Dante: Poet of the Secular World

by Erich Auerbach

paperback no dust jacket. tight binding, creasing to covers and spine, spine is faded. some pages have creasing to the tops. some underling and notes in margins. covers show signs of shelfware and scuffing. chipping or tearing to edges.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Poetry, Criticism, Italy, Essays, Philosophy

196 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

German philologist Erich Auerbach served as professor of Romance philology at Marburg University (1929-35), taught at the Turkish State University in Istanbul (1936-47), and became professor of French and Romance philology at Yale University in 1950. He published several books and many papers on Dante, Medieval Latin literature, methods of historical criticism, and the influence of Christian symbolism on literature. He is best known for Mimesis , a volume on literary criticism written in Turkey, first published in Berne, Switzerland in 1946, and subsequently widely translated.

Reviews

[Chris Coffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This neglected and almost unknown work, to which we have access only thanks to the New York Review of Books' quixotic and impeccably chosen list of forgotten classics, is the most fundamental metaphysical defense of literature ever written.

And the great thing is that it is totally practical, an inspiration for the working writer. Since Plato, imaginative literature has had a bad conscience, and in English words like "fiction" don't even bother to disguise the association of imaginative literature with lies, deception, and mere tales.

Of course this is frustrating for those of us who believe that literature tells human truths that cannot be revealed by any other method. But there it is.

Actually, however, Erich Auerbach cracked the conundrum many years ago, right in the middle of the robust, high-coloured good health of the Scientific Age (ie before all our supposedly neutral and quasi-divine scientific knowledge had produced nuclear weapons) and he set forth in this book, which he wrote out of a unique understanding and an intimate love of Dante's work, the ultimate defense of literature and the truth of literature.

Auerbach starts out with the pre-Socratic Heraclitus (thereby neutralising the later Plato's critique in THE REPUBLIC) and his dictum "A man's character is his fate." Auerbach elaborates this insight to show how each of us, each actual human being, attracts characteristic sorrows, challenges, and other experiences the way a magnet attracts iron filings. And out of our decisions and actions in confrontation with these characteristic experiences, which are unique to each of us in the historical drama of our individual life, our inner being is revealed. Nietzsche had a very similar insight when he observed "If one has character one has one's characteristic experience which recurs again and again."

But Auerbach then generalises this insight to account for the selection process required by practicing writers to create literature. A novel can only have so many characters, so many incidents, and so many details, and these must be rigourously selected from the vast richness of life and incorporated into the limited space of a work of art. And to do so an artist must possess some principal for making this selection, an understanding of the inner working of reality which is embedded in the underlying plot and which reveals itself in a fully satisfying work of art. Auerbach shows how the basis for literature, from its very beginning, is an evolutionary interaction between a sentient being and its environment, an interaction which is unique and which changes both the creature and its environment (ie the bee adapts towards the flower and the flower adapts towards the bee). The premise for this is a deep cultural belief in a living order of reality which adapts and changes, not in some deterministic and mechanistic way, but uniquely and unpredictably, simultaneously following the laws of nature while reserving the mystery of an inviolate virgin contingency in every pristine new moment of the constantly arriving present, and this change occurs as a result of the passage through life of each living being and the interaction of that being with its surrounding historical reality.

Of course, modernism was committed to chaos and randomness and therefore it literally lost the plot . . . but Auerbach shows us how to return to the plot, by rebuilding its philosophical base from the ground of the unconscious back up into the light of a fully realised artistic work.

This is only one of the many treasures contained in this brief work. In the same chapter Auerbach shows how the example of Jesus--told in a new kind of story with a surprising plot in short books we now call The Gospels--detonated the foundations of the classical ideal of the Gentleman. By destroying the gentleman as an ideal of a civilised life this new kind of story jumped the rails of historical development and set the world in motion towards an entirely new destiny. These 400 words--and that is about all they amount to--should be required reading in the high schools of the civilised world.

And then, and only then, does Auerbach begin his brilliant discussion of Dante.

Honestly, reading this book left me breathless. Turning the pages was like watching a new galaxy come into view. It is one of the most important books I have ever read. Literature will begin a new, not necessarily golden, but certainly less dross-like age, if more writers read this book, and it is not too much to suggest that the world would be a better place, if poets and other artists truly are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind, and if they read this book and then went forth and did likewise, as Auerbach suggests that Dante did.

He has certainly shown us what to do . . . the rest is up to us.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admire Auerbach's "Mimesis" more than any other work of literary criticism that comes to mind. This book contains a brief discussion of one episode in Dante's epic - quite illuminating, I think.

