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Jonathan Usher |
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Dante's poem can become the organizing iconography even for works with their own autonomous traditions. One such example is Petrarch's detailed account, in Senilis 4.5, of the hidden meaning of the Aeneid. Petrarch relates that years before, in response to an unspecified attack on Virgil, he had elaborated an allegorical interpretation of the poem; now he would try to recall its outline. It was a subject he had plied Robert of Anjou with at the laureation exam. Petrarch's account of Aeneas' early adventures in this Senilis, even though technically an interpretation of Virgil, contains unmistakable references to the opening of the Comedy with its heavy emphasis on the dark, beast- filled wood of error and the saving presence of a specifically 'intellectual' guide, Achates (like Dante's Virgil in canto 1). However, Petrarch imagines that the purpose of Aeneas' descent is to not just to gain knowledge (the traditional gloss put on Aeneid 6, as in Bernardus Silvestris' etymologization of the Sibyl as what is 'scibile') but to acquire renown, 'gloria'. Such 'Dantification' of Virgil reaches a crescendo in the metrica Petrarch addresses 'Ad Vergilium Maronem [...] heroycum poetam'. Not only is there 'Dantification' of Virgil: there is also 'Virgilification' of Dante. Petrarch begins by asking where the 'second hope of the Latin language'[1] resides after death: quis te terrarum tractus quotus arcet AverniThe opening, with its synonymic pairing, and its placing of the Underworld as grammatical subject, recalls the Sibyl's request to Musaeus and the dwellers of Elysium in Aeneid 6: dicite, felices animae, tuque, optime vates,But 'circles' in Hell are specifically Dantean, and not directly Virgilian,[2] appearing for the first time in canto 4.24. Dante's first circle is Limbo, home to the unbaptized and the virtuous pagans. Such is their throng that Dante metaphorizes them as a 'selva' (4.65-66), which duly produces, perhaps by a conscious contamination between Dante's paradiso terrestre and Virgil's 'seclusum nemus et virgultia sonantia silvae' (704), Petrarch's 'Elysiam [...] silvam'. Dante's virtuous pagans, however, in their 'hemisphere of light', dwell 'in prato di fresca verdura' (4.111), 'sovra il verde smalto' (4.118), as in Virgil's 'amoena virecta' (648) and his later bee simile 'velut in pratis' (707). Petrarch 're-Virgilizes' Dante, and mentions poets strolling 'per prata'. Petrarch's 'Tartarean Helicon' is a lightly classicized castle of the virtuous pagans. Whom should we expect to find there? Unsurprisingly the 'bella scola' (4.94), to which, naturally, Virgil belonged. Petrarch's address to Virgil, 'pulcerrime vatum' in end- of-line position, with its conspicuous superlative, recalls Dante's similar placing of a greeting for Virgil: 'Onorate l'altissimo poeta' (4.80), as well as the Sibyl's identically positioned address to Musaeus as 'optime vates' (669). Then, rather than list Dante's pagan poets (Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan), Petrarch summarizes the group by its beginning and end. Homer comes first, followed by the unnamed 'poetae | [...] reliqui'. Orpheus at this point seems like an intrusion, but is merely a displacement. Petrarch has raced on in canto 4, and found him amongst the ethical writers and poets, alongside Cicero, Linus and 'moral' Seneca (4.140-141). The end of Dante's list is signalled by Lucan, and sure enough Petrarch includes him. But he can't resist the temptation of displaying a scruple which only advertises that he, Petrarch, is a better Dantist than Dante himself. Lucan, as Boccaccio in his Esposizioni,[3] would point out (without noticing the eschatological inconsistency), was a suicide. Petrarch writes: [...] nisi quod violenta relegatApart from slyly indicating, 'longe aliis [...] locis', that he had also carefully read Inferno 13 (where the wood of the suicides contains a modern, if classicizing,[4] poet, Pier delle Vigne), what was Petrarch's purpose in 'relegating' Lucan like this? Perhaps it was a matter of taste, Dante's canon being felt by Petrarch to be outmoded and in need of symbolic redefinition. If so, how to introduce a new, as yet unauthorized member of the 'school'? Through the common term, suicide, Petrarch feels he can introduce another cosmological poet he is just beginning to get to grips with, Lucretius, frequent traces of whom can be found, carefully concealed, in the Latin works.