant through the last 800 years of history. Because actually this conception that Dante made, made the mind of Europe which is still operative today. A civilization is made by certain individuals who bring the matrix together into a focus. Just as Homer made Greece of Athens and Ionia. And just as Virgil made the Roman civilization. Dante will make the European mind. And in this, on page 70, Charles Williams puts it this way and a few sentences which I've excerpted. "Dante's method was the opposite of diffusion. He so concentrated the idea that he personified it. And that not only by an abstract name, however effective. The personification comes later at the beginning of The Commedia. There between the disappearance of Beatrice and the reappearance of Beatrice later on, the city appears in the form of a man."
That is at the very beginning of the comedy we have a glimpse of him at midlife. He's 36 years old, four times nine. He's come one full cycle. He's come half a lifetime. 72 is a sacred number, a full life. He's come half that way. Four nines. And he's lost in a dark forest. He's lost again in that Eden chaos, which is always being carried with us. And in that when he's lost, he began sinking into himself through fear and terror and the unknown. And when he is confronted by this lion, the spotted large-cap figure, which uncannily positions itself every time he tries to back up a retrace his steps or go forward that terrific figure is there. And he realizes that he is moving in tandem with that terrific figure. And because of this preparation he realizes that this is something of structural in, as we would say today, the unconscious becoming manifest. Nature itself manifests the unconscious energies and produces the realities which we must deal with.
And so, in this terrific bind, the figure of Beatrice comes to him, Beatrice. And then she sinks out of sight. And as she sinks out of sight he looks up and his fearfulness and he sees this pale figure of a man coming in to the glade. Just barely making out he cries out in fear and terror and the figure of the man begins to identify himself. And it is Virgil, and he has come just at the moment when Beatrice's figure fades out, Virgil fades in. So that there's a correlation between Beatrice and Virgil in terms of the inner dynamic of Dante's lifecycle. Virgil is the epitome of world government legitimately bringing to a conclusion the matrix of man's possibilities of holding a divine epiphany. Beatrice as being the fuse which would ignite that epiphany and bring it down out of heaven. So that the two are needed for the explosion.
But at the beginning of the com...Commedia he is unable to handle the two of them together. So as the one goes the other comes up. And he follows Virgil through the two large books of the Commedia, The Inferno, and The Purgatorio. And towards the end of The Purgatorio, where he's coming to the end of this vast forest area, he has re-entered the forest again. And he sees a river and as he moves along the river, he sees a feminine figure on the other side of the river. It is not Beatrice; it is someone named Matilda. And as he moves, she moves just the same way. And it's the reoccurrence of the image of the terrific shadow figure only instead of a lion this time as a woman. And this woman turns out to have a correlation with a harlot who is riding in a sacred chariot. But Dante because he has gone through this entire development is able to handle this imagery for himself. And as that figure then eclipses and disappears Beatrice comes back and reemerges into The Commedia because Dante is unable to be led into heaven by Virgil.
Virgil was of the old world. He was of the antique world. He was the best that there was at that time. His fourth eclogue known as The Messianic Eclogue and in Dante's time right up until the twentieth century it was thought to have been an oracular prediction of the birth of Christ. The fourth eclogue of Virgil reads like a prophecy. Prophesying the birth of Christ and all of the various imagery which has come down to us today. Fortified incidentally by the scene of the crash, which was made by, first by Saint Francis during the time just before Dante. All of this imagery had been handled by Virgil but there was something new coming and he could not go into heaven.
So, the guide, the guiding star Virgil had to be displaced by Beatrice and this is where she comes back into play. And for Charles Williams he says, "There are between the disappearance of Beatrice and the reappearance of Beatrice, the city appears in the form of a man. It lives as a man. It lives as Virgil. Virgil like all the rest has at least four significances. He is Virgil. He is poetry. He is philosophy. And he is the institution or the city." This is true in all of its meanings and as instant as institution is the nurse of souls it would have been in every way impossible for Virgil to enter The Paradiso. He and the other the redeemed, city must have collided poetically so that we have here a very interesting situation.