So I decided to read his slender volume on Dante, whom Auerbach admired more ardently than any other writer in the history of the West. A wonderful supplement to Barbara Reynold's biography of Dante.

-----

I just finished Auerbach's book, which is a triumph of literary criticism. Auerback offers a coherent, thoroughly considered description of Dante's perspective on the world and his experience, and Auerbach shows convincingly how that perspective (in addition to poetic genius) enabled the production of the Divine Comedy. No doubt there are many other critics who offer other/different views on the contents of Dante's mind, but I expect that only a very few can express their views so pithily and convinvingly as Auerbach.

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

For chapters 1, 3 and the conclusion alone, I'd give this book 5 stars, but sadly 2, 4 and 5 are a little tedious. That said, it'd be a great book for anyone who's interested in Dante, but hasn't read him, and I'm probably being overly harsh on chapter 2.
Chapter one sets out Auerbach's slightly odd philosophy of literary history in a highly condensed form. The essence of this is: literature can either present human beings as human beings, a combination of body and soul; or it can present them as merely one or the other. His preference is clearly the combination view, and that makes sense. Add to this some particularly dubious periodization (epic/tragic/Christ arrives! We care about the body!/dark ages (we forget the body)/Dante liberates us all! Yay!) and you have the general historical argument of the book.
I'm harsh on chapter 2 because it's about Dante's forebears and his early poetry, which is essentially coterie work. Historically important, yes. Worth 40-odd pages, not so much. Chapter 4 is a textbook account of the physical, ethical and historical/political theories that go into the Commedia, combined a little bit with the overall structure of the poem. It's good, it's just that you'll get the same knowledge by reading, um, the Commedia and a few of Hollander's notes thereto. Chapter 5 is a series of close readings of lines which spirals out of control into a kind of rapturous nineteenth-century praise criticism. Auerbach did much better in 'Mimesis.'

That leaves the great bits, chapter 3 and the conclusion, summed up I think in Auerbach's claim that Dante "transforms Being [i.e., scholastic philosophy and Christian theology] into experience." I don't so much recommend that you read chapter three of this book, as demand that you do so immediately. And then the conclusion, which tops off chapter 3 three nicely.

Two complaints: first, Auerbach's argument that Dante's greatness lies in his attention to and valorisation of individuality can't deal with the increasing abstraction of the Paradiso. He confronts this problem, and suggests that the saints and so on aren't as individualized because their stories are well known- the kind of ad hoc explanation that Auerbach rightly dismisses elsewhere. Second, he argues, correctly, that "the subject and doctrine of the Comedy are not incidental; they are the roots of its poetic beauty," but also suggests in his conclusion that the doctrine is dead and only the poetic beauty and vision of body+soul together remains. Maybe you could make those statements consistent, but it would be difficult at best. There's no need to say that the doctrine is dead, of course; we might not be Thomists, but a good number of people still possess an ideal of, say, a united world at peace, which isn't so much different.

[Tyrone_Slothrop (ex-MB) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nel pensiero medioevale

Fondamentale testo di critica letteraria sull'opera dantesca, che ruota intorno al concetto di "figura" - il significato di questo termine è discusso in profondità nel testo e si potrebbe rozzamente definire l'idea che un fatto terreno, reale, storico sia profezia o "figura" di una realtà terrena o divina realizzata più avanti nel tempo. In questo contesto, la poesia della Commedia diviene poesia filosofica, sapienziale e profetica e, in questo modo, possiamo tentare di interpretare e comprendere molti parti essenziali del capolavoro di Dante, da Beatrice - donna reale e storica e al tempo stesso "figura" della sapienza divina - a Virgilio - concreto poeta romano che scrisse delle origini dell'impero romano e anche "figura" della verità adempiuta nell'impero cristiano romano vagheggiato da Dante.

Auerbach non scrive per dare nuove interpretazioni, ma, nelle sue parole, per contribuire alla comprensione del mondo poetico e simbolico di Dante . Uno degli esempi in cui l'autore mette in pratica questo obiettivo è la trattazione della polisemia, cioè la molteplicità di significati dell'interpretazione figurale in cui, per esempio, alla stessa persona sono attribuiti diversi significati anche contraddittori (come Saul "figura" della superbia nel Purgatorio e, al tempo stesso, "figura" di Cristo in altri passi della stessa opera).
Un altro punto alquanto interessante è che l'opera di Dante introduce una costante della cultura europea dei secoli successivi: l'idea che lo sorti individuale non può essere trascurata, ma è necessaria ed importante e in essa rivela la connessione universale del mondo e della storia. E' quasi ironico che il genio fiorentino possa essere considerato come colui che, involontariamente, ha gettato le basi della ascesa dell'individuo rispetto alle strutture totalizzanti medievali quali impero e papato.

