Dante's Indirection

Extract

‘What then does it mean, “to deceive”? It means that one does not begin directly with the matter one wants to communicate, but begins by accepting the other man’s illusion as good money... nor does one begin thus: I am a Christian, and you are living in purely aesthetic categories. No, one begins thus: Let us talk about aesthetics. The deception consists in the fact that one talks thus merely to get to the religious theme.’ (S. Kierkegaard, Point of View.)

In all the wealth presented to us in Dante’s Divine Comedy nothing is so rich as the intention of the whole, and the methods of presentation and communication which Dante uses to body forth this intention. I want to draw out two themes, the first concerned with the medieval device of the Dreamer himself, the second with what might be called an existential concern for meaning, which realizes itself in Dante’s use of categories.

I want to talk in terms of Soren Kierkegaard, an analogy which at first may seem strange, but, seen in relation to his ‘indirect’ works and his Christian concern, like Dante’s, ‘by indirections to fmd directions out’, the analogy will I think throw light on those strange moments (such as the famous faint in Inferno, 5) when we see Dante himself - the figure of the Dreamer - in all his medieval clarity.

The tension between form and meaning can be pulled so tight, that the excitement of our engagement in the poem forces a reaction upon us before we have a moment to decide consciously what, by our ordinary moral standards and preconceptions, our attitude should be. Before we have, as it were, been tipped the wink by Dante as to what our reaction to Francesca’s story should be, we see him prostrate on the ground in a faint of sheer human pity. If we are honest we will admit that we have been taken unawares.