freccero - dante's prologue scene.pdf

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Dante's Prologue Scene

Author(s): John FrecceroReviewed work(s):Source: Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, No. 118 (2000), pp. 189-216Published by: Dante Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40166559 .Accessed: 03/05/2012 22:20

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Dante'sPrologueSceneJOHN FRECCER

1. TheRegion ofUnlikenessthe shadowy world of the prologue scene, things both are and arenot what they seem. For all its familiarity,the scenery seems to haveno real poetic existence independent of the allegorical statement itwas meant to convey. Moreover, the statement itself, judging from thevast bibliography dedicated to it, is by no means obvious to the contem-

porary reader. The ambiguous nature of the moral landscape seems tolend itself too readily to arbitrary allegorization, but scarcely to formalanalysis. In this respect, the prologue is radicallyunlike any other part ofthe Commediaand matches the abortive journey of the pilgrim with whatseems to be a failure that is the poet's own.Any fresh interpretation of the prologue, if it is to contribute measur-ably to our understanding, must not only attempt an exploration of thiswell-traveled critical terrain, but also account .for the presence, in thismost substantialof poetic visions, of a region whose outlines are decidedlyblurred. It is such an accounting that I hope to offer in this paper. Mythesis is that the landscape in which the pilgrim finds himself bears astriking, indeed at times a textual, resemblance to the "region of unlike-ness" in which the young Augustine finds himself in the seventh book ofthe Confessions.Moreover, the resemblance is not simply an isolated factof purely historical interest but is also of some significance for an interpre-tation of the poem. If the point of departure,as well as the goal, of Dante'sspiritual itinerary deliberately recalls the experience of Augustine in theConfessions, hen it may be that we are to regard Dante's entire spiritualautobiography as essentially Augustinian in structure.There is good evidence, apartfrom the prologue scene, for considering

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Dante Studies, CXVIII, 2000Dame's poem as a spiritual "testament" in the manner of Augustine.Toward the end of the Purgatorio, t a moment that is of great dramaticimportance, Beatrice calls to the pilgrim by name:

In su la spondadel carro inistra,Quandomi volsi al suon del nome mio,Che di necessitqui si registra,Vidi la donna. . .(Purg.XXX, 61-64)Thus, in defiance of medieval convention, the author identifies himselfwith his protagonist, insisting that he does so "di necessit." The apologyis so pointed and the word "necessit" so strong that the passageseems tocall for some interpretation. It happens that in the ConvivioDante haddiscussed the circumstances under which it might be considered necessaryto speak of oneself. One of his examples, precisely the Confessions,s de-scribed in terms that seem almost to herald Dante's own "testament":. . . per necessarie agionilo parlaredi s conceduto: e intra 'altrenecessariecagioni due sono pi manifeste.L'Una quandosanzaragionaredi s grandeinfmiao pericolonon si pu cessare . . L'Altra quando,per ragionaredi s,grandissima tilitadene segue altruiper via di dottrina;e questaragionemosseAgostinone le sue confessionia parlaredi s, cheperloprocessoe la suavita, loquale u di [non] buono n buono,e di buono n migliore, di miglioren ottimo,ne diedeessemplo dottrina, a qualepers vero testimonio icevere onsipotea}Critics have usually been content with rather generic explanations forDante's mention of his own name in the Purgatorio, one of which seemas relevant as does this passagein the Convivio.2 t is clear from the begin-ning of the poem that Dante, like Augustine, intends his work to haveexemplary force for "nostravita." Elsewhere Dante makes this explicit,when he says that he writes "in pro del mondo che mal vive" (Purg.XXXII, 103). By naming himself at the moment of his confession, how-ever, he gives to the abstractexemplum he full weight of verotestimonio,exactly as had St. Augustine before him. Furthermore, the three stages ofAugustine's progress are described in the Convivio n terms that are par-tially echoed in the Paradiso:

Beatricequellache s scorgeDi benein meglios subitamenteChe Tattosuo pertempo non si sporge.(Par.X, 37-39)

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Dante's PrologueScene,john freccerThe phrase"di bene in meglio," for all of its apparentbanality,has techni-cal force,3 describing the second stage of the pilgrim's progress. Beatriceis virtually defined here as the guide for the second stage of spiritual prog-ress4 n terms that the Conviviohad used for the second stage of August-ine's conversion from sinner to saint: "di buono in migliore." It seemslikely that in the ConvivioDante perceived in Augustine's life the samepattern of conversion that he was later to read retrospectively in his ownexperience.Dante speaks of Augustine's life as giving an "essemplo," implyingthe transformation of personal experience into intelligible, perhaps evensymbolic, form. We may observe in passingthat it is the exemplary qualityof the Confessionshat distinguishes it from its modern descendants. Au-gustine's purpose is not to establish his own uniqueness (nor, therefore,innocence, in terms of the standardsby which ordinary men arejudged),but rather to demonstrate how the apparently unique experience was,from the perspective of eternity, a manifestation of Providence's designfor all men. The scholarly debates about the historicity of Augustine'sconversion scene, where a real garden in Milan seems to enclose the figtree of Nathanael (John 1:48),5 are paralleled by the scholarly debatesabout Beatrice who, on one hand, was a woman of flesh and blood andyet, on the other hand, seems to be surrounded at Dante's confessionscene with unmistakably Christological language and mystery. The pointis that in the "then" of experience, grace came in intensely personal form,whereas in the "now" of witness the particularevent is read retrospec-tively as a repetition in one's own history of the entire history of theRedemption. For both Dante and Augustine the exegetical languageseems to structure experience, identifying it as part of the redemptiveprocess, while the irreducibly personal elements lend to the exemplum heforce of personal witness. Together, exemplumand experience, allegoryand biography, form a confession of faith for other men.Conversion, a death and resurrection of the self, is the experience thatmarks the difference between such confessions and facile counterfeits. Inthe poem, the difference between the attempt to scale the mountain, thejourney that fails, and the successfuljourney that it prefigures is a descentin humility, a death of the self represented by the journey through Hell.Augustine alludesbriefly to a similar askesis n order to describe his suffer-ing during his stay in Rome:

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Dante Studies, CXVIII, 2000And lo, there was I receivedby the scourgeof bodilysickness,andI was goingdown to Hell, carryingall the sins which I had committed,both againstThee,andmyself,andothers,manyandgrievous,over and above that bond of originalsin, wherebywe all die in Adam.... So true, then, was the death of my soul, asthat of His flesh seemed to me false;and how true the death of His body,so falsewasthe life of my soul. . . .6The descent into Hell, whether metaphorical as in the Confessions,ordramaticallyreal as in Dante's poem, is the first step on the journey to thetruth. It has the effect of shattering the inverted values of this life (whichis death, according to Christian rhetoric) and transformingdeath into au-thentic life. The inversion of values is represented in Dante's poem by thecurious prefiguration in the first canto of the ascent of the mountain ofPurgatory: the light at the summit, the mountain itself, the attemptedclimb. Although the landscapeis analogous to the scenery that comes intosharperfocus in the second cantica, ll directions are reversed. What seemsup is in fact down; what seems transcendence is in fact descent. Just as thereversed world of Plato's myth in the Statesmanrepresented a world ofnegative values, so the reversed directions of the prologue stand for spiri-tual distortion. Augustine alludes in the seventh book to Plato's mythwhen he describes his spiritual world before his conversion as a "regiodissimilitudinis."7Although Dante nowhere uses the phrase,he borrowedseveral of Augustine's topographical details to describe his own spiritualcondition.