La scrittura è densa, rigorosa e pregnante, nella solida tradizione germanica e richiede attenzione da parte del lettore specie nelle parti più prettamente filosofiche - ma la chiarezza del pensiero e la profondità della competenza filologica e storica di Auerbach sono specchiate e ripagano ampiamente lo sforzo del lettore.


L'unico appunto che mi sento di fare a questa edizione in particolare è relativo all'inserimento della terza parte "Ultimi studi su Dante" che è alquanto più specialistica e dedicata a minuti particolari della Commedia e quindi meno interessante per il lettore non professionista rispetto ai due saggi principali e fondamentali che costituiscono il corpo del libro: "Dante, poeta del mondo terreno" e "Nuovi studi su Dante".

[alessia · Rating 4 out of 5]

saggio bello, interessante, completo, che mi ha aiutata a comprendere meglio la poetica dantesca, il modo di concepire i personaggi della sua opera e l’uso di simboli e particolari termini.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can think of no other book in recent memory I both wanted and expected to like as much as this one, yet which I found didn't live up to my hopes. Mimesis was, I thought, just a stunning work of criticism, and its chapter on The Divine Comedy did more to illuminate the entire work through the examination of one section of one canto than did several readings (without benefit of any study guide) of the entire Inferno--in fact, I'd nearly given up on ever really being able to penetrate Dante's work at all; it was Mimesis that gave me the idea that I didn't have to abandon all hope.

So when I found out that Auerbach had written a single work devoted to Dante, I expected dramatic things. And they may be in here, but it isn't written on a level that's plain enough for me to pull them out. But my biggest mistake was assuming that this book was primarily concerned with The Divine Comedy--this is, rather, an examination of what made Dante an original. The title of the book is actually pretty clear on that--but when I read 'Dante', the only thing I think of is the Comedy, and thus my confusion.

So...in his study of The Divine Comedy Dante, Auerbach begins with Homer, and the classical conception of man and his destiny. The first chapter moves through the ages to show how later periods either modified or enlarged this conception, culminating in the second chapter, and the tradition in which Dante came of age. Here Auerbach compares Dante to his contemporaries, and it isn't until chapter III that we get to the Comedy...sort of. Actually, while the title to this chapter is The Subject of the "Comedy", a better description would be how the state of the world and Dante's own past history led him to conceive of the subject of the Comedy. For those looking for insights into the poem itself, they may find some help in chapters IV and V, which deals with its structure and the presentation, but it really depends on what sort of insights they are looking for. Auerbach analyzes Dante's use of language to illustrate how he was able to so forcefully portray the reality of the individual in a literary realm, and it is there, according to Auerbach, where Dante's true legacy lies: Dante created an individual where there had only been abstraction before.

Auerbach's conclusion is conveniently summarized in his last few pages, but it is the proofs that he provided to reach that conclusion that were often beyond me. I think the reader would need to be much more heavily immersed in Auerbach's subjects to follow along and have the ability to appreciate his arguments or dispute a point. All I could do was try to keep my feet under me as he raced along. Given that this book was published in 1929, and Mimesis 1946, it's entirely possible that, as a friend of mine suggested, Auerbach became more adept at getting his point across, or it may be that he intended the two books for different audiences. Either way, I doubt I'll ever get to a point where I'd need to revisit this one (although Mimesis is a candidate someday.)

[Glendon Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't let anybody tell you that literary criticism is boring, literary criticism is hype as hell.

I was leant this once upon a time in early 2020 when I was trying to write a Dante paper for class, and was told to keep it afterward. I figured there wasn't going to be a better time to give it a go than now, and I'm so glad that I did. More than a commentary on the Commedia, Auerbach's writing on Dante sets him in his poetic and literary context with a sweeping sense of purpose. He opens with a stunning overview of the European literary tradition, contrasting the heroes of Homer, the tragedies, and Virgil, and then presenting the Christ story as a fundamental shift in the way European literature understood heroism and humanity. In that frame, Dante emerges as a new sort of voice, a writer interested first and foremost in the Unity of a person. Auerbach goes on to show the Commedia as an epic driven by the concept of unity - unity in form, in function, in structure, and in style; especially as it presents its very human characters as people united in body and soul, having become evermore Themselves in the afterlife. In so doing, Auerbach argues that Dante's work paved the way for the sort of humanist writing that dominates the current day. He spends some time comparing Dante with his fellow contemporaries, and it becomes immediately clear that Dante was operating in a sphere all of his own.