And at the end of The Purgatorio we have Dante bringing us curiously in this way. He has realized that Virgil cannot take him any further. That he has exhausted the best that antiquity has to offer. He has come to that threshold where he must go anew. And of course he is chagrined. He is not triumphant. This is a very dangerous precarious moment. This is a birth. He cannot look upon Beatrice directly. There are seven women, seraphic angels who are on this divine car that is moving her, and they caution him do not look too hard at her. In other words, don't focus yourself on her because this is an electrifying situation. One can be short-circuited very at this energy level. So, he is standing there as he says, "I stood as children silent in the shamed stand, listening with their eyes upon the earth. Acknowledging their fault and self-condemned."
And the poignancy the moment is illuminated because just as his spirit guide, the love of his life, not a sentimental love a spiritual love. His anima has occurred and reappeared. And the first thing she has said to him is that you have betrayed me. And so, he is standing there on the verge, suspended above all nothingness and she says to him you forgot me. Your memory did not hold me firm in its purpose. You went after other qualities in life.
Family, you had children. You got involved with politics. You're involved in exile. You're involved with literature. And in all this you have forgotten me. But of course, he has not really forgotten her. It's been on his mind constantly since he was nine years old. What she is doing is she is bringing up the fact that he must devote himself, commit himself exactly 100 percent in order to get into Paradiso. There, there can be no reserve however minute, infractional then it must be complete. And so, she is chastising him in this way in order to bring out the response of the wholeness because she can do that. She is the anima image. She is the wholeness. And just as a Zen master will take the kaisak (sp?) and wrap the disciple at the moment in zazen when there was a whole response needed. No more innuendo. No more balancing and refinement. No more elegance and excellence now. And so, Beatrice is doing this for Dante in this mode.
And then he looks up and he records near the end of the Purgatorio in this way, "as when large floods of radiance from above stream with that radiance mingled which ascends, next after setting on the scaly sign are plants then burgeoned. Each wears a new his wanted colors air the sun have yolk beneath another star his flame easties. Thus, putting forth the hue more faint than rose and deeper than the violet was renewed the plant eros while and all its branches bear. Unearthly was the hymn which then arose. I understood it not nor to the end endured the harmony." So, he is having a whole experience. He is not able to reflectively absorb it or analyze it. It is just occurring.
Just so Beatrice then wants him to follow her. She has now as a spirit guide done what is necessary to bring him out, to pop him out of the time-space continuum in which he has always been. And having suffered this, having had this, Beatrice then says now you may drink of the other river. The one river is Lethe, forgetfulness. And the second river is Eunoe, remembrance. And so, Dante goes to the river Eunoe, to remembrance, and he drinks. Just like in the Eleusinian initiation. And having this drink he records, "As a courteous spirit that pro-offers no excuses. But as soon as he have token of another's will, makes it his own when she had taken me. Thus, the lovely maiden moved her on and called to Statius with an air most ladylike, come now with him'. Were further space allowed than reader might I sing. Though but in part that beverage with whose sweetness I have never been sated. But since all the leaves are full this geometric form is complete now. To this point since all the leaves are full appointed for the second strain mine art with warning bridal checks me. I returned from the most holy wave regenerate. Even as new plants renewed with foliage new pure and made out for mounting to the stars." And so, he is able to finally go back through that circle which man had never been able to go back through, the primordial Garden of Eden. Back through into heaven.
Well, we're gonna take a break. Appropriately and we'll come back. I'll be down selling cassettes for a living on the street corner, and I'll be back in about ten minutes.
He begins The Paradiso with the beautiful image, "His glory, by whose might all things are move, pierces the universe". In other words, the radiance of God pierces the universe. It is a frequency of unity which by its ability to pierce through all of its manifestations creates the harmony. Which is the undersurface of the fabric of reality. And while that is largely undiscoverable in Inferno and problematical in Purgatorio. It is everywhere radiantly evident in paradise.
And in fact, the term paradise etymologically is traceable back to the old Persian. And a paradise was a perfected garden. A paradise was land that had been developed into a garden and the garden then perfected. So, the archaic image of the Garden of Eden was that of a paradise.
