In the sanctuary where Religion
“is married to immortal Verse,”
stands Dante as high-priest, and consecrates all modern Art for its vocation. Not as a solitary poem, but representing the whole class of the New Poetry, and itself a separate class, stands the “Divine Comedy,” so entirely unique, that any theory drawn from peculiar forms is quite inadequate to it;—a world by itself, it demands its own peculiar theory. The predicate of Divine was given it by its author, because it treats of theology and things divine; Comedy he called it, after the simplest notion of this and its opposite kind,—on account of its fearful beginning and its happy ending, and because the mixed nature of the poem, whose material is now lofty and now lowly, rendered a mixed kind of style necessary.
One readily perceives, however, that according to the common notion it cannot be called Dramatic, because it represents no circumscribed action. So far as Dante himself may be looked upon as the hero, who serves only as a thread for the measureless series of visions and pictures, and remains rather passive than active,—the poem seems to approach nearer to a Romance; yet this definition does not completely exhaust it; nor can we call it Epic, in the usual acceptation of the word, since there is no regular sequence in the events represented. To look upon it as a Didactic poem is likewise impossible, because it is written in a far less restricted form and aim, than those of teaching. It belongs therefore to none of these classes in particular, nor is it merely a compound of them; but an entirely unique, and as it were organic mixture of all their elements, not to be reproduced by any arbitrary rules of art,—an absolute individuality, comparable with itself alone and with naught else.
The material of the poem, is, in general terms, the express identity of the Poet’s age;—the interpenetration of the events thereof with the ideas of Religion, Science and Poetry in the loftiest genius of that century. Our intention is not to consider it in its immediate reference to its age; but rather in its universal application and as the archetype of all modern Poetry.
The necessary law of this poetry, down to the still indefinitely distant point where the great Epic of modern times, which hitherto has announced itself only rhapsodically and in broken glimpses, shall present itself as a perfect whole, is this:—that the individual gives shape and unity to that portion of the world which is revealed to him, and out of the materials of his time, its History and its Science, creates his own Mythology. For as the ancient world is, in general, the world of classes, so the modern is that of Individuals. In the former the Universal is in truth the particular, the race acts as an individual; in the latter, the Individual is the point of departure, and becomes the Universal. For this reason, in the former all things are permanent and imperishable: Number likewise is of no account, since the Universal idea coincides with that of the Individual;—in the latter, constant mutation is the fixed law; no narrow circle limits its ends, but one which through Individuality widens itself to infinitude. And since Universality belongs to the essence of Poetry, it is a necessary condition that the Individual through the highest peculiarity should again become universal, and by his complete speciality become again absolute. Thus through the perfect individuality and uniqueness of his Poem, Dante is the Creator of modern art, which without this arbitrary necessity, and necessary arbitrariness, cannot be imagined.
From the very beginning of Greek Poetry, we see it clearly separated from Science and Philosophy, as in Homer, and this process of separation continued until the Poets and the Philosophers became the antipodes of each other. They in vain by allegorical interpretations of the Homeric Poems sought artificially to create a harmony between the two. In modern times Science has preceded Poetry and Mythology, which cannot be Mythology, without being universal and drawing into its circle all the elements of the then existing culture, Science, Religion and even Art, and joining in a perfect unity the material not only of the present but of the past. Into this struggle, (since Art demands something definite and limited, while the spirit of the world rushes towards the unlimited, and with ceaseless power sweeps down all barriers,) must the Individual enter, but with absolute freedom, seek to rescue permanent shapes from the fluctuations of time, and within arbitrarily assumed forms to give to the structure of his poem, by its absolute peculiarity, internal necessity and external universality.
This Dante has done. He had before him, as material, the history of the present as well as of the Past. He could not elaborate this into a pure Epos, partly on account of its nature, partly because, in doing this, he would have excluded other elements of the culture of his time. To its completeness belonged also the Astronomy, the Theology and Philosophy of the time. To these he could not give expression in a Didactic poem, for by so doing he would again have limited himself. Consequently, in order to make his Poem universal, he was obliged to make it historical. An invention, entirely uncontrolled, and proceeding from his own individuality, was necessary, to unite these materials and form them into an organic whole. To represent the ideas of Philosophy and Theology in symbols was impossible, for there then existed no symbolic Mythology. He could quite as little make his Poem purely allegorical, for then again it could not be historical. It was necessary therefore to make it an entirely unique mixture of Allegory and History. In the emblematic poetry of the ancients no clue of this kind was possible. The Individual only could lay hold of it, and only an uncontrolled invention follow it.
The poem of Dante is not allegorical in the sense that its figures only signified something else, without having any separate existence independent of the thing signified. On the other hand, none of them is independent of the thing signified in such a way as to be at once the Idea itself and more than an allegory of it. There is therefore in his Poem an entirely unique mean between Allegory and symbolic-objective Form. There is no doubt, and the Poet has himself elsewhere declared it, that Beatrice, for example, is an Allegory, namely, of Theology. So her companions; so many other characters. But at the same time they count for themselves, and appear on the scene as historic personages, without on that account being symbols.
In this respect Dante is archetypal, since he has proclaimed what the modern poet has to do, in order to embody into a poetic whole, the entire history and culture of his age—the only mythological material which lies before him. He must from absolute arbitrariness join together the allegorical and historical: he must be allegorical, (and he is so, too, against his will,) because he cannot be symbolical; and he must be historical because he wishes to be poetical. In this respect his invention is always peculiar, a world by itself, and altogether characteristic.