by
Damien F. Mackey
‘The immediate
parallelism of Dante’s “old man” is to King Nebuchadnezzar's dream in the
second book of Daniel. Here, the man is similarly fashioned, with a head of
gold, chest and arms of silver, a waist of bronze, and legs of iron. However,
both the feet in the Biblical passage are of iron mixed with clay, while in
Dante one foot is iron and the other is of clay’.
Some
Similarities
When reading through the life of Dante Alighieri
(dated to C13th-14th’s AD) one may find some likenesses to the Jewish prophet,
Daniel (c. 600 BC).
Possibly of nobility, like Daniel (1:3).
[Dante] was the
son of Alighiero di Bellincione Alighieri, a notary belonging to an ancient but
decadent
Guelph family, by his first
wife, Bella, who was possibly a daughter of Durante di Scolaio Abati, a
Ghibelline noble.
Kingdom [Italian empire] fell and was
succeeded by foreign power (Daniel 1:1-2).
A few months
after the poet's birth, the victory of Charles of Anjou over King Manfred at
Benevento (26 February,
1266)
ended the
power of the empire in Italy, placed a French dynasty upon the throne of Naples, and secured the predominance of
the
Guelphs in
Tuscany.
Good Education (Daniel 1:4, 20).
To take any part
in public life, it was
necessary
to be enrolled in one or other of
the "Arts" (the
guilds in which the burghers and artisans were banded together), and
accordingly Dante
matriculated in the guild of physicians and apothecaries.
Spoke out on justice matter and hence became
famed (Daniel, “Susanna”).
On 6 July, 1295,
he spoke in the General Council of the Commune in favour of some modification
in the Ordinances of Justice after which his name is frequently found recorded as speaking or voting in the various councils of the republic.
Famous Woman (Susanna again, but also
Wisdom).
Already Dante
had written his first book, the "Vita Nuova", or "New
Life", an exquisite medley of lyrical verse and poetic prose, telling the
story of his
love for
Beatrice, whom he had first seen at the end of his ninth year.
Beatrice, who was probably the daughter of Folco Portinari, and wife of Simone
de' Bardi, died in June, 1290, and the "Vita Nuova" was completed
about the year 1294. Dante's
love for her was purely
spiritual and mystical, the
amor amicitiae defined by
St. Thomas Aquinas:
"That which is
loved
in
love of friendship
is
loved simply and
for its own sake". Its resemblance to the
chivalrous worship that
the troubadours offered to married
women is merely
superficial.
The book is
dedicated to the Florentine poet, Guido Cavalcanti, whom Dante calls "the
first of my friends", and ends with the promise of writing concerning
Beatrice "what
has never before been written of any woman".
Ruling interdict (Daniel 6:9: “Wherefore king Darius signed the writing and the
interdict”.)
At the beginning
of 1300 the
papal
jubilee was proclaimed by
Boniface
VIII. It is
doubtful
whether Dante was among the
pilgrims
who flocked to
Rome.
Florence was in a disastrous condition, the ruling
Guelph party having split
into two factions, known as
Bianchi and
Neri,
"Whites" and "Blacks", which were led by Vieri de' Cerchi
and Corso Donati, respectively. On 7 May Dante was sent on an unimportant
embassy to San Gemignano. Shortly after his return he was elected one of the
six
priors who for two
months, together with the
gonfaloniere, formed the
Signoria,
the chief magistracy of the republic. His term of office was from 15 June to 15
August. Together with his colleagues. he confirmed the anti-Papal measures of
his predecessors, banished the leaders of both factions, and offered such
opposition to the
papal
legate, Cardinal Matteo d'Acquasparta, that the latter returned to
Rome and
laid Florence under
an interdict.
To be burned at stake (Daniel 3: Blazing
Furnace – Three Young Men).
On 1 November
Charles of Valois entered Florence with his troops, and restored the
Neri
to power. Corso Donati and his friends returned in triumph, and were fully
revenged on their opponents. Dante was one of the first victims. On a
trumped-up charge of hostility to the
Church and corrupt
practices, he was sentenced (27 January, 1302), together with four others, to a
heavy fine and perpetual exclusion from office. On 10 March, together with
fifteen others, he was further condemned, as contumacious,
to be burned to death, should he ever come into the power of the Commune.