"His glory by whose might all things are moved pierces the universe. But there is a balance. And in one-part sheds more resplendence, elsewhere less. So that this creates the dynamic. So that the dynamic is not between being and not being but in modulations of resplendence. In heaven that large list of his light partakes was I witness of things. Which to relate again surpasses power of him who comes from thence. For that so near approaching its desire, our intellect is to such depth absorbed that memory cannot follow."
So, when he drinks of Eunoe, he remembers that he can't remember it and so he stops trying. And that frees him. And he is able to go. Because paradise is experienceable in its fullness but not memorable in its fragmentation. So that there is never a memory of paradise. There is no trace of it whatsoever. And the insistence that there be a memory of it is part of man's downfall. He's always trying to have a partial picture of God and it cannot be because there is no partiality of that reality. And so, Dante having drunk of Eunoe remembers not to try to remember the unity but to be in it. And it's resplendence then as he says, "pierces the universe".
He is led by Beatrice progressively through the heavens. He has led to the first heaven, which is the moon. And there are four cantos in paradise, The Paradiso, which concerns of the moon and various observations. And then he moves to mercury. And when he comes to Mercury, he is given a view of why it was that the wholeness of the Roman Empire had such a tremendous impact upon him.
And the figure in Paradise that reveals this for him, manifests it for him, is the great Roman codifier of laws Justinian. Justinian's code of laws has been translated about six years ago in the Penguin Classics. Justinian's mind was not so much to pioneer or originate but to collate and give to a permanent form. Rather like the Code of Hammurabi. So that the code of Justinian was an integrated whole, and that Roman law was the ultimate development of Roman civilization. Not the roads. Not the conquests. Not the language. But the lawful form of the unfolding of Empire and civilization. And so Justinian then explains to Dante why this was so luminous for him. Dante is fond of using a phrase which translates itself into, the luminous mind of reason. That when you know the reason, the reason illuminates the whole mind. And one becomes dazzled with the possibilities of truth and meaning that one knows.
And so, in canto 7 Justinian and other spirits have come to Dante. And Dante in hearing this, hearing about the full circumference of the laws that are possible for man to observe, begins to have doubts as to whether he could be redeemed. Because is not man's Redemption then outside the whole possibility of civilization and law. Is it not transcendent of this. And this is where Beatrice then as the spirit guide comes back into play. Justinian fades away and Beatrice comes back. And she brings out to him she says, "revolving and the rest unto their dance with it moved. Also, and like swiftest sparks in sudden distance from my sight were veiled. Made out possessed and speak it whispered me. Speak, speak until thy lady that she quenched the thirst with drops of sweetness. Yet blank aww, which Lords it over me even at the sound of Beatrice's name did bow me down as one in slumber held. Not long that mood Beatrice suffered. She with such a smile as might have made one blessed amid the flames beaming upon me. Thus, her words began thou in thy thought are pondering as I deem and what I deem is truth. How just revenge could be with justice punished. From which doubt I will free thee, so thou mark my words. For they of weighty (?) matter shall possess thee. Though suffering not a curve upon the power that willed and him to his own profiting, that man who was unborn condemned himself."
The man who was unborn was Adam. Dante all the time has been wondering about Redemption. And he's beginning to realize that all of the complications which he has seen and understood, about history and its development. About world government in its fullness. Were all predicated upon an involvement that worked from a fulcrum of one person, Adam, who was unborn. And that if we can return back in that primordiality to that condition we sidestep all of the innuendo and are saved. That is, we are redeemed because we are returned. And that returner, that Savior is Christ who bears a primordial relationship to Adam.
Then as he ascends with Beatrice as his guide further up into the heavens. He comes to that portion of the heavens where Saint Thomas Aquinas is extant. And Aquinas and Dante have a discussion. And by this time Dante is ready to entertain all possibilities of revelation and knowing. But he is still understanding more and more that there is some implicit requirement upon him. Not only to experience and absorb this but somehow possibly impossible to carry it back in language to the earth. And that he is still in his oracular vision. So, Aquinas is giving him the best arguments that he can in terms of philosophic understanding of the positions which he is beginning to notice in himself.
