From the Tree to the Labyrinth: Historical Studies on the Sign and Interpretation

by Umberto Eco

  To clarify what he means he gives a biblical example, citing Psalm 114: “In exitu Israel de Egipto, domus Jacob de populo barbaro, facta est Judea sanctificatio eius, Israel potestas eius” (“When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah was his sanctuary and Israel his dominion”).

  Dante reminds us that according to the letter the meaning is that the children of Israel went out of the land of Egypt at the time of Moses; according to the allegory the meaning is that we are redeemed by Christ; according to the moral sense that the soul goes from the darkness and sorrow of sin to a state of grace; and according to the anagogical sense the Psalmist says that the blessed soul emerges from the slavery of earthly corruption into the freedom of eternal glory.

  The controversy surrounding this Epistola is well known, whether, that is, it is the work of Dante or not, but as far as our problem is concerned, the discussion is irrelevant: even if the Epistola had not been written by Dante it would nonetheless reflect a medieval idea that deserves our attention.

  On the other hand, in the Convivio Dante positions himself no differently. It is true that the second treatise, which concerns allegory, recognizes that “the theologians take this sense differently from the poets,” but immediately afterward the author affirms that it is his intention to interpret the allegorical mode in the sense of the poets. And the sense of the poets is that by which allegory transmits, under the “cloak” of fable, “a truth hidden under a beautiful fiction. Thus Ovid says that Orpheus with his lyre made beasts tame, and trees and stones move towards himself; that is to say that the wise man by the instrument of his voice makes cruel hearts grow mild and humble, and those who have not the life of science and art move to his will” (Dante 1909: 73).

  This would appear to be another expression of deference to the parabolic sense, such as we found in the case of the fables. But now let us see what Dante does, for instance, with the poem “Voi che ‘ntendendo il terzo ciel movete”)(“You who with your understanding move the third heaven”). He devotes chapters II–IX to explaining how it speaks literally of the angels and the heavens, with ample astronomical clarifications, and he devotes the following chapters to the allegorical explanation: “I say that by heaven I mean science and by heavens the sciences, because of three similarities the heavens have chiefly with the sciences.… For each moving heaven moves around its center, which, as to its movement, does not move, and so each science moves around its subject,” and so on, taking care in addition to remind us how the Gentle Lady of the Vita nuova represented Philosophy. And this is the allegorical sense, fairly well hidden, like that of Scripture.

  In the Convivio, however, both the literal sense and the allegorical sense are presented as intended by the author, and we are basically still talking about an allegory in verbis. In Epistola XIII, on the other hand, something further is suggested.

  Prima facie, as an example of an allegorical reading the author interprets facts narrated by the Bible. It could be objected (see Pépin 1970: 81) that here Dante is citing not the fact of the Exodus but the words of the Psalmist who speaks of the Exodus—a difference Augustine was already conscious of (Enarrationes in psalmos CXIII). But a few lines before citing the psalm, Dante speaks of his own poem, and he uses an expression that some translations, more or less unconsciously, attenuate. For example, the Italian translation of the Latin Epistola by Frugoni and Brugnoli, in the Ricciardi edition of Dante’s minor works, makes Dante say “the first meaning is the one we have from the letter of the text, the other is the one we have from what was meant to be signified by the letter of the text” (“il primo significato è quello che si ha dalla lettera del testo, l’altro è quello che si ha da quel che si volle significare con la lettera del testo”) (Epistole XIII, 7, 20). If this were the case, Dante would still be talking about a parabolic meaning, intended by the author. But the Latin text says: “primus sensus est qui habetur per litteram, alius est qui habetur per significata per litteram,” and here it seems that Dante means to speak of the things “that are signified by the letter” and therefore of an allegory in factis, and there is nothing in the Latin to justify that “was meant to be signified” (“che si volle significare”) which appears in the Italian version. If he had wished to speak of the intended sense, Dante would not have used the neuter plural significata but some other expression such as sententiam.

