>In Inferno 1.86ff, Dante tells Virgil
>
> tu se' solo colui da cu' io tolsi
> lo bello stilo che m'ha fatto onore.
>
> You alone are he from whom I took
> the fair style that has done me honor. [Singleton]
>
>I can't claim more than a passing familiarity with Dante's early poetry,
>but I don't really see the connection. Any suggestions? (Hollander's
>remarks on the "tragic" style of the Commedia are good, but don't really
>address the question of Dante's early style.)
>
Dear David,
The understanding of this passage in fact is not very clear, because,
although Dante had acquired a certain familiarity with Vergil's writings (at
least with the Aeneid and the Eclogues) at an earlier stage, nevertheless
traces of Vergil's influence in the _Vita nuova_ and in the _Rime_ of his
youth (or in the Fiore and in the Detto, if we have to attribute them to
Dante) are rather scarce -- and the traces of Vergil in the Convivio are not
stylistic ones --, and he certainly had not yet acquired any specific fame
as an imitator of Vergil. It seems common to explain the passage by
connecting it with Dante's distinction of the three styles (tragic = high ,
comic = medium or medium mixed with low, elegiac = low) in _De vulgari
eloquentia_ (II, iv): after having determined which are the most elevated
subjects to be treated in the highest form of the Volgare (in ascending
order: arms, love, virtue), and which is the most noble genre of Vernacular
poetry (the canzone as opposed to sonnet and ballata), he fixes that the
style to be used in this genre and for these subjects cannot but be the
tragic style, defined by him in a rather general and preliminary way (the
unwritten fourth book was planned to treat the topic further) as "quando cum
gravitate sententie tam superbia carminum quam constructionis elatio et
excellentia vocabulorum concordat" (II, iv, 7). It is this understanding of
'tragic style' which can apply, on the one hand, to the canzones by which
Dante had acquired fame, but also to Vergil's work, the 'alta tragedia'
(Inf. 20,113), on the other. Yet, according to me, it still remains a
somewhat strange claim that Vergil should have been a model -- even the only
one ("tu sei solo colui")! -- from which Dante had drawn the style of his
earlier canzones. I doubt that the words of Dante-personaggio are simply a
'captatio benevolentiae', the sort of thing a younger writer should state
when meeting an older poet of world wide fame, even and maybe especially if
he had never really profitted as much as he should from the works of this
older colleague. I also doubt that Dante-author in his relatively new
enthousiasm for Vergil had somehow become oblivious -- or wanted his readers
to become oblivious -- of the fact that his earlier works (and his fame) did
not owe very much to Vergil. It's a good point for the reader to stumble and
to rethink his understanding of Dante's attitude and indebtedness to Vergil,
but if there is a good solution of the problem to be found, I myself am not
aware of it.
Otfried
P.S.: Bob Hollander had to go off the list for this summer because he is
staying in Europe, but we have quite a number of other members who are still
on-line and have done much more thinking and reading on this problem than I.
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