¹ See the study of Symonds, J. A., ‘The Dantesque and Platonic Ideals of Love,’ in The Key of Blue and Other Prose Essays (London 1893) 55–86. Symonds is not clear concerning the speculative and moral attitude both Dante and Plato assumed in regard to their respective love traditions. Neither Dante nor Plato ignored the social context in which eros and amore were imbedded but both emphasized the metaphysical and personal aspects of love. On the sources of Dante's Platonism and on medieval Platonism in general much work remains to be done. (See remarks and references in Mazzeo, J. A., ‘Dante, the Poet of Love : Dante and the Phaedrus Tradition of Poetic Inspiration,’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 99.3 [1955] 133–45, at p. 133.) Yet, questions of sources aside, human experience, moral, imaginative and intellectual, repeats itself, not without difference to be sure, but still in broad outline the same. The recurrence of similar experiences and values leads to their formulation in similar conceptual terms. Both thought and imagination have their own internal rules of development, and similar experiences will express themselves in similar concepts and images as both faculties elaborate their data in the attempt to render them intelligible.Google Scholar

² Cf. Mazzeo, ‘Dante, the Poet of Love’ 141, for Dante's conception of the nature of beauty. All references to the Convivio are to the edition of Busnelli, G. and Vandelli, G., Il Convivio (2nd ed. Firenze 1954).Google Scholar

³ Nardi pointed out how the Vita Nuova and the Comedy stand in a similar relationship to Provençal and stil nuovo speculations and representations of love as the Phaedrus and Symposium have in relation to Greek traditions. The history of the Italian lyric up to Dante seems to recapitulate the stages of development which culminated in the conception of eros which Socrates presents in those two dialogues. Nardi traces a development of love from Andreas through Cavalcante and Guinizelli, who concludes that the beauty of the beloved comes from heaven and is destined to return there, and that this beauty arouses in the gentle heart every noble virtue by means of love. Such was the doctrine as Dante received it. He added a new theme, that of the death of the beloved. In dying, she became a ‘spiritual bellezza grande’ (V.N. 33.8) and it is from this death that the Platonism and mysticism of Dante arises. This is the doctrine of both the Vita Nuova and the Comedy. Concerning the Convivio, Nardi maintains that the substance of the doctrine of love in that unfinished work is the same — with the exception of the significance of Beatrice — as that of the Comedy although the astrological and physiological determinism of the Convivio is overcome in the Comedy: Bruno Nardi, Dante e la cultura medieaale (Bari 1949) ch. 1. Thus in Convivio 2.8.4–5 the influence of Venus is held to be the cause of love, although this influence cannot act on, or through the dead. Therefore, Dante has a second love after Beatrice. But in the Purgatorio, Dante accepts full responsibility for the ‘second love.’ Nardi attributes this harmony between the Vita Nuova and the Comedy to a second draft of the former work, the work we now possess having been rewritten after the abandonment of the Convivio. Nardi gives a purely allegorical interpretation of the ‘lady philosophy’ without, however, attempting to account for the fact that the donna gentile is the occasion for an analysis of physical human beauty as well as the beauty of wisdom: Nardi, Nel mondo di Dante (Roma 1944) chs. 1 and 2. Google Scholar

⁴ The following editions and translations of the Phaedrus and Symposium have been especially useful: Hackforth, R., Plato's Phaedrus . translated with an introduction and commentary (Cambridge 1952); Bury, R. G. The Symposium of Plato, edited with an introduction, critical notes and commentary (2nd ed. Cambridge 1932). Also the texts and translations in the Loeb Classical Library, the Phaedrus by Fowler, H. N. (London 1944) and the Symposium by Lamb, W. R. M. (London 1935).Google Scholar

⁵ Hackforth, , op. cit. 94.Google Scholar

⁶ Ibid. 57 52, 81–4. In both the Phaedrus and the Symposium, Plato tends to emphasize ideal eros as it manifests itself in philosophical lovers, but he does give attention to the ‘followers of Ares,’ to love as an ennobling passion which produces martial and civic virtue. Analogously, in the fourth book of the Convivio, Dante considers love as productive of nobilitade, the virtues and dispositions of the soul which make a true gentlemen, and tells how they are acquired through divine grace and philosophy.Google Scholar

