New Insights into the Secret Language

of Dante

Nouveaux aperçus sur le langage secret de Dante, July 1932.

Several months ago while speaking here (March 1932, The Secret Lan- guage of Dante and the 'Fedeli d'Amore') of the last book of Mr. Luigi Valli, we mentioned the work that followed the same guiding ideas, Mr. Gaetano Scarlata devoted his treaty to the De vulgari eloquentia of Dante, or rather as he prefers to name it (for the title has never been exactly determined), De vulgaris eloquentiae doctrina, according to the expression used by Dante himself to define the subject from the beginning, and in order to highlight his intentions towards the doctrinal content of vernac- ular poetry.^[265] Indeed, those whom Dante calls poeti volgari, are those whose writings had, as he says, verace intendimento, which is to say, con- taining a hidden meaning according to the symbolism of the 'Fedeli d'Amore,' since what opposes them is litterali (and not litterati as it has sometimes been incorrectly read), or to those who write only in the lit- eral sense. For him, the first are the real poets, and he also calls them trilingues doctores, which can be understood externally from the fact that such a poetry existed in the three languages Italian, Provençal (not 'French' as Mr. Scarlata wrongly says), and Spanish, but in reality this means (no poet having ever written in all three languages) that it should be interpreted in a triple sense;^[266] and Dante, speaking further on the subject of the trilingues doctors, says that maxime conveniunt in hoc vo- cabulo quod est Amor, which is a rather obvious allusion to the doctrine of the 'Fedeli d'Amore.' With regards to these, Mr. Scarlata makes a very true remark: he be- lieves that they have never had to constitute an association according to rigorously defined forms, more or less similar to that of modern Masonry, as an example, with a central authority establishing ‘subsidiaries' in the varying localities; and we may add in support of this remark, that in Masonry itself nothing of this kind has ever existed before the constitution of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717. Moreover, it does not seem that Mr. Scarlata has grasped the full scope of this fact, which he believes must be attributed simply to circumstances, which are not favorable to the existence of an institution presenting itself under a more stable exterior; in reality, as we have already said often, a truly initiatic organization cannot be a 'society' in the modern sense of the word, with all the external formalism it implies; when statutes, written regulations, and the like come into being, we can be sure that there is a degeneration that gives the organization a ‘semi-profane' character, if we can use such an expression. But, as far as a properly initiatic order is concerned, Mr. Scarlata has not reached the essence of things, and he seems to not have come as close as Mr. Valli; he sees primarily the political side, which is altogether incidental, and he speaks constantly of 'sects,' a point which we amply explained in our last article; in its development, it draws but a few consequences from the doctrine (esoteric and non-heretical) of the amor sapientiae, which is entirely essential, the rest being limited to historical contingencies. It is also possible that the subject of this study lends itself quite easily to what appears to be an error of perspective: De vulgaris eloquentiae doctrina has a direct link with De monarchia, and consequently is related to the portion of Dante's work where social applications have the most important place; but can these applications themselves be understood if we do not constantly relate them to their principle? The most unfortunate thing is that Mr. Scarlata, when he moves on to historical views, has let himself be led to more than questionable interpretations: does it not go so far as to present Dante and the 'Fedeli d'Amore' as adversaries of the spirit of the Middle Ages and precursors of modern ideas, animated by a 'secular' and 'democratic' spirit which would, in reality, be all the more ‘anti-initiatic?' Nevertheless, there are some interestings notes in the second part of his books, especially on the Oriental influences at Frederick II's court and in the Franciscan movement, which would be to begin again on bases which are more in line with the traditional sense; it is true that it is presented only as an 'attempt at historical reconstruction,' and who knows whether the author will not be led by this to further research which will impel him to rectify this?

