1. The conclusions arrived at by Nardi are more than sufficient to indicate that, as in his artistic representation of the after-life, so in his trend of thought Dante betrays signs of Arabic influence. Should further proof of our thesis be required, the poet’s philosophical system might be traced back to its actual sources in Islam, which are to be found not so much among the philosophers as in the works of the Illuministic Mystics, and of the Murcian Ibn Arabi in particular. The Illuministic, or Ishraqi and pseudo-Empedoclean school, was founded by Ibn Masarra of Cordova; and from Spain its ideas were transmitted to the so-called Augustinian scholastics, among others to Alexander Hales, Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, and Raymond Lull. As has been shown in the discussion of the Paradiso, an essential part of Ishraqi teaching—the metaphysical doctrine of light—reappears in the Divine Comedy, where it is illustrated, moreover, by the same symbols as are used by the Moslem mystics. Creation, too, is conceived as an emanation of Divine light, the teleological cause of which is love, and its primary effects, universal and formless matter.[650] Thus a new vista is opened up. Seen in this wise, Dante would appear to have been but one more follower of the Illuministic school, and pre-eminent by his art alone. It has been demonstrated above that almost all of the artistic forms used in Ibn Arabi’s picture of the realms beyond the grave were reproduced a century later in the Divine Comedy. The suggestion now presents itself that many of the Illuministic theories of Dante were derived from the same Ibn Arabi, the leading exponent of Ishraqi ideas, rather than from the other Arabic philosophers with whose systems Nardi compares them.
2. The solution of this problem is beyond the limits of the task at present before us, which is restricted to the search for evidence of a leaning on Dante’s part towards Islamic culture. Nevertheless, it may be of interest to establish a general parallel between the two thinkers, Dante and Ibn Arabi. This should bear, not so much upon the ideas common to both, as upon the images and symbols by which they gave expression to these ideas and the literary devices to which both writers resort to expound their views. As already stated, coincidence in imaginative detail more readily suggests imitation than sympathy in doctrine, although, naturally, conviction is strengthened when both ideas and images agree.
As regards the images, Ibn Arabi uses the same symbols as Dante to express the metaphysics of light, an essential part of the thought of both. God is pure light, and his manifestation ad extra is described by similes of light—diffusion, illumination, reflexion and irradiance—which are all typical of Dante’s imaginings. The metaphor of the mirror, used by Dante to exemplify the influence of superior upon inferior beings, appears, like that of the flame of the candle, frequently in the works of Ibn Arabi. The geometrical symbol of the circle and its centre, representing the cosmos and its Divine principle, recurs even more often in Ibn Arabi than in Dante, and gives rise to similar paradoxes in the works of both writers. As light is the symbol of God and His manifestations, so is darkness of matter. Opacity and transparency respectively characterise the body and the mind in both Dante’s and Ibn Arabi’s conception.
3. A comparison of the expository methods of the two authors will prove still more interesting. The cabbala of letters and numbers is seen from all his works to be an obsession of Dante. Secret virtues are attributed to special numbers, or the numerical values of certain letters are associated with their ideological values. The flavour of occultism thus imparted to Dante’s style is exactly like that found in all the works of Ibn Arabi, whose worship at the cabbalistic shrine argues the sincerity of his conviction. Entire chapters of his Futuhat and whole books are devoted to this superstition; and he even goes so far as to base many of his philosophical demonstrations on the numerical relations thus established.
Another superstition common to the two writers is their belief in astrology. It is needless to dwell upon the many passages in the Divine Comedy and the Convito that testify to the blind faith shown by Dante in the absurd subtleties of astrology. Ibn Arabi, in his whimsical conceits, indulges in still wilder flights of fancy.[651]
The literary artifice of personifying abstract entities is seen in Dante’s Vita Nuova, where the vital, the animal, the visual and natural spirits reason and discourse with one another. Ibn Arabi has no equal in the use, or rather abuse, of prosopopoeia. God and His names, the spirits of Being and of Nothingness, Matter and Shape, engage at each step in the Futuhat in lengthy discussions, like persons of flesh and blood.