⁷ Cornford, F. M., Plato's Cosmology , The Timaeus of Plato (London 1937) 156.Google Scholar

⁸ Ibid. 356.Google Scholar

⁹ In Dante, the relationship which exists between the power and capacity of sublimated erotic experience and the striving after values is implicit already in ‘Amor e cor gentil son una cosa.’ Gentil cor is the subject of both sublimated sexual love and striving for spiritual value. Amore actuates the ‘noble soul’ and the fruits of this activity are the virtues. Cf. Conv. 4.20. Google Scholar

¹⁰ On the question of the value and status of personal beauty in the Middle Ages see De Bruyne, Edgar, Études d'esthétique médiévale (Bruges 1946) II 153–202, esp. 199–200.Google Scholar

¹¹ See the translation and commentary of Cornford, F. M., The Republic of Plato (Oxford 1941) 66–8, 74–5.Google Scholar

¹² Pur. 15.115-7:Google Scholar

¹³ De monarchia 3.4.51 ff. (ed. Moore and Toynbee in Le opere di Dante Alighieri [4th ed. Oxford 1924]): ‘…dicit Augustinus in Civitate Dei: “Non omnia quae gesta narrantur etiam significare aliquid putanda sunt; sed propter illa quae aliquid significant, etiam ea quae nihil significant, attexuntur. Solo vomere terra proscinditur; sed ut hoc fieri possit, etiam caetera aratri membra sunt necessaria.” ’Google Scholar

¹⁴ Sinclair, J. D., The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri , with translation and commentary (London 1948) I 70. All quotations and translations from the Divine Comedy are from this edition.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Pur. 17.13-18:Google Scholar

cf. Par. 3.53–5:

¹⁶ Pur. 24.48ff.Google Scholar

¹⁷ De vulgari eloquentia 2.4.69ff. (ed. Moore and Toynbee in op. cit.): ‘Sed cautionem atque discretionem hanc accipere, sicut decet, hoc opus et labor est; quoniam nunquam sine strenuitate ingenii et artis assiduitate scientiarumque habitu fieri potest. Et ii sunt quos poeta Aeneidorum sexto Dei dilectos et ardente virtute sublimatos ad aethera deorumque filios vocat, quamquam figurate loquatur.’ — For poets whose writings have given them authority as teachers see ibid. 1.9.17–21; 10.25; 12.10, 45 and 2.5.24. On the divine gift of poetry invoked from the Muses, Apollo or the constellations see Inf. 2.7; 32.10; Pur. 1.8; 22.105; 29.37–42; Par. 1.13–27; 18.82; 22.121; Ep. 10.45; Ecl. 1.54.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Ep. 10.18.304 ff. (I cite the text and translation of Paget Toynbee in Dantis Alagherii Epistolae: The Letters of Dante [Oxford 1920]): ‘Rhetores enim consuevere praelibere dicenda, ut animum comparent auditoris. Sed poetae non solum hoc faciunt, quinimmo post haec invocationem quandam emittunt. Et hoc est eis conveniens, quia multa invocatìone opus est eis, quum aliquid contra communem modum hominum a superioribus substantiis petendum sit, quasi divinum quoddam munus.’Google Scholar

¹⁹ Mazzeo, ‘Dante, the Poet of Love’ 143–4, for a consideration of the passages in Pur. 30.121ff. and 31.46ff. in which Beatrice explains to Dante how and why his love should have followed her beyond the grave. Google Scholar

²⁰ Natural love, eros, or the upward movement is a cosmological and universal principle. Its impulse is naturally right. The love of the mind, of a free creature, is liable to error, however. Pur. 17.91–6:Google Scholar

‘Neither Creator nor creature, my son, was ever without love, either natural or of the mind,’ he began, ‘and this thou knowest; the natural is always without error, but the other may err through a wrong object or through excess or defect of vigor.’