Augustine's journey to God, like Dante's, is immediately preceded byajourney that fails, an attempt at philosophical transcendence in the sev-enth book of the Confessionshat amounts to a conversion manque.Lostin what he refers to as a "region of unlikeness," Augustine turns to thelight of Platonic vision, only to discover that he is too weak to endure it.He is beaten back by the light and falls, weeping, to the things of thisworld. At that point in the narrative, the author asks himself why Godshould have given him certain books of neoplatonic philosophy to readbefore leading him to Scripture. He answers:". . . [So that] I might knowthe difference between presumption and confession; between those whosaw where they were to go, yet saw not the way, and the way itself, thatled not to behold only, but to dwell in the beatific country."8The answerapplies exactly to the dramaticpurpose of Dante's prologue scene.There are some excellent reasons for believing that Dante meant thatfirst ascent to be read as a purely intellectual ttempt at conversion, where

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Dante's PrologueScene,john freccerthe mind sees its objective but is unable to reach it. After the pilgrim'sfear is somewhat quieted, the poet uses a famous simile:E come quei che, con lenaaffannata,Uscito fiior delpelagoa la riva,Si volge a l'acquaperigliosa guata,Cos Vanimomio, eh* ncoruggiva,Si volse a rietroa rimiraro passoChe non lascigimaipersonaviva.Poi ch'ei posatoun poco il corpoasso,Ripresiviaperla piaggiadiserta,S che '1pie fermosempreera '1pi basso(Inf.I, 22-30)In a noted essay, Charles Singleton called our attention to the shift, inthese lines, from the flight of an animo, the mind of the pilgrim, to thelagging of a corpo asso, a tired body.9 He was primarily concerned withthe radical shift in poetic tone, the beginning of what he referred to asDante's vision "made flesh." It should be observed that such a shift, be-sides being a radical poetical departure, has a precise conceptual signifi-cance in this context. The whole reason for the failure of all suchjourneysof the mind resides precisely in that laggardbody. The animois perfectlywilling, but it is joined to flesh that is bound to fail.The phrase "l'animo mio ch'ancor fuggiva" has an unmistakablephilo-sophical ring. For one thing, the word animo is decidedly intellectual,rather than theological in meaning, quite distinct from the more commonanima.For another, the phrase recalls, or at least would have recalled tothe Church fathers,the flight of the soul from the terrestrial o the spiritualrealm according to the Platonists, and especially to Plotinus. In the Enne-ads, the latter urges such a flight:Let us therefore lee to our dearhomeland . . But what mannerof flightis this?... it is not with our feet that it can be accomplished, or our feet, no matterwherethey takeus, take us only from one land to another;nor must we preparefor ourselvesa team of horses or a ship ... it is rathernecessary o changeoursightand look with the innereye.10This flight of the soul by means of the "interior eye" was destined to havean interesting history. It is perhaps the ancestor of Dante's abortive jour-ney. The point of it is that the Plotinian sage can safely ignore his body inhis attempts at ecstasy. By chance this passage was well known in the

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Dante Studies, CXVIII, 2000Middle Ages, having been paraphrased, ndeed almost translated,as PierreCourcelle has shown, by St. Ambrose. In one of his sermons, he adds aninteresting detail to Plotinus' exhortation:Let us therefore lee to our true homeland . . But what mannerof flightis this?It is not with our bodily feet that it is accomplished, or our steps,no matterwhere they run,take us only from one land to another.Nor let us flee in ships,in chariots,or with horses that stumbleandfall,but let us flee with our minds\fugiamusnimo],with our eyes or with our interior eet.11It is not essential, for my purposes, to suggest that Dante knew this pas-sage, although there is no reason why he could not have. In any case, thephrasefugiamus animo is not so bizarre that its resemblance to Dante'sphrase could establish it as the poet's source. But even if Dante did notknow it, the point can still be made that since Ambrose's phrase wasmeant to sound Platonic, it is likely that the similar phrase, "l'animo mioch'ancor ruggiva," especially in a context of failure, was likewise meantby Dante to have philosophical, rather than theological force.The division between body and soul was of course a commonplace inancient "flights" of the soul. For Christians, however, it was not the bodyperse that constituted the impediment, but rather the fallen flesh. In short,it is not physical reality that the soul must flee, but rather sin itself. Weshall see presently what Augustine made of the dichotomy and how histhought relates to Dante's verses. For the moment, however, it might bewell to show how a less original thinker saw the effect of the division of"body" and soul in the psychology of conversion. Gregory the Greatprovides us with the kind of theological context in which I believe weare to read the "animo" and "corpo" of Dante's verses. His remarks,contained under the rubric "In conversione, cum hinc spiritus ocat, hinccaro evocat," is suggestive too for a reading of the impediments that besetthe pilgrim:Indeed,one suffersnitiallyafterconversion,consideringone'spastsins,wishingto break mmediately he bonds of secularconcerns,to walk in tranquillityheways of the Lord,to throw off the heavyburden of earthlydesiresand in freeservitude o put on the light yoke of God. Yet while one thinks of thesethings,there arisesa familiardelight n the fleshwhich quicklytakesroot. The longeritholds on, the tighterit becomes, the later does one manageto leave it behind.Whatsufferingn sucha situation,what anxietyof the heart! When hespirit alls

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Dante's PrologueScene,john freccerand the leshcallsusback.On one hand the intimacyof a new love invitesus, onthe other the old habitsof vice hold us back. . .12This is the "flesh" that was ignored by Plotinus in his rather optimisticinvitation to the soul to fly to the Truth.To return to Ambrose's influential statement for a moment, we noticethat he added the detail of the "interior feet" to Plotinus' remarks. Noreader of Dante's first canto can fail to remember that after resting histired body, the pilgrim sets off to his objective "s che '1pie fermo sempreera '1pi basso." In a previous essay, I attempted to explain the meaningof that verse in terms of the allegory of the "interior feet" of the soul.13Itwas my thesis, and is, that the "pie fermo" signifies the pilgrim's will,unable to respond to the promptings of the reason because of the Paulinemalady, characteristic of fallen man whose mind far outstrips the ability ofa wounded will to attain the truth. The fallen will, I suggested, limps inits efforts to reach God. I did not at that time know that Augustine, whouses the theme in a submerged way, was himself very probably Dante'sdirect source for the image of an homoclaudus,unable to advance to thesummit. In a passagefrom the Confessions araphrasingprecisely the Ploti-nian, then Ambrosian passage, Augustine insists upon the inability of acrippled will to complete the journey. He does so with an extended com-parison of the movement of the limbs with the movement of the will.There follows this passage:I was troubled n spirit,most vehemently ndignant hat I entered not into ThyWill andCovenant,O my God, which allmy bones criedout unto me to enter,andpraisedt to the skies.And thereinwe enter not by ships,or chariots,or feet,nor move not so far as I had come from the house to thatplacewhere we weresitting.For,not to go only, but to go in thitherwas nothing else but to will togo, but to will resolutelyandthoroughly;not to turn andtoss,thisway andthat,a maimed ndhalf-dividedill,struggling,ithonepart inking s anotherose.14In this magnificent passage, Augustine uses Platonic words and turns themagainst the Platonists. The goal is not some world of Ideas, but the cove-nant of Jehovah. Moreover, the problem is not of the body as a purelyphysical impediment, but rather of the fallen and crippled will, with theseshortcomings the Platonists had not reckoned. As Augustine was unableto achieve the ecstasy of the Platonists, so Dante's pilgrim is unable toreach the truth of the mind with a will that "sempre era '1pi basso." Theparallelis close enough to suggest on Dante's part a conscious evocation.

