Fear and Desire in Dante

This thesis proposes a theological and mystical interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I read the Commedia as a text of spiritual practice, much like Saint Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum or Saint Bernard’s De Diligendo Deo. In doing so I concentrate my study not primarily on the philosophical and theological structures of Dante’s journey, but on the feeling or the affectus that informs it. The pilgrim of the Commedia –like Dante’s spiritual masters Saint Bernard, Hugh and Richard of Saint Victor, Saint Bonaventure and Saint Thomas Aquinas—believes that a sincere spiritual undertaking takes hold of someone not because of a great idea or a theological doctrine, but because of the intensity of feeling that provides him with the strength and passion to follow his path of purification. When Dante, following his spiritual masters, speaks of the primacy of feeling in the spiritual path, he refers to two specific movements of the soul: fear and desire. Dante points out that fear and desire are the first emotions of man, both in his earthly and in his divine perception of reality. Aristotle, Saint Bernard and Saint Thomas are the main authorities on these affects in Dante’s poem. The spiritual path conceived by Dante is the result of a perfect union between human and divine will, which is to say between nature and grace, or between philosophy and religion, and between fear and desire as instances of earthly and divine feeling. Supplementary Abstract This thesis proposes a theological and mystical interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I read the Commedia as a text of spiritual practice, much like like Saint Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum or Saint Bernard’s De Diligendo Deo. In doing so I concentrate my study not primarily on the philosophical and theological structures of Dante’s journey, but on the feeling or the affectus that informs it. The pilgrim of the Commedia –like Dante’s spiritual masters Saint Bernard, Hugh and Richard of Saint Victor, Saint Bonaventure and Saint Thomas Aquinas—believes that a sincere spiritual undertaking takes hold of someone not because of a great idea or a theological doctrine, but because of the intensity of feeling that provides him with the strength and passion to follow his path of purification. Dante expresses this fundamental truth through Beatrice’s words: “non voglio che dubbi, ma sia certo, / che ricever la grazia è meritorio / secondo che l’affetto l’è aperto” (Par 64-66). And again, in the final verses of Paradiso XXXII, through the words of Saint Bernard this time, Dante reiterates the importance of affect in the search for union with the divine: “tu mi seguirai con l’affezione / sí che dal dicer mio lo cor non parti” (149-150). Dante’s attention to the emotional aspect of pilgrim’s journey leads me to focus on the perceptive dimension of the pilgrim’s senses, both physical and spiritual. The distinction between sensual and spiritual feeling is in fact a distinction with regard to the object towards which the soul opens itself, and not with regard to the movement of openness itself, which is the same. Nor is it a distinction with regard to the principle of any possible contact and union with what is loved. In this sense the spiritual path will be a marvelous journey through human feeling, from sensual to spiritual, or from natural to divine. Saint Bernard also describes the complete journey to God as a journey from bodily to spiritual senses (Csi V:3). As Aquinas maintains, grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it (ST II-II Q 2 art. 4). Dante himself reminds the reader that, in the light of grace, the human senses will finally be able to experience the divine directly: “li organi del corpo saranno forti / a tutto ciò che potrà dilettare” (Par XIV 59-60). When Dante, along with his spiritual masters, speaks about the primacy of feeling in the spiritual path he refers to specific movements of the soul: fear and desire. Dante points out precisely how fear and desire are the very first movements of the soul in the relationship between man and God in the earthly paradise. For Dante, the earthly paradise marks the beginning of human history as we know it, man having lost direct contact with God and, since then, living in “pena e desio” (Purg XXXIII 61): pain in the absence of the origin of happiness, and desire for a renewed encounter with what has been lost. The spiritual path does not emerge from an ecstatic vision, but from fear, sorrow and pain. It is fear, however, specifically the fear that “fa tremar le vene e i polsi” (Inf I 90) that is the first emotion man perceives in his relation with God: fear of one’s own limits before God, but also fear of dying without directly experiencing “il Sommo Bene” (Par VII 80). Fear is considered the beginning of wisdom, in accordance with the Bible, Saint Bernard, Richard of Saint Victor and Aquinas. Aquinas maintains that fear is the beginning of wisdom with regard