Colocación de concreto

The first image that came to mind when I started to work on the lecture on which this chapter is based was that of a handstand: in Italian, fare la verticale (literally: ‘perform the vertical’) means to perform a handstand. While I did not attempt to deliver the lecture in this position, I ask you to imagine that it was, in fact, delivered in that way – for the image will be able to communicate to you more successfully than anything else a few crucial aspects of what is at stake in undertaking this vertical reading of

Inferno iii, Purgatorio iii and Paradiso iii. I suspect that the request to imagine a handstand may generate a mix of surprise, excitement and suspense. These, I think, are very appropriate states of being for engaging in a vertical reading of the Commedia. For the format proposes something that is much needed yet also novel and striking: this new mode of systematically journeying through Dante’s text opens up genuinely fresh and fruitful perspectives on the Commedia. It generates, furthermore, suspense. As surprising and exciting as the journey we are undertaking may be, we are yet to discover where exactly it will lead, or how our relationship with the

Commedia will be transformed by the adventure.

1 The video of this lecture is available at the Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy website, https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1368483

The present text is very close in form to the lecture on which it is based. In preparing the lecture, I had the privilege of attending the first two vertical readings, and my experience of writing the lecture was inextricably tied to the conversations surrounding those, for which I am especially grateful to George Corbett, Matthew Treherne and Heather Webb.

58 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

The image of the handstand, moreover, compellingly raises the question of verticality itself. This is very appropriate for discussing the Threes. As we shall see, these are cantos that, especially if read in the light of Paradiso

iii, invite us to think about verticality and its theological implications. More generally, the image of the handstand directly suggests that the vertical reading we are embarking upon is about the subversion of expectation. All three cantos, in one way or another, foreground the need for expectations and assumptions to be modified to permit progress on the journey towards God. This is true both of the pilgrim Dante himself, and of what the text demands of us as readers. In fact, in this reading, I shall intentionally blur the distinction between the two.

I am conscious of the possible limitations that such forms of interpretation may have. I wish to proceed in this way, however, to convey all the more immediately the sense of journeying and transformation that is a fundamental aspect of Dante’s project, and thereby also a sense of active journeying on our part as we progress on the vertical reading project. I am not suggesting we need necessarily adopt the particular theological framework presented to us by Dante as the form our own transformation can take. But I do think we are missing a vital aspect of Dante’s text if we do not give ourselves opportunities to engage with a constructive sense of the transformative impact it might have on our aesthetic, intellectual, ethical, theological and even spiritual sensibilities. In this vein, my reading will end with a link to a short piece of music that was written almost seven centuries after the Commedia (and that bears only an indirect connection to Dante’s text), but that beautifully embodies, I believe, some of the ideas I will be engaging with. I hope that this musical accompaniment to the present reading will sharpen our sense that journeying vertically through Dante’s Commedia is not simply a detached cerebral venture but a fully embodied one.

Before embarking on my reading of the Threes, allow me to express gratitude for work whose influence pervades the present essay. I am grateful to Heather Webb, for ongoing and illuminating conversation on the importance of posture and of the interplay between individual and communal in Dante’s narrative;2 _{and to George Corbett for illuminating}

and ongoing conversation on Dante’s understanding of salvation and on the relationship between reading the Commedia and listening to music,

2 See also http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/25032 and Heather Webb, ‘Postures of Penitence in Dante’s Purgatorio’, Dante Studies 131 (2013), 219-236.

The Bliss and Abyss of Freedom 59

especially music that is not directly connected to Dante’s poem.3 _{I am}

also grateful to Robin Kirkpatrick, whose translation of the Commedia will accompany us on the present reading, and whose commentary on the poem offers the deepest available reflection on the theological dynamics of Dante’s understanding of freedom.4 _{It is, indeed, from Kirkpatrick that I}

first learned to appreciate just how transformative Dante’s understanding of freedom can be.

As clearly suggested by my title, freedom is the overarching theme I have chosen for my vertical reading of the Threes. It is in and through the question of freedom that verticality and the re-orientation of expectation emerge as subjects in our cantos. What this means, as we shall see, is that these cantos focus on personhood, particularity and hope. Indeed, if we take our cantos in their narrative order, we immediately find a rather stark statement concerning hope and what appears to be the ultimate lack of freedom.

Per me si va ne la città dolente, per me si va ne l’etterno dolore, per me si va tra la perduta gente.

Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore; fecemi la divina podestate,

la somma sapïenza e ‘l primo amore. Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create se non etterne, e io etterna duro.

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate. (Inf., iii. 1-9)

[Through me you go to the grief-wracked city. Through me to everlasting pain you go.

