Eschatology and Subjectivity

Figural Interpretation and Metaphor in Dante's Divine Comedy

Originally submitted for EDU 622: Humane Letters II at Hillsdale College.

Dante’s Divine Comedy represents the culmination of the medieval imagination. The poem synthesizes the totality of thought and tradition before it; it possesses the medieval love of particularities brought under the ideal of unity promoted in philosophy and theology. Yet even as Dante stands at the culmination of the medieval tradition, his poetry contains significant elements which are peculiar to the Florentine, among which stand Dante’s metaphors. Through his development of metaphor, Dante combines the poetic and theological into an eschatological vision and offers the reader a particular kind of subjectivity which depends upon the objective world for self-understanding.

In ancient poetry, metaphors primarily served as ornament. These metaphors often drew from nature and illustrated a particular object or instance in a beautiful way. These metaphors rarely, if ever, added any substance to the thing itself. In fact, using too many metaphors ran the risk of obscuring the poet’s meaning by clouding it in fancy speech.¹

Over the course of the Middle Ages, Christian theologians developed modes of reading Scripture which expanded the use of metaphor. Eric Auerbach’s essay “Figura” explores the significance of figural interpretation in assigning spiritual meaning to events in Scripture.² Most commonly, Old Testament figures signaled Christ, and New Testament figures pointed toward eschatological fulfilment. Figural interpretation serves as a metaphorical reading of Scripture, where the figura (figure) becomes a metaphor for the prefigured reality. Notably, this does not mean that the figura is any less real; it can have real historical validity and simultaneously await fulfillment in a future reality. Figural interpretation allows a kind of metaphor which allows real ontological connections. In ancient metaphor, the relation between the two sides is coincidental, and limited to one quality. However, as a figura of Christ, King David is a metaphor whose connection to Christ becomes more real the more we consider it. The medievals in turn applied figural interpretation to the world; like Scripture, nature was a “book” written by God. Thus, any part of the created order, interpreted properly, can reveal something about God.

Dante’s Divine Comedy must be read with a knowledge of figural interpretation; his innovations with metaphor rely on it. Lewis describes as distinctly Dantean a class of simile (I will call it a metaphor) in which “Like… is always tending to turn into same.”³ When Dante describes God through an image of light, “God is, or is like, light, not for the purposes of this bit of poetry but for every devotional, philosophical, and theological purpose imaginable.”⁴ The effect of this metaphor is twofold: first, our understanding of God is expanded through meditation of light; second, we are inclined to consider light in a new way, as somehow reflective of God’s nature. The connection of physical and metaphysical through metaphor clarifies our understanding of each. The qualities of light clarify our understanding of God, and God’s nature comes to be revealed to us through our experience of light. This is an inkling of what is meant by “Like tends toward same,” and is the fruit of figural interpretation applied to the world.

Auerbach demonstrates the figural interpretation at work in characters such as Cato and Virgil. Dante takes these historical figures and uses them as figurae in an eschatological vision. The innovation is that they are figurae of themselves, imagined eschatologically. Given what he knows of Cato and Virgil in their earthly lives, Dante speculates what they might be in eternal life. Auerbach writes,

Thus Virgil in the Divine Comedy is the historical Virgil himself, but then again he is not; for the historical Virgil is only a figura of the fulfilled truth that the poem reveals, and this fulfillment is more real, more significant than the figura. With Dante, unlike modern poets, the more fully the figure is interpreted and the more closely it is integrated with the eternal plan of salvation, the more real it becomes.⁵

By casting them eschatologically, Dante actually makes Virgil and Cato more real, not less. The same occurs with concepts. Dante marvels that the disembodied souls of the gluttonous in Purgatory appear starved. Statius explains that the soul is the “form” of the body, and therefore a soul suffering hunger will appear as a body that suffers hunger. In this manner, the body is a figura of the soul, and the earthly life a figura of the soul’s eternal suffering (Inferno and Purgatorio) or reward (Paradiso).⁶

One of Dante’s great contributions to metaphor comes through in this eschatological vision. It allows something to become a metaphor for itself. Dante applies a figural interpretation to the cosmos, casting an eschatological vision in which each thing finds its culmination. As is the case with metaphors where “like” tends toward “same,” each side contributes to the significance of the other. Reading Dante’s poem helps the reader understand his own world; likewise, the more he understands the world, the fuller his reading of Dante becomes. Of course, the reader may disagree with Dante on various accounts. Nonetheless, he has engaged in reflection on eternity, and his conceptions (Dantean or otherwise)of earthly and eternal life are refining each other.

There is one more Dantean innovation which sits as a crown upon his whole project. In a departure from epic convention, Dante places himself as the central character in the poem. This choice must be understood in the figurative sense which undergirds the Comedy. The distinction between Dante the Pilgrim and Dante the Poet becomes clearer: Dante the Pilgrim is Dante the Poet, interpreted eschatologically. Insofar as they are the same, the reader is invited to pay attention to the epic in a way which previous epics had not allowed. The reader of these epics was removed from the events by a significant amount of time, and by the third person narrative. Dante, on the other hand, describes events which happened only a few years ago and which happened to him. I do not mean to say that he believes the events of the Comedy actually happened. Nonetheless, the immediacy of the Comedy told from the first person demands the reader take the poem seriously and consider how far and in what way it is true.

Famously, Dante begins the Comedy “Midway upon the journey of our life.”⁷ The plural “our” invites the reader to consider Dante’s experience as reflective of his own to some degree. The Divine Comedy introduces a kind of subjectivity unknown in previous epics. The first-person narrative is subjective, as is the invitation to the reader to see himself in Dante’s experience. However, the subjectivity does not stand against objectivity as it often does in modern artistic endeavors. Rather, Dante’s subjectivity comes out more and more as he recognizes himself in the context of the cosmos. It is God’s divine objectivity, manifested through all things, that makes Dante become more himself. Dante the Poet uses Dante the Pilgrim to describe who he was, is, and ought to be. Who he ought to be becomes clearer as he approaches God.

In the Divine Comedy, Dante achieves much through his use of metaphor. By adopting the figural interpretation of Scripture, he creates a kind of metaphor where a person, place or thing can be imagined eschatologically. By placing himself as the Pilgrim, Dante introduces a subjectivity previously unseen in epic poetry. Along with figural interpretation, this subjectivity allows Dante, and the reader in turn, to imagine himself eschatologically, understanding himself before God. Subjectivity is completed, not abolished, before objectivity.

1. See Terence Hawkes, Metaphor, (Norfolk, UK: Cox and Wyman Ltd, 1972) and C. S. Lewis, “Dante’s Similes” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966).

2. Eric Auerbach, “Figura” in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).

3. Lewis, “Dante’s Similes,” 71.

4. Lewis, “Dante’s Similes,” 71.

5. Auerbach, “Figura,” 71.

6. Dante, Purgatory, XXV, 19-108.

7. Dante, Inferno, trans. Anthony Esolen. (New York: The Modern Library, 2003), I, 1.