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DanteStudia,CXVIII,2000Apartfrom the parallelsbetween Dante's journey and Augustine's withrespect both to the need for the journey and to the fatal flaws in thewayfarers,there are also parallelsto be drawn with regardto the objective.The light of God, even as perceived with the neoplatonic eyes of the soul,proves too much for Augustine in the seventh book of his Confessions:

And Thou didstbeat back the weaknessof my sight, streamingorthThy beamsof light upon me most strongly,and I trembledwith love and awe: and I per-ceived myselfto be far off from Thee, in the region of unlikeness,as if I heardthis Thy voice from on high: "I am the food of grown men, grow, and thoushalt eed upon Me "15In spite of his repeated attempts to reach the light, the weight of "fleshlyhabit" causes him to fall back, "sinking with sorrow into these inferiorthings ruebamn ista cumgemitu."16Dante might well have been remem-bering that phrase when he described himself as beaten back by the wolf:"i' minavo in basso loco." Augustine seems to hearthe voice of God inthe light that he sees. The synaesthetic effect is rhetorically appropriateinthis interiorjourney, for all of the senses here stand for movements of themind, moved by a single God in all of His various manifestations. It maynot be purely coincidental that Dante also insists on a mystical synaesthesiain his experience. After he is beaten back to the dark wood, he describesit as the place "dove '1sol tace." The implication is that the light whichhe formerly saw spoketo him with a voice that was divine.Pierre Courcelle has traced Augustine's "vain attempts at Plotinian ec-stasy" back to their neoplatonic sources.17What emerges clearly from hisstudy is that the ancients saw no need for a guide on such a journey.Plotinus, in fact, explicitly says that one requires self-confidence to reachthe goal, rather than a guide.18This self-confidence was precisely whatAugustine interpreted as philosophical pride, the element that in his viewvitiated all such attempts. His own interior journey begins with an insis-tence upon his need for help:Andbeingthenceadmonished o return o myself,I enteredeven into my inwardself, Thou being my Guide: and able I was, for Thou wertbecomemy Helper.And Ienteredand beheldwith the eye of my soul (suchas it was),above the sameeyeof my soul, abovemy mind, the Light Unchangeable.19Christian virtue, unlike Socratic virtue, is more than knowledge and viceis more than ignorance. The Platonic conversion toward the light is

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Dante's PrologueScene,john freccerdoomed to failure because it neglects to take account of man's fallen con-dition. To put the matter in Platonic terms, the pilgrim must struggle evento reach the cave from which Plato assumed the journey began. Thatstruggle, the descent in humility, helps remove the barrier that philosophyleaves intact. God's guidance, represented dramatically in the poem bythe pilgrim's three guides, transforms philosophical presumption intoChristian confession. St. Bernard, an outspoken critic of philosophicalpresumption, speaks of the opposition between humility and pride in theitinerary to God. His remarks serve as an excellent illustration of howfamiliarAugustine's struggle was in the Middle Ages and of how readilythe struggle lent itself to dramatization in terms that are strikingly likeDante's:"Who dares climb the mountain of the Lord or who will standin His holyplace?" . . Only the humble man can safelyclimb the mountain,becauseonlythe humblemanhasnothingto triphimup. The proudmanmayclimb t indeed,yet he cannot stand or long . . . The proudman hasonly one foot to standon:love of his own excellence. . . Therefore o stand irmly,we must standhumbly.So that our feet may never stumble we must stand,not on the single foot ofpride,but on the two feet of humility.20There can be scarcely any doubt that Dante's pilgrim climbs the mountainin the same tradition.The final passage from Augustine's seventh book provides a series ofimages which I believe offer the closest analogue to the landscape withwhich Dante begins his poem. The theme is humility, which provides atransition to the eighth book, from attempts at Plotinian ecstasy to theconversion under the fig-tree. Speaking of Christ againstthe philosophershe says:They scorn to learn of Him, because He is meek and lowly in heart; or thesethingshast Thou hid from the wise and prudent,and hast revealedthem untobabes. For it is one thing, from a wooded mountain-top[desilvestreacumine]osee the land of peace and to find no way thither;and in vain to essay throughwaysunpassable,pposedand besetby fugitivesanddeserters, ndertheircaptainthe lion and the dragon:and another to keep on the way that leads thither,guardedby the hostof the heavenlyGeneral curaaelestismperatoris];heretheyspoil not who have deserted the heavenly army [qui caelestemmilitiamdeseruerunt].. .21The Augustinian phrase, "de silvestre cacumine," may at first seem a trifleremote as an analogue for the "selva oscura," but if we read on in the

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Dante Studies, CXVIII, 2000Confessionswe find that Augustine elaborates on the description of hisformer life with an alternate image: "In this so vast wilderness [immensasilva], full of snares and dangers, behold many of them I have cut off andthrust out of my heart . . ,"22Of greater significance, perhaps, is the factthat Dante seems to echo elements of the former passage not only in thefirst canto of the Inferno ut perhapsalso in the eighth canto of the Purgato-rio. In other words, there seem to exist between the two authors not onlyanalogies of detail but also of structure, for in these few lines, Augustinedistinguishesbetween success and failurein the journey to God by a seriesof oppositions that match the opposition between the journey of the pro-logue and the successfuljourney that it foreshadows. One need only para-phrase Augustine in Dantesque terms in order to make this apparent:it isone thing to be beset by wild beasts and quite another to be guarded bythe "esercito gentile" (Purg.VIII, 22) of the "Imperador che l su regna"(Inf. I, 124), safe from the chief deserter,"'1nostro awersaro" (Purg.VIII,95).A further word must be said here about the most famous image of theprologue scene, that of the "selva oscura." If we are in fact dealing in theprologue with an attempt at transcendence that is neoplatonic in origin,then the temptation is strong to identify Dante's "selva" with the primematter of Plato's Timaeus, he traditionalenemy of philosophical flights ofthe soul. The Greek word for matter, hyl, was rendered into Latin as"silva" by Chalcidius and the phrase "silva Platonis" became proverbialin the Middle Ages. Bernardus Silvestris uses the word with a force thatsometimes suggests a totally unchristian equation of matter with evil: silvarigens, praeponderantemalitia, silvestrismalignitas.23 ome critics recentlyhave attempted to associate Dante's "selva" with the Platonic "silva,"thereby reviving a gloss that goes back to the Renaissance commentary ofCristoforo Landino.24The gloss runs the risk, however, of leading to aserious misunderstanding. In the dark wood, we are not dealing withman's hylomorphic composition, but rather with sin. Landino's facileequation, "corpo, cio vizio" will not do for the "selva," for it obscuresthe fundamental point of Christianity's quarrelwith metaphysical dualism.Ultimately, to obscure the difference between "corpo" and "vizio" is toforget the doctrine of the Incarnation and this Dante was no more likelyto forget than was Augustine, who spent much of his life refuting theManicheans.Nevertheless, it is possible to show that Dante used the opposition

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Dante's PrologueScene,john freccer"selva luce" in exactly the same way that he used the opposition"corpo- animo"; that is, as a Platonic commonplace used to signify astruggle of which the Platonists were unaware. The distinctive character-istic of the dark wood in Dante's poem is not that it is a selva,but ratherthat it is oscura, s the following textual parallelreveals:

PurgatorioXVIII, 22-25 Inferno, 1-2, 10, 31Gi m'avean rasportatolentipassi Nel mezzo del cammin i nostravitaDentro a laselvaanticaanto ch'io Mi ritrovaiper unaselvaoscura. .Non potearivedereond'iom'intrassi Io non so ben ridircom' iov'entrai. .Ed ecco iandarmi tolse un rio ... .Edecco, uasial cominciarde l'erta ...The resemblance can hardly be fortuitous. Dante's descent into Hell andhis ascent of the Mountain of Purgatory bring him to a point from whichhe can begin his climb to the light, his entrance into sanctifying grace,without fear of the impediments that blocked his way before. That newpoint of departure, the Garden of Eden, was the home of man beforethe fall. Through Adam's transgression,the prelapsarianstate of man wastransformedinto the state of sin. In poetic terms, Adam transformed theselva antica into a selva oscura.Although the "rio" forever separates thepilgrim from original justice and Matelda, he can, with the help of Be-atrice, go farbeyond:

Qui sarai u poco temposilvano,E saraimeco sanza ine civeDi quellaRoma onde Cristo Romano.(Purg.XXXII, 100-102)To say that the pilgrim is a silvano s to say that he still inhabits the selvaofhuman existence; only in the selva darkened by sin, what Dante called "laselva erronea di questa vita,"25does it become impossible to follow thepath to the heavenly city.Augustine chose to describe the impediments on his journey to themountain top in terms of the wild beasts of the Psalms, the lion and thedragon. Dante, on the other hand, described them in terms of the threebeastsofJeremiah 5:6. 1have said elsewhere what I take those three beaststo be: the basic wounds to the rational, irascible and concupiscent appe-tites sufferedby all men as a result of the fall.26What is of particularpoeticinterest here, however, is that in the text of Jeremiah, those three beastsare said to be enemies of all the sinners of Jerusalem. The question is, why

