O'Neill's Use of Dante in The Fountain and The Hairy Ape

O'NEILL'S USE ,OF DANTE IN THE FOUNTAIN AND THE HAIRY APE The Hairy Ape IS ONE OF EUGENE O'NEILL'S MOST POPULAR plays, probably his most anthologized one, while remaining one of his most confusing plays. According to Carpenter, "The trouble is that the emotional violence of the hero and his sudden alienation from American life are not fully motivated nor explained."l Carpenter is right, of course, yet I think we can better appreciate Yank's bewilderment and fury if we read this play in relation to a play O'Neill was working on in the period preceding and following the composition of The Hairy Ape: The Fountain.2 In order, therefore, to try to understand Yank, I want first to examine O'Neill's use of Dante in The Fountain.3 In the Commedia Beatrice is a real woman and a figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mediatrix of all graces. That is, she awakens Dante to a "new life": a transformed earthly life and a higher spiritual reality-in other words, to the life of grace, a gift from God the Father, lovingly calling man back to Him. In Canto II of the Inferno Virgil explains to Dante that he is helping him because Beatrice requested him to since she was sent to him as an instance of Mary's intercession on behalf of sinners. After Virgil she becomes his guide, leading him to Mary, Christ, and his supreme vision at the end of the Paradiso. Appearing to him "within a cloud of flowers" (Purg. XXX. 28), she progressively prepares him for his experience of the divine Rose of Love.4 1 Eugene O'Neill, Twayne's United States Authors Series (New York, 1964), p. 101. 2 In the chronology he supplied for Richard D. Skinner, O'Neill listed the spring and summer of 1921 for the first draft of The Fountain, late fall of the same year for The Hairy Ape, and the summer of 1922 for the final draft of The Fountain. See Eugene O'Neill: A Poet's Quest (New York, 1964), p. ix. 3 In addition to the works by Carpenter and Skinner, the following are the important studies of The Hairy Ape and The Fountain: Doris Alexander, "Eugene O'Neill as Social Critic," reprinted in O'Neill and His Plays: Four Decades of Criticism, ed. Oscar Cargill, N. Bryllion Fagin, and William J. Fisher (New York, 1961), pp. 390-407; Edwin A. Engel, The Haunted Heroes of Eugene O'Neill (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 54-60, 95-107; Doris V. Falk, Eugene O'Neill and the Tragic Tension (New Brunswick, 1958), pp. 27-35,79-84; and Sophus K. Winther. Eugene O'Neill: A Critical Study~ 2nd ed., en!. (New York, 1961) pp. 12-17. 191-199- Raleigh's work will be noted elsewhere. • 4 All quotations from the Commedia are taken from the Temple Classics edition (London, 1958, 1956, 1958). 48 1967 DANTE IN The Fountain 49 In the first scene of The Fountain~ Maria criticizes Juan for failing to love, hoping that "God give you knowledge of the heart!" But Juan is not interested in "songs and faded roses." As he tells her, "Spain is the mistress to whom I give my heart, Spain and my own ambitions, which are Spain's." Years later, suffering from weariness and disillusionment, he is visited by Maria's daughter, Beatriz. She has been sent by her mother to bring him tenderness and is the bearer of a "gift" from the King: "the patent-to find Cathay!" (III)5 Juan falls in love with Beatriz, and by so doing has his desire to find the fountain of youth intensified, believing that if he can regain his youth Beatriz will love him. To him she is "the fountain "; "a benediction"; "the Spirit of Youth, Hope, Ambition, Power to dream and dare, ... Love and the Beauty of Love"; and "queen [of] the golden city of Youth" (VI). Inspired by her innocence, beauty, youth, and the possibility of love she has engendered in him, Juan sets out to find the fabled fountain of Cathay, the "Spring of Life" (IX), alleged by Nano to be...