What Dante Can Teach Us About Character

Time for some posts about craft. Hopefully these will be far enough out there that they are considered beyond craft.

Occasionally in these posts I allude to the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. I know these seem to be arcane references to a writer who lived more than 700 years ago, and whose work is largely forgotten by the general population. But despite the time and language and cultural differences that separate us from his day, I’ve come to understand that the psychological foundations of his work transcend those rather large gaps.

Over the thousands of years in which people have practiced storytelling (written or oral), there isn’t much that hasn’t been analyzed for its effectiveness. But it’s human nature for every generation to try to reinvent what has come before, and sometimes I feel that some writers, agents, and publishers deliberately ignore the advice of old masters to appear fresh. Whether that works or not might be a contributing factor to the decline of reading in our country. Just sayin’.

There are hundreds of great writers whom I could use as models for the art, but Dante was one of the first and still one of the best, and he has long been a favorite of mine. I have included a list of fun facts about his life and work below. (By the way, I am hardly a Dante scholar. These thoughts are mine alone.)

Dante was what we might call an up-and-coming poet in ancient Florence, penning mainstream, often romantic material like many other poets. He was also involved in the politics of his day and was elected to several public offices. But in the vindictive and factional environment of the time he was falsely accused of corruption and was banished from the city of his birth in 1301, the only city and society he had ever known. On penalty of death if he returned, he was forced to roam the Italian countryside for the rest of his life, seeking protection from the aristocracy and wealthy landowners. This isolation, coupled with everything he knew and embraced up to that point, formed his deep perspective on the human condition. He began to write the Commedia in 1308 and finished it only a few weeks before his death in 1321.

A recent article on my favorite Australian website got me thinking about the value of Dante’s writing to today’s writers. Mark Vernon wrote in “The Divine Dante,” “At 700, Dante’s Divine Comedy is as modern as ever — a lesson in spiritual intelligence that makes us better at being alive.”

Of course, Dante wrote within the framework of 14th century Italy, and so his poetry, on its surface, is dependent on the society and beliefs, and even the technology of the time. But strip away that veneer and you’ll find a timeless understanding of human psychology.

Most academics love the writing for the poetry, or, as Vernon does, for its life lessons. I love the Commedia for its stories and characters.

One of my favorites describes the passion of Paolo and Francesca, real life persons whom Dante encountered in the second circle of hell, where the lustful were sentenced,1 damned to be battered by storms for eternity. Francesca was wed to Paolo’s brother, Giovanni Malatesta — a marriage of political convenience. Left alone, Francesca began to meet Paolo in the garden, where he would read to her. Soon they fell in love, a love they probably knew would come to a bad end, as Malatesta was a violent man (His name loosely translates to “bad attitude.”) When her husband discovered the affair, he killed them both. It must be so strange to modern readers that such a pure love could condemn two people to hell, but those were the rules of that era and society. Dante saw beyond that. Although he did not fantasize that their fates could be any different, he had the insight to understand that the power of their love transcended the politics of the surface world. But not enough to absolve them of their sins.

Similarly, the Ulysses of Dante does not conform to modern expectations. The Greek hero was encountered in the eighth circle of hell, reserved for evil counselors and deceivers. He was, to Dante, a liar and trickster of epic proportions. Today we would judge Ulysses by his successes, but then it was by how his deeds had damaged others. When Dante meets him in the Commedia, Ulysses is not contrite in the least but remains proud of what he had done, even while being consumed in the flame that was his punishment.2

Later, when Dante and his guide, the Roman poet Virgil, make it to Purgatorio, we meet Manfred, the last Hohenstaufen king of Sicily. This is a man who was so violent in war that he was excommunicated not once, but twice, by two different popes, and was denied a church burial. His crimes, he relates to Dante, were ghastly. He remained unrepentant until he fell in battle, mortally wounded. As he lay butchered and dying he committed himself to God, was spared hell and granted the opportunity for penance. Say what? All you have to do is mumble a few words of apology and your crimes are ignored, no matter how bad they are?

What Paolo and Francesca did is today considered courage in the face of abuse. Ulysses has long been held as one of the most heroic figures in literature. Manfred’s crimes were by far the worst among these people, and yet he alone was given a second chance. How can this be? Did Dante make a mistake?

My explanation lies in the possibility and the grace that comes with change, the recognition of what one has been and the revelation of what one might become. This fundamental psychological truth has been the foundation of fiction for centuries. Remember the biblical story of the prodigal son? The belief that the repentance of the wayward is of greater value than unwavering devotion has guided western thought for millennia. And this idea is maintained in modern fiction. Think about some of your favorite stories. How many involve a bad character who must ultimately realize the change is necessary?

I have only read the Commedia once, and when I did I looked at it as a window into the writing and culture of the past. It wasn’t until Vernon’s article that I began to see that it was still applicable to the present. I hope to be able to read it again soon, and I’ll keep that thought in mind as I do.

Many of the characters in the poem are real people. Dante’s motivation for writing the Commedia was not completely literary or altruistic. He had been unjustly exiled from his homeland, and much of the poem is devoted to describing the eternal punishments of people who had wronged him.

In writing The Divine Comedy, Dante broke from the formal Italian that was used in literature at the time, and substituted the everyday vernacular of the people, which eventually led to the work’s popular acceptance.

Perhaps his greatest innovation was to give voice to the women characters in the story. Until that time (and in many cases long after) men spoke for women. But Dante allows women to speak for themselves; in fact, when he encounters his lifelong love, Beatrice, as he enters Paradiso, he is overcome with reawakened longing when he sees her. But Beatrice has transcended earthly desire, and she scolds him for not realizing his true motivation.

When Dante died from malaria in 1321 it was not known if he had finished the Commedia. It is said that several months later his son, Jacopo, had a dream in which Dante led him to a secret compartment in a wall where he had hidden the final part. Jacopo and his brother Pietro found Paradiso, which had begun to deteriorate in the musty hiding place. They copied it and sent it to a city official, and it was reunited with the first two parts.

When Giuseppe Garibaldi united the many states and provinces in the Italian Peninsula into a single country in 1860, the colors in which Dante dressed Beatrice — red, green, and white — were chosen for the Italian flag. According to my Italian teacher, even today, 700 years after the epic poem was written, Italian children spend five years studying it in school.

According to Wikipedia, the work is called a comedy because in the Middle Ages, literary genres were defined by plot trajectory rather than humor. A comedy meant any story that began in confusion, fear, or hardship and ended in joy, peace, or salvation. The word “divine” was added to the title much later.

For suggestions about the best translations of The Divine Comedy, see this post from Biblioll College.

Image by FinjaM from Pixabay