Through me you go and pass among lost souls. Justice inspired my exalted Creator. I am a creature of the Holiest Power,

of Wisdom in the Highest and of Primal Love. Nothing till I was made was made, only eternal beings. And I endure eternally. Surrender as you enter every hope you have.]

3 See also George Corbett, Dante and Epicurus: A Dualistic Vision of Secular and Spiritual Fulfilment (Oxford: Legenda, 2013).

4 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. and comm. Robin Kirkpatrick, 3 vols (London: Penguin, 2006-2007).

60 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

Entering Hell, we are told, coincides with the abandonment of hope.5 _This

would seem to make sense, especially as it might be seen to conform to assumptions we might have of Hell as the place that, by definition, is without freedom. There is no hope because there is no freedom. To be in Hell, in this view, is to be deprived of freedom as a result of our shortcomings: the ultimate imposition of divine authority on the recalcitrant human self, the self which in its freedom decides not to follow the divine Word.

If these are the expectations we are bringing with us upon entering Dante’s Hell, however, we need to be ready to revise them. This is already suggested by the fact that we are told that Hell is the creation not only of justice, power and wisdom, but also of love. This, as Denys Turner has recently pointed out in one of the sharpest and most compelling analyses available of the theology of Inferno, reveals the condition of Hell to be an unfolding of, rather than an imposition on, the freedom of its inhabitants. As Turner puts it:

[Dante’s Hell] is a place where sinners, by choice, inhabit their sins and live their lives structured by sin’s distorted perceptions of love. That love they have to reject, as being an invasion of some imagined personal space, independent of God, as a violation of their personal freedom and autonomy. But this self-deceived self-affirmation shows up in the refusal of the damned to accept that there can be any narrative other than their own, for they deny that there is, after all, any divina commedia. The damned all have their own stories to tell, and Inferno tells them. Each of them, from Francesca da Rimini to Ugolino, know that those stories which they each tell of their fates recount not just why they were sent there to hell in the first place – that is, their specific sin – but also why they are held there without term in a condition of sinfulness, for the grip of hell on them is but the grip with which they hold onto their stories, without which they cannot imagine for themselves an identity or reality. They need their stories, stories of their own telling, and they need the misrepresentations that those stories tell. Hell is but the condition consequent upon their ultimate refusal to abandon that need. Hell, then, is the condition not of those who have sinned, for many who have sinned more grievously than Francesca and Paolo are not in hell but in a place of Redemption in purgatory. Hell is the condition of those who do not repent of their stories, who refuse the offer of their revision by the divine love, and insist on living by means of the story that sin tells, the story of the attempt to achieve a self-made significance independently of the story of the divine love.6

5 It is important to note that ‘lasciate’ in Inf., iii. 9 can be read both as imperative and indicative.

6 Denys Turner, Julian of Norwich, Theologian (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 92.

The Bliss and Abyss of Freedom 61

Hell, in this view, is not the antithesis of freedom but the result of confusing freedom with choice,7 _{and of the pursuit of freedom as autonomy, a pursuit}

of freedom that through individualistic self-centredness entraps the self in its own limitation – a limitation necessarily deriving from the self’s not being self-sufficient but radically dependent on divine love as the very substance of its being.8 _{As we shall see, it is this very limitation that in}

Purgatorio and Paradiso will be presented as the genuine foundation of freedom and identity.

But let us reflect on Inferno iii a little while longer. Immediately after entering the gates of Hell – which we should note are open, unlike the ones that later will have to be opened for Dante and Virgil by a divine messenger9 _{– Dante meets the first group of human beings on his journey.}

Indeed the third canto of each cantica is the canto in which Dante meets the first group of human beings already inhabiting the realm of the afterlife he is visiting. In Inferno iii, Dante first becomes aware of the group’s presence through horrific and cacophonous sounds – an aural aspect of Dante’s text that we should keep in mind as we proceed, given that Paradiso iii, the last canto on our vertical journey, ends in song. Of the infernal cacophony, Dante tells us:

Quivi sospiri, pianti e alti guai risonavan per l’aere sanza stelle, per ch’io al cominciar ne lagrimai.

Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, parole di dolore, accenti d’ira,

voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle facevano un tumulto, il qual s’aggira sempre in quell’ aura sanza tempo tinta, come la rena quando turbo spira. (Inf., iii. 22-30)

[Sighing, sobbing, moans and plaintive wailing all echoed here through air where no star shone, and I, as this began, began to weep.

Discordant tongues, harsh accents of horror, tormented words, the twang of rage, strident voices, the sound as well, of smacking hands,

7 See also David Burrell, Faith and Freedom: An Interfaith Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).

8 See also Par., xxix, 13-18. 9 Inf., viii-ix.

62 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

together these all stirred a storm that swirled for ever in the darkened air where no time was, as sand swept up in breathing spires of wind.]