  How can we talk about an allegory in factis apropos of events narrated in the context of a secular poem, whose mode, Dante tells us in the course of the letter, is “poeticus” and “fictivus”?

  There are two possible answers. If we assume that Dante was an orthodox Thomist, then we can only conclude that the Epistola, which clearly runs counter to Thomist principles, must not be authentic. In that case, however, it would be odd that all of Dante’s early commentators (Boccaccio, Benvenuto da Imola, Francesco da Buti, and so on) have followed the path indicated by the epistle. But the most economical hypothesis is that Dante, at least as far as his definition of poetry went, did not follow Thomas’s opinion.

  Dante believes that poetry has philosophical dignity, not only his own poetry but that of all the great poets, and he does not accept the dismissal of the poet-theologians decreed by Aristotle in his Metaphysics (and commented upon approvingly by Saint Thomas). Sixth among so much wisdom (along with Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan—as he remarks in Inferno, IV, 48), he never ceased to read both the facts of mythology and the other works of the classical poets as if they were allegories in factis, a practice that, despite Thomas’s caveat, was cultivated in Bologna in the period during which Dante resided there (cf. Renucci 1958). These are the terms in which he speaks of poets in the De vulgari eloquentia (I, 2, 7), in the Convivio, and in many other places, and in the Divine Comedy he has Statius openly affirm that Virgil taught those who came after him “like someone who goes at night and carries his lamp behind him and does not help himself” (Purgatorio XXII, 67–69): the poetry of the pagan poet conveys additional meanings of which the author is unaware. And in his Epistola VII Dante offers an allegorical interpretation of a passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, seen as a prefigurement of the destiny of Florence.

  For Dante, then, the poet continues Holy Scripture after his own fashion, just as in the past he had confirmed or even anticipated it. He believes in the reality of the myth he has produced as he tends to believe in the allegorical truth of the classical myths that he cites, along with historical personages assumed as figurae of the future, even mythological personages like Orpheus. And Cato of Utica himself will be judged worthy of signifying, along with Moses, Christ’s sacrifice (Purgatorio I, 70–75), even God himself (Convivio IV, 18, 15).

  If this is the poet’s task, to figure by means of a poetic lie facts and events that function as signs, in imitation of the signs of the Bible, then we can understand why Dante would propound to Cangrande della Scala what has been defined by Curtius as his “self-exegesis” and by Pépin as his “self-allegoresis.” It is plausible that Dante thought of the secondary meaning of his poem as being close to the secondary meaning of the Bible, in the sense that at times the poet himself, when inspired, is not aware of all he is saying. For this reason he invokes divine inspiration (addressing Apollo) in the first canto of Paradiso. And if the poet is someone who “when Love inspires him notes, and in the same way as Love dictates within goes signifying” (Purgatorio XXII, 52–54), in order to interpret what he is not always aware that he has said, we may then use the same procedures reserved by Thomas for sacred history. If a poetic text were entirely literal-parabolic, it is not easy to see why the poet would clutter up various passages with enunciatory instances in which he invites the reader to decipher what is hidden “beneath the veil of the strange verses” (see, for example, Inferno IX, 61–63).