Finally, whole passages in the Vita Nuova and the Divine Comedy, which purport to be autobiographical, are devoted to the description and mystical interpretation of dream visions. Ibn Arabi also narrates a multitude of dreams, hidden in which he discovers the loftiest metaphysical thought.
4. Of all the visions thus described by Dante, one is of particular interest.[652]
Dante in a dream sees a youth robed in white, seated near him in a pensive attitude. The youth sighs, as he raises his eyes to him, and to Dante’s question why he is so sad, replies: “Ego tamquam centrum circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentiae partes; tu autem non sic.” The poet calls upon him to explain the meaning of this symbol, but the youth replies: “Non dimandar più che utile ti sìa.”
Common in the extreme among Moslem mystics is the dream vision of God appearing to them in the image of a youth. A hadith attributed to the ninth-century traditionist, Tabrani, tells how Mahomet first saw the vision.
I saw the Lord my God in a dream—begins the hadith—seated on a stool, a beardless youth of great beauty....[653]
Ibn Arabi himself claims to have seen similar visions, in which his Divine beloved, God, appeared to him in human form.[654]
“These apparitions,” he says, “left me in such a state that for days I could take no food. Each time that I sat down to eat He appeared standing at the end of the table, gazing upon me and saying in words that I actually heard, ‘and wilt thou eat in My presence?’ and eat I could not. In truth I felt no hunger, for His presence filled and well-nigh intoxicated me ... for throughout those days His vision haunted me wheresoe’er I went.”
True, none of these visions contains the same cryptic words that Dante places in the mouth of the youth. But these words undeniably have their interpretation in the metaphysics of Ibn Arabi. In his geometrical symbolism, God is the independent centre of a circle and His creatures the points on the circumference, that are dependent for their existence on the centre. God, then, is the centre of gravity towards which all creatures are drawn by the love inspired in them by the infinite beauty of the Divine essence.[655]
It may be argued that this interpretation does not necessarily furnish the key to the enigma of Dante’s vision, but it does offer an explanation. In the obscure words attributed to the youth Dante would indeed seem to express the love he felt in his heart towards God, the centre of creation. This is the very doctrine he unfolded later in the Divine Comedy, where he asserts that the entire universe is swayed by the love of God, which is the principal and the final goal of all movement.[656]
5. Coincidences of literary artifice even more striking will be found by comparing the Cancionero and the Convito with two books of Ibn Arabi, “The Interpreter of Love” and its commentary, “The Treasures of Lovers.”[657] Indeed, it will be seen that the literary principles underlying the works of both authors are the same. The intermingling of verse with prose, which is characteristic of the Convito, is to be found in almost all the works of Ibn Arabi, but no two works of the poets coincide so remarkably as “The Interpreter of Love” and the Convito. Both poets represent their work to be autobiographical, and the theme and mode of expression in each are almost identical.
In the Convito Dante declares his intention to interpret the esoteric meaning of fourteen love songs which he had composed at an earlier date and the subject of which had led to the erroneous belief that they dealt with sensual rather than intellectual love. The poet desires to clear himself of the accusation of sensuality, and thus has written the Convito as a commentary on those songs and in explanation of the allegory underlying the literal meaning.