to the effects of a divine presence in man, but not to its essence, which is faith (ST I II Q. 68 art. 7). Fear is thus the beginning of wisdom in a very specific sense, because it makes man feel the primary presence of God in his affection, rather than as intellectual or theological content. As I mentioned above, it is only in the heart of man that God will eventually reveal Himself. This divine presence, however, is at first operative as fear and as sorrow for the absence of the most precious love. It is when the divine is perceived in the affective side of the soul that the spiritual quest begins. The first two cantos of the Commedia are steeped in fear, to the extent that fear is the only sign of vitality in the reader’s initial encounter with Dante’s masterpiece. Fear of death (Inf I 6) because of the lost “diritta via” (3) and fear of being devoured by beasts impede the pilgrim in his escape from the “selva oscura” (2). In the obscurity of the Inferno however, fear nourishes another feeling: desio, desire for Paradiso (Inf II 136). Only a direct experience of the divine can alleviate the great fear experienced at the beginning of the journey; only an impression of the divine on the soul can have an impact similar to fear. Complete and final joy is as powerful as the desperation it replaces. Fear will accompany the pilgrim for the first two books, along with the desire for a new encounter with “il primo amore” (Par XXXII 142). Fear will disappear only when the pilgrim reaches earthly paradise, after Beatrice’s forgiveness and the first experiences of a life without sin. From then on it is the desire for God that moves the pilgrim on his journey: Beatrice invites the pilgrim to walk close to her (Purg XXXIII 19-21) and to free himself from fear: “da tema e da vergogna / voglio che omai ti disviluppe, / sí che non parli piú com’om che sogna” (31-33). II My thesis takes as its primary object of study the progression, transformation, “trasumanar” (Par I 70) of the pilgrim’s feelings in his journey from sensual to spiritual experience. Fear and desire are the two fundamental feelings in this great quest, and the central areas I explore. In the first part of the first chapter I consider the meaning of the terms fear and desire, primarily in the introductory cantos of Inferno. In dealing with fear and desire in this chapter, I have kept in mind not only the mystical literature dear to Dante, but the reading of the Commedia by two great poets of the past century: Giuseppe Ungaretti and T.S. Eliot. Their interpretations of Dante’s journey in the Commedia have influenced my reading in two ways. Ungaretti has helped me understand the senses that propel the pilgrim towards his journey, while Eliot’s insight into the purpose of Dante’s writing has proven invaluable. Ungaretti’s reading of the first canto of Inferno underlines in a masterly fashion that fear is the source of Dante’s quest. The beginning of the Commedia, according to Ungaretti is: “intriso di notte e tutto echeggiante e intimidito di notturno orrore” (10). Only in this tremendous fear and loneliness will the pilgrim find the way of grace; in the first canto of Inferno, Ungaretti writes: “sono progressive apparizioni in solitudini che preparano alla grande solitudine dell’anima la quale, nel secondo canto, sentirà la propria debolezza, e, nel segreto suo smarrimento accoglierà la Grazia, e potrà sentirsi preparata alla sacra iniziazione” (20). Eliot parallels Ungaretti in tracing the prominence of the senses as the basis of the Commedia, and of poetry itself. He focuses on the aim of Dante’s masterpiece. Eliot maintains that the Commedia “has to educate our senses as he goes along;” its first purpose is make the readers feels the state of souls in the afterlife: “the insistence throughout is upon states of feeling; the reasoning takes only its proper place as a means of reaching these states” (52). Ungaretti and Eliot have guided my writing: Ungaretti in considering the philosophical and theological sources of fear; Eliot in the study of the progressive evolution of the pilgrim’s experience from sensual to spiritual. In the second part of this first chapter I deal with the structure of desire in the Commedia. What I mean by “structure of desire” is the specific nature of this human passion, which has two main aspects: desire as a force that moves man to act, and the extinction and ending of desire itself in the realization and attainment of the object of one’s love. In the Convivio (IV xii 16-17) and the Commedia, Dante delineates this essential law of desire. At the core of Purgatorio, which is also the centre of the Commedia, Dante details the nature of this passion, the bringing-into-action of man towards a specific and concrete enjoyment: “Poi, come ‘l foco movesi in altura / per la sua forma ch’è nata a salire / là dove piú in sua matera dura, / così l’animo preso entra in disire, / ch’è moto spiritale, e mai non posa / fin che la cosa amata il

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