Sons and Lovers: Guido in Paradise

Each tenth canto of the three parts of the Divine Comedy marks the passage over a threshold into a new realm, or into the more essential part of each realm. In Inferno it is the first canto inside the retrenched ramparts of the City of Dis; in Purgatorio it is where, also just inside a gate, penitential punishments actually begin; in Paradiso it is where we pass out of the shadow of the earth and its imperfections (inconstancy, ambition, and sensual love) displayed by categories of saints appearing lower down. The three cantos X are also linked by the themes of pride in art and pride in family, twin offenses punished on the first purgatorial terrace that are cognate, in Inferno X, with Farinata's fierce preoccupation with ancestors and progeny and Caval-cante's fearful boasting of his son's high genius. So too Paradiso X celebrates simultaneously the Creator's love for his Son and for his own art. Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's first friend, is named explicitly in Inferno X by his frantic father and possibly on the terrace of pride, in Purgatorio XI, when Oderisi da Gubbio remarks that one Guido has wrested from the other the "glory of our tongue" (97-99). Teodolinda Barolini has described the entire Paradiso as the contradiction and antithesis of Cavalcanti's philosophical poem on the incompatibility of love and understanding, Donna me prega.¹ Although never mentioned in the Paradiso, it is in Canto X, in the heaven of the wise spirits, that Guido is most present in his absence. He is present thematically by the links between art and family that recall the earlier cantos X, by the spectacular insistence on the compatibility of human understanding with the human body, by the focus of the philosophers on Beatrice herself, and the surprise appearance of Siger of Brabant who, as Averroist, stands in for Guido himself.

The linked themes of family ties and artistic genius are common to the heretics in Inferno X, the prideful in Purgatorio X-XII, and the wisemen in Paradiso X-XIV. In Inferno X, 59 an anguished father asks why his son has not accompanied Dante on a journey accomplished through "greatness of genius" ("altezza d'ingegno"). As John Freccero has recently pointed out, Cavalcante's invocation of genius identifies both Guido and Dante as philosophers as well as poets and, moreover, betrays the assumption that the purpose of a trip to the underworld, like that of Aeneas, is to meet with one's dead father and to attain wisdom thereby.²Purgatorio X introduces the terrace of pride, portrayed first as the downfall of artists and then as the haughtiness of aristocrats exulting in their family name. In Paradiso X, where the pilgrim meets with an array of spirits who incarnated wisdom while on earth, the poet pointedly acknowledges the insufficiency of his own genius, art, and custom, even as he takes his poetic daring to new heights.

Perch' io lo 'ngegno e l'arte e l'uso chiami,sí nol direi che mai s'imaginasse;ma creder puossi e di veder si brami.E se le fantasie nostre son bassea tanta altezza, non è maraviglia;ché sopra 'l sol non fu occhio ch'andasse.

(Par. X, 43-48)³

Metaphorical family ties are emphasized in Paradiso X. For example, the spirits are referred to as belonging to the "fourth family" of heaven, certainly meant to recall the "philosophical family" of great minds seated around Aristotle, "master of the men who know," in the dim light of Limbo (Inferno IV, 131-32). Unlike those sad spirits who live in desire without hope, here the innate desire to know is sated by a steady contemplation of the Trinity, expressed in terms of a father "satisfying" his family by showing how he "engenders" and "breathes forth."

Tal era quivi la quarta famigliade l'alto Padre, che sempre la sazia,mostrando come spira e come figlia.

(Par. X, 49-51)⁴

Filiation and spiration were already connected in the Purgatorio in the consecutive discussions of human reproduction and the production...