Exile honour. Justice (Daniel was an exile).
A few years
before his exile Dante had married Gemma di Manetto Donati, a distant
kinswoman of Corso, by whom he had four children.
Dante now
withdrew from all active participation in politics. In one of his odes written
at this time, the "Canzone of the Three Ladies" (Canz. xx), he finds
himself visited in his banishment by Justice and her spiritual children,
outcasts even as he, and declares that, since such are his companions in
misfortune, he counts his exile an
honour.
Writer on Matters Divine (Daniel 5: ‘Call for Daniel, and he will tell you what
the writing means’).
His literary
work at this epoch centres round his rime, or lyrical poems, more
particularly round a series of fourteen canzoni or odes, amatory in
form, but partly allegorical and didactic in meaning, a splendid group of poems
which connect the "Vita Nuova" with the "Divina Commedia".
Lover of philosophy (Daniel 1:20: “In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king
questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and
enchanters in his whole kingdom”).
About this time
(1306-08) he began the "Convivio", or "Banquet" in Italian
prose, a kind of popularization of
Scholastic philosophy in
the form of a commentary upon his fourteen odes already mentioned. Only four of
the fifteen projected treatises were actually written, an introduction and
three commentaries. In allegorical fashion they tell us how
Dante became the
lover of Philosophy, that mystical lady whose soul is love and whose body is wisdom, she "whose true abode is in the most secret place of the
Divine Mind".
Disappears from scene (Nothing hear of
Daniel from early reign of Nebuchednezzar until reign of Belshazzar).
All certain traces
of Dante are now lost for some years.
On Monarchy (Daniel 4:27: ‘Therefore,
Your Majesty, be pleased to accept my advice: Renounce your sins by doing what
is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that
then your prosperity will continue’).
It was probably
in 1309, in anticipation of the emperor's coming to
Italy, that Dante wrote
his famous work on the monarchy, "De Monarchiâ", in three books.
Fearing lest he "should one day be convicted of the charge of the buried
talent", and
desirous of "keeping vigil for the good of the
world", he proceeds successively to show that such a single supreme
temporal monarchy as the empire is necessary for the well-being of the world, that the Roman people acquired universal sovereign
sway by Divine right, and that the authority of the emperor is not dependent
upon the
pope, but
descends upon him directly from the fountain of universal authority which is
God.
It is therefore the
special duty of the emperor to
establish freedom and peace "on
this threshing floor of mortality". Mr. Wicksteed (whose translation is
quoted) aptly notes that in the, "De Monarchiâ" "we first find
in its full maturity the general conception of the nature of man, of
government, and of human destiny, which was afterwards transfigured, without
being transformed, into the framework of the Sacred Poem".
Most wicked. (Daniel 4:17: ‘… the most High ruleth in the kingdom of
men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men’.)
Thence, on 31
March, he wrote to the Florentine Government (Epist. vi), "the most wicked Florentines within", denouncing them in
unmeasured language for their opposition to the emperor, and, on 16 April, to
Henry (Epist. vii), rebuking him for his delay, urging him to proceed at once
against the rebellious city, "this dire plague which is named
Florence".
Bad Decree (Daniel 6:8: ‘Now, Your Majesty, issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot
be altered--in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians’).
By a decree of
2 September (the reform of Baldo d'Aguglione), Dante is included in the list of
those who are
permanently excepted from all amnesty and grace by the commune of Florence.
Joined emperor Pisa (Daniel 8:2: ‘In this vision I was at the fortress of Susa …’).
In the spring of
1312 he seems to have gone with the other exiles to join the emperor
at Pisa, and
it was there that
Petrarch,
then a child in his eighth year, saw his great predecessor for the only time.
And Jeremiah/Jeremias (Daniel 9:2: ‘I, Daniel,
learned from reading the word of the LORD, as revealed to Jeremiah the prophet …’).
