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Bertran de Born and Sordello: The Poetry of Politics in Dante's Comedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Teodolinda Barolini
Teodolinda Barolini*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract

The figure of Sordello, who appears in Purgatorio vi and guides Dante and Vergil to the valley of the princes, has long puzzled critics, since his stature in the Comedy seems greater than his historical achievements warrant. He is noted chiefly for a planh with political overtones, the lament for Blacatz. Of the Comedy’s lyric poets, the other known especially for political poetry is Bertran de Born, among the “sowers of scandal and of schism” in Inferno xxviii. By comparing Dante’s treatment of these two “political poets,” we see that they are used within the poem in a way that necessarily transcends their historical identities: they have become emblematic, respectively, of the good and bad uses to which poets can put their verse in the service of the state.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 94 , Issue 3 , May 1979 , pp. 395 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1979

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References

Notes

1 In “Dante and Sordello,” Comparative Literature, 5 (1953), 1–15, C. M. Bowra makes a case for the importance of Sordello's long narrative poem, “Ensen-hamens d'onor,” noting that “each point made by Dante [in the invective of Purgatorio vi] can be paralleled by something said by Sordello [in the ”Ensenha-mens“]” (p. 7). Ultimately, however, Bowra gives more weight to the lament for Blacatz, thus joining all other scholars who have written on the subject. Of the older studies, the best is E. G. Parodi's “Rassegna di studi sordelliani,” Bulleltino délia società dantesca italiana, 4 (1897), 185–97; here ail the issues to be endlessly discussed by later critics are first raised. Of more recent studies, the most illuminating are Aurelio Roncaglia's “Il canto vi del Purgatorio” Rassegna delta letteratura italiana, 60 (1956), 409–26, and Guido Favati's “Sordello,” Cultura e scuola, 4 (1965), 551–65.

2 Sordello: Le poésie, ed. Marco Boni (Bologna: Li-breria Antiquaria Palmaverde, 1954), pp. 156–60. The translations from the Provençal are my own; I have attempted to make them as literal as possible.

3 Purgatorio vi.74–75; from the text established by Giorgio Petrocchi, La Commedia secondo I'antica vul-gata, 4 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1966–67). All further quotations from the Comedy are from this edition. The translations are my own.

4 Vincenzo de Bartholomaeis, Primordi delta lirica d'arte in Italia (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1943), p. 208.

5 Thomas G. Bergin, “Dante's Provençal Gallery,” Speculum, 40 (1965), 15. The idea of three troubadours in the Comedy, one for each canticle, was anticipated by E. Hoepffner in “Dante et les Troubadours,” études Italiennes, 4 (1922), 193–210.

6 I have deliberately omitted Pier della Vigna and Forese Donati from my list of the Comedy's lyric poets. The linguistic point Dante is making about Piero is, I believe, that he is a representative of the highly rhetorical prose style of the chancellery of Frederick H, not that he is a poet of the scuola siciliana; and the episode of Forese Donati, like Dante's tenzone with Forese, tells us more about a moment in Dante's life and poetic development than it does about Forese. But even if I were to take these two figures into consideration, my observation regarding Bertran de Born and Sordello would remain unchanged. I should mention that this study, based on the idea of Bertran and Sordello as the two political poets among the Comedy's lyric poets, comes from my dissertation, in which I analyze Dante's treatment of all the Comedy's poets (“Dante's Poets: A Study in Poetic Revisionism” Columbia 1978).

7 For the legend of Bertran de Born and the Young King, see Olin H. Moore, The Young King: Henry Plantagenet 1155–1183, in History, Literature and Tradition (Columbus: Ohio State Univ., 1925), and William D. Paden, Jr., “Bertran de Born in Italy,” in Italian Literature: Roots and Branches [Essays in Honor of Thomas Goddard Bergin], ed. Giose Rimanelli and Kenneth John Atchity (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 39–66. Although Moore suggests that Bertran may not have been so intimate with Prince Henry as the poet claims (pp. 38–47), Dante and his contemporaries certainly believed in this intimacy.

