The passages on which my comments were based are from Inferno vi: 94-
111 and xiii: 103-108.
Regards,
Jim Kerbaugh
[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> In a message dated 8/29/00 11:44:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
> > Dante's shades (except for the suicides) will get their bodies back
> > at Judgment Day, and the reunification will make their torment more
> > complete. So any separation is temporary.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Jim Kerbaugh
>
> Does he actually say this (if so, where)? Or do you just mean we can safely
> assume that this was the theological belief of his day?
>
> To me, it's an important distinction. I find Dante deeply pious and
> completely orthodox. But he's also a highly innovative poet, who often says
> old things in new ways. As a result, the Commedia is loaded with passages
> that _seem_ unorthodox...until one studies them closely and perhaps goes back
> to the Biblical sources he uses so often. Then one realizes what he's saying
> is perfectly conventional. I suppose it's the passages that at first glance
> might seem unorthodox that fuel, say, a Harold Bloom, who finds Dante to be
> "a rebel," an assessment with which I can't concur.
>
> I should admit people might want to question my rule-of-thumb criterion for
> orthodoxy. It seems to me Dante is a very close reader of the Bible. Also
> that he takes it very seriously in its traditional sense as Holy Writ, the
> word of God. When I find he's based a passage on Biblical verses, I catalogue
> that in my mind as orthodox, because it's orthodox (and pious) to treat the
> Bible as a supreme authority. Catholicism actually has a divided authority,
> because the Bible is taken seriously but so are the practices of the Fathers.
> If there were a conflict between what the Church said and what the Bible
> said, my sense is that Dante would give the Bible more weight--he just seems
> that intense about it. And I'm not the person best qualified to evaluate what
> this means in assessing his orthodoxy. Sometimes he plays with fairly obscure
> Biblical verses, not the ones people usually remember. Also, artists tend to
> remember one kind of Biblical passage (the kind with striking visual images)
> and theologians tend to remember another (the kind with obvious "theological"
> messages). So there's a disparity right off the bat between Dante and many
> of his annotators.
>
> In any case, Jim, if what you mean is that there were certain theological
> beliefs in Dante's day, and we can expect him to say the usual thing in the
> usual way, I'd want to be more cautious. I find him more likely to say the
> usual thing in an unusual way...sometimes so unusual that one doesn't
> immediately see the connection.
>
> pat
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