Reverence for
his fatherland,
Leonardo
Bruni tells us, kept Dante from accompanying the imperial army that vainly
besieged Florence in September and October; nor do we
know what became of him
in the disintegration of his party on the emperor's death in the following
August, 1313. A vague tradition makes him take refuge in the
convent of Santa Croce di
Fonte Avellana near
Gubbio.
It was possibly from thence that, after the death of
Clement V, in 1314, he
wrote his noble letter to the
Italian cardinals (Epist. viii),
crying aloud with
the voice of Jeremias, urging them to
restore the
papacy to
Rome.
Part Two: Some More Comparisons
Condemned to death. Pardoned (Daniel 2:24,
also Fiery Furnace incident).
A little later,
Dante was at
Lucca
under the protection of Uguccione della Faggiuola, a
Ghibelline soldier who
had temporarily made himself lord of that city. Probably in consequence of his
association with Uguccione the Florentines
renewed the sentence of death against the poet (6 Nov. 1315), his two sons being included in the
condemnation. In 1316 several decrees of amnesty were passed, and (although
Dante was undoubtedly excluded under a provision of 2 June) some attempt was
made to get it extended to him.
Ideal ruler (Daniel 2:36-38, “Head of Gold”)
The poet's
answer was his famous letter to an unnamed Florentine friend (Epist. ix),
absolutely refusing to return to his country under shameful conditions. He now
went again to
Verona, where
he found his ideal of knightly manhood realized in Can Grande della Scala, who
was ruling a large portion of Eastern
Lombardy as imperial
vicar, and in whom he doubtless saw a possible future deliverer of
Italy. It is a plausible
theory, dating from the fifteenth century, that identifies Can Grande with the
"Veltro", or greyhound, the hero whose advent is prophesied at the
beginning of the "Inferno",
who is to effectuate the imperial ideals of the "De
Monarchiâ", and succeed where Henry of Luxemburg had failed.
Paradiso and its Explanation (Daniel’s
Heavenly Vision, 7:9-10, 13-14 and Interpretation, 15-28).
In 1317
(according to the more probable
chronology) Dante settled
at
Ravenna, at the
invitation of Guido Novello da Polenta. Here he completed the "Divina
Commedia". From
Ravenna
he wrote the striking letter to Can Grande (Epist. x), dedicating
the
"Paradiso" to him,
commenting upon its first canto, and
explaining the intention and allegorical meaning of the whole
poem.
Laurel crown of Bologna turned down (Daniel
5:17 turns down King Belshazzar’s honours: “You may keep your
gifts for yourself and give your rewards to someone else”).
A letter in
verse (1319) from Giovanni del Virgilio, a lecturer in Latin at the
University of Bologna,
remonstrating with him for treating such lofty themes in the vernacular,
inviting him to come and
receive the laurel crown in that City, led Dante to
compose his first "Eclogue" a delightful poem in pastoral Latin
hexameters, full of human kindness and gentle humour. In it
Dante expresses his
unalterable resolution to receive the laurel from Florence alone, and proposes to win his correspondent to an
appreciation of vernacular poetry by the gift of ten cantos of the
"Paradiso".
Divina Commedia relates a vision (Daniel is
a man of dreams and visions).
The "Divina
Commedia" is an allegory of
human life,
in the form of a
vision of the world beyond the grave,
written avowedly with the object of converting a corrupt
society to righteousness:
"to remove those living in this life from the state of misery, and lead
them to the state of
felicity".
It is composed of a hundred cantos, written in the measure known as
terza
rima, with its normally hendecasyllabic lines and closely linked rhymes,
which Dante so modified from the popular poetry of his day that it may be
regarded as his own invention. He is relating, nearly twenty years after the
event,
a vision
which was granted to him (for his own
salvation when leading
a
sinful life) during
the year of jubilee, 1300, in which for seven days (beginning on the morning of
Good Friday) he passed
through
hell,
purgatory, and
paradise, spoke with the
souls in each realm, and
heard what the
Providence
of God had in store for himself and to world. The framework of the poem
presents the dual scheme of the "De Monarchiâ" transfigured.
Beasts, Mountain (Daniel 7, Dream of Four
Beasts, and 2:34 Mountain).
