#1247 Zygmunt Baranski: Dante's Divine Comedy

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricard Lobs, and today I'm joined by Doctor Sigmund Benski. He is Emeritus RL Knela Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame and also. The professor of Italian emeritus at the University of Cambridge, and today we're going to focus a lot on Dante and his Divine Comedy or Comedy as we're going to get into. So Zig, welcome to the show. It's a huge pleasure to have you

00:32 Zygmunt Baranski: on. Thank you, Ricardo. It's a, you know, it's a pleasure and also it's an intrigue, you know, to be with you, but it's also an intriguing experience, I'll be honest with you.

00:44 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so let's get into it. So, I, I mean, as I, as I've already made a reference or alluded to in my introduction, uh, it seems that the original title of Dante's Divine Comedy was not exactly the Divine Comedy, right? Tell us about that.

01:06 Zygmunt Baranski: Now, the, the original title, as far as we're aware. Uh, IS comedy, just simply the in, uh, Florentine of the time it was comedia with the stress on the final IA, while in it's modern Italian it's comedia, uh, and we know it's comedia because Dante uses it in rhymes, so we know from the other rhyme words that the pronunciation is. The, the one that I've mentioned, and now the, the title comedy immediately caused considerable perplexity, uh. And because nowhere does Dante explicitly explain why he's using that term. And precise and precisely on account of the confusion that it caused, the bewilderment, you know, the there were even reactions, and I paraphrase in a slightly humorous way, but you know what that that reader said, and we have a lot of records of contemporary readers because the poem generated a huge commentary tradition. Uh, FROM we suspect it may have been even already during Dante's own life, the latter years of Dante's life, but certainly within a year or two after his death in 1321, and some readers said, well, this is a great poem, but the title is pretty rubbish, as I said, that's my paraphrase of what they wrote. Uh, AND indeed. The reason we think why the epithet Divina was added, and it wasn't added until the 16th century, 1555 in fact, in one of the printed in a Venetian printed edition of that year, is precisely as, you know, further clear evidence that people were confused, dissatisfied, perplexed by the title. And by adding the epithet divine, which Very easily connects with the subject matter of the poem since it's a poem that it's a religious poem in which religious issues of Christian culture of the time sort of are present just about on every page of the poem and it's a poem that recounts a journey of an individual who goes via the three realms of the of the afterlife, health, purgatory, and paradise, and in order to finally achieve union with God, which of course is an extraordinary claim to make, whether then or now. Now, there are various theories why we think Dante used the term. Comedy to define the poem, uh, the gene, there is almost universal consensus that we need to look in terms of medieval theories of literature, uh, and despite the fact that in Until fairly recently, there was a view that the Middle Ages was bereft of literary theory and criticism, this is in fact a major mistake, er, reflection on literature beginning with the Bible was everywhere in medieval culture, and they had a sophisticated system for the analysis of texts. And this in very simple terms, the system tended to divide all literary texts into three categories, tragedy, comedy, and then a third category which was normally satire, but it could also be other sort of super genres because within these categories, different varieties of texts would be included. Now the thing to note immediately is that the use in the Middle Ages and indeed before the Middle Ages and also subsequently into the Renaissance and beyond was the these terms did not have the meanings that with which we associate nowadays so comedy was not necessarily something humorous, which is the way we would respond to the term. Now, the complications that arise is that, as I'm sure will emerge later in our discussion, the commedia is. Without doubt, one of the most experimental and innovative works of the Western tradition, and it is a work that on the one hand challenges that tradition, but on the other hand uses traditional terminology in order to clarify what the poet is doing, because essentially Dante's aim was to Not to, in a sense, the way in which some of the 20th century avant-garde movements worked as a total rejection of the tradition. Dante didn't Dante wanted to innovate within the tradition and to be recognized as an innovator in terms of the tradition. So this is what one of the problems that possibly the major problems associated with the term comedy is that comedy was considered to be a sort of sorry, the way in which the that tripartite distinction that I mentioned worked was that each of these categories, let's call them genres, the Middle Ages would have called them styles. Uh, EACH of them had its own subject matter, its own vocabulary. Its own rhetoric and that fundamentally, there shouldn't be contamination between the tragic and the comic, the tragic and the comic and the satirical. And this was something that was inculcated in manuals, in education, etc. THAT there was some room for flexibility and that, you know, but fundamentally that was the basic premise, uh, upon which medieval thinking about literature, but also medieval writing sort of function and comedy was perceived to, To to find itself with its own constrained set of subject matter, language, etc. Now, the problem that arises is that one of the what characterizes the commedia as one of the characteristics is that it employs not only all three styles, all three genres within a single text, but it also, especially at the linguistic level, introduces vocabulary that would not have been considered as part of literary discourse. So why use the term comedy? In very simple terms, comedy out of the three styles tragedy, comedy, satire, was, when one looks at the definitions that were current and available, is the most flexible of the three. So what Dante's using comedy as, he's saying he uses it as a kind of We believe sort of Prompt, you know, to his readers to to ask themselves why comedy. And the, the, the answer I believe is that because I'm trying to point to you that if we're thinking about this in language and terminology that you understand. I I'm suggesting, look how formally flexible my poem is. Mhm.