On hearing this noise, Dante questions Virgil as to its source. Dante calls Virgil ‘maestro’ – emphasizing his role as guiding teacher. Indeed, each of the four times that Dante directly addresses Virgil in this canto he begins in the same way: ‘Maestro’. This emphasis on the pilgrim’s need for guidance is important for our vertical reading because in our other cantos too we will see Dante being challenged to grow through having to negotiate different modes of perception and different ways of relating to those offering him guidance. Virgil responds to Dante’s question by explaining to him that the noise is produced by the indifferent, the crowd of those who failed to make any mark on the world or on their own selves, those who are in effect without identity. They frantically and purposelessly follow a blank banner and have no proper place either in Heaven or Hell. As Virgil says, they are envious of every other otherworldly condition and, ultimately, are not worthy of our consideration:

Questi non hanno speranza di morte, e la lor cieca vita e’ tanto bassa

che ’nvidiosi son d’ogne altra sorte Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa; misericordia e giustizia li sdegna:

non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa. (Inf., iii. 46-51)

[These have no hope that death will ever come. And so degraded is the life they lead

all look with envy on all other fates.

The world allows no glory to their name. Mercy and Justice alike despise them. Let us not speak of them. Look, then pass on.]

In fact, Dante does recognize some of them, most famously ‘colui che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto’. Much has been written about how we might identify who this person actually is, the two most likely contenders being Pontius Pilate and Pope Celestine V. The most important thing about Dante’s way of telling us he identified someone, however, is that this identification amounts to no identification at all. It amounts, simply, to a general definition of the ignavi, those who refuse to make anything of

The Bliss and Abyss of Freedom 63

themselves, those who reject the divine gift of free will and the possibility of individual identity.

As they move forward on their journey, Dante and Virgil next see those who do not fall into the rather numerous group of the indifferent. This is a privileged moment for reflecting on the theological dynamics of Inferno. For what we are told about this second group that we meet in Inferno iii applies also to all those we will meet later in Hell. And what is most significant about this description in light of this essay’s theme is that these human beings move towards their infernal abode of their own accord. They might be swearing and cursing God or the day they were born, as Dante tells us they do, and some of them might be proceeding more slowly than required, but they all move forward spurred by divine justice acting within them in such a way as to turn their fear into desire. As Virgil says,

quelli che muoion ne l’ira di Dio tutti convengon qui d’ogne paese; e pronti sono a trapassar lo rio,

ché la divina giustizia li sprona,

sì che la tema si volve in disio. (Inf., iii. 121-126)

[[All those…] who perish in the wrath of God, meet on this shore, wherever they were born. And they are eager to be shipped across.

Justice of God so spurs them all ahead that fear in them becomes that sharp desire.]

We might be tempted here to think that the divine justice Dante is referring to is some external force acting upon them, but this would run counter to the rather more subtle psychological picture Dante is presenting. Yes, we are told that the infernal guardian Charon violently shepherds the damned and reminds them of what we had seen written on the gates of Hell – of the need to abandon hope. But the divine justice which Virgil points out to Dante as the primary motivating force of the newly damned comes from within; it is a form of self-knowledge whereby the damned seem to recognize the appropriateness of their current journey, its faithfulness to the life they chose for themselves, preferring their story to love’s story. Indeed, none of the sinners we meet in Inferno is actually found protesting against the divine justice of their present predicament. Many blame other human beings for their fate, others are either directly or indirectly defiant

64 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’

towards God, but on close scrutiny none of the sinners are presented as actually deeming their predicament unjust.

One way of reading the journey through Hell, then, is as a journey towards self-knowledge, an ever-deeper plunge into the justice of the condemnation of the darker possibilities inherent in our being, those aspects of our selves that are expressions of our isolating presumption to be self-sufficient and to live at the expense of others and of God.

From this perspective, the next thing to note about Inferno iii is the first use in the Commedia of a formula that will become familiar. In challenging Charon to let them pass, Virgil says,

[…] Caron, non ti crucciare vuolsi così colà dove si puote

ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare. (Inf., iii. 94-96)

[Charon […] don’t torment yourself. For this is willed where all is possible that is willed there. And so demand no more.]

Once again, we would seem to be presented with an instance of the imposition of God’s will over something external to it. And, once again, the picture is nonetheless more complicated than this. First of all, the reference is not to God but to the Empyrean, the transcendent ‘place’ of perfect freedom where will coincides with power, and power – as we will see in Paradiso iii – coincides with love. We have here a first way in which our cantos raise the question of verticality itself. Dante’s journey, like Hell itself, depends on love and, therefore, on the Empyrean – which is nothing