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6 Statius
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6 Statius The long speech of Hugh Capet in Canto 20 brings to a climax the Purgatorio ’s concern with history and politics. The major themes will reemerge in the powerful symbolism of the pageant at the summit of the mountain, but in the meantime Dante will shift his attention to questions of individual virtue, and to the role of his vocation as poet and his various poetic discipleships in the scheme of the Commedia. Between the sudden intrusion of Statius and the appearance of Beatrice Dante will probe not only the significance of his relation to the Poeti but also the distancing effect of his commitment to the vernacular “parlar materno,” the language which will give expression to his gradual realization of the meaning of Beatrice. This chapter considers some obvious questions: what the figure of Statius meant to Dante; why he plays the role he plays in the Commedia; why Dante puts into his mouth the religious autobiography he narrates, a story almost entirely fictional, but as detailed as that of any character in the poem save Dante himself; and finally, why Statius should have been assigned the long discourse on the formation of the human embryo and the creation of the soul which he delivers in Purgatorio 25. Obvious questions indeed. But I propose to consider them primarily in terms of 159 — 160 The Ancient Flame 1. Pézard, “Rencontres,” 115–33; Dragonetti, Dante, pèlerin, 255–71. 2. In the brief twelfth-century commentary Super Thebaidem once attributed to Fulgentius, the Argives thirst for “the fountain of faith”; the acts of Theseus and the altar of Clementia manifest divine mercy. Later commentators identify the altar of Clementia with the altar “to the unknown God” of Acts 17; see Padoan, “Teseo ‘figura Redemptoris,’” 126–28. Statius’ own poetry, and this at least is something new. My working assumptions are that Dante took Statius’ poetry seriously and saw him as a major figure in the great tradition of the Poeti and that the role Statius plays in the Commedia is based primarily, if not entirely, on what Statius himself had written. These assumptions, too, might seem obvious enough, but critics of Dante have shown a strange reluctance to make them. Fortunately not all would take so casual a view of the matter as the senior Dantista who once assured me that Lucan would have done just as well as Statius, that Dante had more or less flipped a coin between them. But another learned friend put the problem almost as well. When I told him that I was trying to puzzle out why Statius had been so important to Dante, he was sympathetic but concerned; the medieval commentaries on Statius, he suggested , wouldn’t help me much, and I would probably have to look for information in the text itself. The advice was well meant, and turned out to be perfectly correct, but the way in which he offered it made “going to the text” of a poet so strange seem like a last resort, a desperate measure, and this reluctance has been the rule among Dantisti. Even those who have written specifically on the problem of Statius’ role have had a hard time approaching it directly. Such excellent scholars as André Pézard and Roger Dragonetti have gone to great lengths to explain Statius’ role in the light of Dante’s supposed knowledge of the Silvae , the one work of Statius that he never mentions.1 Others have made what they could out of the rather sketchy medieval tradition of allegorical interpretation of the Thebaid. But none of the critics who have attempted to account for Dante’s Statius by these various means has seriously considered the possible relevance of Statius’ actual poetry, beyond the selective allegorizing of a few motifs noted by medieval commentators: the terrible thirst of the Argives as they approach Thebes; the Altar of Clementia ; Theseus’ intervention in the war.2 [18.191.234.62] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 17:38 GMT) In this respect we have progressed scarcely at all since C.S. Lewis’ excellent little essay on Dante’s Statius appeared more than seventy years ago.3 This was mainly an inventory of passages from the Thebaid whose religious and moral outlook might have appeared to Dante to be in harmony with his own Christian point of view. Lewis made little attempt to establish specific connections between Statius’ poetry and Dante’s, but his essay remains the one piece of...