08:53 Ricardo Lopes: Right, so I would like to ask you before we go into questions surrounding uh the figure of Ve more generally in the history of our Western tradition, Western literature. I would like to ask you a few questions about the poem itself and how it progresses. So when it comes to the hell or inferno part. Um, I mean, uh, of course there's the circles of hell, and, uh, they include scenes like lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. Um, HOW do you look at this sort of, let's say, progression through the circles of hell? Do you think that, uh, dentists structured hell that way? To, uh, tell people that, um. The, the sins that, that you can find at the lower levels are worse than the ones you can find at the upper levels.

10:04 Zygmunt Baranski: Yes, exactly, yeah, it's very, the poem is very carefully organized. All three parts of the afterlife are structured in very sophisticated ways, and indeed we continue to discover sort of, you know, complexities. Even now, so it's not just that, you know, there's something that's immediately accessible, which is the organization of the sins, essentially, as Virgil Dante's guide explained in Inferno 11. Uh, IS fundamentally based not on Christian principles but actually on pagan ones, on, to be precise, on pagan ethical systems, primarily Aristotle's ethics, so the sins, but also, Uh, there's a Ciceronian element to the organization of the sins. Now, Dante doing this, moving from the sins, let's say, of incontinence, the sins that involve our passions. uh THE way it's struck and progressively moving down to sins that more and more involve our intellect to our actual ration, the use of our reason in order to see it to sin, such as fraud and Treachery, as you correctly, as you correctly said, those, we can see how they map onto pagan ethical notions. Now what Dante's doing in that, in itself it's not surprising because since the ever greater influence through the 12th century through the 13th century and into the 14th century of Aristotle and pagan moral thinking, what Dante was doing fits in with what, you know, many theologians, philosophers, writers, thinkers, etc. WERE doing at the time, showing the demonstrating the correlations. Between Christian thought and pagan thought, especially in matter of ethics. What is astonishing, what is very different is if you go and read or just consult quickly the extensive literature, the on accounts of the afterlife that were very popular in throughout the Middle Ages and in particular in the later Middle Ages. We do not find any account of hell or more generally of the afterlife that is. Constructed in a sophisticated a manner as Dante's afterlife, including hell, nor do they use that in, in the instance of Inferno, a systematic application of pagan ethics. Now, What, why is Dante drawing on pagan ethics? I, I hope I've explained that there was a cultural context which legitimated that, but also it's part of a much broader investigation of which the most obvious representative is Virgil himself, who acts as a guide, a pagan poet who acts as a guide through two parts of the Christian afterlife. Is that one of the things, many things that Dante is doing in the poem is to explore the rela the interrelationship between pagan and Christian culture. Now I should also add briefly that in fact, and this is one of the things that we've increasingly understood more recently, when we've stepped back from simply basing ourselves on Virgil's lesson where he explains the organization of Inferno. In Inferno 11 is that in fact there are significant Christian elements within the organization of hell. So, for instance, when Dante arrives in Malebolge, the circle of of fraud, we now recognize that that division which is divided into 10 subdivisions, connects with Christian reflection upon sins and in particular, A a certain type of category of sins which from about the 12th century onwards had become increasingly debated and influential, and these are the sins of the tongue, i.e., sins which are predicated on the use of language, and you can immediately appreciate the correlation between language and reason.

14:43 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Right, I think that one important thing to refer here is that in Dante's Inferno, uh, we find people that, uh, I mean, uh, to understand why they're there, we have to look at the text in a historical context because for example we can find there. Uh, HOMOSEXUAL people, atheists, people who commit suicide who we nowadays, or at least many of us nowadays, uh, wouldn't, uh, condemn, uh, at least in terms of those characteristics.

