A Charming Little Tale from Thomas Hardy

 In "Far From the Madding Crowd," Thomas Hardy's chief male protagonist, Gabriel Oak, at one points finds himself in a drinking establishment called Warren's Malthouse, getting to know the locals and in the process, trying to find out more about his former neighbor and now prospective employer, Bathsheba Everdene to whom he had once unsuccessfully proposed marriage.

The other men first claimed not to know much about Bathsheba, who only a few days earlier had taken over a nearby farm that had been owned by her recently deceased uncle, but after Oak persisted, asking if anyone knew her father and mother, one man, Jacob Smallbury, said he had known them a little before both had died some years earlier. Smallbury then pressed the maltster for details, a request that prompted various others to weigh in as well.

In a nutshell Bathsheba's father had married a very attractive woman whom he adored; he may or may not have been wealthy between bankruptcies, and, most interestingly, he apparently had a certain weakness: a rather strong desire to chase after pretty girls despite his good fortune in marriage.

"Well, now, you'd hardly believe it, but that man -- our Miss Everdene's father -- was one of the ficklest husbands alive, after a while," said a man named Mr. Coggan. "Understand, 'a didn't want to be fickle, but he couldn't help it.  The poor feller were faithful and true to her in his wish, but his heart would rove, do what he would."

Among other things, this brings to mind Dante's "Commedia" in which he postulates that man is endowed with love and intellect, or desire and reason, and that they need to be harmonized.

In this case, Levi Everdene's desire was pointed in one direction and his will in another.

It could have been a disaster in the making, but according to Mr. Coggan, Everdene came up with what might be thought of as a rather ingenious if somewhat problematic workaround.

After his shop closed for the day and they sat together, Everdene made Bathsheba's mother take off her wedding ring. He then called her by her maiden name and pursued her as if he were enjoying the transgressive delights of adultery.

"As soon as he could thoroughly fancy he was doing wrong and committing the seventh, 'a got to like her as well as ever and they lived on a perfect picture of mutel love," Coggan said. The reference, of course, is one of the 10 Commandments.

"Well, 'twas a most ungodly remedy," murmured Joseph Poorgrass (another one of the locals); "but we ought to feel deep cheerfulness that a happy Providence kept it from being any worse. You see, he might have gone the bad road and given his eyes to unlawfulness entirely -- yes, gross unlawfulness, so to say it."

"You see," said Billy Smallbury, "the man's will was to do right, sure enough, but his heart didn't chime in." 

And, as the years went by, Levi Everdene apparently became "quite godly," by among other things, copying verses from tombstones and serving as a godfather "to poor little come-by-chance children."

Well, that was a narrow escape, wasn't it? Good thing his wife was apparently a very fetching woman who evidently found pleasure in the game as well.

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Going Everywhere But Going Nowhere: Eliot and Dante

One often-cited passage from T.S. Eliot's poem "The Four Quartets" is:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

One of Eliot's most important influences was Dante's "Comedia,"or "The Divine Comedy" as it came to be known.

Very early in his set of Yale University lectures entitled "Reading Dante," professor Giuseppe Mazzotta depicts "Comedia" as encyclopedic in nature, which he says means "a circle of knowledge" as originally conceived by Marcus Vitruvius, a Roman architect and engineer. 

Vitruvius most famously wrote a book known as De Architectura that was a lot more than the title might suggest. "Much more than a book on buildings and machines, the contents of De Architectura reveal the ancients' much wider concept of what exactly is 'architecture' and it describes such topics as science, mathematics, geometry, astronomy, astrology, medicine, meteorology, philosophy, and the importance of the effects of architecture, both aesthetic and practical, on the everyday life of citizens." That's from "The Ancient History Encyclopedia."

Picking up on that notion and applying it to "Comedia," Mazzota says:"

This idea of circularity is crucial, in the sense that to know something you have to have a point of departure, from which you will pass through all the various disciplines of the liberal arts, only to arrive right back where you started. The beginning and the ending in a liberal education must coincide, but you will find out things along the way that allow you to see with a different viewpoint or perspective."

The arts in question are called "liberal" for a couple of different reasons, Mazotta explains. First, to distinguish them from knowledge known in medieval times as mechanical arts. But far more importantly, knowledge gives mankind important freedoms. 

That could be a topic for another day.  The point of this posting is simply to illustrate some important linkage between Dante and Eliot.

