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Galiet & Galiet
political change by means of Christianity. This elevated homeward journey towards Christian moralism, including a sublime procession (Pur. 29) and Dante’s saintly self-examination of the three theological virtues, faith, hope and charity (Par. 24-25-26), juxtaposes the eternal exile cantos of Inferno’s damned: the incontinent, violent and deceitful and those that failed to timely convert. Virtuous Pagans and Virgil dwell in Dante’s Infernal Limbo while the theologically exiled and fallen from heaven’s numinous glory, Lucifer and Adam and Eve dwell, respectively, in Dante’s Infernal frozen pit and Paradisiacal fixed-star sphere (Par. 26). Virtuous Israelites are redeemed through Christ’s Harrowing of Hell. Rightly so, Dante’s response to Cacciaguida smacks of militancy: his pilgrim’s ‘armour’ will be his ‘foresight’ (Pur. 17, 109). Dante may loose his Florence, but never the prophetic power of his verse. Dante may be exiled, but never silenced.
The Divina Commedia’s three Canticas are Adam and Eve’s fallen tears made verse and prayer 3⁄4 oración 3⁄4 as they flee away from Eden of the Garden. It decries Dante’s own political exile while reiterating theological exile. In its page-turning ladder affair, Dante, the poet, weeps; Dante, the pilgrim, reaps; Dante, the exile, weeds. Indeed, Dante, the exile, exiles with his literary device 3⁄4 vice 3⁄4 and those fallen from his own favour in the name of God’s grace divine. As a result, Dante, beyond poetry’s realm thrives, becoming the righteous Philosopher King of his own visionary epic, a capacious compendium of the Sacred Scriptures, Plato’s utopian Republic,9 Aristotle’s First Orgarnum, Neoplatic texts and light-imbibed sermons in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica. In short, Dante, masterful weaver of verse, is the whip and rein of his creation and also the divine messenger of St. Peter and God,
9 Plato. Complete Works. Republic. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 1997.
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