Dante and the Blessed Virgin (review)

'The Blessed Virgin Mary is the key to Dante' - thus begins the reader's journey into this beautifully structured and compelling volume by the late Professor Ralph McInerny. Under his skilful guidance, the world of Dante's creative output is lucidly explored in order to make comprehensible the Florentine poet's 'layered approach' to 'human life and its destiny' (p. 29). Intended primarily for a Catholic audience, McInerny's in-depth monograph nevertheless offers perspectives that are appealing to a wide variety of readers.

The book is divided into four chapters, beginning with 'A New Life Begins', which consists of a brief overview of the Vita Nuova and Beatrice's role as 'a figure both of Christ and of Mary' (p. 10). Chapter 2 is entitled 'In the Midst of My Days' and examines the first cantica and Dante's initial foray into Hell as a means of exploring 'the natural as presupposed by the supernatural' (p. 29). This is followed by 'The Seven Storey Mountain', wherein the author illuminates our understanding of the moral lessons of Dante's Purgatorio, e.g., 'every human act is disordered when it is not proportioned to its proper end' (p. 85), and elucidates the weighty significance of Mary's virtues, all of which underscore the pilgrim's journey along the cornices of the sunlit mountain. In the final chapter, 'Queen of Heaven', the uniqueness of the Blessed Virgin's role and her centrality in the Commedia are convincingly portrayed.

McInerny's sustained control of his material is superb, whether he is providing a humorous account (such as the well known gag about academics and their horror of sharing rooms) or guiding us through the salient points in Dante's oeuvre. The distinctive blend of scholarly rigour with an engaging conversational style never falters. At times synthetic, 'There are angels and angels' (p. 60), while at other times personal, 'Dantisti, as a group, seem to me to be a very special breed of scholar' (p. xi), McInerny musters an array of literary characters, including Jay Gatsby and Huckleberry Finn, to add verve to his explication of the influence on Dante of the ancient Greek philosophers and great doctors of the Church, including for example, Plato, Aristotle, St Bernard and St Thomas Aquinas. In doing so, the author renders explicit Dante's intention in his fictional work from many and diverse perspectives, whether theological, philosophical, exegetical, historical or literary.

'We become involved in stories because their characters are in some way ourselves', states McInerny (p. 21), and his moments of personal insight are deftly interwoven with judicious exegetical commentary, for example, on Aquinas' moral philosophy, Christ's Sermon on the Mount and its relationship with the practice of natural wisdom, or St Augustine's encapsulation of original sin as a means to regain heaven through his exclamation, O felix culpa. Amidst edifying discussions about desire in contest with reason, the reader is reminded of the original meaning of the word soul - breath, wind - and of the resonance of Psalm 38 that declares 'every man is but a breath' (p. 78).

It is refreshing to see excerpts from Dante's works (in Italian) being supported in English by the translations of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Dorothy Sayers. Coterminous with the inclusion of such noteworthy translations, McInerny considers anew well-known Dantean passages and the interpretative tools of a long commentary tradition. His prose style is captivating when, for example, he describes Dante's first reaction to Beatrice in the Vita Nuova as 'seismic' (p. 4) or depicts Mary's extraordinary situation as that of '[a] simple little girl [who] is to become the Mother of God and thereby first among all creatures in the supernatural order' (p. 61). These arresting moments infuse the text with a supreme vitality. No less remarkable are the scholarly considerations of other aspects of the Commedia, such as Dante-poet's solution of presenting spectral bodies in the afterlife that emphasize his...