  That said, we are bound to admit that, as far as his manner of interpreting metaphors goes, Dante does not break with the ideas of his time and in particular with those of Thomas. Let us take the
Vita nuova, and confine ourselves to examining how Dante explains the sonnet “Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare.” The poem contains a number of metaphorical expressions, such as “benignamente d’umiltà vestuta,” “dolcezza al core,” not to mention the invitation, addressed to the soul, to sigh (sospirare). Well, Dante makes it immediately clear that “this sonnet is so easy to understand … that it has no need of any division.” And the same is true for the other compositions he comments on: he clarifies the general philosophical meaning, but it does not occur to him to explain the metaphors. If we turn to the Convivio, we find something very similar. Indeed, it is curious that, in explaining “Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona” (and I would argue that the verb “ragiona” [“reasons, speaks”] is already a first metaphorical expression, to say nothing of the fourth verse, in which the intellect “disvia” [“goes off track”]), not only does Dante fail to explain his metaphors, but, in order to explain the profound meaning of his poem, he employs liberal quantities of additional metaphors as if they were readily comprehensible: “Lo quale amore poi, trovando la mia disposta vita al suo ardore, a guisa di fuoco, di picciolo in grande fiamma s’accese; sì che non solamente vegghiando, ma dormendo, lume di costei nella mia testa era guidato” (“Finding my life disposed toward ardor, this love later blazed up like a fire, from a small to a great flame, so that not only while I was awake but also during my sleep the light of her penetrated my mind”), going on to speak of the “abitaculo del mio amore” (“the dwelling of my love”), its “multiplicato incendio” (“spreading fire”), and so on. Similarly, apropos of “Voi che ’ntendendo,” whereas the canzone itself, philosophical in its content, does not contain many metaphors, in his commentary the author piles on metaphors intended to explain the text but which he makes no effort to explain, such as “trapassamento,” “vedovata vita,” “disposarsi a quella immagine,” “molta battaglia intra lo pensiero,” “rocca della mia mente,” and so on. For Dante too, then, metaphors are completely part of the literal (intended) meaning and do not require any effort of interpretation.

  We have only to observe what happens when in Epistola XIII to Cangrande della Scala he explains how the poet has attempted to render the ineffability of the divine vision. Dante obviously cites Pseudo-Dionysius, and, even if he had not done so, we would have known perfectly well where the theme of the unutterability of God came from. He further warns us that “multa namque per intellectum videmus quibus signa vocalia desunt: quod satis Plato insinuat in suis libris per assumptionem metaphorismorum” (“in fact with the aid of our intellect we see many things for which we lack verbal expressions: which is sufficiently demonstrated by Plato in his works when he makes use of metaphors”) (Epistola XIII, 29). And, even using a very conservative definition of whether an expression is used metaphorically, in Paradiso 33, 55–145, we can identify seventy-seven metaphors and similes—some of which are among the most striking in the poem. But throughout the Epistola, it does not even occur to Dante, who seems determined to explain everything, and brings in philosophy and theology to elucidate what it was he wanted to say, to comment upon these metaphors. When he cites the opening lines of the Paradiso, “The glory of him who moves all things / penetrates and shines throughout the universe,” he confines himself to saying that what he says is “bene dictum,” explaining that the glory of God “penetrat, quantum ad essentiam; resplendet, quantum ad esse” (“it penetrates as to its essence, it shines as to its being”) Epistola XIII, 23). He says, in other words, what philosophical purposes these two metaphors are used for, but he feels no need to say in what way glory (in any case already a metaphorical expression) can be said to penetrate and shine.

  3.6. The Symbolic Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius

  At this point it remains to be seen whether metaphor, having forfeited its cognitive function in poetry and in the text of Scripture, could still assume a revelatory function in a theory of divine names—where the challenge is to name someone whom no literal expression can give a proper account of.

  In the wake of Neo-Platonism, in the sixth century the idea of the One as unfathomable and contradictory enters the Christian world, through the agency of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (hereinafter “Dionysius”). In his works the Divinity is named negatively as something that is

  the Cause of all [and] is above all and is not inexistent, lifeless, speechless, mindless. It is not a material body, and hence has neither shape nor form, quality, quantity, or weight. It is not in any place and can neither be seen nor be touched. It is neither perceived nor is it perceptible. It suffers neither disorder nor disturbance and is overwhelmed by no earthly passion. It is not powerless and subject to the disturbances caused by sense perception. It passes through no change, decay, division, loss, no ebb and flow, nothing of which the senses may be aware. None of all this can be either identified with it nor attributed to it.…

  … It is not soul, or mind, nor does it possess imagination, conviction, speech, or understanding. Nor is it speech per se, understanding per se. It cannot be spoken of and it cannot be grasped by understanding. It is not number or order, greatness or smallness, equality or inequality, similarity or dissimilarity. It is not immovable, moving or at rest. It has no power, it is not power, nor is it light. It does not live, nor is it life. It is not a substance, nor is it eternity or time. It cannot be grasped by the understanding since it is neither knowledge nor truth. It is not kingship. It is not wisdom. It is neither one nor oneness, divinity nor goodness. Nor is it a spirit, in the sense in which we understand that term. (The Mystical Theology, trans. Luibheid, pp. 140–141)30

  And so on in this vein for page after page of dazzling mystical aphasia.