Then as he goes up in heaven, he sees the souls of many renowned warriors and Crusaders at the level of the planet Mars. And then he ascends with Beatrice to Jupiter the sixth heaven in which he finds the souls of those that had administered justice rightly in the world. You see they had administered justice. They had brought the collocation of laws into balance for mankind. And had promoted the development of equanimity upon the earth.
Then Dante begins to bring in again the spirits and Paradiso began giving an inventive against the clergy. Because as the church, the clergy, that have obscured this culminating capacity. They have in many ways helped the beginning building capacity but the very pinnacle of it has been obscured. So, there's been this blur at the top and this over emphasis on fundamentals and basics. And Dante then in Canto 19 of The Paradiso writes, while all this is circulating in him being absorbed. He writes, "before my sight appeared with open wings the beauteous image in fruition sweet gladdening the throng spirit. Each did seem a little ruby, where on so intense the Sunbeam glowed, that to mine eyes it came in clear refraction. And that which next befalls me to portray voice hath not uttered, nor hath ink written nor on fantasy was ever conceived."
And so, he is now to the eye of the eagle the Ruby laser of vision which is so poignant and coherent and powerful that it clears, it occurs to him as a clarity. A clarity. And when he looks out and he hears how history will culminate in a day of judgment. With Christ appearing for those who have lived the life of Christ. Not for a bureaucratic structure. Not for a clergical hierarchy. But for those who have actually in fact lived that life to its fullness and completeness. There will be a judgment.
The eagle then celebrates the praise of certain Kings who, whose glorified spirits then Dante notices form in their inner penetration. The form of the eye of the eagle in paradise. The spirits of the Joseph kings in their inner penetration, form the structure of the eye of the eagle in paradise. And seeing this, he saw that the pupil of that eye of the Eagle was the sage King David. And in the circle rounded, he saw Trajan and Constantine, William the Second of Sicily and so forth. And other good kings.
And Dante then is able to ascend into the upper regions of paradise where he leaves behind those who have been concerned with the equanimity of man and comes into the realm of the apostles. And as he goes into each realm, each apostle comes to Dante and addresses him by a question to see whether he understands a beatitude, a perfection, charity or some other one. And as he is able to understand this to discourse, to talk about it but also to manifest it, he is allowed to progress on.
And in cantos 26 Saint John examines Dante according to the question of charity. He begins the cantos in this way, "with dazzled eyes whilst wandering, I remained fourth of the beame (sp?) flame which dazzled me, issued a breath that inattention mute, detained me, and these words it spake. Tore well that long is till thy vision on my form over spent regain its virtue. With discourse though compensate the brief delay. Satan beginning to what point by soul aspires. And meanwhile rest assured that sight in thee is but overpowered a space not wholly quenched. Since thy fair guide and lovely and her look hath potency. The light to that which dwelt in andiocese (?) hand I answering thus, be to mine eyes the remedy or late or early at her pleasure. For there were the gates at which she and did light never die fire. Her never dying fire. My wishes here are centered in this palaces the wheel that Alpha and Omega is to all the lessons love can read me. Yet again the voice which had dispersed my fear, when dazed with that excess to converse urged and spake behooves the. Sift more narrowly thy terms and say who leveled at this scope, thy bow. Philosophy said I hath arguments. And this place hath authority enough to imprint in me such love". And he goes on.
And in this cantos Dante is beginning to realize that the capacity of Beatrice to lead him through the power of love is reaching some sort of an apex. And that this apex is forming before he comes to the final culmination in Paradise. And as this is occurring to him, he realizes that there is some revelation awaiting him here. That all this time, all his life, in all this form, he's been counting on his soul being capable in its finest pristine image of leading him to the culmination.
But by the time he gets to cantos 27 and he comes into contact the Saint Peter, he realizes that something else is happening to him. And in his conversation with Saint Peter, he begins to think more and more about the wholeness of man. And about man's capacity to even attain the ultimate, even with this capacity. And as he reaches this point in The Paradiso - Beatrice disappears. She is no longer there.