Auerbach's writing is eminently readable, sounding almost like a poetry in and of itself. I feverishly underline almost the entire first chapter because it was hitting this perfect synthesis of being profoundly insightful and also beautifully phrased. If reading Paradise had made me a little cold, Auerbach does a lot to fill me with, if nothing else, compassion and respect for Dante's sweeping achievement. In particular, I was caught by the way Auerbach redeemed Beatrice's inclusion for me. It is easy to see Beatrice as a weird sort of trope, a bizarre fantasy dredging from Dante's horny youth. But not only does Auerbach properly root Dante and Beatrice in the Love poetry traditions of Dante's time, he also sees Beatrice and Virgil as important guides of healing for Dante as a person. He writes the Commedia in a time of deep personal strife - exiled, betrayed, and alone. And from that loneliness, Dante summons up his two deepest loves as friends and guides to lead him through the afterlife. I can't help but be touched by that.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. And very difficult. Auerbach had sensitivities and insights that you find nowhere else--and he managed (later) to combine them into a complete theory of western literature. This is an early work of his (1929), but it's the best thing I've read so far in helping me try to formulate in my own mind what makes Dante unique, and an author I keep coming back to, even if only in translation.

[Drew Norwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gold. The first chapter is an introduction to the concept of mimesis, and the “idea of man in literature.” He then moves on to consider Dante’s early poetry and the stil nuovo, Provençal poetry. Next he dives into the Comedy, its subject, structure, presentation, and impact.

The introduction was one of the best sections of the book. Here, Auberbach takes you through Plato, Virgil, and the culminating narrative of Jesus Christ and the gospel, then on to medieval literature. His survey and takeaway is ground-breaking: “The drama of earthly life took on a painful, immoderate, and utterly un-classical intensity, because it is at once a wrestling with evil and the foundation of God's judgment to come. In diametrical opposition to the ancient feeling, earthly self-abnegation was no longer regarded as a way from the concrete to the abstract, from the particular to the universal…Not only is Christian humility far more compelling and more concrete, one might almost say more worldly, than Stoic apathy, but through awareness of man's inevitable sinfulness, it also does far more to intensify man's awareness of his unique, inescapable personality. And the story of Christ revealed not only the intensity of personal life but also its diversity and the wealth of its forms, for it transcended the limits of ancient mimetic aesthetics…Human destiny and the history of the world became once more an object of direct and compelling experience, for in the great drama of salvation every man is present, acting and suffering; he is directly involved in everything that has happened and that happens each day. No escape is possible from this thoroughly spiritual and yet real earthly world, from an individual fate that is decisive for all eternity. On that foundation the mimetic art of the Middle Ages came into being. It aimed directly at the concrete representation of transcendent substance;”

There are many sterling passages, such as the one above, but the following passage on the Comedy itself is one of the most memorable: “but this [earthly paradise at the top of Mount Purgatory] is only a place of transition, a status viatoris, for even the most perfect earthly life is not the ultimate purpose of the human community, but preparation for the sight of God, which means eternal beatitude. As we see, this order is perfectly consonant with the two others, for the whole poem, whether considered from a physical, an ethical, or a historico-political point of view, builds up the destiny of man and his soul and sets it before us in a concrete image: God and creation, spirit and nature lie enclosed and ordered in perfect necessity (which however is nothing other than perfect freedom allotted to each thing according to its essence). Nothing is left open but the narrow cleft of earthly human history, the span of man's life on earth, in which the great and dramatic decision must fall; or to look at it the other way round, from the standpoint of human life, this life, in all the diversity of its manifestations, is measured by its highest goal, where individuality achieves actual fulfillment and all society finds its predestined and final resting place in the universal order. Thus, even though the Comedy describes the state of souls after death, its subject, in the last analysis, remains earthly life with its entire range and content; everything that happens below the earth or in the heavens above relates to the human drama in this world. But since the human world receives the measures by which it is to be molded and judged from the other world, it is neither a realm of dark necessity nor a peaceful land of God; no, the cleft is really open, the span of life is short, uncertain, and decisive for all eternity; it is the magnificent and terrible gift of potential freedom which creates the urgent, rest-less, human, and Christian-European atmosphere of the irretrievable, fleeting moment that must be taken advantage of; God's grace is infinite, but so also is His justice and one does not negate the other. The hearer or reader enters into the narrative; in the great realm of fulfilled destiny he sees only himself alone unfulfilled, still acting upon the real, decisive stage, illumined from above but still in the dark; he is in danger, the decision is near, and in the images of Dante's pilgrimage that draw before him he sees himself damned, making atonement, or saved, but always himself, not extinguished, but eternal in his very own essence. Thus in truth the Comedy is a picture of earthly life.”