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Dante Studies, CXVIII, 2000should the three beasts associated with Jerusalem, the promised land, bethe obstacles to the pilgrim in his climb?The answer, I believe, resides in the fact that the pilgrim's goal is in asense Jerusalem, or at least the heavenly Jerusalem, although he cannotknow that until he reaches it, which is to say, until he assumes the per-spective of the poet. Toward the beginning of this paper I suggested thatboth Augustine and Dante used scriptural exegesis in order to structuretheir experience, superimposing (or discovering,hey would insist) a bibli-cal pattern of meaning upon their own history. Thus far I have tried tocompare the shadowy world of the pilgrimwith Augustine's region ofunlikeness. There is nothing shadowy about the interpretativeview of thepoet, however, for, as Charles Singleton has shown, part of the poet'sstrategy is to introduce into both the prologue and the Purgatorio, uper-imposed upon the narrative, the figura which was considered to be thepattern of conversion.27 We have already cited the verses that relate theemergence from the dark wood to the crossing of a *'passo" through theopen sea. Again, as the pilgrim struggles up the slope of the mountain,the poet refers to him as being in a "gran diserto," as far from woods orwater as can be imagined. Finally, when the pilgrim is trapped standingbefore the wolf, Lucy, looking down from heaven, sees him as though hewere standing before a flooded river of death, weeping and unable tocross.28 n the sea, desert, and river, any medieval exegete would discernthe three stages of the Exodus of the Jews, en route from Egypt to Jerusa-lem, the promised land.In this respect too, Dante probably owed much to the Augustiniantradition. For the representation of his attempts at purely intellectual con-version, Augustine drew upon the traditional neoplatonic motifs of theconversion to the light. At the same time, he reinterpreted those motifsin the light of Revelation. On at least one occasion, the death of Monica,his allusion to the figure of Exodus is explicit:May they [God'sservants]with devout affectionremembermy parents n thistransitoryight,my brethrenunderThee our Father n our CatholicMother,andmy fellow-citizens n that eternalJerusalemwhich Thy pilgrim people sighethafter rom theirExodus,even unto their return hither.29There may be as well an allusion to the Exodus in the passage in theseventh book which seems so important for Dante's representation: "Forit is one thing, from the wooded mountain top to see the land of peace

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Dante's PrologueScene,john freccerand to find no way thither ..." In the sixteenth century, the passagewasannotated with a reference to Deut. 32:48-52, where Moses is permittedby God to see the land of Canaan from the mountain, but not to reach it:"Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thitherunto the land which I give the children of Israel."30These references are admittedly too few to enable us to demonstratethat the presence of the figure of Exodus is of importance in Augustine'snarrative,but if Augustine was merely allusive with respect to the figure,commentators on his work throughout the Middle Ages were explicit.Courcelle's repertoryof commentaries on the "region of unlikeness" pro-vides many citations that are suggestive for the interpretation of Dante'sprologue scene. Among them are severalwhich specifically relate August-ine's conversion to the traditional biblical figure of conversion. Richardof St. Victor will serve as an example:The firstmiraclewas accomplishedn the exodus of Israel romEgypt [In exituIsraelde Aegypto],the second was in the exodus of Israel rom the desert.Whowill give me the power to leave behind the region of unlikeness?Who willenableme to enterthe promised and,so thatI maysee both the flightof the seaand the turningback of theJordan.31Richard makes clear, first of all, that Egypt is a state of mind, and, sec-ondly, that even after leaving it, the soul must traverse a desert regionwhich is precisely like the "gran diserto" in which the pilgrim is blocked:Comingforth from the darkness f Egypt,fromworldlyerror o the more secretplacesof the heart,you discovernothingelse but a placeof terrorand vast soli-tude. This is that desertland, arid and unpassable . . filled with all terriblethings.32In this desert place, where "all is confused, all is disturbed;where nothingis in its proper place, nothing proceeds in proper order,"33 he impedi-ments one encounters are the vices and passions (usually three-fold, ac-cording to Augustine's commentators)34to which man is subject, since"vulnerati sumus ingredientes mundum . . ,"35

* * *//. The Wings of Ulysses (Inf. XXVI, 125)

The canto of Ulysses contains a striking instance of Dante's use ofneoplatonic imagery to describe, not simply the flight of the soul to the201


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Dante Studies, CXVIII, 2000absolute, but also the inevitable failure attendant upon any such journeywhen it is undertaken without the help of God. This instance of neopla-tonic imagery is therefore analogous, perhapseven coordinate, to the im-agery the poet uses to describe his own unsuccessfuljourney in the firstcanto.Since Giorgio Padoan's essay of a few years ago,36there can no longerbe any doubt that Dante's Ulysses is the Ulysses of medieval tradition,whose journey was considered to have a moral significance. The knowl-edge which is the object of his quest is of a metaphysical, rather thannavigational, order. In Dante's reading, as in the reading of the neoplato-nists, the voyage was an allegory for the flight of the soul to transcendenttruth;one could extend Padoan's argument to suggest that Dante's Ulyssesends up a shipwreck rather than in the arms of some paradisiacPenelopein order to indicate what Dante thought of such purely philosophicalexcursions. It is this dimension of meaning that gives the episode its struc-tural importance throughout the poem, beyond the limits of the canto inwhich it is contained. The ancient voyager is recalled at the beginning ofthe Purgatorio nd again toward the end of the Paradisoprecisely to markthe contrast between his abortivejourney and that of the pilgrim. Dante'sdescent into Hell enables him to reach the shore which Ulysses was ableonly to make out in the distance, a contrast that evokes once again, as weshall see, Augustine's distinction between philosophical presumption andChristian conversion.At one point in his famous speech, Ulysses describes his journey interms that directly allude to the traditional flight of the soul:

. . . volta nostrapoppanel mattino,Dei remi facemmoali al folle volo. . .(w. 124-125)Critics have seized on the phrase "il folle volo" and have used it to char-acterize the daring of Ulysses' voyage. The adjective is particularlyapt, asRocco Montano has observed,37for it can reflect both Ulysses' regret forthe disastrous consequences of his voyage, as well as the author's moraljudgment on the entire undertaking. However, the first part of the verseis of potentially much greater significance. By itself, the word "volo"might be taken as a simple rhetorical twist, a faint suggestion at best ofplatonic flights. A careful look at the preceding metaphor, however, trans-

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Dante's PrologueScene,john freccerforms the suggestion into a certainty. When Dante has Ulysses say "deiremi facemmo ali," he is echoing a classical metaphor, the "remigiumalarum" used by Virgil to describe the flight of Daedalus. The metaphorwas eventually endowed with meaning in a philosophical context, ameaning which is relevant to our understanding of the entire episode.In the sixth book of the Aeneid,Virgil summarizes in a few words thestory of Daedalus and Icarus. He then describes the temple built by Dae-dalus and the votive offering made to Phoebus:

Redditushisprimum erris, ibi, Phoebe, sacravitremigiumalarumposuitque mmania empla.(AeneidVI, 18-19)

It is to Pierre Courcelle that we are indebted for the history of the neopla-tonic interpretation of Daedalus' "winged oarage."38In the article towhich Padoan alludes in his essay, Courcelle shows that both the story ofUlysses and the flight of Daedalus were interpreted by neoplatonists tosignify the flight of the soul: "il faut que Tame prenne son voi pour regag-ner sa patrie."39St. Ambrose refers to the myth of Daedalus to describethe liberation of the soul from matter and uses the phrase "remigiumalarum,"as does St. Augustine on several occasions.40I should like merelyto add to Courcelle's vast documentation a passagewhich lies outside thescope of his study but is exactly within mine, since it occurs in the onlymedieval neoplatonic commentary of the Aeneid which Dante was likelyto have known. Bernardus Silvestrissimply echoed a long tradition whenhe identified the temple with contemplation and the "remigium alarum"with the reason, but in doing so, he probably made that gloss directlyaccessible to Dante:[Daedalus] d templumApollinisvenit i.e. sublimiumcontemplationem ationeet intellectuperlustrare d philosophicumstudium se penitus transtulitbiquealarumemigium.e. rationist intellectusxercitiumacravit.41Just as Virgil's remigium larummetamorphorically transformed Daedalus'flight into a sea voyage, so the phrase, "dei remi facemmo ali" trans-formed Ulysses' voyage into a platonic "volo." Ulysses' journey is anextended dramatization of an interior journey through what Padoan hascalled "le vie della sapienza"; the very oars that he used were traditionalmetaphors for the power of intellect.