15:24 Zygmunt Baranski: Yeah, absolutely, I, I very strongly believe and much of my research is predicated on. And trying to understand what Dante is saying in terms of the medieval context, for me that's fundamental and. Uh, THERE aren't any atheists as far as we know in the in in the Inferno or anywhere else if I, if I may just correct you. What we have is a is a group of souls whom Dante claims do not believe in the immortality of the soul, which is these, these are the heretics, which is quite different from atheism. One can believe in God but not believe in the immortality of the soul. That, I, I think that's actually quite important because. Uh, WHILST certainly there were within, you know, especially the university culture of the 13th and 14th century, that. Thinkers who. Let's say their views were problematic, including on whether or not the soul survived. There is no suggestion that any of these figures, you know, actually denied the existence of God. In fact, quite the opposite. Uh, AND yeah, and absolutely we need to judge Dante's view of suicide, of, Uh, ho, you know, sexual sins of a certain type, etc. OR sexual behavior or sexual orientation, etc. NOT by imposing our own value system, we can of course, compare and contrast the two, but in order to understand the nature of Dante's treatment, We have to consider it in terms of what the attitudes were at the time, and there are a number of scholars who know a lot more about these matters than I do, authoritative scholars who have suggested that in fact, Dante's attitudes were, and again I'm going to use a term anachronistically, you know, were more liberal on these matters than those of, let's say call it the majority opinion.

17:37 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm, THAT, that's very interesting. Uh, AND then in purgatory, I mean, as he goes through, um, as he goes up Mount Purgatory, what we find there are simply the seven deadly sins, correct? I mean, it's pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust, and again I imagine that there's a sort of progression here from the The gravest sin to the least grave sin, I

18:11 Zygmunt Baranski: imagine that that's, that is absolutely correct. However, the whole issue of the structure of the mountain, because in the second canticle, uh, Purgatorio, uh, we actually, it's a journey up a mountain and only. Uh, The central part of the mountain is actually purgatory itself, i.e., Purgatory proper. There is a pre-purgatory that is explored in the first nine cantos of that of Purgatorio. Then there's a central part which is divided according to the seven capital vices, and then the, the final part for. The transition occurs in Canto 27, actually takes place in the Garden of Eden, so part of the journey is a return to that state of spiritual innocence that had characterized that Adam and Eve before they, they sinned. So again, you can begin to see how complex and sophisticated the system is that Dante, that it doesn't just, you know, simply go from hell, which has a certain coherence as hell, we move to a mountain, which itself is divided into three distinct and quite separate parts. You know, anti-purgatory is probably the most original part of Dante's view of the afterlife because he creates an area which really doesn't exist in the medieval tradition of account of the afterlife. The placing of Eden next to Purgatory is again, is Dante's invention and just simply the way in which he envisages the world, he he, you know, uh, a very close friend and colleague of mine, Ted Cacci, who, With whom I've worked together for many years and then we were colleagues at Notre Dame, he's written extensively and very authoritatively more than anyone, precisely on the way in which Dante views and maps the world, not just the world within which we live, but you know, so for instance, the mountain that he locates, the mountain let's call it a purgatory, uh, is an addition, so he's actually creating, In inverted commas, the world, he's giving us, offering his readers insights and a view of the world which they would not have had without reading Dante, but he goes beyond this because he's also in Paradiso as he travels up towards Paradise and Paradise, proper, Paradise, which is the, in the mind of God and the seat of the blessed and the angel, is only essentially in the last 4 canti, 30 to 33 of Paradiso. The preceding is a journey through the medieval cosmos, through the different heavens of the medieval cosmos.

21:12 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so before we talk about Paradis or paradise, uh, you mentioned, of course, at the top of, uh, Mount Purgatory we find the Garden of Eden or the earthly paradise. I mean, do we have any idea why Dante included it there, and how does it differ from a Paradiso? I mean, uh, what kind of progression do we find between the Garden of Eden and Paradise?