[Matt McCormick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was really written for a reader with a deep understanding of the history and mechanics of language and poetry. It offers little to a lay reader who simply enjoys poets such as Dante written in the readers vernacular. The first few pages were insightful, the next 50 frustrating. I didn’t make it to page 60.

[Giorgia Saolini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Auerbach ha un modo di portarci per mano attraverso i suoi studi sul Sommo Poeta che è tutto particolare, tanti dicono che questo autore in particolare sia praticamente incomprensibile ma io credo che questa difficoltà sia creata dallo stile denso che l’autore adotta sia qui sia in “Mimesis” che non rende di facile scorrimento.
Tralasciando lo stile, quello che Auerbach ci presenta è un Dante che nasce come summa e inizio di qualcosa, summa delle correnti a lui precedenti e contemporanee e inizio di un nuovo modo di vedere il mondo, si perché chiunque non affermi che Dante ha cambiato il mondo è un povero illuso e questo Auerbach lo mette in chiaro in molti modi diversi e io personalmente ho concordato con ognuno di essi.
Insomma un libro molto pesante da leggere, che ho letto dilazionandolo nel tempo ma che mi ha soddisfatta immensamente, e voi che ne dite?

[Jeffrey St. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literary critics are not generally known for their courage. Erich Auerbach is the exception. Born in Berlin to a family Jewish intellectuals, Auerbach survived the trench warfare and mustard gas raids of World War I. After the war he turned his intention to a study of Dante, a poet once conceived of as an intracably religious writer. After WW I, however, religion seemed to have no relevance to the shattered world of the new Europe. Auerbach's lucid study of the Vita Nuova and Commedia redeem Dante for the modern world, showing through a close textual exegesis of the poems that Dante was ferociously political poet, a voice of the secular world, a grandfather of the modern sensibility. After the publication of his Dante book, the chill shadow of Nazism descended upon Germany and soon all of Europe. Auerbach fled for his life to a difficult exile in Istanbul, leaving behind his books. In a small room in Istanbul he began to compose the greatest volume of literary criticism of the 20th century, Mimesis, a study of narrative strategies beginning with the Homeric poems through Dante and Cervantes to Flaubert and Joyce. The book is stuffed with close readings of quotations from these masterworks, all quoted from memory. The centerpiece is his study of the Florentine poet. Come back Dante, we need you.

[Sinan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bugüne kadar okuduğum en zor kitaptı. Fakat Dante’yi ve Komedya’sını mükemmel irdeliyor. Daha önce okumuş olsam da Komedya’yı Aurebach’dan edindiğim fikirler perspektifiyle yeniden okumaya karar verdim.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his introductory preface to Auerbach’s Mimesis, Edward Said says he thinks that the book on Dante is Auerbach’s best work, and though I haven’t read all of Mimesis, I am now inclined to agree. Auerbach writes so enthusiastically about literature that it is difficult not to get swept up along with him and his grandiose descriptions of what these authors are capable of depicting.

The first chapter of the book is however, decidedly the worst, to the point where I would have liked the book more had it not been included. What should be an introduction to the thesis of the book is instead an attempt at a 20 page crash course on two thousand years of religious and literary history. The chapter uses nigh-nonsensical terms such as “vulgar spiritualism” and “Asianism,” the latter of which he never defines properly, and the former of which he means some conceptualization of late Platonism. The chapter is coherent up to the point of Aristotle, before it devolves into compressing too much time into too few pages. He attempts to draw a distinction between the western and eastern churches, but this becomes too oversimplified and is not something which is relevant to the rest of the book. Auerbach was supremely erudite, and I don’t doubt the coherence in his mind of this historical telling, but it fails to come across to the reader, and so consequently does not do a good job of situating Dante within his context or what Dante thought was his context, which he does a great job of later in the book.