Humdrum-Sex, Disturbing Violence Loom Large in "Ghoul"

 Back about four years ago, when I was reading The New Yorker regularly (I stopped because I thought the magazine's coverage of the arts had significantly deteriorated), I came to realize that most of its weekly short stories were "downers."  You can read what I had to say about that here.

Well, I decided to re-subscribe and the latest short story, "Ghoul," by George Saunders, fits easily into that trend. It's unrelentingly dystopian if rather imaginatively set in an underground theme park that calls to mind Dante's "Inferno."

Asked in a New Yorker author interview whether the story has a message, perhaps as a metaphor to the current U.S. sociopolitical situation, Saunders said he didn't know what his story meant. He described it, in effect, as an exercise in writing -- an attempt to write something that will "try to get the reader to finish the story -- no easy feat -- by making each little motion of the narrative compelling."

How does he accomplish that? In large part in the tried and true manner -- heavy doses of sex and violence. Not much in the way of innovation there, but as we know, sex and violence sells -- and the New Yorker pays authors well for the stories it publishes.  

While the sex is depicted as rather casual, very open "mating" about which no one is much concerned, the violence is another story.  This theme park is run on the basis of a bunch of rules and the population (sort of a circus-performer-like tribe) is encouraged to rat on each other when transgressions take place.  As opposed to Dante, that brings to mind George Orwell and "1984." Those deemed guilty in "Goul" are kicked to death by their colleagues and friends, and one way to break the rules is to not kick hard enough.

When the chief protagonist, a man named Brian, gets involved in one of these situations, he has a bit of an awakening that Saunders identifies as perhaps the most significant moment in the tale.

“Sometimes in life the foundation upon which one stands will give a tilt, and everything that one has previously believed and held dear will begin sliding about, and suddenly all things will seem strange and new.” [Brian thinks to himself]  Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I find I’ve reached the same conclusion as Brian (aided, I’d say, by the process of writing this story): it depends. It depends on what we do next in the face of this new understanding of ourselves."  So Saunders told the New Yorker.

Readers can make of that what they will and that's the point, Saunders would say.

Does Francesca da Rimini Deserve to be in the Inferno?

In the preceding post, I talked about a woman known as Francesca da Rimini who Dante Alighieri placed in the circle of his Inferno reserved for the lustful. There, she and her lover are condemned to swirl around in the winds of Hell forever as a result of their supposedly transgressive behavior.

Why continue this topic?  An important aspect of character development involves motivations, and questions of who or what is really responsible for any particular outcome. And how reliable is the narrator?

While you can read about Dante-the-poet's justifications for the outcome in question in the previous post, legitimate questions can be raised as to whether it was actually justifiable, whether it was prejudiced by certain, debatable  assumptions about the human condition and whether the poem's sketchy account of what happened told the whole story.

Was Francesca's Punishment Justifiable?

First, one can ask whether what Francesca and her lover Paolo did really constitutes "lust." Their affair was hardly a one-night stand.  Rather it lasted for ten years and presumably would have gone on even longer had not Francesca's husband caught them together and immediately killed them both.  It sounds more like two people very much in love with each other, sex being a natural expression of such sentiments.

But it was nonetheless adultery some might say, and that's that. Maybe so, but that portion of hell -- not deep into the abyss to be sure -- is for the lustful. One could argue there is a difference and Dante was most definitely a man to make distinctions. His Commedia is endlessly about distinctions and gradations,  even in Paradiso  One might not immediately imagine there to be different degrees of beatitude, perhaps leaving Saints aside, but that's apparently the case up there.

Not much seems to be known about the state of Paolo's marriage -- how it came about why it seems to have been unsuccessful, in one respect at any rate. But it is known that Francesca's father, head of the Italian city of Ravenna, married her off at about age 20 to the very unattractive older son of the head of the neighboring city of Rimini to cement an alliance -- not an uncommon practice in the Middle Ages.

Since Francesca apparently had no choice in the matter (she was simply an asset to be deployed to the advantage of the family), it seems hard to characterize her love for her husband's younger brother as adultery.  She didn't first choose her husband and only after he had accepted her, reject him for another man. Her political marriage was something of a legal technicality, serving society, but not her. It's hard to believe Francesca was married "in the eyes of God."

Dante's Catholicism didn't expect mere mortals to be perfect even if God had given them the means, through reason and love, to be so.  Indeed, Dante-the-pilgrim as he wanders through the afterlife with various guides has much to atone for and only after he has satisfactorily done so, does he reach a level of Paradise where he can get a glimpse of God.