[5] Dante's Limbo starts with a depressing description of the unbaptized. This gloomy vision, coupled with Virgil's admission that he too was one who 'sanza speme vivemo in disio' (4.42), had prompted Dante to ask whether anybody had escaped from Limbo's confines. Virgil replies: [...] 'Io era novo in questo statoThis passage too, naturally minus its biblical enumeration, is echoed in Petrarch's letter to Virgil, though now shunted to a position after the 'bella scola'. Petrarch writes to ask whether Virgil had escaped, like Aeneas, from Tartarus through the gates of dreams, or: An potius celi regio tranquilla beatosThe Dantean sub-text reveals itself in subtle details: 'beatos | excipit' translates 'feceli beati'; the stars pick up Dante's use of the heavenly spheres as metaphor of paradise; 'potens' translates 'possente'; 'magno certamine victor' translates 'con segno di vittoria'. But Petrarch's separate references to the 'rex' and the 'victor', at opposite ends of the hexameter, lead one to suppose a Buti-style reading of Dante's line 54, distinguishing victory from crowning. The violent description of the 'Stigios raptus' suggests that Petrarch is also conflating Inferno 12.38, and possibly 21.112 ff. But the line he actually uses for the 'raucous hinges' is a reworking, with a judicious admixture of Horace (for 'valvas', see Sat. 2, 6, 112), of the Sibyl's description of the gates of Tartarus: tum demum horrisono stridentes cardine sacraeIt may sound like an opportunistic citation, included just for its powerfully icastic imagination. Milton was struck by the same lines (Par. Lost, 2.879), and Dante himself uses them for the description of the seldom-swung gates of Purgatory (9.133-36 and 10.4). Petrarch is here, however, more consistent ideologically than we give him credit for. The Sibyl is explaining to Aeneas that the stronghold of Tartarus is not normally open to righteous non-residents. Only she, on the invitation of Hecate, has visited it. Petrarch is programmatically restoring the original Virgilian images behind Dante's description of the harrowing of Hell and the analogous passage of the 'messo celeste'. This reinsertion then explains the Petrarchan detail, emphasised by elaborate symmetrical word-play (limina / repagula; plantis / palmis; stigmatis / stigmatis), of treading on the threshold. Virgil has just had the Sibyl announce, inverting the normal barring of hallowed ground to the impious, that: 'nulli fas casto sceleratum insistere limen' (563). Petrarch's allusion, following the dictates of imitatio, chooses another term, a more Christian 'impia', to go with 'limen' now in the plural. The remainder of the metrica delivers Petrarch's news of the present. Even in this short sequence, however, we can see that Francesco was no mean Dantist, expertly able to re-mix the Comedy with its underlying Virgilian model. [1] Servius' report of Cicero's calling the young Virgil a successor to Ennius: see G. Velli, Petrarca e Boccaccio (Padua: Antenore 1995), pp. 7-8. [2] Originally an astronomical term, adopted by Servius, and repeatedly employed in explanations to book six. Dante's use probably derives, therefore, from this commentary. [3] Esposizioni, IV, litt., 133: Boccaccio claims Tacitus as his source. [4] Piero ostentatiously calls Federico 'Caesar' and 'Augustus'. [5] On Petrarch's programmatic use of Lucretius, see R. J. Lokaj, 'Strepitum Acherontis Avari: A Petrarchan Descent to the Hades of Lucretius', forthcoming, International Journal of the Classical Tradition. |
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