In the Convivio, however, both the literal sense and the allegorical sense are presented as intended by the author, and we are basically still talking about an allegory in verbis. In Epistola XIII, on the other hand, something further is suggested.
Prima facie, as an example of an allegorical reading the author interprets facts narrated by the Bible. It could be objected (see Pépin 1970: 81) that here Dante is citing not the fact of the Exodus but the words of the Psalmist who speaks of the Exodus—a difference Augustine was already conscious of (Enarrationes in psalmos CXIII). But a few lines before citing the psalm, Dante speaks of his own poem, and he uses an expression that some translations, more or less unconsciously, attenuate. For example, the Italian translation of the Latin Epistola by Frugoni and Brugnoli, in the Ricciardi edition of Dante’s minor works, makes Dante say “the first meaning is the one we have from the letter of the text, the other is the one we have from what was meant to be signified by the letter of the text” (“il primo significato è quello che si ha dalla lettera del testo, l’altro è quello che si ha da quel che si volle significare con la lettera del testo”) (Epistole XIII, 7, 20). If this were the case, Dante would still be talking about a parabolic meaning, intended by the author. But the Latin text says: “primus sensus est qui habetur per litteram, alius est qui habetur per significata per litteram,” and here it seems that Dante means to speak of the things “that are signified by the letter” and therefore of an allegory in factis, and there is nothing in the Latin to justify that “was meant to be signified” (“che si volle significare”) which appears in the Italian version. If he had wished to speak of the intended sense, Dante would not have used the neuter plural significata but some other expression such as sententiam.
How can we talk about an allegory in factis apropos of events narrated in the context of a secular poem, whose mode, Dante tells us in the course of the letter, is “poeticus” and “fictivus”?
There are two possible answers. If we assume that Dante was an orthodox Thomist, then we can only conclude that the Epistola, which clearly runs counter to Thomist principles, must not be authentic. In that case, however, it would be odd that all of Dante’s early commentators (Boccaccio, Benvenuto da Imola, Francesco da Buti, and so on) have followed the path indicated by the epistle. But the most economical hypothesis is that Dante, at least as far as his definition of poetry went, did not follow Thomas’s opinion.
Dante believes that poetry has philosophical dignity, not only his own poetry but that of all the great poets, and he does not accept the dismissal of the poet-theologians decreed by Aristotle in his Metaphysics (and commented upon approvingly by Saint Thomas). Sixth among so much wisdom (along with Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan—as he remarks in Inferno, IV, 48), he never ceased to read both the facts of mythology and the other works of the classical poets as if they were allegories in factis, a practice that, despite Thomas’s caveat, was cultivated in Bologna in the period during which Dante resided there (cf. Renucci 1958). These are the terms in which he speaks of poets in the De vulgari eloquentia (I, 2, 7), in the Convivio, and in many other places, and in the Divine Comedy he has Statius openly affirm that Virgil taught those who came after him “like someone who goes at night and carries his lamp behind him and does not help himself” (Purgatorio XXII, 67–69): the poetry of the pagan poet conveys additional meanings of which the author is unaware. And in his Epistola VII Dante offers an allegorical interpretation of a passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, seen as a prefigurement of the destiny of Florence.
For Dante, then, the poet continues Holy Scripture after his own fashion, just as in the past he had confirmed or even anticipated it. He believes in the reality of the myth he has produced as he tends to believe in the allegorical truth of the classical myths that he cites, along with historical personages assumed as figurae of the future, even mythological personages like Orpheus. And Cato of Utica himself will be judged worthy of signifying, along with Moses, Christ’s sacrifice (Purgatorio I, 70–75), even God himself (Convivio IV, 18, 15).
If this is the poet’s task, to figure by means of a poetic lie facts and events that function as signs, in imitation of the signs of the Bible, then we can understand why Dante would propound to Cangrande della Scala what has been defined by Curtius as his “self-exegesis” and by Pépin as his “self-allegoresis.” It is plausible that Dante thought of the secondary meaning of his poem as being close to the secondary meaning of the Bible, in the sense that at times the poet himself, when inspired, is not aware of all he is saying. For this reason he invokes divine inspiration (addressing Apollo) in the first canto of Paradiso. And if the poet is someone who “when Love inspires him notes, and in the same way as Love dictates within goes signifying” (Purgatorio XXII, 52–54), in order to interpret what he is not always aware that he has said, we may then use the same procedures reserved by Thomas for sacred history. If a poetic text were entirely literal-parabolic, it is not easy to see why the poet would clutter up various passages with enunciatory instances in which he invites the reader to decipher what is hidden “beneath the veil of the strange verses” (see, for example, Inferno IX, 61–63).
That said, we are bound to admit that, as far as his manner of interpreting metaphors goes, Dante does not break with the ideas of his time and in particular with those of Thomas. Let us take the Vita nuova, and confine ourselves to examining how Dante explains the sonnet “Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare.” The poem contains a number of metaphorical expressions, such as “benignamente d’umiltà vestuta,” “dolcezza al core,” not to mention the invitation, addressed to the soul, to sigh (sospirare). Well, Dante makes it immediately clear that “this sonnet is so easy to understand … that it has no need of any division.” And the same is true for the other compositions he comments on: he clarifies the general philosophical meaning, but it does not occur to him to explain the metaphors. If we turn to the Convivio, we find something very similar. Indeed, it is curious that, in explaining “Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona” (and I would argue that the verb “ragiona” [“reasons, speaks”] is already a first metaphorical expression, to say nothing of the fourth verse, in which the intellect “disvia” [“goes off track”]), not only does Dante fail to explain his metaphors, but, in order to explain the profound meaning of his poem, he employs liberal quantities of additional metaphors as if they were readily comprehensible: “Lo quale amore poi, trovando la mia disposta vita al suo ardore, a guisa di fuoco, di picciolo in grande fiamma s’accese; sì che non solamente vegghiando, ma dormendo, lume di costei nella mia testa era guidato” (“Finding my life disposed toward ardor, this love later blazed up like a fire, from a small to a great flame, so that not only while I was awake but also during my sleep the light of her penetrated my mind”), going on to speak of the “abitaculo del mio amore” (“the dwelling of my love”), its “multiplicato incendio” (“spreading fire”), and so on. Similarly, apropos of “Voi che ’ntendendo,” whereas the canzone itself, philosophical in its content, does not contain many metaphors, in his commentary the author piles on metaphors intended to explain the text but which he makes no effort to explain, such as “trapassamento,” “vedovata vita,” “disposarsi a quella immagine,” “molta battaglia intra lo pensiero,” “rocca della mia mente,” and so on. For Dante too, then, metaphors are completely part of the literal (intended) meaning and do not require any effort of interpretation.