Virgil,
representing human philosophy acting in accordance with the moral and
intellectual virtues,
guides Dante by the light of natural reason from the dark wood of alienation
from
God (where
the beasts of lust pride, and avarice drive
man back from ascending
the Mountain of the Lord), through
hell and
purgatory to the earthly
paradise, the state of
temporal
felicity,
when spiritual liberty has been regained by the
purgatorial pains.
Sight of God (Daniel’s Heavenly Vision,
7:9-10, 13-14).
Beatrice,
representing Divine philosophy illuminated by revelation, leads him thence, up
through the nine moving heavens of
intellectual preparation,
into the
true paradise, the spaceless
and timeless empyrean, in which the blessedness of eternal life is found in the
fruition of
the
sight of God.
Sun and stars (Daniel 12:3).
There her place
is taken by
St. Bernard,
type of the loving contemplation in which the eternal life of the
soul consists, who
commends him to the
Blessed
Virgin, at whose intercession he obtains a foretaste of the
Beatific Vision, the poem
closing with all powers of knowing and loving fulfilled and consumed in the
union of the understanding with the Divine Essence, the will made one with the
Divine Will, "the Love that moves
the sun and the other stars".
Victim persecution and injustice, burning
with zeal (Daniel 6, Den of Lions).
Himself the victim
of persecution and injustice, burning with zeal for the reformation and renovation of the
world, Dante's impartiality is, in
the main, sublime. He is the man (to adopt his own phrase) to whom Truth
appeals from her immutable throne ….
Lofty mountain (Daniel 2:34), rising out of
ocean (Daniel 7:2).
The
"Purgatorio", perhaps the most artistically perfect of the three
canticles, owes less to the beauty of the separate episodes. Dante's conception
of
purgatory as
a lofty mountain, rising out of the
ocean in the southern hemisphere, and leading up to the
Garden of Eden, the
necessary preparation for
winning back the earthly
paradise,
and with it all the prerogatives lost by man at the fall of Adam, seems
peculiar to him; nor do we find elsewhere the purifying process carried on
beneath the sun and stars, with the beauty of transfigured nature only eclipsed
by the splendour of the
angelic
custodians of the seven terraces.
Beatrice on banks of Lethe (Daniel 8:16
Angel on banks of river Ulai).
The meeting with
Beatrice on the banks of Lethe, with
Dante's personal confession of an unworthy past, completes the story of the
"Vita Nuova" after the bitter experiences and disillusions of a
lifetime.
Works of Dante considered spurious (Many
sceptics of Book of Daniel).
The title of
father of modern Dante scholarship unquestionably belongs to Karl Witte
(1800-83), whose labours set students of the nineteenth century on the right
path both in interpretation and in textual research. More recently, mainly
through the influence of G.A. Scartazzini (d. 1901), a wave of excessive scepticism swept over the
field, by which the traditional events of Dante's life were regarded as little
better than fables and the majority of his letters and even some of his minor
works were declared to be spurious.
Hebrew prophet (Daniel was indeed that).
Never, perhaps,
has Dante's fame stood so high as at the present day, when he is universally
recognized as ranking with Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, and
Shakespeare, among the
few supreme poets of the world.
It has been well observed that his inspiration resembles that
of the Hebrew prophet more than that of
the poet as ordinarily understood.
Part Three:
Dante ‘Becomes’ Nebuchednezzar
Dante’s “inspiration resembles that of the Hebrew prophet more than that of the poet as
ordinarily understood”. So we read in Part
Two. But it has also been said (see below): “Dante is to
Nebuchadnezzar as Beatrice is to Daniel”.
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“Why should Dante have cast himself as the tyrannical
Babylonian ruler?”
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For some
incredible likenesses to the Book of Daniel in Dante’s writings it may suffice to quote from the following two intriguing
articles:
Robert Hollander
(Princeton University)
17 May 2005
Paradiso 4.14: Dante
as Nebuchadnezzar?