21:45 Zygmunt Baranski: That's uh it's a very good and interesting question. Uh, THE reason why he there are, I would say there are two primary reasons for locating it at the top of the mountain, and I mentioned both of them briefly, uh, in my previous answer. One is the fact that he wants to highlight the spiritual condition that this journey through hell, which is a rejection of sin, of course, and then, Up Mount Purgatory, which is a journey of spiritual improvement. It's uh, so in essence, in the central part of Purgatory, that place of, that's constructed around the seven cardinal vices, Individual sins unlike hell are not being punished. What's happening is that that disposition within us, which leads us to sin in particular ways, is being improved and rectified. It's being cleansed and prepared. To Be made spiritually pure, so that the person who has been cleansed, is able to then proceed on their journey up to paradise because once you're in purgatory, you're saved. In, in general terms, you cannot be returned to hell. Uh, BUT what you do, you have to go through a process of spiritual cleansing in order to make yourself fit to enter paradise. So Dante, by placing Eden at the top of the mountain is highlighting this return to a state of spiritual innocence, which is what God actually wanted for us according to the scriptural account and Christian theology. And then sin intervened and we know what happened subsequently. Uh, THE other reason is precisely that, the one I also mentioned, the one that Dante is, because the poem has this extraordinary breadth. Many people talk about it as as an encyclopedic poem, a poem that includes everything, a poem that would give its readers an experience of the whole complexity of reality. So by locating Eden there, he's he's offering people, you know, a vision as to where he believes, in fact, it's more than he believes, he claims that he was actually there. Eden actually is. Now, the relationship between, what is the relationship between the Garden of Eden, the earthly paradise, and paradise itself. Uh, Is one is that the earthly paradise is here on Earth. 2, it is not the seat of God, the angels, and the blessed. It is still part of our earthly reality, it belongs in some ways to us, or rather it should have belonged to us, if sin hadn't intervened, and in order for us to reach God, And to know God, because part of the whole debate around, you know, what is it like in paradise was the belief that the possibility that at least in part we would have knowledge of God as well as knowledge of all the blessed and of all the angels, etc. IN paradise. And this is not a condition that we find in the earthly paradise.

25:20 Ricardo Lopes: And so in Paradise, the kind of organization that we get there, then takes directly from the celestial references and the view of the heavenly bodies that people had back in medieval Europe, right? I mean the Moon and then Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and then also the fixed stars, the Primum Mobilae and the Imperium. This is all from uh the kind of view people, the kind of view people have of the cosmos back in medieval Europe,

25:58 Zygmunt Baranski: the late medieval, yes, it was based upon primarily the work of an astronomer known as Ptolemy. Uh, TO which some Additions of Aristotelian elements of Aristotelian thought were added, Yes, fundamentally the, It's a system that has the earth at its center, and then the different heavens that you mentioned, and then after the primummobile, which was considered to be the heaven whose influence affected all the other heavens and then they, they saw the whole of the uh the cosmos working through celestial, through celestial influence, and up to there it's, it's not as, you know, The problems arise with the Empirean. Is the Empirean actually a, a heaven in the sense that the other heavens are, or is it something completely immaterial outside of time and space and place and exists exclusively in the mind of God, which at the time when Dante composes the Commedia, that is the view that he has, uh, of the Empire in. Uh, NOW, what's interesting, as I mentioned earlier, is that in fact Dante only finds himself in heaven itself, in the Empire Ian right at the very end of the poem, that essentially what we have in the preceding canti, that the the. The, the bulk of the of the Paradiso itself is a journey through. The heavens of the medieval cosmos, so we are not in paradise. Mhm. What the reason for this is. There are several, but the one that Beatrice offers, because Beatrice by in the earthly paradise takes over as Dante's guide from Virgil, uh, you can see that beyond the sort of personal reason of the relationship between Beatrice and Dante, you need, you know, one can see why a pagan guide would not be appropriate for the last part of the journey. Beatrice explains that. As a special privilege, God is allowing. Dante the pilgrim, the traveler, the protagonist of the poem, to have an indirect experience of what paradise is like. Now this is predicated on the fact that as with most religions, as far as I'm aware, probably all, it is generally normally impossible for there to be direct contact between the divinity and humanity, and that therefore, And the Bible is the most. Obvious and well-known example of what I'm talking about, the communication has to be indirect, it has to be mediated so that we can understand it, and the Bible fits into that system, into that scheme better than anything else. So we, so in the same way, in order to appreciate the divine, we can only do this indirectly. And this is also the case as far as the pilgrim is concerned. Who in approaching paradise is first given an indirect experience so that he gets some understanding of the way in which the Empirean is organized. Uh, ON another level, this is very effective rhetorically. It's very effective ret because Pa even the cosmos through which he travels is primarily, it's like where in Paradise, sorry, in Purgatory and Inferno, Dante is actually seeing souls, seeing the environment through which he travels, etc. Once he starts traveling through the heavens, essentially all he sees is light and hears sounds. So there's a. An extraordinary reduction in what he is experiencing. And that therefore this poses obviously a whole series of problems of uh how do you tell the story if all you can do is talk about light. Now obviously a lot of what the paradiso is is a reporting of speeches, there's a an increase in in dialogue, and there's an increase in the length of the of. The speeches that are given inevitably to counter this, Dante then throughout the Paradiso does all sorts of very interesting things with light, images of light, the souls that he sees as lights, sort of organizing themselves into interesting shapes, from a celestial eagle to a cross, etc. ETC. But fundamentally, that part is very much a way of Making clear to us as well, you know, that the experience of the divine is progressive, it's mediated, it continues, he builds up slowly to that moment when he enters the empire again. Which itself of course is not what paradise is actually like, because as a human being, he cannot remember his actual experience of paradise. So it can, that's why he can talk to us about it. But there's a certain point when he becomes, when he achieves union with God, he says that's it, I can't remember anything. But everything, the whole process is an indirect process. This is something that there's often confusion about. At no point does Dante ever actually claim that what he is reporting is paradise itself. No, because he can't remember. How can you remember as a human being something that exists exclusively in the mind of God? Because if you could, you would then have understood and in a sense. Been able to find yourself on a par with the mind of God, which, of course, you know, uh, A a a a religious. A person of faith like Dante would would would have considered as absurd, even someone like myself who is not a person of faith. Can see why, you know, in terms of the way which we think about God, why such a claim would be nonsensical, you know, uh, and so Dante, you know, it it make what's very important to make it if you want, a text that is accessible and understandable to us, whilst at the same time, revealing that this was the way in which he himself, as Beatrice explained, because you're a human being. You can only understand the divine indirectly, and therefore this, you know, as you're approaching God, you're indirectly experiencing more and more understanding of what the Empire in is like.

