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Dante as a Religious Poet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2024

Kenelm Foster O.P.
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Extract

The commonplace that Dante is a religious poet prompts one to ask what this compound term means; but for my purpose it suffices to define religion as an interior state of submissive attention to God, and poetry as an interior state of creative attention to things—that is, an attention which tends essentially to express experience as completely as possible in words. Religion, in this sense, is not necessarily Christianity, though Christianity presupposes it; still less is it the doctrine or the external observances of any given religion. Similarly poetry, in this sense, is not any particular poem or poems, though these all presuppose it. Both terms refer to interior states which may be found in any human soul. And as defined, these two states are clearly distinct. And the distinction is supported a posteriori by the fact that most religious people are not, except in remote potency, poets and that many poets are not, except in remote potency, religious. The two states, however, though distinct, are not incompatible and have in fact often been found together; but when this happens there is a certain overlapping of interests, causing tensions and problems varying with the circumstances and characters of the religious poets concerned. In Gerard Hopkins, for instance, the tension was between poetry and his priestly vocation; and there is no more tragic case known to us, because in no one else have the two gifts and capacities appeared at a greater intensity simultaneously. Dante’s case is very different: if he felt this tension at all, he must have felt it less intensely; because for him there was no question of sacrificing poetry to religion, but (if anything) of sacrificing one sort of poetry (of secular inspiration) to another sort (of religious inspiration).

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 35 , Issue 417 , December 1954, pp. 506 - 515
Copyright
Copyright © 1954 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1. Purg, I, 19–25: ‘The fair planet that inspires love was making the whole east laugh, veiling the Fishes that followed her. I turned to the right and gazed at the other pole, and I saw four stars never seen before save by the first people. The sky seemed to rejoice to their flames’…

2. Purg. I, 115–7: ‘Dawn was vanquishing the morning breeze that fled before her, so that far off I knew the trembling of the sea.’

3. Purg. XVI, 85–90: ‘Issues from the hands of him who loves her before she exists, like a child that plays and laughs and weeps, the little simple soul; knowing nothing save that, come from a glad maker, she gladly turns to all that pleases her.’

4. Purg. XVII, 127–9: ‘Everyone vaguely apprehends a good as term of the soul's desire; and therefore strives to reach it.’

5. Inf. XXVI, 118–20: ‘Consider the seed whence you spring: you were not born to live as the beasts, but to follow virtue and knowledge.’

6. Mon. III, 15: ‘The form of the Church is simply the life of Christ, considered both in what he said and what he did. For his life was the idea and model for the Church militant, and especially for the bishops and more particularly for the supreme pontiff whose task it is to feed the lambs and the sheep.’

7. Par. XVIII, 122–3: ‘… the temple which was built up with miracles and martyrdoms’.

8. Par. XVIII, 124–6: ‘O hosts of heaven whom I contemplate, pray for those who are on earth, all led astray by bad example!’

9. Par. XXI, 28–30: ‘O threefold Light which, sparkling in their sight, dost so content them, look down upon our storm!’

10. Purg. XXI, 1–3: ‘The natural thirst which is never slaked, except with the water which the Samaritan woman asked for.’

11. Purg. XVIII, 73–5: ‘This noble power is what Beatrice means by free‐will: therefore see that you have it in mind, if she happens to speak of it.’

12. Par. XIX, 40–2: ‘… He who turned the compass round the limits of the Universe, marking out within it so much that is hidden, so much that is known.’

13. Par. XXXIII, 1–2: ‘Virgin mother, daughter of thy Son, lowly and exalted above all creatures …’

14. Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, London, 1954, p. 371.

15. Par. XVIII, 20–1: ‘Turn and listen; for Paradise is not only in my eyes.’

16. Par. I, 1–2:’ The All‐Mover's glory penetrates and glows through the Universe.’

17. Par. XXX, 40–2: ‘Intellectual light full of love, love of the true good full of joy, joy that surpasses all sweetness.’