Petrarch and Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition

Chapter 8 Dante, Petrarch, and the Laurel Crown

c h a p t e r 8 Dante, Petrarch, and the Laurel Crown sara sturm-maddox With regard to poetic coronation, Italian poets of the fourteenth century received from antiquity a double legacy: one part an individual , literary sanction, the other a collective, historical one. Ovid’s tale in the Metamorphoses of Apollo’s pursuit of a nymph who was transformed into a laurel tree culminates in the god claiming the tree as his own, initiating its significance in the recognition of inspired achievement. Then there is the ritual with which Ovid’s Apollo also associates the laurel: the jubilant popular acclaim of triumphant heroes in ancient Rome. In fourteenthcentury Italy, a series of events—both textual and historical—brought the theme to the fore in the aspirations of some of the most fervent practitioners of the poetic art. While the two strands, poetic and historical, are frequently intertwined, both in the works of the poets and in critical assessments of their attitudes, attention to the distinction between them sheds light on the issues of preeminence and public recognition that concerned the three greatest poets of the Trecento: Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca , and the self-proclaimed disciple of them both, Giovanni Boccaccio. Mussato and Dante: Variations on a Theme of Coronation In 1315, in Padua, Albertino Mussato was awarded a triple crown of laurel , ivy, and myrtle for his achievement as historian and poet. His De gestis 290 Baranski 08 2/24/09 3:43 PM Page 290 Henrici VII Caesaris was an ambitious endeavor treating very recent history: the life of the emperor Henry VII from his arrival in Italy in late 1310 until his death at Buonconvento three years later.1 The Paduans were also eager to reward Mussato for his tragedy Ecerinis, which evoked the tyrannization of their city under Ezzelino da Romano in the preceding century. Following Mussato’s coronation in the Palazzo Comunale, on Christmas Day the Paduans were summoned to a patriotic festival, a public reading of the Ecerinis . Denouncing the crimes of a former Ghibelline tyrant, the play served as political propaganda to fuel the city’s resistance to assaults led by another powerful Ghibelline lord, Can Grande della Scala of Verona. Thus did Mussato become the hero as well as the poet laureate of Padua.2 The Inferno of the Florentine exile Dante Alighieri was circulated a year before Mussato’s Ecerinis, his Purgatorio in the year of the Paduan’s coronation. In 1319, while living in Ravenna and at work on the Paradiso, Dante received a poetic epistle in Latin from Giovanni del Virgilio, a poet and respected professor at the University of Bologna, praising his poem “triplicis confinia sortis / indita pro meritis animarum, sontibus Orcum, / astripetis Lethen, epiphoebia regna beatis” (unfolding the regions of threefold fate assigned according to deserts of souls, Orcus to the Guilty, Lethe to them that seek the stars, the realms above the sun to the blest) (Carm.1.5).3 But del Virgilio also asserted that despite its extraordinary merits, Dante’s great poem written in the “language of the market-place” could be expected to garner no fame higher than the clamor of the crowd. “Cast not in prodigality thy pearls before the swine,” del Virgilio urges. Rather, why not undertake a great poem in Latin on the tumultous events of contemporary Italy, the “mighty toils of men,” which Dante alone was able to extol?4 Thus might Dante truly set himself apart, and Giovanni promised to present him proudly in Bologna, crowned with laurel, to receive the ovations of a learned and discerning public. The proposal could hardly have been more timely for Dante, who in the opening canto of the Paradiso invokes Apollo to help him merit at last the coveted accolade: O buono Appollo, a l’ultimo lavoro fammi del tuo valor sì fatto vaso, come dimandi a dar l’amato alloro. (Par. 1.13–15) ———— Dante, Petrarch, and the Laurel Crown 291 Baranski 08 2/24/09 3:43 PM Page 291 O good Apollo, for this last labor make me such a vessel of your worth as you require for granting your beloved laurel.5 If he succeeds in depicting “l’ombra del beato regno / segnata nel mio capo” (the image of the blessed realm which is imprinted in my mind) (Par. 1.23–24), he tells Apollo, vedra’mi al piè del tuo diletto legno...