Indeed, there is a whole realm of the Commedia, known as Purgatorio, where people who have repented, often at the last minute of their lives, are given time to make amends and eventually reach heaven.  And the only way out of Purgatorio is up: once there, you aren't going to Hell although it could take a long time for you to work things out, as it were.

And further, there is a special level or zone of Purgatorio for the lustful.  So why isn't Francesca there? Because her vengeful husband didn't give her a chance to recant. Bad luck I suppose, but should one be consigned forever to the Inferno on the basis of luck? It doesn't seem right, and especially when it appears her husband is going to end up in one of the deepest and most dreadful regions of the Inferno, not for killing Francesca (of course), but for murdering his brother as Cain did to Abel in the Bible. (The region in question is named after Cain.)

Where is the justice in all of this? 

Is Dante Right About The Human Condition?

Now let's turn to the poet Dante's underlying assumptions about the human condition and how they could be dead wrong. 

Dante-the-poet (as opposed to Dante-the-pilgrim who comes across as clueless much of the time) operates on the basis of the following assumptions: God endowed mankind with love, reason and free will. Because of the last mentioned and because love engenders strong desires, if reason isn't properly applied, it is easy to go astray. For our purposes, the key notion here is that love is internal to a person and controllable. So by failing to use her reason properly -- to understand the moral of the story of Lancelot and Guinevere -- Francesca misdirects her love and is condemned on both accounts.

That's not the way Francesca experienced what happened to her, which could call into question Dante's assumptions. Why should we think he knows what he's talking about, or telling the truth, when we know he had an agenda in writing the Commedia?

Francesca sees love as an external force that can take control of a person. Maybe Dante-the-pilgrim's guide at this point, the Roman poet Virgil, a pagan, should explain the role of Cupid to him.

"Love, who [an external entity] which so fast brings flames to human hearts, seized him [Paolo who first kissed her] with feeling for the lovely form, now torn from me [she's just a "shade" now with no substance]. The harm of how [she was murdered] still rankles.

"Love, who no loved one pardons love's requite, seized me for him so strong in delight that, as you see, he does no leave me yet."

The message here is that Francesca had no control over what happened, and my guess is it's a feeling shared by any number of readers, and especially with respect to the first time they fell in love.

As we know from the previous post, Francesca and Paolo were alone, reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere "for pure joy" and "we knew no suspicion." But when they read "the longed for smile of Guinevere -- at last her lover kissed," they were swept away in passion for each other. 

While Dante-the-poet is scornful of this outcome, his chief protagonist, Dante-the-pilgrim, can't imagine how such love can result in Francesca's fate, and he faints. (And not for the last time. One can't help thinking the pilgrim is a bit of a beta-male, but that's another topic.)

So who is correct about the nature of the human condition when it comes to love: Dante-the-poet, or Francesca, and if Francesca is correct, she most certainly does not deserve to be in the Inferno.

Did We Get the Full Story?

As we know from scholarly commentary on the "Commedia" if not from our own reading, there are a host of characters in the poem, few of whom are fleshed out in much detail.  Rather, the poet seems to think his readers will already know enough about them (despite the fact that many are fictional) that he can use an aspect or two of their lives to make a certain point.

Such is the case with Francesca. How exactly did that political marriage come about? Was Francesca complicit initially, or perhaps just a dutiful daughter going along with whatever her father (and mother?) thought best?  It would seem to be important to know in view of what happened to her.

In 1370, about 50 years after the Commedia appeared, the Florentine writer Giovanni Boccaccio, author of the Decameron and an admirer of Dante Alighieri. decided to flesh out the story and in a fashion arguably very sympathetic to Francesca. 

You can read a full account of Boccaccio's version as well as much, much more about Francesca on the website Dante Poliglotta, but in short, Boccaccio claims she was tricked into it. He says she was married by proxy, thinking she was wedding the attractive Paulo, and only on the morning after, discovered that her husband was instead his unattractive, lame older brother.

If that was the case, there is ample reason Francesca shouldn't be in the Inferno.

Well, one could go on and on because as you can see from Wikipedia's account of Francesca, her story inspired numerous plays, operas and other works of art. Which is another reason for knowing all about her.

I don't know about you, but I don't think she's really in the Inferno. Let's just mark it down to artistic license on the part of Dante. 

 

The Story of Francesca, and Why Read Fiction?