Perhaps, one of the causes of Mr. Scarlata's mistake is the way in which Dante contrasts the use of the vulgare with that of Latin, the ecclestiastic language, and also the manner of symbolizing poets, according to the verace intendimento, contrasted to theologians (the latter being a way of mere allegory); but it is in the eyes of Dante's adversaries, or (which is often the same in such cases) of those who do not understand that the vulgare could be no more than the sermo laicus, whereas for him-self it was something altogether different; furthermore, from the strictly initiatic point of view, is the function of initiates more truly ‘sacerdotal' than that of an exoteric 'clergy' that possesses only the letter and stops at the rind of the doctrine?^[267] The essential point here is to know what Dante means by the expression vulgare illustre which may seem strange and even contradictory if we stick to the ordinary meaning of words, but which is explained if we notice that vulgare is synonymous with naturale: it is the language that man learns directly through oral transmission (as the child who, from the initiatic point of view, represents the neophyte, learning his mother tongue), which is to say symbolically, the language that serves as a vehicle for tradition, and which can, in this respect, be identified with the primordial and universal language. This is closely re-lated, as we can see, to the question of the mysterious 'Syriac language' (loghah suryānīyyah) that we have discussed here in previous articles;^[268] it is true that, for Dante, this 'language of revelation' seems to have been Hebrew, but as we said then, such an affirmation must not be taken lit-erally, the same can be said of any language that has a 'sacred' character, which is to say any that serves to express a regular traditional form.^[269] According to Dante, the language spoken by the first man, created im-mediately by God, was continued by his descendants until the building of the tower of Babel; then, “hanc formam locutionis hereditati sunt filii Heber...; hiis solis post confusionem remansit;” but are not these 'Sons of Heber' all those who have retained the tradition, rather than a specific people? Has the name ‘Israel' not often been used to refer to all initiates, irrespective of ethnic origins, and these, who in fact actually form the 'chosen people,' do they not possess the universal language which ena-bles them to understand each other, which is to say the knowledge of the unique tradition which is hidden under particular forms?^[270] Moreover, had Dante thought it was truly the Hebrew language, he could not have said that the Church (referred to by the enigmatic name Petramala) be-lieved to speak Adam's language, it speaks Latin, and not Hebrew, for which it does not seem that anyone has ever claimed the quality of prim-itive language; but if one understands by this that it believes to teach the true doctrine of revelation, everything becomes perfectly intelligible. In addition, even admitting that the first Christians, who possessed this true doctrine, had actually spoken Hebrew (which would be historically inac-curate, because Aramaic is no more Hebrew than Italian is Latin), the 'Fedeli d'Amore,' who considered themselves as their successors, never claimed to use this language in opposition to Latin, as they would logi-cally have had to to according to this literal interpretation. ^[271]

We see that this is all very far removed from a purely 'philological' meaning which is usually attributed to the treatise Dante, and that it is fundamentally something other than the Italian idiom; and even what really relates to it can also have at the same time a symbolic value. There-fore, when Dante opposes one city or region to another, it is not simply a linguistic opposition, or, when citing certain names such as Petramala, Papienses, or Aquilegienses in this choice there is (even without going so far as to consider the properly named geographic symbolism) a rather transparent intention, as Rossetti has already remarked; of course, in or-der to return to the true meaning of this or that seemingly insignificant word, it is often necessary to refer to the conventional terminology of the 'Fedeli d'Amore.' Mr. Scarlata correctly points out that it is almost always the examples (including those which seem to have only a purely rhetorical or grammatical value) which give the key to the context; in-deed, this was an excellent way of diverting the attention of the 'profane,' who could only see sentences without any importance; one could say that these examples play a fairly similar role to that of the 'myths' in the Platonic dialogues, and one only has to see what the academic 'critics' makes of them to be convinced of the perfect efficiency of the process of offering a 'hors-d'œuvre,' in place of what is the most significant.

In sum, what Dante seems to have essentially had in view is the for-mation of a language capable, as far as is possible through the superpo-sition of multiple meanings, of expressing the esoteric doctrine; and if the codification of such a language can be qualified as 'rhetoric,' it is in any case, a rhetoric of a very special type, as far removed from what is now understood by this word as the poetry of the 'Fedeli d'Amore' is from the modern ones, whose predecessors are those litterali to whom Dante reproached for rhyming 'stupidly' (stoltamente) without enclosing in their verses any profound meaning. ^[272] In the words of Mr. Valli which we have already quoted, Dante proposed quite something other than “to make literature," and this amounts to saying that he was precisely the opposite of a modern; his work, far from being opposed to the spirit of the Middle Ages, is one of the most perfect syntheses, just as that of the builders of the Cathedrals; and the simplest initiatic data makes this easy to understand that there are some very profound reasons for this con- nection.