Who, in this climate, when identity politics rule the publishing world, would have dared to publish Dante or Shakespeare, both of whom imagined characters who were different from themselves?
The realm of Paradise in Dante’s great Commedia is an acquired taste, as my sophomores in Humanities might tell you. Most readers of Dante enjoy the Inferno with its vividly defiant sinners and unforgettably grotesque punishments, and this is not a historically recent preference (just in case we are tempted to see it as further evidence of cultural decline), but more a matter of Dante’s sifting his readership. In Canto 2 of Paradiso, he tells the reader to turn back unless he is serious. The nightmare carnival of Hell and the orderly ascent of Mount Purgatory give way to subtle imagery of light and music and love, so much so that Dante cannot say exactly what has happened to his living body, which drew such commentary from the souls in the earlier parts of the poem. Some readers (including some of my students) love the Paradiso most. Reading it helped guide Thomas Merton toward the monastic life of contemplation, as he wrote in The Seven-Storey Mountain (1948)—a book (with a Dantean title, by the way) that helped in my own conversion.
It’s hard not to bring the serene perspectives of paradise into contrast with the troubles and contentions of our cultural moment. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas appears as one of the brilliant, circling souls in the inmost of three rings in the sphere of the sun, and he addresses a doubt that he reads in Dante’s mind—the problem, basically, of how Solomon could be called the wisest man, biblically speaking, compared to Adam and Christ. (You’ll have to read the Paradiso for the answer.) Notice the advice that Thomas gives. He tells Dante not to jump to conclusions but to be slow in judging,
‘For he ranks low among the fools
who, without making clear distinctions,
affirms or denies in one case or another,
‘since it often happens that a hasty opinion
inclines one to the erring side, and then
fondness for it fetters the working of the mind.’
(Paradiso 13.115-20, Hollander translation)
Maybe we didn’t need Aquinas in heaven to tell us not to rush to judgment, but it doesn’t hurt. A startling example of the power of hasty opinions came up last week in an article by the novelist Richard North Patterson. He explains that his latest novel was rejected by 20 publishers, but not because “it concerns the televised trial of an 18-year-old black voting rights worker, stemming from the fatal shooting of a white sheriff’s deputy during a late-night traffic stop in rural Georgia.”
The issue is that the action is “seen through the eyes of three major characters, two of them black.” Among the publishers, “the seemingly dominant sentiment was that only those personally subject to discrimination could be safely allowed to depict it through fictional characters.” In other words, the opinion that identity politics defines literature inclines the publishers to the erring side and fetters them there. In this case, the hasty opinion about Patterson’s novel happens to go along with real power about the voices that can be heard, very much like the power of woke social media. The only writers who can be actively promoted, it seems, are those with a claim to victimhood.
The absurdity ought to be apparent to anyone. The range of art goes far wider and deeper. Richard North Patterson quotes Zadie Smith, a novelist whose background might qualify her for grievance, when she speaks out for the novelist: “What insults my soul,” she writes, “is the idea… that we can and should write only about people who are fundamentally ‘like’ us: racially, sexually, genetically, nationally, politically, personally. That only an intimate authorial autobiographical connection with the character can be the rightful basis of fiction. I do not believe that. I could not have written a single one of my books if I did.”
Who, in this climate, would have dared to publish Dante? Suppose that Othello had been canceled because Shakespeare imagined the voice of a black man fooled by a demonic liar into thinking he has been betrayed by his young white wife? Shakespeare speaks for the Jewish Shylock; he writes the immortal lines of Cleopatra, of whom Enobarbus says, “Age cannot wither her, or custom stale/Her infinite variety.” Never a woman or a king, Shakespeare inhabits the identities of Cordelia and King Lear—and many others from different times and cultures ranging from ancient Rome to Verona to the magical island of Prospero.
As Patterson rightly says, “to write about any character whatsoever is, inevitably, to step outside ourselves. Whatever our origin, we are each the product of infinite experiences, and no two of us are alike. We spend our lives trying to understand people, including members of our own families, who are, in multiple ways, not like us.” For Dante (not to forget the challenges of Paradise), the greatest task was to imagine heaven, peopled with all those other people alike in loving God but entirely distinct in themselves. What would art be without a way into the lives of others?
Republished with gracious permission from the Wyoming Catholic College Weekly Bulletin.
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
The featured image is “Self-Portrait with a Portrait on an Easel” (between 1623 and 1624) by Nicolas Régnier, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.