The translation of the title is poor, because there is a more direct translation available which becomes apparent throughout the text itself. I am nowhere near fluent in German, and I do not pretend to be more knowledgeable in the art of translation than Manheim, but the choice to render “irdischen” as “secular” instead of “earthly” is bizarre. The word earthly appears many times throughout the text itself, secular, does not. Auerbach belabors how Dante’s view of religion and philosophy is incorporated into every aspect of his life and thought, and so to call Dante secular is simply not right. Calling the Comedy earthly is intriguing enough in and of itself, for how could a poem about heaven and hell be in any way earthly? And this is Auerbach’s thesis, that despite having been given over to their eternal fates, each character is still an individual, and their life in hell, purgatory or heaven is merely an extension of their life on earth. Dante may have been living on the edge of entering into a secular world, but he did not see himself as part of that. Earthly, definitely. Secular, not at all.

When I first read Dante three years ago, I didn’t understand much of it. I wasn’t familiar with the sources Dante was drawing on, and I didn’t understand that the eternal fates of the characters weren’t arbitrarily chosen. Though I have now read Aquinas, Auerbach helped to illuminate precisely the orderedness of the poem, which at least for me, was difficult to grasp without a clear understanding of the worldview it was born out of. Auerbach spends a great deal of time psychologizing Dante, something I don’t usually like, but which he manages to do as well as it can be done. And it is by no means a naive psychologizing, for he takes into account a skeptical view towards the historical reliability of what we can know about Dante. Auerbach has a sense of historical empathy, where he is able to explain how and why someone thought the way they did, all without being judgemental. “[...] we shall not, to be sure, cherish any futile, absurd desire to revive what is irretrievably lost, but neither shall we be tempted to despise or condemn the meaningful order on which Dante’s thinking was based.” (p.126) This ability of his is something I greatly admire.

Dante: Poet of the Secular (Earthly) World is a fantastic book to read if one wants to delve deeper into Dante, or like me, feels they really didn’t understand the Comedy on their first reading. Auerbach is a master both of the clear, logical argument with specific examples from the text as well as more impassioned paragraphs about how incredible a writer Dante is. Though these speeches are sometimes quite general, they are always prefaced with argument, and my only criticism of them would be that his praise of Dante is sometimes coupled with a negative view of the literature of the middle ages, but overall this is not too important. I wish I could write like Auerbach does!

[Steve Greenleaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m in the midst of reading all things Dante; well, no, that would be a life-long project. Let’s say I’m reading a good deal about Dante while at the same time once againtaking the journey through the Commedia. I purchased Auerbach’s book not so long ago, having read its praises from other commentators, and further encouraged by an introduction by Michael Dirda. So, I plunged in.

And upon plunging in, I almost leaped out. The author wrote the original in his native German (translated by Ralph Mannheim), and I quickly discerned that Auerbach was not keen to break his prose into shorter paragraphs. But more to the point, the initial chapter delves deeply into Dante’s early works as a poet in the dolce stilo nuovo that was the rage in Florence in the late 1200s. Auerbach’s analysis and comparisons of Dante with his peers and influences was detailed and thorough—and for the most part over my head. I’m not an expert on poetry, not to mention the poetry of the dolce stile nuovo of late medieval Florence and that of the Provencal troubadours. I almost walked away, but I didn’t, and I’m now quite happy that I didn’t.

For the succeeding chapters are about the Commedia, familiar ground for me. In the later chapters there was no loss of erudition on Auerbach’s part, but having some background already on the Commedia, this part made a lot more sense to me. And Auerbach’s primary thesis makes a great deal of sense. In fact, as one friend remarked when I told him of what book I’d been reading—Poet of the secular world?—does capture the importance of what Auerbach has to say. Auerbach argues that Dante writes about persons as historical creations and realities. In short, Dante plays a role in Auerbach’s great project (and masterwork), Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Dante’s Commedia is a key step in the development of mimesis (the representation of reality) in the Western literary canon, notwithstanding the fact that his epic poem explores the most fantastic world imaginable at that time: a journey through the afterlife, through Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Heaven). What makes Dante’s work so intriguing to me is his juxtaposition of very real and skillfully formed individuals with the most astounding creatures and situations (and all done within the confines of a mostly Thomistic worldview).

None of this is to say that Dante was not a committed Christian; he was, very much so. But what Auerbach emphasizes in Dante’s masterpiece can also be found in the Gospels: a divine world manifest in our quotidian world; a tale of true God and true Man. Dante very much follows in this line of portrayal.

This brief, but dense work is worth the effort for anyone who seeks to better grasp of the world of the Commedia. I guaranty that it will enhance a reader’s journey through the three realms with Dante and his guides.