33:27 Ricardo Lopes: But in terms of the people uh Dante encounters as he goes through um the heavens, I mean there's the um, I, I guess, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess that there's uh a reference here to at least some uh virtues because you can find the ambitious, the lovers, the theologians and teachers, the warriors, the. Just, uh, the contemplative. So, uh, as, do you think that there's any kind of progression here as we find in hell and purgatory, or is it just, uh, the symbolism associated with each of the heavenly bodies?

34:12 Zygmunt Baranski: No, uh, uh, there is some idea of progression, uh. Where in the other two parts of the afterlife as we've discussed, one can correlate what Dante's doing to preexisting systems that whether it's Aristotelian ethics or the seven cardinal vices, it's much more difficult beyond the heavens themselves to correlate. The way in which Dante. Sort of then organizes the souls, distributes the souls is probably a better term, to, Yeah, Christian systems that some people have seen relationships between the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues, and there is some merit to that, but the whole system is much more fluid and flexible, uh, and. The why are certain souls included in certain heavens, it is normally on the basis of uh astronomical and astrological beliefs of the time because certain human behaviors were. Associated with certain planets, this is most obviously with, you know, can be illustrated by citing the example of the heaven of Venus, the goddess of love, etc. SO we find the lovers there. Now, the system there seems, you know, we. The last group of sort of community of souls that he meets are the contemplatives up in the Saturn. In the heaven of the moon, which is the lowest, we also find contemplatives because we meet nuns there. People have dedicated themselves to the contemplative life whilst they're still on Earth. So you've got contemplatives both at the bottom and at the top, so what's going on? What seems to be going on is that the 1st 3 heavens. Uh, WE talk about them in terms of medieval cosmological belief as being within the shadow of the earth, i.e., the shadow that is created from the earth going up to the sun. Once you go above the sun and the sun itself, there is no shadow. So that shadow suggests that something of, of our earthly nature, of the fact that these souls. Yes, they're saved, and that of course is wonderful and fundamental, but also the way in which they arrived at that salvation, uh, had elements that were problematic within it. So if we stay with the lovers, for instance, the suggestion is that in life, before they turn their love. Towards proper ends that they had actually behaved in a manner that was lustful. So we have in the first three heavens, a kind of souls that still find themselves within the influence of the earth. Beyond that, the souls that we move, It's, it's hard to think how the why, why the whys, especially for an intellectual like Dante. Should find themselves lower than warriors, but they do. Or why the, the just, uh, you know, should find themselves lower than the contemplatives. Now there, of course, by putting contemplation at the top. Dante's saying those those people who dedicate their life while still on earth fully to God. Which is what the monks that he meets there do, uh, are somehow superior in inverted commas to those of us who involve ourselves in more earthly activities. In reality, all of Dante's writings, including the Commedia, tend to be a celebration of people who are actively involved rather than people who just dedicate themselves to contemplation. But conventionally in medieval culture, the contemplative life was considered to be superior to the active life.

38:48 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So how do you look at the roles of Virgil and Beatrice in the poem?

