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

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The struggle over political issues (I use the word ‘political’ in its widest sense) had thus become a struggle over the interpretation of the will of God; DanteDante was not the first to present his interpretation as an authentic one. The appeal to divine authority was the natural and normal way to express strong political convictions in medieval civilisation, as it had been at the time of Jewish prophecy. Indeed, very few of DanteDante’s medieval predecessors had gone so far as to claim that a special revelation had been granted them; and never before had this claim been asserted with such an encyclopedic unity of vision and with such a power of poetic expression. Politically, it was a failure. DanteDante’s idea, the reestablishment of the Roman Empire as the providential form of united human and Christian society on earth, was a lost cause long before the Commedia became known. The life which the great poem won tra coloro che questo tempo chiameranno antico (Par. XVII, 119–120) is not due to its political doctrine, but to its poetic power. Yet DanteDante’s poetic power would not have reached its highest perfection, had it not been inspired by a visionary truth transcending the immediate and actual meaning. The Christian revival of the Imperium RomanumImperium Romanum is the first conception of political unity on earth, and the Christian interpretation of human life as fall and redemption is at the root of all dialectical understanding of history. DanteDante, in his vision, combined both. He reached conceptions far beyond the horizon of Demosthenes’Demosthenes Athenian democracy. Thus it may well be legitimate that he spoke to his readers, as he still speaks to us, with the authority and the urgency of a prophet.