The literal sense is the love of the poet for a fair and virtuous maiden, learned yet modest and devout, of a winning grace and courteous manner, whose bodily and moral perfections the poet extols in an outburst of impassioned verse. Beneath this cloak of voluptuousness Dante avers there is hidden the love for the Divine science of philosophy, personified by the maiden. Her eyes represent the demonstrations of wisdom; her smiles, its persuasions; the rays of love that descend from the heaven of Venus upon the lover are the philosophical books; and the love-sick sighs he heaves are symbolic of the anguish of the mind tortured by doubt and the longing for truth.[658]
Finally, Dante explains how he came to write the original songs. One day after the death of his beloved Beatrice, Dante is walking alone, when of a sudden he meets a gentle maiden of great beauty and learning, with whom he falls in love; not daring to declare his passion, he seeks solace in the ecstatic contemplation of his idol and sings his emotions in melancholy rhymes.[659]
An identical occurrence and motive inspired Ibn Arabi to compose the love poems contained in his “Interpreter of Love” and write the commentary upon it known as the “Treasures of Lovers.” In the prologue to the commentary the author furnishes an explanation, of which the following is a summary:
When I resided at Mecca in the year 598 (1201 A.D.) I made the acquaintance of a number of worthy people, pre-eminent among whom was the learned doctor Zahir ibn Rustam, a native of Ispahan, who had taken up his abode at Mecca. This master had a daughter, a tall and slender maiden. Virtuous, learned, devout and modest, she was a feast for the eyes and bound in chains of love all who beheld her. Were it not that pusillanimous minds are ever prone to think evil, I would dwell at greater length upon the qualities with which God had endowed both her body and her soul, which was a garden of generous feeling.
It was from her that I drew the inspiration for the poems, telling of the sweet fancies of a lover. In them I sought to convey some of the passionate feelings treasured in my heart and to express the tender longings of my soul in words that should suggest how dearly I loved her and how the thought of her filled my mind in those bygone days as it haunts me even now. Thus every name mentioned in this work refers to her, and hers is the dwelling of which I sing. But also, in these verses I make constant allusion to spiritual revelations and to relations with the Intelligences of the Divine spheres. This is customary in our allegorical style, for to our mind the things of the future life are preferable to those of this world; moreover, she herself knew full well the hidden meaning underlying my verse. God forbid that the reader should attribute unworthy thoughts to the writers of poetry such as this—men whose aims are loftier and who aspire but to the things of heaven.
My reason for composing this allegorical commentary upon my songs was that my pupils had consulted me about them. They had heard learned moralists of Aleppo deny that holy mysteries lay hidden in my poems and allege that, in trying to affirm this, I merely sought to conceal the sensual love which I had felt. I therefore set to work to write this commentary upon all the amorous poems I had composed during my stay at Mecca in the months of Recheb, Shaban, and Ramadan. In all these poems I constantly allude to spiritual mysteries and to the teachings of philosophy and ethics. If, to express these lofty thoughts, I used the language of love, it was because the minds of men are prone to dally with such amorous fancies and would thus be more readily attracted to the subject of my songs.
Ibn Arabi then introduces a fragment from his book of songs, in which he enumerates the more usual among his poetic metaphors and interprets their general allegorical meaning. He adds:
“All these figures of speech should be regarded as symbolic of sublime mysteries and Divine illuminations vouchsafed to me by the Lord God. Turn thy thoughts, oh! reader, from the mere words and seek the hidden meaning that thou mayest understand.”
Having thus duly warned the reader, Ibn Arabi begins his commentary with the fictitious story of the vision of a beautiful maiden.
“One night,” he says, “I was in the temple of the Caaba, walking, as required by rite, round and round the holy dwelling. My mind felt at ease and a strange peace overcame my soul. To be alone, I went out of the temple and started to walk along the roadway. As I walked, I recited aloud some verses, when, of a sudden, I felt a hand softer than velvet touch me on the shoulder. I turned and lo! a Greek maiden stood before me. Never had I beheld so beautiful a countenance, nor heard so soft a voice; never had I met a woman more endearing or with speech so refined, who expressed such lofty thoughts in more subtle language. Verily she surpassed all the women of her day in delicacy of mind, in literary culture, in beauty and in learning....”
Prefacing his work with the narration of this fictitious episode in his life, which he alleges led to the composition of his songs, the author proceeds to give the allegorical meaning of each verse. His beloved, he explains, is the symbol of Divine wisdom[660]; her virgin breasts, the nectar of its teachings; the smile on her lips, its illuminations.[661] Her eyes are the emblems of light and revelation.[662] The mournful sighs of the lover represent the spiritual longings of the soul.[663] Among a host of other subjects, the author deals with the origin and destiny of the human soul, the nature and phenomena of love, and the essence of spiritual beauty. In matters of faith, he discusses the relations between reason and belief, the hidden trinal sense of the conception of God, the transcendental value of universal religion in comparison with other religions, and Islam as a religion of love.