38:58 Zygmunt Baranski: Uh YOU know that. They're hugely complex, but to keep things, you know, as. Accessible as possible, that It Dante is. One of the things that we haven't talked about at all really is, or just touched on it in passing, is that the Commedia, like all Dante's writings, end up, as well as doing lots of other things, celebrating their author. Can just think about it, this guy claims, not just that he's gone on a journey through the afterlife and had union with God, which was something that, Religious thought of the time, thought truly exceptional, that possibly Moses had achieved it, the apostle Paul had achieved it, and now we've got this guy from Florence, Dante Alighiri. Who claims to have enjoyed union with God. The the the there's a kind, it's not just that he goes on this journey, he claims over and over again that God has specifically chosen him to go on this journey. Hm. So much of the poem is highly personalized. This is true of all of Dante's works. He is a one way or another, he is the protagonist of all his works. And so why Virgil? Now for a long time, and this goes right back to 14th century interpretations of the poem, Virgil was equated with reason, human reason. What a human person. Can achieve without divine illumination, as a pagan, Virgil could not benefit from, Revelation, which only. So it shows that it becomes an emblem of the extraordinary capabilities of the human, which is one of the things Dante celebrates. He thinks on the one hand we can behave appallingly, but on the other hand, he also recognizes the extraordinary potential that we have as human beings and the extraordinary potential of human reason, which of course he considered to be a gift of from God. Now Increasingly in, I would say especially since for almost the last 100 years, if perhaps a bit less. We've recognized that although. The element of reason associated with Virgil is important, it's much more significant, A, that he is a poet, and B, that he was a poet of the Roman Empire. So Virgil, so what Dante's doing in the same, you know, it's part of that exchange, that part of locating himself within the tradition. He's Virgil was widely considered to be the greatest poet. With together with Homer, but the Middle Ages didn't really know Homer directly, you know, they, but they did know the Aeneid extremely well, and Virgil, in a sense is everywhere, you know, and the, and his poetry is everywhere. So what Dante's doing by having Virgil as his guide is he's measuring his own poem and his own poetic prowess against Virgil's. And as you probably will have guessed, what emerges is that his poetic ability, not least because He's a Christian and because he's been chosen by God, is superior to Virgil's poetic ability. And The Commedia is superior to the Aeneid. On the other hand, we should also recognize what an extraordinary gift Dante has given Virgil, or, you know, in a, in locating him as an active and positive force within a Christian universe. And there are moments, especially in Purgatory, where Virgil behaves as if he were a Christian minister. You know, that there's, but and it's part of this, as I said earlier, this exploration of the relationship between the Christian and the pagan. It's also a way of of stressing the the validity of pagan culture. For the Christian world, that, you know, that in a sense it's the, if it to put it in modern terms, it's the way in which, you know, some of us believe in the lasting value, of course, it needs to be adapted to the present, and that's what Dante's doing. With Virgil, the lasting value of the classics, and that's exactly what he's doing, he's showing, to put it in in kind of slightly anachronistic terms, that Virgil is still relevant, Despite the fact that he'd written so many centuries before, despite the fact that he's a pagan, he's still relevant for my world, for my modernity in inverted commas. Right. Uh, uh, IT'S also Virgil had an extraordinary status within medieval culture. Uh, AND what, and that he's adding to that status to that, what the term they would have used was authoritity, in that he was a great authoritas, a great authority. So he was adding to Virgil's authoritativeness. Beatrice is, is. In many ways, both less complex and more complex, less interesting and more interesting. Beatrice, uh, as we know, uh, first appears in some of Dante's poems and then in the work that he wrote, there's some dispute, but let's say in the mid 1290s that the Vita Nova, the new life, in which he collects some of his poems and then. Embeds these poems into a prose narrative and a prose analysis, commentary of his poems, in which there are 3 protagonists, one is himself as the lover, 2 is Beatrice as the beloved, and 3 is the god of love, Amore. And so Beatrice is celebrated, and he makes claims for her which are. Within the terms of the way in which love literature and reflection on secular love are developed, are innovative and in particular what he does is he brings together Christian ideas about love, together with secular ideas about love and they're embodied in the figure of Beatrice, who is presented as a divine emissary on earth, as a miracle, as someone who has been sent specifically to, Help the lover Aidante achieve salvation. So this is an extraordinary claim he makes for this woman. What's striking about the figure of Beatrice is. That in the Vita Nova is that she doesn't speak, she is simply known through her effects, and this is an important point to keep in mind when we start thinking of the Beatrice of Paradiso and of the earthly paradise. Now, I'm sure the issue that many of your listeners will want to know is, was she a real woman or not? My answer is I don't know. There certainly was a Beatriza Plitinari, and Danti had connections with the Poltinari family. Uh, WHEN he was still in Florence before his exile in 1302, whether the figure is Bertricipoti, I don't know. And in a sense it doesn't matter because Beatrice, it's the name. Beatrice, bringer of beatitude, someone who leads to salvation, that's what's important, and it's all the symbolic rather than the realistic values in the Vita Nova that are crucial. Mhm. So what we can say is that if she is based upon an actual historical person, and there is no evidence at all other than what we find in the Vita Nova, which is a piece of literature, it's art, let's not forget that, that Dante ever had any feelings for a historical figure for someone called Beatrizapotinari. There's no evidence at all beyond what we are told in the Vita Nova. That what is what is much more interesting is the fact that he should. Make such extraordinary claims for a young woman in Florence, there's a kind of elevation, however much we may feel uncomfortable about the way in which he's reduced her to silence, the sort of, you know, very much male oriented, Uh, view of love that we get in the Vita Nova, it's still extraordinary the claims that he's making for this young Florentine woman, whether or not she is Beatriza Pultina. Now when we get to the earthly paradise and. Paradiso Shock horror Beatrice speaks All of a sudden the silent figure of the Vita Nova, largely known through her effects, largely known through what. The lover thinks about her, so she's placed in a, if you want a position of subordination inverted commas, and the nova, suddenly explodes on the scene and has a clear narrative identity and power. She does nothing, if anything, it is the pilgrim who is subordinated to her. The tables are turned. And this is also remarkable, but what's even more remarkable is. The Beatrice of the Paradiso, it's not just she continues in her status of of. Someone that has been chosen by God to help. The Dante figure achieves salvation. She continues having those attributes, but then Dante adds a whole series of other attributes to her. So her level of complexity grows exponentially, and in particular what is remarkable about her, is the fact that she gives these long, Technically complex speeches in medieval philosophy and theology, she talks like a university professor. At a time when university professors were exclusively male, the idea of a woman, especially a young Florentine woman who died young. To be talking as if she was. You know, a professor at the University of Paris of Bologna is remarkable, and this is an area where work is now being increasingly done to recognize what the implications are of having. Beatrice becoming a major intellectual, not just a major intellectual through what she said, but also institutionally. The kind of things that she deals with belong to the world of the upper reaches of medieval learning. So, as I'm saying, I'm that's just, we could literally spend the whole uh dissenter episode on each of them and still have only scratched the surface.