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Dante Studies, CXVIII, 2000I should like to underscore what I take to be an important implicationof the phase that Dante puts into the mouth of Ulysses. The "wingedoarage" of tradition was usually associated with Daedalus, rather thanIcarus.42 n Virgil's story it was mentioned in connection with a flight thatwas not "folle" at all, for Daedalus, unlike his son, reached his objective.This element is what the allegory of Ulysses has in common with theallegory of Daedalus: the return of Daedalus to safety ("Redditushis pri-mum terris . . .") and the return of Homer's Ulysses to his home madethose stories excellent analogues for the platonic regressusf the soul to itsheavenly patria.43The fact that Dante associated the "remigium alarum"

of tradition with Ulysses' voyage seems to suggest that he was aware of anallegorical significance common to the two stories;yet, by describing theflight as a "folle volo," he seems deliberately to have turned the allegoryagainstits authors. In spite of the opinion of most modern commentators,he may even have known of Ulysses' return to Ithaca through severalindirect sources;44he certainly knew that the "winged oarage" of the soulwas usually associated with the return of Daedalus. Nevertheless, it is be-causehe accepts the common allegorical significance and interprets it as aChristian must that his version of the story ends in shipwreck. If Ulyssesis shipwrecked and if the wings of Daedalus seem rather to recall Icarus,it is because the regressushat both stories came to represent is, in Dante'sview, philosophical presumption that is bound to end in failure. I shouldlike to suggest that the voyage of Dante's Ulysses exists on the same planeof reality as its counterpart, the journey of the pilgrim; that is, as a dra-matic representation of the journey of the mind. It is for this reason thatDante takes it as an admonition:Allormi dolsi,a orami ridoglio,Quandodrizzo a mente a ci ch'io vidi;E pi lo 'ngegnoffieno ch'i' non soglio,Perch non corrache virtnoi guidi . . .(Inf.XXVI, 19-22)

His insistence on the distinction between ingegnoand virtu between themotive power of his "journey" and his guide, contrasts sharplywith thespeech of Ulysses, in which "virtute e canoscenza" (v. 120) seem almostsynonymous, the single, somewhat exterior objective of the "folle volo."Just as the ancients equated knowledge and virtue, so too Ulysses seemsto equate them, making no provision in his calculations for the journey

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Dante's PrologueScene,john freccerwithin,the personal askesisupon which all such attempts at transcendencemust be based. The distinction between Ulysses' journey and the journeyof the pilgrim is not in the objective, for both are directed toward thatmountain in the southern hemisphere, but rather in how the journey isaccomplished. The difference is quite literally the journey through Hell,the descent intra nos which transformsphilosophical presumption into ajourney of the mind and heart to God.We have seen in the first part of this study that the power of intellectwas considered by Plotinus a sufficient vehicle for the flight to the truthand that the great neoplatonist specifically denied the need for any guideon such a journey. For Augustine, on the contrary, and for all Christianthinkers thereafter, the journey had to be accomplished "et per intel-lectum etper affectum."45uch insistence on the volitive power of the soulis the constant theme of Augustine's polemic against neoplatonism in theConfessions.This polemic, I believe, lies at the heart of Dante's representa-tion in the canto of Ulysses. Toward the beginning of the Confessions,Augustine uses the example of the prodigal son in order to illustrate histhesis that one moves toward or away from God with the will:For darkened ffections s removal rom Thee. For t is not by ourfeet, or changeof place,that men leave Thee or returnunto Thee. Or did thatThy youngersonlook out for horses r chariots,r ships, ly with visiblewings,or journey by themotion fhis limbs hat he might in a farcountrywastein riotous iving all Thougavestat his departure?46Again, in the passageoffered in the firstpart of this study as a backgroundtext for understanding Dante's "pie fermo" verse, some of these imagesof flight reappear:And therein[Thy Covenant]we enter not by ships,or chariotsx eet, no, movenot so farasI had come from the house to thatplacewhere we were sitting.For,not to go only,but to go in thitherwasnothingelse but to will to go, but to willresolutelyandthoroughly;not to turn andtoss, thisway andthat,a maimedandhalf-dividedwill, struggling,with one partsinkingas anotherrose.47

Each of Augustine's neoplatonic images of flight has its counterpart in thecanto of Ulysses. Ulysses describes his navigation as a winged flight, butto the pilgrim the sight of the Greek hero recalls a celestial chariot:205


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Dante Studies, CXVIII, 2000E qualcolui che si vengi con li orsiVide '1carro 'Eliaal dipartire,

Quandoi cavalli l cielo erti levorsi . . .(w. 34-36)Whatever else Dante may have intended to suggest by the somewhatgratuitous comparison, the fact remains that, like the ship of Ulysses andthe wings of Daedalus, the chariot of Elijah is on a flight to the Absolute.The presence of these comparisons, although stripped of all trace of pla-tonic banality by Dante's poetic power, nevertheless reinforces the figu-rative significance of Ulysses' voyage and generalizes that significancebeyond the limits of one man's experience. At first glance the passagesfrom the Confessionsust quoted and the episode of Ulysses seem to havenothing more in common than these images of flight, schematic and allu-sive in Augustine, dramatic and powerful in Dante's verses. But the allu-sions in Augustine's words can lead us back to a complex of literary andphilosophical motifs to which, I believe, the figure of Dante's Ulyssesowes its origin.As Pierre Courcelle has shown, the neoplatonic images in the August-inian passage derive from a text of Plotinus, virtually translated by St.Ambrose and quoted partially n the firstpartof this study.A fuller citationof the passagereveals that Plotinus is in fact thinking of Ulysses when heurges his readeron to the journey without a guide to the heavenly patria:Let us therefore lee to our dearhomeland . . But what mannerof flightis this?How shallwe reascend?Like Ulysses,who, they say, escapedfrom Circe themagicianandfromCalypso, hat s, who refused o staywith them in spiteof thepleasures f the eyesand the beautyof the senses hat he found there ... it is notwith our feet that it can be accomplished . . nor must we prepare or ourselvesa teamof horsesor a ship. . . we mustrather ook with the innereye.48Both St. Ambrose and St. Augustine suppressed the reference to Ulysseswhen they paraphrasedPlotinus' exhortation. Several other passages inAugustine's work, however, suggest that Ulysses came to represent forhim the archetype of the presumptuous philosopher who would reach thetruth unaided.49One text in particular,the prologue to the De Beata Vita,seems, according to Courcelle, to refer to Ulysses in a lengthy allegory ofvoyage.50 Padoan in his essay quoted from it, yet failed to refer to someof the passageswhich seem most relevant for understandingDante's Ulys-ses. Of considerable importance for the purpose of this study is that Au-