[Brandon Hawk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Auerbach's book gives a nice introduction to reading and thinking about Dante, especially the Divine Comedy. Less a biography than an essay on Dante's works, the book offers insight and interpretation of both the poet and his literature within the Western literary tradition. Throughout the book, Auerbach especially stresses his central thesis that Dante's work surpasses the mimetic art of previous authors (from the Classical period through the Middle Ages) in his "testimony to the reality that is poetry, to the modern European form of artistic mimesis which stresses the actuality of events" (174); essentially, Auerbach argues that Dante's mimesis captures the concept of realism previously unattained in the mimetic art of literature. In this sense, Dante's work "was both old and new, rising from oblivion with greater power and scope than ever before" (178)--and in these words we see Auerbach's point as well as his high elevation of Dante to the most essential poet of the Middle Ages, even the most essential in Western literature.

The book approaches Dante and his work in six parts. In the first, Auerbach outlines the history of mimesis and literary conceptions of humanity before Dante, beginning with the Classical tradition and moving forward to give the literary context for Dante's work. He traces the literary image of character from Homer through to Christianity, into the "Hellenistic melting pot" in which the traditions converged (15), into the spiritual atmosphere of the medieval period when portrayals and conceptions "lost [their] literal meaning" and "the concrete reality was lost" (18), leading to his insistence that Dante recovered and perfected the portrayal of realism.

The second part approaches Dante's early works (esp. the Vita nuova) and Dante set apart from the Provencal poets and contemporaries in "his fame as a poet" (29) even as a young man. Furthermore, Auerbach emphasizes what he relates as Dante's sophisticated style in that "Dante's poems spring less from a feeling or an idea than from an event" (41), rooting his poetry in the naturalism of "concrete historical reality" (42). Throughout this section and the next, Auerbach also emphasizes the "examples of true loftiness" (51) that Dante upholds in contrast to his contemporaries. Indeed, Auerbach emphasizes such loftiness throughout his study--and if there is one criticism of Auerbach's book, it is that he often praises such lofty work with his own style of waxing too lofty and eloquent at times, raising Dante beyond mere mortal and speaking of him subjectively as the supreme poet.

In the third, fourth, and fifth sections, Auerbach turns to discuss Dante's greatest work, the Comedy. The third chapter focuses on the "systematic synthesis" created in the work, as "Dante tried to reconcile the Thomist system with the mystical ideology of the cor gentile"--a feat about which Auerbach insists "Only a poet could effect a concordance of that kind" (71). Thus Dante merged the "rational" philosophical tradition with that of the "sensuous and poetic" work of artists (71), merging it with the need for a public "noble vernacular" (77) in the form of what Dante himself "refers to it by a new term of his own coining as 'the sacred poem,' il poema sacro or lo sacrato poema, or simply as 'the vision'" (92). And, Auerbach writes, in this synthesis and new form, "the noble style in which the poem is written is a harmony of all the voices that ever struck his [Dante's] ear" (97).

The fourth chapter primarily deals with the worldview that Dante imparts into his great work: three "interwoven systems" which are "a physical, an ethical, and a historicopolitical system" drawn from the Ptolemaic philosophy "as adapted to Christian dogma by Christian Aristotelianism" (101). Herein, Auerbach charts the course that Dante travels--through the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso --as well as the essential order and system of thought infused within this journey, especially emphasizing the human "freedom of choice, a power compounded of intellect and will... which enables him during his lifetime on earth, to love in the right or wrong way and so decide his own fate" (105). This, of course, is essential for the reality that Dante portrays: the conception of human choices on this material plane carrying over as one's final characteristic destiny in the afterlife

In Auerbach's chapter on "The Presentation" of the Dante's Comedy, he specifically traces the realism that Dante creates through the journey, in characters, setting, images, and psychology within the work. Tracing specific instances, Aurbach also offers general unifying elements of the poem and its interpretation, foremost emphasizing the role of memory in the text: for through the memory of the characters, Dante "captures the essence not only with greater intellectual precision but also more concretely and completely than do temporal events with their uncertainty and ambiguity" (143)--it is the memorial characteristics and essence of the images provided--"the individual, concrete qualities" (142)--in the Comedy that give it the sense of a concrete reality. From this argument, Auerbach moves his analysis to the final chapter, a short reflection titled "The Survival and Transformation of Dante's Vision of Reality." Here Auerbach discusses not only how Dante's mimesis "stresses the actuality of events" (174) but also how such a mimetic work ushers in a new literary tradition for European culture, one in which, with Dante, "the historical individual was reborn in his manifest unity of body and spirit," giving way to the new art, in which "Modern mimesis found man in his individual destiny" (178).

