Page 12 - GALIET EXILE: Dante IV+

Galiet & Galiet
palpitant dream and yearning to migrate back, with due pomp and circumstance, to that abode of abodes, Florence, poem and serenade of his being, and to that evanescent and evergreen laurel crown, song of his singing. In the same Canto, Beatrice will explain to St. Barnard Dante’s journey towards his Maker in the steps of Exodus:
The Church, at war on earth, has not a child – And this is written in that sun whose rays Here shine upon our ranks – more full of hope. It has, therefore, been granted him to come, Before his term of soldiership is through
From Egypt to behold Jerusalem. (Par. 25, 52-57)
Exile & Pilgrimage. Dante’s Commedia is a Biblical living fable of visions, teachings and sermons that sings of Exodus and Emmaus, the mysterious pilgrim of the sidewalk who journeys with us.3 It becomes a rhyming, three-fold universal pilgrimage poem composed for Italy to punish immorality and evil, denounce all forms of usury and political and ecclesiastical corruption and redeem their pilgrim readers while saving its poet. Stern Dante, in denying Aristotle’s classical rule for epic writing in his Poetics,4 records himself in his Commedia, as creator within his creation, in imitation of the visionary and prophetic Books of Ezekiel and of Revelation where those to be saved, including John and Ezekiel, are present within their texts. Moreover, in Ezekiel 2.9-10 and in Revelation 5.1, John and Ezekiel, respectively, see in God's hand a scroll, "written within and without” – the Book of Life, mirrors of the Word and World, Logos and Mundi – listing the names of those that fear God (Rev 3, 5). As a result, Dante’s peregrination,
3 Lk.24:13-28.
4 Aristotle. Poetics. Aristotle posits that the poet ought not to appear in his epic. Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. Malcolm Heath. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
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