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Dante's PrologueScene,john freccergustine helps us to understand the significance of shipwreck on ajourneysuch as that undertaken by Ulysses. More important still is the fact that heseems to read in the voyage his own philosophical experience. Augustinebegins his allegory by explaining that an unknown power has launched uson the sea of life and that each of us seeks, with more or less success, theport of philosophy:. . . how would we know how to get there, except by the power of sometempest,(whichfools believe to be adverse)hurlingus, unknowingwanderers,towardthat mostdesired and?51He then distinguishes three types of philosophers. The first never wandervery far, yet find the place of tranquillity and become beacons to theirfellow men. The second,deceivedby the deceptiveappearance f the sea, choose to set out on the opensea and dare to wanderfar from theircountry,oftenorgettingt. If . . . the wind,which they deem favorable,keeps blowing from the poop, they enterproudlyandrejoicing nto an abyssof misery . . What else canwe wish them but ... aviolenttempestandcontrarywinds,to lead them in spiteof theirsighsandtears,to certainand solid oys?52Padoan observed that the element of forgetfulness in this passageseems torecall Ulysses' neglect of family and home, while the following paragraphseems more reminiscent of Aeneas.53Nevertheless, the hazards describedin the latter,are instructive for glossing Ulysses' journey as well:Those of the thirdcategory . . perceivecertain ignswhich remind hem of theirdearhomeland . . and,eitherthey find their home againwithoutwanderingordelay,or more often, they lose theirway in the fog or fix upon stars hat sinkinthe sea.Again,they aresometimesheldbackby variousseductionsand miss thebest time for settingsail.They wanderfor a long time and even riskshipwreck.It often happensto such men that some calamity,arising n the midst of theirgood fortune, like a tempest opposing their efforts,drives them back to thehomelandof their desiresand of theirpeace.54There is an undeniable, although somewhat generic resemblance betweenthese sea-going adventures of philosophical quest and Ulysses' own story.The reference to the navigational "fix" on stars that sink beneath thewaters is perhapsless generic. It is paralleled by the apparently descriptivebut probably significant detail mentioned by Ulysses:

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Dante Studies, CXVIII, 2000Tutte le stellegide l'altropoloVedea a notte, e '1nostro tanto basso

Che non surgea uor del marinsuolo,(w. 127-129)The point of these verses is that the ship is "off course," since the polestar,upon which all mariners must fix for guidance, has disappearedbe-neath the ocean floor. But the most startlingdetail of Augustine's allegoryis contained in the paragraph mmediately following this, not referred toby Padoan, which nevertheless may serve to explain why Ulysses shouldbe sailing toward a mountain,ratherthan back to Ithaca:Now all of thesemen who, in some manner,areborne toward he land of happi-ness, have to fearand desperatelyo avoid a huge mountain set up before theport, creatinga greatdangerto those entering.It shines so and is clothed withsuch a deceptive ightthat t seemsto offerto those who enterahaven,promisingto satisfy heirlonging for the land of happiness . . For what other mountaindoes the reasondesignateas fearful to those who are entering upon or haveenteredphilosophical tudythan the mountainof proudvainglory?55At this point Augustine concludes his allegorical exposition and proceedsto apply the allegory of his own life. In his youth, he had fixed his eyeson stars that sank into the ocean and therefore led him astray.The studyof various philosophies kept him afloat, but the attractions of a womanand the love of honor prevented him from flying "totis velis omnibusqueremis" into the embrace of philosophy. Finally,a tempest that he took tobe adverse (his illness), forced him to abandon the career that was leadinghim toward the Sirens and drove his shaky and leaking boat toward thehaven of tranquillity.56The prologue of the De Beata Vita is a dramatic representation of theevents recounted with apologetic intent in the Confessions.The attemptsat Plotinian ecstasy are represented in the seventh book of the Confessionsin largely traditional philosophical terms while in the prologue to thedialogue, under the influence of a long tradition of Homeric allegoresis,autobiography takes a more literary form. There is a somewhat similarrelationship between the experience of Dante's pilgrim and that of Ulys-ses. For both men, the object of the journey seems to be the mountain inthe southern hemisphere. Again, the pilgrim takes Ulysses' fate to be aspecific admonition for himself. Ulysses dies shipwrecked before the

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Dante's PrologueScene,john freccerlooming mountain, but in the first canto of the poem the pilgrim seemsto have survived, by pure accident, a metaphorical shipwreck of his own:E come quei che, con lenaaffannata,Uscito fior del pelagoa la riva,Si volge a l'acquaperigliosa guata,Cos l'animo mio ch'ancor uggiva,Si volse a rietroa rimirar opassoChe non lascigimaipersonaviva.(Inf.I, 22-27)Ulysses' experience with the "alto passo" (Inf. XXVI, 132) seems to bewhat one would expect of such a "varco folle" (Par.XXVII, 82-83). It isthe pilgrim's urvival that is gratuitous, both on the mountain of the pro-logue and the mountain of Purgatory. In the latter instance, just before heis girded with the rush of humility, he remembers Ulysses' pride:

Venimmopoi in sul lito diserto,Che mainon vide navicar ue acqueOrno che di tornariaposcia esperto.(Purg. , 130-132)The return s the element of the story that is given new meaning, in theChristianperspective. The mountain of philosophic pride, says Augustine,

swallowsup into its depthsthe proudmen who walk upon it and covers themover in its darkness,natching rom them thatshiningabodeof which they hadcaughtbut a glimpse.57For some that shipwreck was definitive; for others it was the prelude to anew life, "com' Altrui piacque."

* * *At the beginning of this paper I suggested that Dante's borrowing fromAugustine in the Confessionswas not simply an isolated fact of purelyhistorical interest but was also of some significance for the interpretationof the poem. If Dante chose to echo Augustine's attempt to reach the

truth through philosophy alone, then the implication is that Dante under-took a similar attempt and also met with failure. For all of his effortsin the Convivioto define philosophic truth in theological terms, Dante's209


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Dante Studies, CXVIII, 2000philosophical experience may have been as ultimately disillusioning forhim as was Augustine's with the neoplatonists. Beyond this biographicalanalogy, admittedly unverifiable, there is the more important analogy, orperhaps homology, f literary structure. As in all spiritual autobiographies,so in the Confessions nd in the Divine Comedy, here is a radical divisionbetween the protagonist and the author who tells his story. The questionof the relative "sincerity" of such autobiographies is the question of howreal we take that division to be. Augustine and Dante took it to be almostontologically real, for it was their conviction that the experience of con-version, the subject matter of their respective stories, was tantamount to adeath of their former selves and the beginning of a new life.For Dante, the distance between protagonist and author is at its maxi-mum at the beginning of the story and is graduallyclosed by the dialecticof poetic process until pilgrim and poet coincide at the ending of thepoem, which gives a unity and a coherence to all that went before. Fromthe outset, the poet's voice expresses the detached point of view towardwhich his pilgrim strives, while the journey of the pilgrim is history inthe making, a tentative, problematic view constantly subject to revision,approaching certitude asa limit. It is at the last moment that the metamor-phosis of the pilgrim's view of the world is completed, when he himselfhas become metamorphosed into the poet, capable at last of writing thestory that we have read.It should be observed that this metamorphosis accounts for much ofthe ambiguity in the characterizationsof the Inferno.The critical uncer-tainties about whether Francesca is a heroine of spontaneous human loveor merely a deluded medieval Emma Bovary, whether Ulysses embodiesthe spirit of the Renaissance or simply malacuriositas,whether Ugolino isa fathersufferingwith Dostoevskian dignity or a Pisan cannibal, arise fromthe dialectical relationship of the pilgrim's view to that of the poet. Fur-ther, it is no accident that we generally side with the pilgrim in his humanresponse to these great figures, against the crushing exigencies of thepoet's structure. The pilgrim's view is much like our own view of historyand of ourselves: partial, perhaps confused, still in the making. But thepoet's view is far different, for it is global and comprehensive, the totalview of a man who looks at the world, his neighborhood and indeedhimself with all the detachment of a cultural anthropologist. The processof the poem, which is to say the progressof the pilgrim, is the transforma-tion of the problematic and humanistic into the certain and transcendent,