6. The coincidence here shown between the Convito of Dante and the Treasures of Ibn Arabi may prove of further interest, as furnishing an answer to the vexed question of the origin of that form of lyrical poetry known in Italy as dolce stil nuovo. In this new school of poetry, of which Guido Guinicelli, Guido Cavalcanti and Dante were the contemporary creators, the theme of each song is love. The emotion of the poet at the sight or remembrance of his beloved is described in two forms—either it is a mystical adoration, a sweet beatitude of the soul that in ecstasy longs for spiritual union with its beloved and thus strives heavenward; or else it is an affliction of the heart torn by anguish, a morbid fever that consumes the life blood of the lover, a dread disorder of the mind that pervades his whole being and makes him long for the approach of death as a relief from the torture he is suffering. In subtle inquiry into the emotional processes of love, Cavalcanti stands supreme, more especially when dealing with love as an affliction. His songs are tragic outbursts of this mode of feeling which is found to a less degree in Guinicelli and Dante, who treat love rather as a gentle melancholy, or as an ecstatic contemplation or mystical and semi-religious aspiration.
Another characteristic of the stil nuovo poetry is the analysis and philosophic interpretation of the emotions. The psycho-physiological faculties and spirits controlling the heart are distinguished and even personified. This scholastic manner, which robs the poetry of much of its charm, is used to excess in Cavalcanti’s “Donna mi prega.”
The mere possession of the woman they love is far from being the sole desire of these poets. On the contrary, their elect appears to them rather as an ethereal image, a being who is worthy of Platonic love. Indeed to them real love lies, not in marriage, but rather in a perpetual state of chastity; and the figure of their beloved they idealise either as an angel of heaven or the symbol of Divine wisdom or philosophy. In either conception, she is the instrument by which God inspires the lover with noble feelings and sublime ideas. And so, earthly and heavenly love are merged in one.
Vossler has pointed out the absence in either classical or Christian literature of anything that might serve to account for this hybrid theory of a love that is at once earthly and spiritual; this curious and new form—to quote his own words—of Platonism, which yet is not directly derived from Plato.[664] There is nothing in the doctrine of the Church, in Ovid, or in Aristotle, to explain such an idealistic and romantic conception of woman, so spiritual a love, which, as Vossler says, must have appeared grotesque to the philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages. Vossler’s efforts to find an explanation are more remarkable as examples of ingenuity and erudition than they are convincing. The ideas expressed by the Italian poets of the dolce stil nuovo he traces back through the songs of Provençal troubadours to the chivalry and psychology of the Germanic race.
7. But Vossler’s argument, based on complicated transformations of social psychology, is brought to nought by one outstanding fact: far earlier than the first of those many stages, Islam in the East and in Spain had furnished works, both of prose and poetry, treating of love in the same romantic spirit.
The common prejudice—common both by its wide diffusion and the absence of all logical foundation—denying all idealism to the conception of love of the Arabs, and Moslems in general, is quite contrary to fact. The Yemen tribe of the Banu Odhra, or “Children of Chastity,” were famous for the manner in which they upheld the tradition of their name. “I am of a race that, when it loves, dies,” said one of them. Jamil, one of their most celebrated poets, died mad with love for his lady, Butayna, upon whom he had never dared lay hands. Two other poets of the same tribe, the lovers Orwa and Afra, died together consumed by the flame of a lifelong passion, which left them in a state of chastity to the end. The romanticism that prefers death to the defilement of the chaste union of the souls is a feature of all the melancholy and beautiful songs of these poets.[665] The example of abstinence and perpetual chastity set by the Christian monks of Arabia may well have influenced the Banu Odhra. The mysticism of the Sufis, directly inherited from the Christian hermits, also drew its inspiration from the lives and writings of the romantic poets of Arabia.[666] Regardless of the fact that neither the Koran nor the life of Mahomet himself furnishes the slightest ground for so idealistic an interpretation of love, they do not hesitate to attribute to the Prophet the saying: “He who loves and remains chaste unto death, dies a martyr.” Ibn Arabi adopts this motto[667]; and the doctrine is followed by many Sufis who, although married, stand as heroic examples of perpetual chastity. Thus idealised, the wife is no longer the sexual mate of the Sufi, but rather his companion or sister in asceticism; and his love for her is part of his love for God.