And Dante alone towards the ultimate pinnacle of paradise, looks around him and he finds that there is someone else there again. And this time the figure is Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. And Saint Bernard comes in this way Canto 32 of The Paradiso, "freely the sage, the wrapped and musings high assume the teachers part and mild began." And what he is talking about now is Mary. He's talking about the Virgin Mother.
And Dante, who all his life and for all his time, in every complication, has been holding the image of Beatrice so dear and she has now gone at the pinnacle of heaven. And the first thing his final spirit guide begins to tell him about is the cosmic mother, the Virgin Mary. His particular love even at the ultimate soul manifestation of it in a universal sense had screamed from him the absorptive experiential quality of the universal mother.
And so, Bernard of Clairvaux is now coming and immediately he began saying to Dante, "the wound that Mary closed, she opened first who sits so beautiful at Mary's feet. The third in order underneath her low, Rachel with Beatrice. Sarah next, Judith, Rebecca, and the gleaner maid." And he goes on in this light and then says, "here silent is thou art I know thy doubt. And gladly will I noose loose the knot, wherein thy subtle thoughts have bound thee." In other words, he has come to a point where the subtlest of thoughts of him, his reflective capacity to understand, have all this time been in a knot. Forbidding him an ultimate openness. And he has been absorptive all the way through. Cleared all the way through the different levels. But that he cannot come to that final point of triumphal light in paradise because there is a knot there. Created of his most subtle thoughts and they have something to do with the nature of the feminine, of Mary as the mother of God.
And Saint Bernard of Clairvaux then is going to unloose these and Dante then is going to open the hand of comprehension for himself. "Here silent as thou art. I know thy doubt and gladly will loosen the knot wherein thy subtle thoughts have found thee. From this realm excluded chance, no entrance here may find. No more than hunger thirst or sorrow can a law immutable have established all. Nor is there aught thou seest that doth not fit exactly as the finger to the ring." That is to say there is a comprehension in Paradise which is exact. And that Dante in order to receive this ring must free himself as the finger free to receive it. Can no longer be knotted up. And this ring is a comprehension of the all.
And Dante expresses it in the final cantos of the Divine Comedy in cantos 33 he writes, "oh virgin mother, daughter of thy son, created beings all in lowliness surpassing as in height above them all. Term by the eternal council preordained and nobler of thy nature so advanced in thee, that it's great maker did not scorn to make himself, his own creation. For in thy womb rekindling shown the love revealed whose genial influence makes now this flower to germinate eternal peace. Here down to us of charity and love, art as the noonday torch. And art beneath to mortal men of hope a living spring. So mighty art thou lady. And so great that he who graced desire and comes not to thee for Eden's would not have desire and fly without wings. Not only him who asks thy bounty but doth freely oft for run the asking. Whatsoever may be of excellence and creature, pity mild, relenting mercy, large munificence, all are combined in thee."
That the Virgin Mary is a wholeness, a comprehensiveness which is inclusive of the all, and he is in opening himself realizing that this marriage of reality is her all to his creativeness. And in this, Dante then writes towards the end of The Paradiso Canto 33, "with fix-ed heed, suspense and motionless, wandering by gaze and admiration still was kindled as I gaze. It may not be that one who looks upon that light can turn to any other object willingly his view. For all the good that will make covet there is summed and all else were defective found complete. My tongue shall utter now no more. Even what remembrance keeps that could the babes that yet his moistened at his mother's breast." He has had an experience of the all.
And he concludes The Paradiso and The Commedia with this final utterance. "Here vigor failed the towering fantasy. But yet the will rolled onward like a wheel in even motion, by her love impelled that moves the Sun in heaven and all the stars. And so, the Italian Renaissance began with Dante finishing this great Gothic cathedral of comprehension. And the reverberation ill understood many times. But fragmental II understood enough times to begin to develop a movement in Florence. A movement in northern Italy. A sense of spring. Sir Kenneth Clarke put it in his civilization series. He says there are times when it seems that the temperature of the earth is a little warmer. The man's spirit a little kinder. And in northern Italy at this time in the mid 14th century, a spring began to come out the thaw of medieval era had come to a close. And a renaissance was in motion.
So we'll look next week yet two early precursors of this. Giotto and relationship. Thank you so much.
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