The only German poem of universal plan, unites together in a similar manner the outermost extremes in the aspirations of the times, by a very peculiar invention of a subordinate mythology, in the character of Faust: although in the Aristophanic meaning of the word it may far better be called a Comedy, and is another and more poetic sense Divine, than the Poem of Dante.
The energy with which the individual embodies the singular mixture of the materials which lie before him in his age and his life determines the measure in which he possesses mythological power. Dante’s personages possess a kind of eternity from the position in which he places them, and which is eternal: but not only the actual which he draws from his own time, as the story of Ugolino and the like, but also what is pure invention, as the death of Ulysses and his companions, has in the connection of his poem a real mythological truth.
It would be of but subordinate interest to represent by itself, the Philosophy, Physics and Astronomy of Dante, since his true peculiarity lies only in his manner of fusing them with his poetry. The Ptolemaic system, which to a certain degree is the foundation of his poetic structure, has already in itself a mythological coloring. If however his philosophy is to be characterized in general as Aristotelian, we must not understand by this the pure Peripatetic philosophy, but a peculiar union of the same with the ideas of the Platonic, then entertained, as may be proved by many passages of his poem.
We will not dwell upon the power and solidity of separate passages, the simplicity and endless naiveté of separate pictures, in which he expresses his philosophical views, as the well known description of the soul which comes from the hand of God as a little girl “weeping and laughing in its childish sport,” a guileless soul, which knows nothing, save that, moved by its joyful Creator, “willingly it turns to that which gives it pleasure:”—we speak only of the general symbolic form of the whole, in whose absoluteness, more than in any thing else, the universal value and immortality of this Poem is recognized.
If the union of Philosophy and Poetry even in their most subordinate synthesis is understood as making a didactic poem, it becomes necessary, since the poem must be without any external end and aim, that the intention (of instructing) should lose itself in it and be changed into an absoluteness (in eine Absolutheit verwandelt), so that the poem may seem to exist for its own sake. And this is only conceivable, when Science (considered as a picture of the Universe, and in perfect harmony therewith, as the most original and beautiful Poetry) is in itself already poetical. Dante’s Poem is a much higher interpenetration of Science and Poetry, and so much the more must its form, even in its freer self-existence, be adapted to the universal type of the world’s aspect (Weltanschauung).
The division of the Universe and the arrangement of the materials according to the three kingdoms of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, independently of the peculiar meaning of these ideas in Christian theology, are also a general symbolic form, so that one does not see why under the same form every remarkable age should not have its own Divine Comedy. As in the Modern Drama the form of five acts is assumed as the usual one, because every event may be regarded in its Beginning, its Progress, its Culmination, its Dénouement, and its final Consummation, so this Trichotomy, or threefold division of Dante in the higher prophetic poetry, which is to be the expression of a whole age, is conceivable as a general form, which in its filling-up may be infinitely varied, as by the power of original invention it can always be quickened into new life. Not alone however as an external form, but as an emblematical expression of the internal type of all Science and Poetry is that form eternal and capable of embracing in itself the three great objects of Science and culture,—Nature, History and Art. Nature, as the birth of all things, is the eternal Night; and as that unity through which these are in themselves, it is the aphelion of the universe, the point of farthest removal from God, the true centre. Life and History, whose nature is gradual progress, are only a process of clarification, a transition to an absolute condition. This can nowhere be found save in Art, which anticipates eternity, is the Paradise of life, and is truly in the centre.
Dante’s Poem, therefore, viewed from all sides, is not an isolated work of a particular age, a particular stage of culture; but it is archetypal, by the universal interest which it unites with the most absolute Individuality,—by its universality, in virtue of which it excludes no side of life and culture,—and finally by its form, which is not a peculiar type, but the type of the theory of the Universe, in general.
The peculiar internal arrangement of the Poem certainly cannot possess this universal interest, since it is formed upon the ideas of the time, and the peculiar views of the poet. On the other hand, as is to be expected from a work so artistic and full of purpose, the general inner type is again externally imaged forth, through the form, color, sound of the three great Divisions of the Poem.
From the extraordinary nature of his material, Dante needed for the form of his creations in detail, some kind of credentials which only the Science of his time could give, and which for him are, so to speak, the Mythology and the general basis, which supports the daring edifice of his inventions. But even in the details he remains trite to his design of being allegorical, without ceasing to be historical and poetical. Hell, Purgatory and Paradise are, as it were, only his system of Theology in its concrete and architectural development. The proportion, number and relations which he observes in their internal structure were prescribed by this science, and herein he renounced intentionally the freedom of invention, in order to give, by means of form, necessity and limitation to his poem, which in its materials was unlimited. The universal sanctity and significancy of numbers is another external form upon which his poetry rests. So in general the entire logical and syllogistic lore of that age, is for him only form, which must be granted to him, in order to attain to that region in which his poetry moves.
And yet in this adherence to religious and philosophical notions, as the most universally interesting thing which his age offered, Dante never seeks an ordinary kind of poetic probability; but rather renounces all intention of flattering the baser senses. His first entrance into Hell takes place, as it should take place, without any unpoetical attempt to assign a motive for it or to make it intelligible, in a condition like that of a Vision, without however any intention of making it appear such. His being drawn up by Beatrice’s eyes, through which the divine power is communicated to him, he expresses in a single line: what is wonderful in his own adventures he immediately changes to a likeness of the mysteries of religion, and gives it credibility by a yet higher mystery, as when he makes his entrance into the moon, which he compares to that of light into the unbroken surface of water, an image of God’s incarnation.