This new trend of thought is promptly reflected in the literature both of the East and the West. Ibn Daud of Ispahan, in his Book of Venus of the ninth century, analyses and defends romantic love. Ibn Hazm of Cordova, who lived in the eleventh century, has left us in his book called the “Necklace of the Dove,” but better known as the “Book of Love,” and in a smaller work, “Characters and Conduct,” a whole treatise dealing with the passion of love and breathing the purest romanticism.[668] He regards the essence of love as consisting not in the commerce of the bodies but in the union of the souls. Moreover, his “Necklace” abounds in authentic stories of Spanish Moslems, drawn from all ranks of society, whose love is Platonic and who render silent homage to their beloved and worship her with an almost mystical adoration. At times, in his anguish, the lover writes letters bathed in tears or even written in his blood. Many, in a paroxysm of despair, meet with a tragic end in madness or death.
But this romantic form of love, as sung by the poets of the Banu Odhra and described and classified in the books of Ibn Daud and Ibn Hazm is perhaps rather than ascetic continence an ultra-refinement of an erotic sensibility that has been worn out by excess. Accordingly, it appears at three epochs and in three centres that in this respect had reached the zenith of hyperæsthesia—in the Yemen, where the pre-Islamic poets had exhausted the theme of sensual love, and at the highly civilised courts of Baghdad and Cordova, where decadence had begun to set in.
8. We are thus still far from the Platonic conception of woman, idealised as an angel and a symbol of philosophy. The origin of this strange conception would seem to be due to an attempt to idealise the sensual coarseness of the Koranic paradise. The houris of the Koran, although celestial, are intended solely to be instruments of carnal delight. This idea was incompatible with the spiritual longings of the later Moslem mystics, who had been profoundly influenced by the asceticism preached and practised by the Christian monks. But it was impossible to eliminate from the Koran the verses proclaiming those sensual joys. The mystics, therefore, in their legends of the after-life replaced the houris by one celestial bride, a spiritual being whose love is chaste and whom God has appointed to each of the blessed.[669] In all those legends, this heavenly spouse is depicted as a guardian angel, who serves to inspire her lover with a desire for spiritual perfection and a greater love for God during his life on earth.
Later, when to the asceticism inherited from the Christian monks the Sufis applied a pantheistic and neo-Platonic form of metaphysics, the idealisation of sexual love reached the acme of subtlety and abstruseness. This has been shown by the erotic poems of Ibn Arabi, in which the beloved is a mere symbol of Divine wisdom and the passion felt for her allegorical of the union of the mystic soul with God Himself. The psychological phenomena attendant upon love he analyses with a surprising delicacy and penetration, and shows himself far superior, especially in the Futuhat, to any of the Italian poets of the dolce stil nuovo.[670] Not content with distinguishing between the different degrees of feeling that separate love from sympathy, from affection, from passion and from desire, he probes into the subconscious states of the heart and mind, and interprets them in a mystical sense. The sighs, the tears and mental anguish of the lover; his languor and melancholy; his bewilderment and his secret grief mingled with jealous anger; his fits of brooding and dejection, of ecstasy and rapture—the whole gamut of the psychology of love is closely analysed in the pages of the Futuhat, which is at the same time a metaphysical exegesis of the passion. For, after admitting a threefold aim in love, viz., the union of the sexes, the union of the souls, and the spiritual union with God, he has the sublime audacity to assert that it is God who appears to every lover in the image of his beloved.[671] In order that we may learn to love Him, He assumes the form of the fair Zaynab, of Suad, of Hind, of Layla—of all those beauties of whose charms the poets sing, little suspecting that in their songs of love they are praising the only Beauty of the World, God, incorporate in those sensual forms.
