And it is to Heaven, appropriately enough, that we must turn by way of a conclusion. In the introduction to this reading, I suggested that the
‘Ahi serva Italia’ passage in Purgatorio vi could be read as a gloss on the relationship between Dante-pilgrim’s otherworldly journey and the poet’s political journey through the ‘selva oscura’ [dark wood] of our life on earth. It is clear that the pessimism of the invective is anticipated in Inferno vi – though with a much narrower focus – by Ciacco’s account of the wickedness of Florence, a city where even the noblest and best citizens are consigned to deepest Hell:
‘Farinata e ’l Tegghiaio, che fuor sì degni, Iacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo e ’l Mosca,
e li altri ch’a ben far puoser li ’ngegni, dimmi ove sono e fa ch’io li conosca;
ché gran disio mi stringe di savere se ’l ciel li addolcia o lo ’nferno li attosca.’
E quelli: ‘Ei sono tra l’anime più nere;
diverse colpe giù li grava al fondo.’ (Inf., vi. 79-86)
[Farinata and Tegghiaio, who were so worthy, Iacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo and Mosca, and the others who turned their wits to doing well, tell me where they are and cause me to know them; for great desire urges me to understand if Heaven sweetens or Hell poisons them.’ And he: ‘They are among the blacker souls; various sins weigh them toward the bottom.’]
Divided City, Slavish Italy, Universal Empire 141 As Dante’s protagonist proceeds on his journey through the afterlife his focus widens and his understanding deepens, just as, in the political world outside the text, events move on, and the historical Dante breaks away from the White Guelphs exiled with him in 1301 and begins to embrace – in his behaviour and in his writing – the concept of that ‘parte per [se] stesso’ [party unto [him]self] (Par., xvii. 69) that his ancestor, Cacciaguida will tell him to form when they meet in the Heaven of Mars. Henry succeeds Albert, and Dante embraces the aims of his Italian campaign with an enthusiasm that puts Sordello’s patriotic fervour in Purgatorio vi to shame. Until, that is, Henry fails, leaving Rome widowed once more, and the prophetic tone of Dante’s letters ringing like so much empty rhetoric.
It is my contention that, in the wake of Henry’s death, Dante dramatically reassesses his conception of the political order, and specifically his belief in the possibility of the establishment of a universal Roman Empire on earth. How, if his letters are taken at face value, could it be otherwise? In Paradiso, then – and most notably in Justinian’s thoroughly providential, Christ-centred, account of Roman history – we are presented, I believe, with a story with a beginning (Aeneas’s flight from Troy), a middle (the Incarnation and Crucifixion: the providential moments on which the whole story hangs), and an end: Dante’s here-and-now, a time when no new Emperor could make of ‘serva Italia’ a land of milk and honey, and no new Messiah could bring about Italy’s (political) redemption. Just as I believe that the Monarchia is not a practical political manual, a blueprint for world domination, but a utopian meditation on what might have been, and a reflection on what – between 1310 and 1313 – had gone so badly wrong,46 so too, it seems to me, in Paradiso vi we find a description of that perfect Empire of which Dante dreams, but devoid of any sense that it can now ever be reconstructed on earth. It is in this sense that the
46 See my ‘“Ecce nunc tempus acceptabile”: Henry vii and Dante’s Ideal of Peace’, The Italianist 33 (2013), 484-504 (pp. 496-97). Cassell notes that the Monarchia is ‘a text disincarnate’ (Anthony K. Cassell, ‘Monarchia’, in The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. by Richard Lansing (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 616-23 (p. 617)), while Shaw affirms that there is nothing implausible about the suggestion ‘that Dante would compose a treatise demonstrating the need for an emperor when his hopes in practical terms of ever seeing this come about in his own lifetime had been definitively dashed’ (Shaw,
‘Introduction’, p. xl).
142 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’
pessimism of the invective against Italy of Purgatorio vi, notwithstanding the fact that a good portion of the pilgrim’s otherworldly – and the poet’s worldly – journey remains to be undertaken when it is pronounced, comes ultimately to stand as Dante’s definitive statement on human political affairs.
And yet it must not be forgotten that in the three cantos which this chapter explores – as in the Commedia as a whole – the poet traces a trajectory ‘di Fiorenza in popol giusto e sano’ [from Florence to a people just and whole]
(Par., xxxi. 39). If ‘Ahi serva Italia’ is the fulcrum about which these cantos turn, this does not mean that a more conventionally ‘vertical’ reading is impossible. Indeed, on one level a vertical reading is what the Commedia insists upon, as it strains ever upwards towards that ‘vera città’ of which the souls in Purgatory are already citizens.47 And this is important, because, while I believe that Henry’s death occasioned in Dante a deep political pessimism with regard to the here-and-now, this does not necessarily mean that he gave up altogether on the notion of community, but only that he shifted his ‘political’ ideal upwards, heavenwards, to that realm where all the souls want only what God wills for them, not only accepting, but actively rejoicing in his justice and his rule, and where, therefore, cupiditas and the libido dominandi are replaced, as Justinian explains, by the sweet harmony of the perfect community:
Quindi addolcisce la viva Giustizia in noi l’affetto sì che non si puote torcer già mai ad alcuna nequizia.
Diverse voci fanno dolci note:
così diversi scanni in nostra vita
rendon dolce armonia tra queste rote. (Par., vi. 121-26)
[Thus the living Justice sweetens our love so that it can never be turned aside to any iniquity. Different voices make sweet notes: thus different thrones in this our life produce a sweet harmony among these wheels.]
47 Purgatorio xiii. 95; and compare Paradiso xxx. 130.