Читать книгу Gesammelte Aufsätze zur romanischen Philologie – Studienausgabe. Herausgegeben und ergänzt um Aufsätze, Primärbibliographie und Nachwort von Matthias Bormuth und Martin Vialon онлайн

135 страница из 203

At the foot of the mountain of the Purgatorio, DanteDante and Virgil meet a venerable old man, who, with severe authority teaches them how to prepare for the ascent, as the guardian who controls access to purification. It is Cato of UticaCato v. Utica. The choice of this particular character for such a function is very astonishing. For Cato was a pagan; he was an enemy of CaesarCaesar and the monarchy; his allies, CaesarCaesar’s murderers BrutusBrutus and CassiusCassius, are put by DanteDante in the deepest hell, in Lucifer’s mouth by the side of Judas; moreover, Cato committed suicide, a crime for which horrible punishment is meted out in another circle of the Inferno. And yet Cato has been appointed as guardian of the Purgatorio! The problem becomes clear to us by the words with which Virgil addresses him: ‘I pray you, allow my companion to enter; he is in search of liberty, that precious good you know so well – you who have despised life for it; you know it well, because death was not bitter to you in Utica, where you abandoned your body that will be so radiant on the last day.’ From these words, it becomes obvious, that Cato is a figura, or better still, that the historical Cato is a figurafigura of the Cato in DanteDante’s Purgatorio. The political and earthly freedom for which he died, was only a shadow, a prefiguration of Christian freedom from evil which leads from the bondage of corruption to true sovereignty over oneself, the libertas gloriae filiorum Dei – a freedom which DanteDante finally attains at the top of the Purgatorio, when Virgil crowns him as master over himself. Cato’s choice of voluntary death in order to avoid slavery is obviously considered by DanteDante not as a crime, but as a figura of this liberation. Of course DanteDante was inspired in the choice of Cato for this part by Virgil’s sixth book, where Cato is represented as a judge of the righteous in the netherworld (secretosque pios, his dantem jura Catonem) and he was encouraged to treat Cato in a special manner by the universal admiration expressed for him even by authors who were his political opponents. Cato was one of the classical examples of Roman virtue on which DanteDante based his political ideology of universal Roman monarchy. But the manner in which he introduced Cato and justified his part is independent of Virgil and is clearly figurative. Both forms of Cato are real and concrete, the historical and the eternal form; his function in the beyond presupposes the reality of his historical role. Cato is not an allegory nor a symbol of liberty, but an individual personality: he is raised from his preliminary status, where he considered political freedom as the highest good, to the final perfection of his form, in which civil virtue or law have lost their value, and in which the only thing of importance is the ben dell’intelletto, the true highest good, the liberty of the immortal soul in the sight of God.