Working through Dante's literary moves and contextualizing the Comedy within the larger literary culture as well as the poet's own work, this introduction offers a stunning view of Dante the poet and the man. As with many scholars, Auerbach does get drawn into the cult of the author he discusses, and sometimes his veneration of Dante overshadows his intellectual approach. In his analyses, however, Auerbach offers not only his theses about the poet and his works but also important discussions, explanations, and interpretations of how to read the Comedy in order to better understand its place in the Western tradition.

[Jackson Cyril · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe it was Nadia Boulanger who once declared that Monteverdi was the first to set human emotions to music-- in that sense there is a direct line of influence from "L'Orfeo" to "La Traviata" and "West Side Story". Auerbach, in similar lines, argues that it was Dante who was the first intensely 'secular poet'-- and there is little indeed that separates "Anna Karenina" (or even "Lady Chatterley") from the story of Francesca and Paolo ("Inferno", Canto V). This thesis, in Edward Said's words, has a ring of "Nietszchean audacity" about it-- considering the overwhelmingly sacred tenor of Dante's "Comedy". But Auerbach's reading is thorough and (of course) well backed-up. That this reading could be such a respectable one, yet elude readers for seven centuries also, I think, attests to the remarkable fecundity of Dante.

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“现代欧洲文化史中，千真万确地存在一条信念，是无论何种宗教和哲学都未曾改变的，即是个体的命运绝非毫无意义，相反必然具备悲剧性和重要性，使得所处的整个世界在其中显现；这一信念我们最初正是在但丁那里见到的。”同意豆列里一位豆友的意见，讲神曲的几章还是有些过于概括，仿佛前2章（欧洲文学史和中世纪抒情诗的发展）预告了一出大变活人���但丁对earthly reality的兴趣）但后3章好容易把神曲这个过于ingombrante的批评对象装进箱子里就没了。最精彩的文本分析反倒出自第2章，对比但丁/Guinizelli/Cavalcanti/普罗旺斯诗人的抒情诗艺术，证明但丁的创新在于对actuality of events的把握，正是这点（后来）使得神曲里充满了出场几行也同样真实的人物而不是抽象的善恶和模糊的影子。
【不知为什么以前接收到的（错误）信息是这本书讲了但丁神学和诗歌艺术的冲突，实际上Auerbach（正确地）彻底否决了这种（现代人臆想出的）冲突之存在。】

[LaMalvenue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una cosa che amo è quando i libri che studio per gli esami riescono a interessarmi e a piacermi. È il caso di questi saggi di Auerbach su Dante.
Sono un po’ complessi da capire, soprattutto perché molto filosofici e stilisticamente articolati.
Nonostante tutto ho trovato parecchio interessanti le analisi fatte all’interno sulla Divina Commedia, perché ti offrono una visione diversa da quella che potresti immaginare.

Se Dante vi piace, leggetelo.

[austra]

Auerbach offers an account of how Dante fused scholastic thought, Christian history, and the individuality of lived experience into the poetic vision of the Comedy. Parts of the book feel overextended or dated, and his sweeping historical periodization can verge on the simplistic. His synthesis, stylistic clarity, and humanistic insight make this study an indispensable, if imperfect, companion to reading Dante.

[Garrett Peace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating: 4.5

Auerbach repeats himself a few too many times, and I’m convinced this could have been cut down a little, and the section on Dante’s early poetry and the Provençal poets is kind of a slog, but when Auerbach really gets going, it’s some of the best writing about writing you’ve ever read.

[Russel Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dense, thoughtful little tome requiring careful attention, but rife with insight into Dante and the importance of the development of inner life and personality to humanism and the modern, secular world.

[Dan Snyder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super-Charge your reading of Dante with this beautiful book.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

As profound and majestic as the work it critiques.

[Ben Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Astute but verbose

[Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant; blew the doors wide open.

[Rachele Callandrone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prima di Figura è un po' una yappata ma Erich ci piace così

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult and abstract, but worthwhile. Auerbach gives rather short shrift to the sheer magnitude of the Commedia by trying to reduce it to a single theory of literature, but that single theory itself holds a surprising amount of water, even though I disagreed with it in the end. Overly reductive, but a challenging, unique and worthwhile addition to the usual body of Dante criticism.

[Hermioneginny · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Letto" saltando parole, righe, pagine...era troppo noioso!!!

[Ilya · Rating 4 out of 5]

It may be more complicated than Dante, but it is still a great introduction to the Divine Comedy and its role as a bedrock of the Western mimetic and -- yes -- secular literary tradition.