The distinction between true and false loves and the possibility of diverting natural love from its true course arises in the rational order. Eros, so to speak, may err. But it is guided, not only by reason, but by grace, which is the power by which true love is kindled and ordered. Par. 10.82–90:

‘ Since the beam of grace by which true love is kindled and which then grows by loving shines so multiplied in thee that it brings thee up that stair which none descends but to mount again, he that should refuse to thy thirst the wine from his vessel would be no more at liberty than water that does not fall to the sea.’ Cf. also Par. 1.136ff. and 4.124ff.

²¹ There are some other interesting references and resemblances to Plato in the works of Dante. In the Vita Nuova (12), Love appears in a vision as a curious mixture of youth and age, an image which recalls the Symposium where Eros is presented as both the youngest and oldest of the gods. Dante was also Platonic in his doctrine of Creation which is a more or less ‘Christianized’ version of the Timaeus. God immediately and directly created the incorruptible things: (a) angels, (b) matter, (c) heaven, (d) the intellectual soul of man. The intelligences and their spheres created mutable, contingent things through their efficacy according to divine eternal archetypes. Given God and what He immediately creates, the rest of the process of creation is Timaeus doctrine with its three elements: (a) divine archetypes, (b) middle causes corresponding to the Demiurge, (c) an unformed matter which they ‘inform.’ See Conv. 3.14.2–8; Par. 7.64–75; 124–44; 13.52–66, 29.13–18, 28–36; De mon. 2.2.15–38. For angels as middle causes see Par. 13.61–6. Ledig, G. in his article ‘Dante als Platoniker,’ Jahrbuch der Dante-Gesellschaft 26 (Leipzig 1946) points out some interesting similarities between Dante and Plato as persons, in their political attitudes and in their manner of reaction to temporal events. Both of them shared an intense political interest and both were ‘failures’ in political life. They set against the confusion of temporal reality a supersensory ‘beyond’ conceived in richly symbolic and mythic terms (pp. 138–9).Google Scholar

²² This idea is a medieval commonplace. A classic statement is that of Boethius in the Consolatio philosophiae 3 metr. 9.18–25. Google Scholar

²³ The striking similarities between Plato and Dante were observed by some of the Renaissance humanists and critics. Ficino and Landino interpreted the Comedy as a Platonic work, and Mazzoni praises Dante as having given the world a representation of the intelligible world itself. He expressly refers to the Phaedrus (247) where Plato denies the possibility of describing the world above the heavens and says that Plato would have had to acknowledge his error if he had been able to read the Paradiso (Introduction to Mazzoni's Della difesa della ‘Commedia 'di Dante). As the Renaissance Platonists never tired of emphasizing, inspiration is really a kind of recollection of the real or intelligible world which is the true dwelling place of the soul. The poet, in their view, remembers more than less gifted mortals of this world above, and he can find images and symbols for expressing at least a part of that essentially inexpressible reality. To find some mode of expression which will suggest the quality and content of his transcendent vision requires learning and training and, since true poetry is of this kind and presupposes an essentially supernatural experience, he will employ allegory, for allegory is the mode for expressing depth of meaning. The poet will also be a lover who will understand how love awakens by an external visible beauty which activates an internal reminiscence of a supernatural beauty. It is evident how Dante met all the Renaissance criteria for the true poet. Cf. Raffaele Resta, Dante e la filosofia d'amore (Bologna 1935) 141–66. Google Scholar

²⁴ Mazzeo, ‘Dante, the Poet of Love’ 136. Google Scholar

²⁵ Ibid. 135 Par. 30.56ff.Google Scholar

²⁶ Ibid . 144–5, Pur. 16.85ff.Google Scholar

²⁷ Symonds’ essay, ‘The Dantesque and Platonic Ideals of Love’ (n. 1 above) is written entirely from the point of view of the abnormality of amore and eros. Google Scholar

²⁸ Moore, Edward, Studies in Dante, Third Series (Oxford 1903) 221–52; Charles Williams, The Figure of Beatrice (London 1943); Etienne Gilson, Dante et la philosophie (Paris 1939), especially the first chapter.Google Scholar