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The following
passage, a simile, apparently establishes a four-way typological analogy,
three terms of which are disclosed, and one of which is not expressed, but is
understood easily and by all who have dealt with this text. At the same time,
it has always caused displeasure or avoidance in its readers:
Fé
sì Beatrice qual fé Danïello,
Nabuccodonosor levando d'ira,
che l'avea fatto ingiustamente fello;
(Par. 4.13-15)
The cast of
characters of this passage also (and obviously) includes the protagonist,
even if he is not named in it. And indeed, all readily agree that, in this
"equation," Dante is to Nebuchadnezzar as Beatrice is to Daniel.
The problem only begins once we have come that far.
Dante
has accustomed his readers to understanding his typological analogies
readily. One such that usefully comes to mind with reference to our passage
is found farther along in Paradiso, the allusion to the figurally
related pair Ananias/Beatrice and its unexpressed but pellucidly clear
companion duo, in similar relation, Saul of Tarsus/Dante:
"perché
la donna che per questa dia
regïon ti conduce, ha ne lo sguardo
la virtù ch'ebbe la man d' Anania ."
(Par. 26.10-12)
While not all
aspects of this quadripartite relation have proven to be easily assimilated
(for instance, what exactly Beatrice's gaze represents), it is probably fair
to say that its basic business has escaped no one: Dante, blinded by the
presence of St. John, is assured by him that he will soon regain his sight by
the ministrations of Beatrice, who will serve as the new Ananias to his Saul
(Acts 9:8-18), blinded on the road to Damascus.
To return to
our less well understood simile, we find that it puts into parallel Beatrice
(placating Dante's anxiety) and Daniel (stilling Nebuchadnezzar's wrath). It
thus also necessarily puts into parallel Dante and Nebuchadnezzar, a relation
that at first makes no sense at all [1].
The poet has earlier in the Commedia visited
this biblical text (found in the second book of the prophet Daniel), the
account of the king's dream and Daniel's interpretation of it (see Inf.
14.94-111 for Dante's version of that dream, embodied in the representation
of the veglio di Creta ). Here he fastens on its perhaps strangest
aspect: the new king's desire to kill all the wise men in his kingdom of
Babylon who could neither bring his forgotten dream back to mind nor then
interpret it � about as
untoward a royal prerogative as anyone has ever sought to enjoy. Thus it
seems natural to wonder in what way Dante may possibly be conceived of as
being similar to the wrathful king of Babylon . The entire commentary
tradition observes only a single link: Nebuchadnezzar's displeasure and
Dante's puzzlement are both finally relieved by (divinely inspired � see Trucchi on these verses [2])
external intervention on the part of Daniel, in the first case, and then of
Beatrice. However, saying that is akin to associating Joseph Stalin and
Mother Teresa on the nearly meaningless grounds that both were among the most
famous people of their time. Why should Dante have cast himself as the
tyrannical Babylonian ruler? That is a question that has only stirred the
edges of the ponds in the commentaries and has never had a sufficient answer.
If we turn to the work of my friend Lino Pertile, we find that he, after
correctly noting the verbal playfulness of the tercet ("Fé... fé...
l'avea fatto... fello" [we might want to compare Par. 7.10-12:
"Io dubitava e dicea 'Dille, dille! / fra me, 'dille' dicea, 'a la mia
donna / che mi diseta con le dolci stille'," an even more notably--and
playfully--overwrought tercet]), characterizes this simile as being
"hyperbolic and distracting rather than illuminating." [3]
That is because Pertile, like almost everyone else
(and perhaps understandably), believes that "Beatrice might reasonably
be compared to Daniel, but the analogy between Dante's tongue-tying
intellectual anxiety and Nebuchadnezzar's wrath is hardly fitting." [4]
That, this writer must confess, was until very
recently his own view of the matter. [5]
However, if one looks in the Epistle to Cangrande (77-82),
one finds a gloss to Par. 1.4-9 that is entirely germane here. And
apparently, in the centuries of discussion of this passage, only G.R.
Sarolli, in his entry "Nabuccodonosor" in the Enciclopedia
dantesca[6],
has noted the striking similarity in the two texts,
going on to argue that such similarity serves as a further proof of the
authenticity of the epistle. [7]
In that passage Dante explains that his forgetting of
his experience of the Empyrean (because he was lifted beyond normal human
experience and could not retain his vision) has some egregious precursors:
St. Paul, three of Jesus's disciples, Ezekiel (such visionary capacity
certified by the testimony of Richard of St. Victor, St. Bernard, and St.
