Commentary Par I 13-15

The invocation of God, even if as the "good Apollo," is, once one considers the poetic moment, almost a necessity. (Paulinus of Nola apostrophizes Christ as follows: "Salve o Apollo vere" [Save us, O true Apollo--Carmina II.51], as noted by Kantorowicz [Kant.1951.1], p. 228, among a plethora of similar expressions found in Greek [and some Latin] syncretistic passages.) Who else but God Himself can serve as the ultimate "muse" for a poem about the ultimate mysteries of the Christian faith? If the first two of these three verses indirectly but clearly associate Apollo with God (the word valore in verse 14 is used at least thrice again, undoubtedly to refer to the Power of God the Father [[Par I 107], [Par X 3], and [Par XXXIII 81]]), while the second indirectly but clearly associates Dante with St. Paul (see [Inf II 28], "lo Vas d'elezïone" [the Chosen Vessel]), since Dante, likewise, will be made God's chosen vessel (vaso). And what of the gift that this poet seeks? The "belovèd laurel," in this exalted context, becomes, rather than poetic fame, the true immortality of those who are blessed for eternity, another and better kind of immortality: the "laurel" granted by God to his immortal (i.e., saved) poet, rewarded, among other things, for having written, under His inspiration, of Him. In the Epistle to Cangrande, Dante offers the following explanation of the reason poets call on higher authority: "For they have need of invocation in a large measure, inasmuch as they have to petition the superior beings for something beyond the ordinary range of human powers, something almost in the nature of a divine gift" (tr. P. Toynbee -- the last phrase reads quasi divinum quoddam munus, representing an only slightly veiled reference to the theologized nature of his "Apollo"). For Dante's single use of the Latinism "muno," based on munus, see [Par XIV 33]. For a somewhat different view, one closer to the usual understanding, see Robin Kirkpatrick (Kirk.1978.1), pp. 108-11, who believes that in the invocation Dante seems to be seeking only an intellectual or philosophical competence. We should not forget, if we insist on the pagan valence of Apollo, that Dante has already twice "transvaluated" a pagan god into the Christian deity: see [Inf XXXI 92] and [Purg VI 118] for the expression sommo Giove (highest Jove). This is surely the same phenomenon that we witness here.

Do these "transvaluations" of the more usual understandings of poetic inspiration and success entirely erase the traces of their original reference among poets and their audiences? We are, after all, reading a poem. And we should have no doubt but that its human agent was as interested in earthly success as any other poet (and perhaps more than most). However, the context makes a pagan understanding of these grand poetic gestures at the same time both impossible and desirable. We are almost forced to recognize the divine claims made by this very human agent, but we are allowed to understand them in completely human terms as well. We find ourselves in a usual dilemma: if we take the truth claims made by the poet on behalf of his poem seriously, we feel greatly troubled (mortal agents are not allowed such claims unless they are demonstrably chosen, as, to Christian believers, was Paul); on the other hand, if we insist that these claims are in fact not true, we sense that we have failed to deal with something that, if it makes us uncomfortable, nonetheless must be dealt with; other poets do not make such stringent demands upon our belief. In another way of phrasing this, we can only say No after we have said Yes, that is, by understanding Dante's veiled claims, no matter what we eventually decide to think of them.