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Dante's PrologueScene,john freccerfrom novelistic involvement to epic detachment, from a synchronic viewof the self in a dark wood to a diachronic total view of the entire worldas if it were, to use Dante's powerful image, a humble threshing floorupon which a providential history will one day separate the wheat fromthe chaff.This view from Paradise is a spatialtranslation of what might be calleda memory of universal history. The coherence of the whole poem maybe grasped only with a view to its totality, a view from the ending, just asthe coherence of the poet's life could be grasped only in retrospect, fromthe perspective of totality in death. Clearly the same may be said of uni-versal history, whose coherence may be perceived only from the perspec-tive of eschatology, when the evolution is finally concluded. In the lineartime that is ours, such a perspective is impossible, for it implies a survivalof our own death and the death of the world. For Dante, however, as forAugustine, there was a death which enabled the mind to graspsuch totali-ties, not by virtue of linear evolution, but ratherby transcendence: a deathof detachment. To perceive the pattern of one's life in its totality was tosee the structure or figuraof God's redemptive act, the master-plan of allhistory. In the Paradiso,Dante describes the cognition of the blessed as headdressesCacciaguida:

. . . come veggion le terrenementiNon capere n triangoldue ottusi,Cos vedi le cose contingentiAnzi che sieno in s, mirando l PuntoA cui tutti li tempison presenti . .(Par.XVII, 14-18)This "now" of the blessed, like a geometric "figura," enables Cacciaguidato prophesy Dante's future without ambiguity. It provides the place tostand from which the pilgrim comes ultimately to see himself and theworld around him under the aspect of eternity.Augustine first saw the need to define that "present moment," theplace to stand from which one could see one's former self, in the totalitythat is present in God. He was also the first to see the metaphysical sig-nificance of what used to be referred to as "organic unity." For Augustine,as well as for Dante, a poem had to be understood as a unity, not becauseit was a "literary object," but rather because its significance could begraspedonly when its process was completed. This was not simply a liter-

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Dante Studies, CXVIII, 2000ary fact, but rather the outward sign of a spiritual reality. A passage fromthe Confessionsmakes clear how the progression to greater and greatertotalities, what structuralistsmight call the emboitement es structurations,can lead from a poem to universal history:I am about to repeata Psalm that I know. Before I begin, my expectation sextendedover the totality;but when I have begun, however much of it I shallseparateoff into the past is extended along my memory . . . until the wholeexpectationbe at length exhausted,when that whole actionbeing ended, shallhave passed nto memory . . . the same takesplace in the whole life of man,whereof all the actions of man areparts; he same holdsthroughthe whole ageof the sons of men, whereof allthe lives of men areparts.58Formal criticism helps us to see how the poem must be read in retrospect,but to see all of reality in that way requires a perspective more privilegedthan that of the critic. From such a perspective, the "present moment" ofconversion, "levels of meaning" are not arbitrarilysuperimposed by thehuman mind, but are rather discovered to be exponential recurrences ofthe structureof God's Providence in history, life, and the whole universe.The passage from Augustine contains within it at once the essence ofbiblical allegory and the essence of Dante's spiritual autobiography, evento the stylistic level.I should like to close by referring again to a verse to which I havealready alluded. As he moves with the stars, Dante looks down upon"l'aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci" {Par.XXII, 151). For all the distanceimplied by the poetic fiction, the pronoun "ci" strains to have it bothways: to claim the perspective of eternity without a surrender of the poet'splace in time. The synthesis of eternity and time is the goal of the entirejourney: the vision of the Incarnation. At the end of the poem, the dra-matic convergence of pilgrim and poet is matched by the conceptual con-vergence of humanity and the Divine. For Augustine too, the mystery ofthe Incarnation was essential to his experience as well as to his faith. Inthe seventh book of the Confessions,he says that he was able to find in theteaching of the Platonists all of the Gospel of John except or the doctrineof the Word made flesh. The philosophers "scorn to learn of Him, be-cause He is meek and lowly in heart." At the same time, the Word wasalso essential to the literary structure of the Confessions, or it gave unityto what otherwise may have seemed disjointed meditations on literature,life and exegesis. Augustine's autobiography, like Sartre's, is primarily

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Dante's PrologueScene,john freccerconcerned with words, but the ending of Christian autobiography is si-lence:For that voice passed by and passed away, began and ended; the syllables soundedand passed away, the second after the first, the third after the second, and so forthin order, until the last after the rest, and silence after the last .... And these Thywords, created for a time, the outward ear reported to the intelligent soul, whoseinward ear lay listening to Thy Eternal Word.59So the literary unity of Dante's poem is no formal artifact, but is ratherthe testament of a spiritual ourney from a region of unlikeness to likeness,from the "selva oscura" to "la nostraeffige."CornellUniversityIthaca,New York

NOTES1. Convivio I, ii, 12.2. See, for example, Natalino Sapegno. After quoting some early commentators, he concludes:

"Qui insomma il nome esplicitamente pronunciato del protagonista non segno di vanit, ma servead accrescer vergogna." La Div. Com. a cura di N. S. (Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1957), ad. loc.3. Richard of St. Victor uses an analogous phrase in a context where "transitus" means "conver-sion": "Qui transit de maio ad bonum, bene quidem transit; et qui transit de bono ad optimum,bonum et ipse transitimi fcit." De exterminationemali I (PL 196, 1074).4. For Beatrice as guide for the second stage of Dante's spiritual progress, see C. S. Singleton,Dante Studies 2:Journeyto Beatrice Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958).5. For the arguments against the literal historicity of the scene, see Pierre Courcelle, Recherchessur les "Confessions"de Saint Augustin (Paris:E. de Boccard, 1950), esp. pp. 188 ff. Courcelle answerssome of his critics in Les "Confessions"de Saint Augustin dans la tradition ittraire:Antecedents tpostrit(Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1963), 191 ff. Both works were essential in the preparation of thisstudy. Indeed, the present article might be considered simply an application of Courcelle's conclu-sions to the Divine Comedy.6. ConfessionsV, chap. 20. The translation is by E. B. Pusey (New York: Collier Books, 1961),p. 72.7. For the "region of unlikeness" from Plato (Statesman272e ff.) to Gide, see Courcelle's "reper-toire" in Les "Confessions" . . . Appendice V, pp. 623-640. For relevant bibliography, see, by thesame author, "Tradition no-platonicienne et traditions chrtiennes de la region de dissemblance,' "in Archivesd'histoiredoctrinale t littrairedu Moyen Age XXXIM957 (1958), 5-33.8. Conf. VII, 20. Pusey, p. 112.9. Dante Studies 1: Commedia: Elementsof StructureCambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1954), pp. 11-12.10. EnneadsI, 8. Courcelle's chap. Ill, "La dcouverte du no-platonisme chrtien" in his Recher-ches is dedicated to Ambrose's borrowing from Plotinus and its influence on Augustine. Section 2(pp. 106 ff) in particular is devoted to the influence of this chapter from the Enneads on Ambroseand Augustine. The text we quote is cited by Courcelle, p. 111.1 1 Liberde Isaacet animaVili, 79 (PL 14, 559), Courcelle, Recherches, . 1 1 1

