DANTE'S MINOR WORKS

L IL CONVITO

AFTER the death of Beatrice, Dante, seeking comfort from his grief, turned for solace to the Consolations of Philosophy by Boethius, and to Cicero's treatise On Friendship. Becoming absorbed in his reading and studies, he rapidly acquires knowledge, and for love of it all other things are forgotten. By means of his great natural talents he masters the science and philosophy of his time. The enlarged vision which these give him, together with the new temper of mind which they induce, profoundly modify his lyrical compositions. The Middle Ages had a strong tendency towards symbolism. This is forcibly exemplified in the worship of the Roman church, where every garment worn by the priest, the candles, the ceremonials, had a religious significance, and were intended to teach some truth. Upon symbolism far more than on preaching the church relied to convey spiritual instruction to the common people. This same tendency finds expression in the literature of the period. Spiritual abstractions and philosophic ideas are presented in allegorical form that they may appeal to the imagination, for in the untrained the imagination affords a broader avenue to the will than does the reason. Moreover allegory is delightful in itself. Its hidden and problematical meanings afford genuine pleasure to minds enamored of mystery and subtlety. From Dante's lyrical genius, now steeped in

1 For an interesting discussion of the phase in Dante's experience represented by the Convito, vide Wicksteed's translation of Witte's Dantes Trilogie, in Essays on Dante (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), especially the Appendix, pp. 423-432.

scholastic lore, a new type of poetry, more didactic and richer in hidden meanings than the sonnets and canzoni of the Vita Nuova, is inevitable, and as a result we have Il Convito, or Il Convivio (The Banquet).

Dante's object in the book was twofold. His opening words are a translation of what Matthew Arnold calls "that buoyant and immortal sentence with which Aristotle begins his Metaphysics: ""All mankind naturally desire knowledge." But few can attain to what is desired by all, and innumerable are they who live always famished for want of this food. "Oh, blessed are the few who sit at that table where the bread of the angels is eaten, and wretched they who have food in common with the herds." "I, therefore, who do not sit at the blessed table, but having fled from the pasture of the crowd, gather up at the feet of those who sit at it what falls from them, and through the sweetness I taste in that which little by little I pick up, know the wretched life of those whom I have left behind me, and moved with pity for them, not forgetting myself, have reserved something for these wretched ones." These crumbs were the substance of the banquet which he proposed to spread for them. It was to have fourteen courses, and each of these courses was to have for its principal viand a canzone of which the subject should be Love and Virtue, and the bread served with each course was to be the exposition of these poems,― poems which for want of this exposition lay under the shadow of obscurity, so that by many their beauty was more esteemed than their goodness. They were in appearance mere poems of

1 Charles Eliot Norton, Library of the World's Best Literature, essay on Dante. (By permission.)

love, but under this aspect they concealed their true meaning, for the lady of his love was none other than Philosophy herself, and not sensual passion but virtue was their moving cause. The fear of reproach to which this misinterpretation might give occasion, and the desire to impart teaching which others could not give, were the two motives of his work.

There is much in the method and style of the Convito which in its cumbrous artificiality exhibits an early stage in the exposition of thought in literary form, but Dante's earnestness of purpose is apparent in many passages of manly simplicity, and inspires life into the dry bones of his formal scholasticism. The book is a mingling of biographical narrative, shaped largely by the ideals of the imagination, with expositions of philosophical doctrine, disquisitions on matters of science, and discussion of moral truths. But one controlling purpose runs through all, to help men to attain that knowledge which shall lead them into the paths of righteousness.

Its right use in the philosophy, which is, wisdom, and its end

For his theory of knowledge is, that it is the natural and innate desire of the soul, as essential to its own. perfection in its ultimate union with God. The use of the reason, through which he partakes of the Divine nature, is the true life of man. pursuit of knowledge leads to as its name signifies, the love of is the attainment of virtue. It is because of imperfect knowledge that the love of man is turned to fallacious objects of desire, and his reason is perverted. Knowledge, then, is the prime source of good; ignorance, of evil. Through knowledge to wisdom is the true path of the soul in this life on her return to her Maker, to

know whom is her native desire and her perfect beatitude.

In the exposition of these truths in their various relations a multitude of topics of interest are touched upon, and a multitude of opinions expressed which exhibit the character of Dante's mind and the vast extent of the acquisitions by which his studies had enriched it. The intensity of his moral convictions and the firmness of his moral principles are no less striking in the discourse than the nobility of his genius and the breadth of his intellectual view. Limited and erroneous as are many of his scientific conceptions, there is little trace of superstition or bigotry in his opinions; and though his speculations rest on a false conception of the universe, the revolting dogmas of the common medieval theology in respect to the human and the Divine nature find no place in them. The mingling of fancy with fact, the unsoundness of the premises from which conclusions are drawn, the errors in belief and in argument, do not affect the main object of his writing, and the Convito may still be read with sympathy and with profit, as a treatise of moral doctrine by a man the loftiness of whose intelligence rose superior to the hampering limitations of his age.

In its general character and in its biographical revelations the Banquet1 forms a connecting link between the New Life and the Divine Comedy. It is not possible to frame a complete reconciliation between all the statements of the Banquet in respect to Dante's

1 Although two of the Canzoni were well known before 1300, the prose comments did not assume their present form until after Dante left his fellow exiles and before the invasion of Italy by Henry VII. Toynbee assigns the date between April, 1307, and May, 1309; Scartazzini between 1308 and 1310. (D.)