A. N. Wilson - Dante in Love

DANTE IN LOVE

Also by A. N. Wilson

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The Laird of Abbotsford: A View of Sir Walter Scott
A Life of John Milton
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Penfriends from Porlock: Essays And Reviews, 19771986
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C.S. Lewis: A Biography
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Iris Murdoch as I Knew Her
London: A Short History
After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World
Betjeman: A Life
Our Times

DANTE
IN LOVE

A. N.
WILSON

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Atlantic Books, and in export edition by Callisto,
imprints of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright A. N. Wilson, 2011

The moral right of A. N. Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

The permissions to quote from material in copyright contained on p. 373 form part of this copyright page.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders. The Publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.

ATLANTIC ISBN : 978 1 84887 948 5
CALLISO ISBN : 978 0 85740 027 7
eBook ISBN : 978 0 85789 581 3

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
2627 Boswell Street
London WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

CONTENTS

For Rowan and Jane Williams

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Jeremy Catto, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Barbara Reynolds, Aidan Nichols OP, Gerald Peacocke, Alessandro Gallenzi and Matthew Sturgis all read the book at various stages of composition and helped enormously with their expertise. J. C. Smith gave helpful advice about the origins of the Romance tongues. Grateful thanks too to Matthew Sturgis and Rebecca Hossack for conversations about Dante in Italy and in London. Thanks too to Jinny and Robin White who, together with Iona, Honor and Romilly, entertained us so royally in Tuscany. Like the peasants observed by Dante, we sat and watched the fireflies in the hill-country he knew so well. At a late stage, I was lucky enough to acquire Georgina Capel as my agent, and a Vita Nuova began. She it was who introduced me to Atlantic Books: and the enthusiasm of Anthony Cheetham, Toby Mundy and the team has been enormously encouraging. Especial thanks to Orlando Whitfield who helped in so many ways, and to Margaret Stead, the best editor I have ever encountered, whose literary intelligence, sharp eye, patience and accuracy put me forever in her debt. Tamsin Shelton has been a stimulating and conscientious copy-editor. All those named will undoubtedly be encountered if I ever reach Paradise, and before that dawning, they have made the experience of writing about Dante, discussing Dante, and knocking a book about Dante into shape, a foretaste of Heaven.

DANTE IN LOVE

WHY THIS BOOK HAS BEEN WRITTEN

DANTE IS THE GREATEST POET OF THE MIDDLE AGES. IT COULD BE argued that he was the greatest of all European poets, of any time or place. Yet, for many, per haps nearly all (non-Italian), readers, he also remains unread. Most literate people are aware of only a few facts about him and nearly all of these are wrong, such as that he was romantically involved with a girl called Beatrice. Dante, a married man with children, did have love affairs, some of them messy, and about some of them, he wrote. Beatrice was not in this sense one of the women in his life. She was something different.

There are other readers who have begun to read Dantes book the Vita Nuova under the impression that it would have been all about Beatrice, and then they have given up because it was about something else Dante himself, chiefly. Sometimes they have tried to read his Comedy , which was named by Boccaccio (131375) the divine Comedy , and they have abandoned the attempt. The intelligent general reader of the twenty-first century that is to say, you might or might not have a knowledge of classical mythology and Roman history. Dante expects you to remember who Briareus was, and who Cato, and how Arachne was transformed into a spider, and what was the fate of the Sabine women. On top of this, he expects you to share his knowledge of, and obsession with, contemporary Italian history and politics. Some translations and modern editions of his poem endeavour to help you here by elaborate explanations of the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, which soon have your head spinning. And on top of all that, there is the whole confusing business of medieval philosophy and theology what Thomas Aquinas owed to Averroes, or the significance of St Bernard of Clairvaux.

No wonder that so many readers abandon their reading of Dantes three-part Comedy ( Inferno , Purgatorio and Paradiso ) long before they get to Purgatory. No wonder that so many who manage to read as far as the Purgatorio find that very little of it has remained in their heads. Such readers are prepared to take on trust that Dante is a great poet, but they leave him as one of the great unreads. And in so doing, they leave unsavour ed one of the supreme aesthetic, imaginative, emotional and intellectual experiences on offer. They are like people who have never attended a performance of Mozarts Don Giovanni , or of King Lear , never heard a Beethoven symphony, never visited Paris. Quite definitely, they are missing out.

If you belong to this category of Dante-reader, or non-reader, then this book is specifically designed for you. And before we go any further, it had better be admitted that, as your travel guide in unfamiliar terrain, I know that my work will be difficult. The greatest of all European poems cannot be understood unless you familiarize yourself with the Europe out of which it came. So we must set off on a journey together to the Middle Ages, which were a strange land.

Dante was the most observant, and articulate, of writers. He was profoundly absorbed in himself, but he was also involved with the central political and social issues of his time. Indeed, it was his involvement with politics which led to his being expelled from his native city, Florence, and spending the last two decades of his life in bitter exile. If he had been a successful Florentine politician, he would never have written the Comedy . He would be remembered as a poet no doubt about that. His Canzoni and Ballate and Sonnets would ensure that his name had lasted. But his true greatness was to sum up in one narrative poem, not only his own autobiography, but the lives of his contemporaries, and the tremendous change which had taken place in Europe in his lifetime.