8 Modern scholarship has raised the question of the authenticity of “Si tuit li dol.” Carl Appel, in his edition of Bertran (Die Lieder Bertrans von Born [Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1932]), places “Si tuit li dol” among the poems of doubtful attribution, as does L. E. Kast-ner in “Notes on the Poems of Bertran de Born,” Modern Language Review, 32 (1937), 219. For a résumé of the critical opinion on this matter, see D'Arco Silvio Avalle, éd., Peire Vidal: Poésie (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1960), I, cxvi, n. 1. The traditional attribution of “Si tuit li dol” to Bertran is so firmly ingrained that the poem has been included in anthologies under his name even by scholars who acknowledge that the authorship is questionable; see, e.g.. Anthology of the Provençal Troubadours, ed. R. T. Hill and T. G. Bergin, 2nd ed., rev. and enlarged by Thomas Bergin, with the collaboration of Susan Olson, William D. Paden, Jr., and Nathaniel Smith (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1973), ii, 37, and Medieval Song: An Anthology of Hymns and Lyrics, trans, and ed. James J. Wilhelm (New York: Dutton, 1971), p. 164. The only recent compiler to omit “Si tuit li dol” from a selection of Bertran's poems is Frederick Goldin, in Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouvères (New York: Anchor-Dou-bleday, 1973).

9 Benedetto Croce, La poesia di Dante (Bari: Laterza, 1922), p. 112.

10 Giovanni Gentile poipts out the use of “Vedi là” in both episodes (“Il canto vi del Purgatorio” [1940]; rpt. in Letture scelte su/?a Divina Commedia, ed. Giovanni Getto [Florence: Sansoni, 1970], pp. 577–93). Indeed, most of these similarities between the two cantos, with the exception of the interrupted conversation motif, which I mention below and which I have not come across elsewhere, have been previously noted in one commentary or another.

11 Irma Brandeis, The Ladder of Vision: A Study of Dante's Comedy (New York: Doubleday, 1960), p. 84.

12 De Vulgari Eloquentia, ed. Aristide Marigo, 3rd ed. (Florence: Le Monnier, 1968), Bk. i, Ch. xv, par. 2.

13 Convivio, ed. G. Busnelli and G. Vandelli, 2nd ed. (Florence: Le Monnier, 1964), Bk. iv, Ch. xi, par. 14. The source for Bertran's generosity would be the razos and perhaps two passages in the sirventes; see Moore, pp. 52, 57. It is worth noting that the only other contemporary poets mentioned in the Convivio are Giraut de Bornelh and Guido Guinizzelli; Bertran is therefore one of a very select group.

14 This passage is from the first of the two biographies of Bertran de Born. The text is from Le biografie trovadoriche, ed. Guido Favati (Bologna: Libreria Antiquaria Palmaverde, 1961), p. 147. The case for Dante's knowledge both of Bertran's poetry and of the Provençal biographies is stated by Moore, pp. 74–78.

15 Bertran compares himself to Ahithophel, a counselor who urged Absalom to rebel against his father, King David. Interestingly, Dante is not the first to suggest a parallel between these biblical figures and the Young King and his father. William of Newburgh reports that when Prince Henry escaped to his father-in-law, Louis vu of France, in 1173, Henry n sent a committee to Louis demanding the return of his “Absalom” (see Moore, p. 10).

16 On a textual level as well, the entire canto is a preparation for its pièce de résistance, Bertran de Born. There are echoes of Bertran's poetry throughout Inferno xxviii, starting with the imitation of the opening of “Si tuit li dol” in 11. 7–21. (See the commentary on the Inferno in The Divine Comedy, trans., with commentary, Charles S. Singleton [Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1970–75], pp. 496, 502, 506.)

For the distancing rhetoric of this canto, which deliberately depersonalizes the sinners, see the excellent study by Mario Fubini, “II canto XXVIII dell' Inferno” Lectura Dantis Scaligera (Florence: Le Monnier, 1967), pp. 999–1021.

Regarding the criticism of this canto, the classic studies are Michèle Scherillo's “Bertram dal Bomio e il Re Giovane,” Nuova antologia, 154 (1897), 452–78; and Vincenzo Crescini's “II canto XXVIII dM'Inferno,” Lectura Dantis (Florence: Sansoni, 1907); rpt. in Letture scelte sulla Divina Commedia, ed. Giovanni Getto (Florence: Sansoni, 1970), pp. 383–98. An interesting recent article is Marianne Shapiro's “The Fictionalization of Bertran de Born,” Dante Studies, 92 (1974), 107–16, which deals with the episode as a moment in the Comedy's “askesis of the entire troubadour tradition'” (p. 109).

17 “Dante's Provençal Gallery,” p. 29; for the similarities of the valley to Limbo, also see Parodi, p. 193. In showing that Sordello is “one of the important and impressive figures in the Purgatory” Ber-gin points out that “his presence takes in three cantos” and that “he is a true guide” (p. 25).

18 See the Monorchia, ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci (Verona: Mondadori. 1965), Bk. i, Ch. iv, par. 2: “Unde mani-festum est quod pax universalis est optimum eorum que ad nostram beatitudinem ordinantur” ‘Thus it is shown that universal peace is the best of those things that are regulated for our happiness’ (translation mine).