9. Let us at this juncture glance backwards and collect the threads of the argument presented in this last part of our work.
The numerous symptoms of a leaning towards Islamic culture that have been discovered in the writings of Dante are proof that his mind, far from being averse from the influence of Moslem models, was rather inclined towards their assimilation. In a previous chapter it was shown how likely the transmission of these models from Moslem Spain to Italy and the Florentine poet was. In the first two parts of this work the great wealth of Moslem feature in the Divine Comedy was demonstrated after minute examination. In the third part it was seen how the majority of pre-Dante Christian legends are also derived from the literature of Islam. It would seem, therefore, that the chain of reasoning is complete, and that no serious objection can be raised to the assertion that imitation did indeed exist, once we have established as facts the resemblance between the model and the copy, the priority of the former to the latter, and communication between the two.
Nor is it possible any longer to deny to Islamic literature the place of honour to which it is entitled in the stately train of the forerunners of Dante’s poem. For this literature, in itself, furnishes more solutions to the many riddles that surround the genesis of the poem than all the other precursory works combined.
But at every step of the long journey we have travelled in the research into the Islamic models of the Divine Comedy, the figure of one writer has stood out as the most typical and the most likely to furnish in his works the key to what is still obscure in Dante. We refer to the figure of the Spanish mystic and poet Ibn Arabi of Murcia. His works in general, and particularly his Futuhat, may indeed have been the source whence the Florentine poet drew the general idea of his poem. There also Dante could have found the geometrical plans of the architecture of hell and paradise, the general features of the scenery in which the sublime drama is laid, the vivid picture of the life of glory led by the chosen, the Beatific Vision of the Divine Light, and the ecstasy of him who beholds it. Moreover, it would be difficult to find two thinkers whose poetical and religious temperaments are so alike as those of Dante and Ibn Arabi; for the resemblance extends not only to their philosophical thought, derived from the illuministic school of Ibn Masarra, but also to the images by which their ideas are symbolised and the literary means by which they are expressed. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the Convito and the Treasures. Conceived and composed in the self-same manner, these works were written with the same personal object; and both authors follow the same method in the allegorical interpretation of the amorous theme of their songs. The share due to Ibn Arabi—a Spaniard, although a Moslem—in the literary glory achieved by Dante Alighieri in his immortal poem can no longer be ignored.
The gigantic figure of the great Florentine need not thereby lose one inch of the sublime height it has reached in the eyes of his compatriots and of all mankind. Blind admiration of genius is not the most appropriate form of homage. Nor could the worship of his memory, inspired by a mere spirit of patriotism, satisfy a man who placed above his love for Italy and the Latin race, the lofty ideals of humanity and religion; who laid proud claim to the title of a citizen of the world; and who breathed into the exquisite form of his divine poem an universal and eternal spirit of morality and mysticism that was the natural expression of the deepest Christian feelings.
In the end we find that it is that perennial source of poetry and spirituality, the Divine religion of Christ, that furnishes the real key to the genesis of Dante’s poem and its precursors, both Christian and Moslem. For Islam, be it once more said, is but the bastard offspring of the Gospel and the Mosaic Law, part of whose doctrines on the after-life it adopted. Lacking the restraining influence of an infallible authority whereby the fancy of its believers might have been checked, it assimilated elements from other Eastern sources and thus came to deck and overlay with all the trappings of Oriental fancy the sober picture of the life beyond the grave that is outlined in the Gospel. Dante could, without altering the essence of Christian teaching on that life, draw for the purposes of his poem on the artistic features furnished by the Moslem legends. In so doing he was but reclaiming for Christianity property that was by rights its own, heirlooms that had lain hidden in the religious lore of the East until restored to the stock of Western culture greatly enhanced by the imaginative genius of Islam.