  How then can we speak of divine names? How can we do this if the Transcendent surpasses all discourse and all knowledge, if it abides beyond the reach of mind and of being, if it encompasses and circumscribes, embraces and anticipates all things, while itself eluding their grasp and escaping from any perception, imagination, opinion, name, discourse, apprehension, or understanding? (The Divine Names, trans. Luibheid, p. 53).

  Not knowing what else to name it, Dionysius calls the divinity “the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence” and “the ray of the divine shadow which is above everything that is” (p. 135). At first blush, these appear to be oxymorons, expressing a contradiction, and therefore the impossibility of an unambiguous definition; they are nonetheless oxymorons based upon metaphors.

  Dionysius, however, continues to insist that no metaphor or symbol can express the divine nature. But in so doing he swings back and forth between a kind of mystagogic attitude (under the influence of various non-Christian sources) and a symbolic theology, designed to help even the simple-minded comprehend the nature of God.

  From the mystagogic point of view God is ineffable, and the only way to speak adequately of him is to be silent: as we ascend from lower to higher things “we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing,” (The Mystical Theology, trans. Luibheid, p. 139). When someone speaks, it is to hide the divine mysteries from those who cannot penetrate them: “it is most fitting to the mysterious passages of scripture that the sacred and hidden truth about the celestial intelligences be concealed through the inexpressible and the sacred and be inaccessible to the hoi polloi. Not everyone is sacred, and, as scripture says, knowledge is not for everyone” (The Celestial Hierarchy, trans. Luibheid, p. 149). Symbolic discourses regarding God are “the protective garb of the understanding of what is ineffable and invisible to the common multitude” (Letter Nine, trans. Luibheid, p. 283).

  This mystagogic attitude is continually contradicted by the opposite attitude, the theophanic conviction (and it is this mode that will fascinate Eriugena) that, since God is the cause of all things, he is rightly nameless and yet all names are fitting, in the sense that every effect points back to its Cause (The Divine Names, trans. Luibheid, p. 56). In this way the form and figure of a man are attributed to God, or that of fire or a
mber, his ears are praised and his eyes and his hair, his countenance, his hands, his shoulders, his wings, his arms, his back, and his feet “They have placed around it such things as crowns, chairs, cups, mixing bowls and similar mysterious items” (The Divine Names, trans. Luibheid, pp. 56–57).

  The symbolic theology that attempts to make the nature of God comprehensible through similes or “aistheta symbola” (“perceptible symbols”) (Letter Nine, trans. Luibheid, p. 281) swings between these two extremes. Still, it must be clear that these symbolic references are always inadequate. Hence the need for these representations to display their feebly hyperbolic nature (if I too may be permitted an oxymoron):

  Furthermore, I doubt that anyone would refuse to acknowledge that incongruities are more suitable for lifting our minds up into the domain of the spiritual than similarities are. High-flown shapes could well mislead someone into thinking that the heavenly beings are golden or gleaming men, glamorous, wearing lustrous clothing, giving off flames which cause no harm, or that they have other similar beauties with which the word of God has fashioned the heavenly minds. It was to avoid this kind of misunderstanding among those incapable of rising above visible beauty that the pious theologians so wisely and upliftingly stooped to incongruous dissimilarities, for by doing this they took account of our inherent tendency toward the material and our willingness to be lazily satisfied by base images. At the same time they enabled that part of the soul which longs for the things above actually to rise up. Indeed the sheer crassness of the signs is a goad so that even the materially inclined cannot accept that it could be permitted or true that the celestial and divine sights could be conveyed by such shameful things. (The Celestial Hierarchy, trans. Luibheid, p. 150)