Gesammelte Aufsätze zur romanischen Philologie – Studienausgabe. Erich Auerbach
does not address everyone who happens to pass, but only those who pass by the rather esoteric way of love: the fedeli d’ AmoreFedeli d’amore. But a little later, in the final chapters after the death of Beatrice (29 and ff.), when he again quotes the Lamentations (Quomodo sedet sola civitas …), the development leads to a new address and apostropheApostrophe, this time directed to a much larger group of persons: Deh peregrini che pensosi andate … (Sonnet 24, ch. xli). And after many years, or even decades, he again several times chose to quote the motives of the first chapter of the Lamentations: in the apostrophe to Italy, Purg. VI, 78ff. (non donna di provincie, ma bordello), and in the Latin Epistola VIII written in 1314 to the Italian cardinals. In the meantime, his horizon had widened; he had long since ceased to address his verses to an esoteric minority. The range of his ideas now comprehended the whole world, physical, moral, and political; and he addressed himself to all Christians. The lettore in the Commedia is every Christian who happens to read his poem, just as the passage in the Lamentations was addressed to everyone who happened to pass through the streets of Jerusalem. DanteDante had reached a point where he conceived his own function much more as that of a vas d’elezione, a chosen vessel, than as that of a writer soliciting the favor of a literary public. Indeed, from the very beginning, he never had the attitude of such a writer. Although he expects glory and immortality, he does not strive for it by trying consciously to please the reader; he is too sure of his poetic power, too full of the revelations embodied in his message. Already in the Vita Nuova, his charm is a kind of magic coërcion; even though much of this work is an expression of grief and lamentation, his voice very often sounds no less commanding than imploring: calling up those who have intelletto d’amore, and ordering them into the magic circle of his verses (recall also the Casella episode in Purg. I).
But only in the Commedia does the accent of authoritative leadership and urgency reach its full strength – and it is there linked to the expression of brotherly solidarity with the reader. The Favete linguis of HoraceHoraz, the musarum sacerdos (Carm. I, 3), may be comparable to DanteDante’s addresses for its authoritative sublimity – still, it remains quite different. It lacks DanteDante’s actual urgency; DanteDante is much nearer to the reader; his appeal is that of a brother urging his fellow brother, the reader, to use his own spontaneous effort in order to share the poet’s experience and to prender frutto of the poet’s teaching. O voi ch’avete li intelletti sani, / mirate … It is as sublime as any ancient apostropheApostrophe, but has a distinctly more active function: incisive, straightforward, upon occasion almost violent, yet inspired by charity; a mobilization of the reader’s forces. To be sure, the imperative echoes VergilianVergil apostrophes, but these were not addressedMittelalterAnrede im MA to the reader; VergilVergil did not, as DanteDante does, interrupt an extremely tense situation by an adjuration, the content of which, in spite of its urgency, is an act of teaching. Inciting emotions and teaching were separated in ancient theory and very seldom combined in practice.16 DanteDante’s mirate presupposes the Christian vigilate; it presupposes a doctrine centered around the memory and the expectation of events. It occurs at a moment of present danger, immediately before the intervention of Grace – just as another passage, comparable in many respects, though lacking the figure O vos qui: Aguzza qui, lettor, ben li occhi al vero (Purg. VIII).17
Other addresses to the reader are less dramatic, but almost all contain an appeal to his own activity. Very often, the imperative is pensa (pensa per te stesso; pensa oramai per te, s’hai fior d’ingegno:18 in other passages it is ricorditi, leggi, immagini chi bene intender cupe, per te ti ciba, and so on. The pedagogical urgency is sometimes very strong, as in one passage just mentioned (Inf. XX, 19ff.):
Se Dio ti lasci, lettor, prender frutto
di tua lezione, or pensa per te stesso.
or in the following encouragement to the reader confronted by an example of very severe and deterrent punishment in the Purgatorio (X, 106ff.):
Non vo’ però, lettor, che tu ti smaghi
di buon proponimento per udire
come Dio vuol che ’l debito si paghi.
Non attender la forma del martire :
pensa la succession; pensa ch’ al peggio,
oltre la gran sentenza non può ire.
The most telling example of the pedagogical attitude is probably the passage on the movement of the celestial spheres, Par. X, 7ff.:
Leva dunque, lettore, a l’alte rote
meco la vista, …19
with its continuation:
Or ti riman, lettor, sovra ’l tuo banco,
dietro pensando a ciò che si preliba,
s’esser vuoi lieto assai prima che stanco.
Messo t’ho innanzi: ornai per te ti ciba.
There is, of course, a great variety of style in the addresses. They include the levels of horrible sublimity, of gloomy humor (O tu che leggi, udirai nuovo ludo, Inf. XXII, 118), of invocation (Inf. XVI, 127ff.; Par. XXII, 106ff.), of friendly advice, and many other intonations. Note one passage, among the most charming, possibly involving a shade of playful humor (though I have my doubts; friendly irony is a very infrequent phenomenon in DanteDante). It occurs in Par. V, 100ff., when in the heaven of Mercury the souls gather around Beatrice and DanteDante, just as fishes in a quiet and limpid pond gather around something which may be food – exclaiming: ‘Here is someone who will increase our fervor.’ At this juncture DanteDante interrupts:
Pensa, lettor, se quel che qui s’inizia
non procedesse, come tu avresti
di più savere angosciosa carizia;
e per te vederai …
Obviously, the originality of DanteDante’s addresses to the reader is a symptom of a new relationship between both, one which is based on DanteDante’s conception of his own rôle and function as a poet. With the utmost explicitness and consistency, he maintains the attitude of a man who, by special grace, after Aeneas and Paul, has been admitted to see the other world, and has been entrusted with a mission as important as theirs: to reveal to mankind God’s eternal order and, accordingly, to teach his fellow men what is wrong in the structure of human life at this special moment of history. The imperial power, ordained to unite and to govern human society, is despised and almost destroyed; the papacyPapsttum has forgotten its spiritual function, by transgressing its boundaries, by pursuing worldly ambitions and worldly avarice, it has ruined itself and has corrupted the entire human family. DanteDante goes so far as to describe this disorder as a second fall of man. True, such ideas were not unheard of: similar motifs had occurred at least since the time of the Investiture conflictInvestiturstreit.20 Yet a great poem in the vernacular with such a content and such an attitude of the writer was entirely new. It implied, indeed, it necessitated a kind of relation to the reader similar to a prophet’s to his hearers: authoritative, urgent, and, at the same time, inspired by Christian charity; trying, at every moment, to keep his hold upon the reader, and to let him share, as concretely and intensely as possible, in the whole experience reported in the poem. The form of the addresses, indeed, is often similar to that of classical apostrophesApostrophe; but whenever DanteDante adapted such a classical form in addressing his reader, he would Christianize it.
Yet there is a limit to DanteDante’s attempt to carry the reader along with him on the journey: the reader of the poem never becomes an actual companion of the journey. DanteDante alone, among the living, has been in Hell, in Purgatory, and in Heaven. One passage, an address to the reader, may seem to cast doubt on his claim. It is the most sublime of all, the beginning of Par. II, 1–15: O voi che siete in piccioletta barca … It is extremely tempting to interpret this apostropheApostrophe as addressed not to readers of a book, but to actual followers on a journey. If one isolates these fifteen verses from the remainder of the poem, such an interpretation would not be difficult. It would imply the explanation of qui (vs. 11–12: … al pan de li angeli,