    

Seen below is Dante Gabriel Rossetti's depiction of the story of Francesca da Rimini and her lover Paolo -- on the left as their transgressive relationship began while reading a book of fiction.  In the center and on the right, Virgil and  Dante-the-pilgrim observe the lovers swirling around in perpetuity in the winds of Hell. 

The scenes are from Dante-the-poet's "Commedia," or "The Divine Comedy" as it is generally known.  

Rossetti, the London-born son of an Italian who emigrated to England, was named Gabriel Charles Dante, but put Dante first in honor of the Italian poet, who lived much earlier.  Rossetti founded an artistic movement known as The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

The watercolor painting is owned by the Tate Gallery in London and the image is borrowed from the museum's website for non-commercial purposes. 

        

 Why read fiction?

For entertainment is surely the most common answer. A good thriller, a compelling romance, a dystopian epic -- in short,  a "page turner" of one sort or another. 

Alternatively, people talk about reading stories because they identify with a character and perhaps better understand themselves as a result. Sometimes, they become so absorbed it is hard to return to "real life."

Reading fiction is also a way to travel without leaving one's armchair -- a series of detective stories set in Venice, or at British horse race tracks, or in ancient Rome. Less tedious perhaps than reading about the same places without a narrative and a compelling character or two.

Of course there are other reasons as well, perhaps many.

This topic came to mind as I was, rather late in life, reading Dante's "Commedia," the most well-known episode of which is undoubtedly the story of how Francesca and Paolo ended up in the Inferno, albeit in one of the outer regions where the form of torture is far, far less drastic than those which lie deeper within.

Francesca da Rimini (1255 -  c. 1285), daughter of the ruler of the Italian city of Ravenna, was married off at about age 20 for political reasons to the head of a rival family that ruled the near-by city of Rimini. There she apparently quickly fell in love with her husband's married younger brother, Paolo. They carried on an affair for about 10 years until they were discovered by Francesca's husband, who then killed them both. 

Dante appropriated the affair, placing Francesca and Paulo in the circle of Hell reserved for the lustful, using their story to illustrate what happens when love, a fundamental human attribute in his view, is misdirected. In the circle of lust, the poet's chief protagonist, a fictional pilgrim named Dante exploring the afterlife initially with the Roman poet Virgil as his guide, questions Francesca as to what happened.

What does this have to do with the question "why read fiction?"  Seems pretty obvious: adultery is wrong and in a Christian context, sinful.  While the religion allows for confession and proper repentance, the two lovers, caught in the act and immediately killed, clearly had no time or opportunity for that. So off to Hell they went, intertwined forever.

But that's not the whole story and arguably, not even the most important aspect of it in the mind of Dante-the-poet. Dante-the-pilgrim doesn't condemn Francesca. Rather, he faints in sympathy when he understands the consequences of her love for Paolo, who, it has been pointed out, she doesn't mention my name. Nor does Dante-the-pilgrim question him as to what happened. And, in real life, it seems we know little about him -- how he married and why he preferred Francesca to his wife, for instance. It's all about a desirable, but fallen young woman and presumably far more interesting that way.

Moreover, among the ruling classes at least, where it was common for marriages to be arranged to secure alliances or for other non-romantic purposes, adultery was not uncommon. In Francesca's case, she was married to an older man who, although described as brave, was lame. Probably not what a 20-year-old woman, ready for a passionate romance, had in mind. So it's not unreasonable to be sympathetic.

But back to the story.  According to Francesca, she and Paulo were reading the Arthurian story of Lancelot and Guinevere "for joy" or "for delight" (as the Italian can be translated) and couldn't resist kissing when encountering the scene in which Sir Lancelot first kisses Guinevere, King Arthur's wife. One thing led to another in both cases.

In Dante's time (1265 - 1321), fiction was not to be read for entertainment, for joy, or for delight, as Francesca put it, but rather for ethical instruction.

Francesca and Paolo should have somehow suppressed or ignored the feelings the scene engendered within them and learned a moral lesson from the tale instead, When they failed to use their God-given power to reason correctly, that transgression was as bad misdirecting love toward lust.  They should have learned the lesson that when Lancelot and Guinevere's affair was discovered, it caused a civil war that resulted in the end of Arthur's kingdom.

Which brings me back to the question, why read fiction?  Why are you reading it?

Before ending, I should note that Dante's rendering of Francesca and Paolo's affair spawned a host of paintings, plays and operas plus alternative versions of the story, one of which, by Boccaccio, I will hopefully address later.