51:20 Ricardo Lopes: Right, so I have two more questions. These ones are not, I mean, the last one will be directly about the comedia, but, uh, the next one, where would you place Dante in the history of Western literature?

51:38 Zygmunt Baranski: Uh, I'm a dentist, so, you know, there's the pacion Professionnaire oozing out of my ears. He's certainly one of the. 3 or 4 major writers of the Western tradition, and that's not just myself saying that, you know, there's a, especially from the 19th century onwards, this has been a, a fairly well established view. I, I would argue that in fact he is the most important. Uh, OF course I would, but the reasons I, I think that I would give is that he, in a sense, Opens He, he, he, the way for the development of literature. And the legitimation of literature in one's own language. Of course, there were, there was, you know, quite a significant amount of literature being written in the vernaculars, not in Latin, but Latin culture predominates. What Dante does is probably more than any other writer. At the beginning of the tradition in the vernacular. Shows the extraordinary potential of the vernacular, of course he's using. His own vernacular, which is Florentine, etc. uh, AND. That he shows that it can do anything that Latin can do. But not only that, what happens is the way in which people react to him. So we have immediately Dante being treated as if he was not just on a par with the great classical writers, Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, etc. BUT that he's superior to them. And what this, the way in which I talked about authority, Virgil's authority a moment or two ago, one of the ways in which this authority was established within the culture was given a kind of institutional status was that commentaries were written on the works of authoritative authors. Before Dante writes the commedia, there is only very limited commentary on text written in the vernacular. Once the commedia appears, there is an absolute explosion of commentaries on the commedia. The whole field of the 14th century comedies is a major subfield within Dante's studies, because what happens is without precedent. At that moment, it, in a sense it. What I do, what teachers of literature do and have been doing everywhere, in a sense we're building on those commentators to the commedia, those commentators who wrote a commentary on a work written in their own language, which is what Latin literature, Greek literature now is simply one particular area of the study of literature. In Dante's time, it was almost exclusively only that, and so what happens is that modern, You know, the way in which we think about literary study has its origins in Dante. The other point I would make is a point that, not that I make, but that was made by the great Italian 20th century poet Eugenio Montale, winner of the Nobel Prize, who in 1965, Uh, the, the centenary for Dante's birth, Dante was born 12161265, died 1321. In a lecture that he gave in Florence on Dante, said, and I again slightly paraphrase and translate from the Italian, he said, Dante filled up, I, as if when we go and fill up with gas at the gas station, and he said, and he only left a few drops for the rest of us. And this is a Nobel Prize winning poet, and basically the point he was making is that Dante's done it already, and he's done it better. Than what I can do or than what we can do. And there's this recognition of his extraordinary achievement as an experimental writer, as someone who is evident, especially from the 19th century onwards in within, let's say the English language tradition, it's enough to think of two authors like Elliot and Pound, who are profoundly influenced and and depend heavily upon Dante and recognize. The extraordinary, you know, originality and impact that he's had. I think that within the Western tradition, if we're fair, there's only really Shakespeare that in a sense comes close to having that same sort of cultural, both within high culture but also within popular culture. Dante has an extraordinary reception within popular culture.