Augustine); and then he turns to his own unworthiness to be included in such
company (if not hesitating to insist on the fact that he had been the
recipient of exactly the same sort of exalted vision): "Si vero in
dispositionem elevationis tante propter peccatum loquentis oblatrarent,
legant Danielem, ubi et Nabuchodonosor invenient contra peccatores aliqua
vidisse divinitus, oblivionique mandasse" [But if on account of the
sinfulness of the speaker (Dante himself, we want to remember) they should
cry out against his claim to have reached such a height of exaltation, let
them read Daniel, where they will find that even Nebuchadnezzar by divine
permission beheld certain things as a warning to sinners, and straightway
forgot them]. [8]
Dante, like the Babylonian king, has had a vision that
was God-given, only to forget it. And now he is, Nebuchadnezzar-like,
distraught; Beatrice, like the Hebrew prophet, restores his calm. It is worth
observing that Dante's way of stating what Daniel accomplished is set forth
in negative terms: He helped the king put off the wrath that had made him
unjustly cruel; the poet does not say Daniel restored the dream, the loss of
which caused the king to become angry with his wise men in the first place.
But that is precisely what we are meant to conclude, as the text of the
epistle makes still clearer. Thus the typological equation here is not
otiose; Dante is the new Nebuchadnezzar in that both of them, if far
from being holy men (indeed both were sinners), were nonetheless permitted
access to visionary experience of God, only to be unable to retain their
visions in memory. The king enters this perhaps unusual history, that of
those who, less than morally worthy, forgot the divine revelation charitably
extended to them, as the first forgetter; Dante, as the second. This is
exactly the sort of spirited, self-conscious playfulness that we expect from
this greatest of poets, who doubled as his own commentator. And that
commentator, in the Epistle to Cangrande, was not only the first to
deal with this passage but the only one to have got it right. [9]
[1]
If one also considers Dante's other typological reference to the book of
Daniel (6:22; see Mon. III.i.1), where Dante compares himself to the
prophet in the lions' den, one quickly understands the non-binding nature of
any particular identity in his series of self-definitions. See note 5 for his
drawing attention to himself as David or as Uzzah, depending on the
context in which he is working.
[2] Ernesto Trucchi, comm. to Par. 4.13-15, DDP.
[3] Lino Pertile, " Paradiso IV," in Dante's
"Divine Comedy," Introductory Readings III: "Paradiso," ed.
Tibor Wlassics ( Lectura Dantis [virginiana], 16-17, supplement,
1995), p. 50.
[5] But see an earlier study of another figural construction
in which Dante is observed connecting himself as antitype to an entirely
negative precursor in surprisingly positive terms: Robert Hollander,
"Dante as Uzzah? ( Purg. X.57 and Epistle XI.9-12),"
in Sotto il segno di Dante: Scritti in onore di Francesco Mazzoni,
ed. L. Coglievina & D. De Robertis (Florence: Le Lettere, 1999), pp.
143-51. In that instance also the meaning of a passage in the poem is
deepened by one in an epistle, if in that case the Latin text may have
preceded the vernacular one, as is almost certainly not true in this.
[6] ED IV, 1973, p. 1a. For an independent and similar
argument (without reference to Sarolli's voce), see Albert
Ascoli, "Dante after Dante," in Dante for the New Millennium,
ed. T. Barolini and H.W. Storey (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003),
pp. 358-59 & nn.
[7] Sarolli continues, brushing aside the traditional
commentator's explanation, which focuses on the Daniel/Beatrice typology by
simply avoiding the Nebuchadnezzar/Dante one, to speculate that what is
really at stake is the parallelism Babylonian wise men/Plato, a pairing that simply
doesn't compute. (The wise men are not wrong; Plato is--or at least his
ideas, in their raw form, are deeply culpable.)
[8] Epistola XIII.81, ed. E. Pistelli (SDI, 1960);
tr. P. Toynbee (both cited from the Princeton Dante Project).