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Dante Studies, CXVIII, 200012. MoraliaXXIV, cap. XI [Ree. VII], PL 76, 300. It is clear from the context that Gregory istalking about the first stage of conversion, presumably before the reception of sanctifying grace. Inthe figure of Exodus which he subsequently applies to his analysis (col. 301), this stage correspondsto the crossing of the desert, between the crossing of the Red Sea and the crossing of the Jordan.This is precisely the stage at which the pilgrim finds himself here. See Singleton, "In Exitu Israel deAegypto," 78th Annual Report of the Dante Society(1960), reprinted in Dante: A Collectionof CriticalEssays, ed. J. Freccer (Englewood Clifls, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965), p. 105, where Singletonquotes a passage further on in this chapter of the Moralia.13. Freccer, "Dante's Firm Foot . . :" HarvardTheologicalReview, LII, 3 (October, 1959), 246-281.14. Conf VIII, 8; Pusey, p. 126.15. ibid. VII, 10; Pusey, p. 107.16. ibid. 17: p. 109-110.17. Recherches, p. 157-167: "Les vaines tentatives d'extases plotiniennes."18. EnneadsI, 6; Courcelle, Les "Confessions," p. 49.19. Conf. VII, 10; p. 107. Courcelle (Les "Confessions," p. 51) shows that in his insistence on theneed for a guide, Augustine is much closer to Philo than to Plotinus. In the De migrationeAbraham,Philo states that it is precisely because they were not presumptuous but were guided by God thatMoses and Abraham were able to see the light (De tnigr.Abr. VII, ed. Cadiou, SourceschrtiennesXLVII [Paris, 1957], p. 70).20. St. Bernard, Letter to William, Patriarch of Jerusalem, No. 217 in his Letters,trans. B. S.James (London: Burns, Oates, 1953), p. 296. I am indebted to Professor Morton Bloomfield ofHarvard for having first drawn my attention to this passage.21. VII, 21; Pusey, pp. 113-114. (I have corrected Pusey's rendering of the phrase "de silvestrecacumine.")22. X, 35; Pusey, p. 181.23. On Bernardus and the question of his dualism, as well as relevant bibliography, see . Garin,Studi sulplatonismomedievale Firenze: Le Monnier, 1958) pp. 54 ff.: "Le 'cosmogonie' di Chartres."24. For a most recent view, as well as bibliography, see the forthcoming article by F. X. Newman,"St. Augustine's Three Visions and the Structure of the Commedia" in Modem LanguageNotes, LXX-XII, No. 1 (Jan. 1967).25. ConvivioTV, xxiv, 12.26. Freccer, "Dante's Firm Foot," p. 274 ff.27. "In Exitu," p. 105.28. J. Freccer, "The River of Death: Inf. II, 108," in The Worldof Dante, ed. Chandler andMolinaro (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1966), pp. 25-42.29. Conf. IX, 13; Pusey, pp. 151-152.30. The annotation is contained in the translation of William Watts (1631), reprinted in the LoebLibrary edition of the Confessions Cambridge, 1951) I, 399.31. Op. dt. (a propos of Psalm 113), col. 1073, cited in part by Courcelle, Les "Confessions,"p. 635.32. Ibid., col. 1076.33. William of St. Thierry, De nat. et dign. amorisXI, 34 (PL 184, 401); Courcelle, Ibid., p. 625.34. Usually, voluptas, concupiscentia,nanisgloria, or concupiscentiaamis, concupiscentiaculorum, u-perbiavitae, following Augustine in Book X. See the texts of Courcelle, Ibid., pp. 632-633.35. St. Bernard, De diversis ermoXLII, 2 (PL 183, 661); Courcelle, Ibid., p. 627.36. Giorgio Padoan, "Ulisse 'Fandi Fictor' e le vie della Sapienza," in Studi danteschi,XXXVII(1960), 21-61.37. Rocco Montano, Storia delta Poesia di Dante (Napoli: Quaderni di Delta, 1962), 1, 520(n.125).38. Pierre Courcelle, "Quelques Symboles funraires du no-platonisme latin: Le Voi de Ddale -Ulysse et les Sirnes," in Revue des tudes anciennes,XLVI, 1 (1944), 65-93. See also, by the same

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Dante's PrologueScene,john freccerauthor, "Les pres de l'Eglise devant les enfers virgiliens," Archives d'hist. doc. et litt. du M.A., XXX(1955), 10-11.39. Ibid., p. 67 and n. 8, where Courcelle shows the influence of Ovid on the tradition ofDaedalus' flight.40. Ambrose, De uirginitateXVIII, 115-116 (PL 16, 296) and Hexam. V, 14, 45 (PL 14, 225);Augustine, apart from the texts mentioned below, De ordineII, 12, 37; Expos. Ps. CXVIII, 14, 8; onwhich see Courcelle, p. 68.41. Bernardus Silvestri, Commentumsupersex libros Eneidos Virgilii,ed. Riedel (Gryphiswaldae,1924), p. 37.42. This essentially favorable connotation of the phrase is demonstrated by the glosses of Am-brose and Augustine. For the former, "Alarum autem remigiumnon materialis compago pennarum,sed continuus ordo bonorum fctorum est (De virgin.,loc.dt.)." Augustine, on the other hand, identi-fies the wings as the wings of the dove, or charity (cf. Psalm 67: 13; Expos. Ps. CXVIII, loc. dt.).43. Porphyry's De regressu nimae was the standard neoplatonic text for the theme. Its possibleinfluence on Augustine is a much debated question, for which see Courcelle's Recherches, ndex, s. v.Courcelle remarks that phrases in Ovid's Ars amandisuch as "Da reditumpuero" (II, 29) and "Regressusnon dabat ille viro" (II, 32) "se prtaient merveille un expos des theories no-platoniciennes surle retour de l'ime" (Rev. des tudesandennes,p. 67, n. 8). Jerome Carcopino has shown that Ulysses'return o Ithaca was used in Gnostic iconography to represent the salvation of the soul: De Pythagoreaux Aptres(Paris, 1956), Chap. IV: "Representations gnostiques du salut chrtien," pp. 157-188.44. My former student David Thompson of the University of California at Los Angeles is prepar-ing a full study of Dante's Ulysses. He will show that it is more likely than not that Dante knew ofUlysses' return, as did many medieval mythographers and commentators long before the translationof Homer.45. See, for example, Thomas Aquinas In IV Sent. d. XVII, q. I, a. 3, sol. 3; quoting AugustineIn Ps. CXVIII, serm. VIII. For the relevance of the point in Dante's prologue, see my "Dante's FirmFoot," p. 267.46. Conf. I, 18; Pusey, p. 24.47. Conf. VIII, 8; Pusey, p.126.48. Plotinus, Enneads I, 8 cited by Courcelle in his Recherches, p. 111-112 and compared withthe text of Ambrose De Isaac VIII, 78.49. In a text from the ContraAcademicos,Augustine seems to be alluding to the voyage of Ulyssesas an allegorical journey to the "port of wisdom." Interestingly enough, he recalls the flight ofDaedalus as a similarjourney:

No one ever crosses the Aegean sea without a ship or other means of transport, nor, if he doesnot wish to fear Daedalus himself, without appropriate means or without the help of some hiddenpower .... The same may be said of him who wishes to reach the port of wisdom. (Translationmine.)(ContraAcad. Ill, 2, 3; quoted by Courcelle, Revue des etudes andennes, pp. 68-69). The figure ofUlysses as Sapiens was a commonplace. See, for example, Bernardus Silvestris (op. dt., p. 21) whoetymologizes Ulysses' name: "Ulixes quasi olonsevos, omnium sensus, dicitur sapiens quia omniumperitiam habet."50. De Beata Vital,!; Courcelle, Revue des etudesandennes,p. 87; Padoan, p. 41.51 . I am translating from the text of R. Jolivet in Dialoguesphilosophiques Oeuvresde St. Aug., 4,lre srie; Paris, 1948), p. 222, with the help of his French translation.52. Jolivet, p. 224.53. Padoan, p. 42, n. 1.54. Jolivet, Ibid.55. Jolivet, p. 226.56. Ibid., pp. 226-230. The theme of the shipwreck as an allegory for philosophical curiositasreoccurs in the anonymous Disputatio adversusAbaelardum,where "tempestuous" questions lead to

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Dante Studies, CXVIII, 2000"shipwreck" from which the writer flees with the "oars" of the fathers of the church: "caeterum,quoniam propitia divinitate profundissimarum quaestionum naufragia incolumni nave, non ingeniolomeo, sed sanctorum Patrum remis evasi . . ." (PL CLXXX, 328; referred to by Henri de Lubac,L'Exgse medievale Paris:Aubier, 1959] I1, 108.57. Jolivet, p. 226.58. Conf. XI, 28; Pusey, p. 204.59. Ibid., 6, p. 190.

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