56:48 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So, my last question then, of course we've already explored here how the comedy is a deeply religious text. So why would an atheist like I am, I'm an atheist, I'm not religious at all, why would an atheist like me who doesn't even believe in the afterlife, doesn't believe in God, doesn't believe in hell, purgatory, or paradise, and even some of the sins that Dante. Includes in hell and even perhaps in purgatory. Uh, I mean, I don't even consider particularly moral behaviors like I don't know, heresy or uh uh things related to people's sexual behaviors, people who commit suicide and things like that. I mean, why would an atheist like the comedy?

57:49 Zygmunt Baranski: But I can't sort of explain why, why anybody likes anything, I can tell you why I like certain things. But but to put it in, in, in slightly different terms, you know, why do we read science fiction? Why do we read novels, it's art, it's literature. And within literary texts we find a bit of everything when we go to the cinema. You know, we don't necessarily believe what we see, you know, it, it's, what's extraordinary about the poem is, Less if you want it vision of the afterlife, although that's fascinating in terms of the way in which he innovates on, you know, the, uh, around how people of his time thought about the nature of the afterlife, and his is a hugely and radically innovative view of the afterlife. What's extraordinary is he tells a great story, you know, and it's a fantastic adventure story, starting in a dark wood and ending up, you know, in. Embraced by God, with all the adventures in between, it's like that so many of the tropes of adventure stories are there. This is why, you know, for instance, video games were so easily made of the journey through hell, because it's, it's great storytelling, I've always told my students, think of it in the first instance as a story. It then reveals and opens out a whole world. You know, I think it's in the one of, you know, it's in somewhere in the Communist Manifesto, I'm not sure if it's in all the different book but certainly you you you know. There's this sense that the whole of the Middle Ages, Marx and Engels, you know, the whole of, you find the whole of the Middle Ages, in the commedia, so it gives us a kind of privileged peephole into centuries upon centuries of our past, our past that still fascinates us. Think of all the new kind of medievalisms from, you know, Games of Thrones, etc. THAT we, we still have now. Again, somebody, I think it was a, uh, A Church of England uh minister who wrote somewhere, and again, as with Marx and Engels exaggerating, he said, well, if all other texts of Christian culture disappeared, as long as we have the Divine Comedy, we would be able to, you know, reconstruct the fundamentals of Christianity. It offers us insights into so many different aspects that are of significance. And within our lives, you know, this why students continue to flock to the commedia, you know, whether in Italian or in translation, is precisely because they, they find so much of it, it's the richness of the text that and. And then if you can read the Italian, it's the extraordinary quality of the language, the inventiveness of the language. Every word, and I don't, and I mean this seriously, is just the right word in the right place, and it's combined just the right way, beginning with the combination of sounds. So that even if you don't know Italian, you'll get something just simply if you were able to read it out, out loud, because you know, the way it combines with other words. He was an extraordinary wordsmith, he didn't write very much, and it took him about 15 years to write the commedia. And this was arguably, you know, the one of the greatest human minds ever, and he wrote this relatively short epic poem, and it took him 15 years to write. The the effort that goes into it, it, it's uh, what people appreciate is the what the extraordinary ambition, it's an ambition which, if we're gonna talk about in terms of silk, it's probably sinful. You know, because he'd kind of considered himself to be the greatest, the best, you know, I am the best. And part of that's fascinating as well, to read something of someone with that, not just that self-confidence, but he's actually persuading you that, well, he might actually be right. Mm

1:02:02 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah. So, Zig, let's uh wrap up the interview here and look, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It's been a fascinating conversation.

1:02:15 Zygmunt Baranski: Thank you, Ricardo, it's been a pleasure to meet you and to have this chat. I always enjoy talking about Dante, and I'll now get back to the work I'm doing on, on Dante at the moment. OK, all the very best. Bye.

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