[9] Whatever doubt remains concerning the authenticity of
the epistle has been effectively and considerably challenged by a recent
study: Luca Azzetta, "Le chiose alla Commedia di Andrea Lancia,
l' Epistola a Cangrande e altre questioni dantesche," L'Alighieri
21 (2003): 5-76.
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An Image of Man
Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto XIV, Lines
103-116
What makes a man? According
to nursery rhymes the ingredients include snips and snails and puppy dog tails;
according to modern times the ingredients are dollars and bills, gold and
silver. According to Dante, the image of every man is revealed in the
fourteenth canto of the Inferno with the allegory of the "old
man" beneath Mount Ida from whom the three mythological rivers spring, and
who is made of gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay. But is this a man, this
concoction of various elements? And is this everyman? Dante's answer
would be 'yes,' followed by an injunction to 'look deeper.'
Taking Dante's
command to heart, the immediate parallelism of this "old man" is to
King Nebuchadnezzar's dream in the second book of Daniel. Here, the man is
similarly fashioned, with a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, a waist of
bronze, and legs of iron. However, both the feet in the Biblical passage are of
iron mixed with clay, while in Dante one foot is iron and the other is of clay.
Daniel explains the
various metals as the succession of empires after the "golden age" of
Nebuchadnezzar. In the dream, a stone "cut out by no human hand (Daniel
2:34)" smites the base, cracking every layer of the statue. The image
crumbles, blown away by the wind, and the stone becomes a mountain. Dante's man
is likewise fissured, but no reason is given for the disfigurement. Here the
golden head remains intact, and no mountain takes the place of the statue in
the Inferno, but "from the splay/of that great rift run tears
(Canto XIV, ln. 112-113)" which form three of the four mythological
rivers: Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon.
The similarity
between the two images is striking, and one must assume that Dante expected his
Medieval audience to draw such an obvious connection. It remains to the reader
to probe the deeper meanings. Biblical scholars have long held that
Nebuchadnezzar's dream was not merely a prophecy about the King's own reign and
the empires after him, but a foreshadowing of the Reign of God, as symbolized
by the victorious mountain. In Dante's Divine Comedy, Christ has already
come through Hell (Canto IV, ln. 52-63) and liberated the righteous - the stone
has already cracked the statue and become a mountain. The Reign of God
proclaimed by the Gospels and symbolized by the mountain has come to pass. In
Dante's geography, the "great old man stands under the mountain's mass
(Canto XIV, ln. 159)." This mountain may be either Calvary or Purgatory,
both "ladders" to the Heavenly Kingdom.
Daniel explains that
the feet of the King's statue that are made of iron mixed with clay represents
an ill-made empire that shall be a "divided kingdom" with "some
of the firmness of iron…in it," that is "partly strong and partly
brittle," "mix[ed] with one another in marriage, but they will not
hold together (Daniel 2:41-43)." By separating the two substances so that
one leg is iron and the other clay, Dante shows a more completely "divided
kingdom." Some scholars have argued that this may represent or prefigure
our own modern separation of church and state. Secular critics have made the
case that the "right foot…baked of the earthen clay,/…the foot upon which
he chiefly stands (Canto XIV, ln. 110-111)" is the Church herself,
"weakened and corrupted by temporal concerns and political power struggles
(Musa, 77)." This may certainly have been one of Dante's multilayered
meanings, but is not necessarily the only allegory.
The old man is mentioned as Virgil and Dante enter the Burning Sands
after the Wood of the Suicides in Hell. These two rings are reserved for those
violent against the Self (suicides), God (blasphemers), Nature (Sodomites) and
Art (usurers). The iron foot is described in Daniel as that metal that
"breaks to pieces and shatters all things…it crushes (Daniel 2:40)."
Iron is the element associated with weaponry and war - a violent element
appropriate to the circle of the violent. 
Clay, often used as a
symbol for man's human frailty, may be one answer to the riddle of the right
foot. The people in Hell fell because they relied on their own flawed humanity
rather than the divine providence or intellect, which the unshattered golden
head may symbolize.
