An Irish Dante, Part I: Possible Precursors to the Commedia

Abstract

An Irish Dante, Part I: Possible Precursors to the Commedia Daragh O’Connell (bio) 2021 marked the septicentennial celebrations of Dante’s death in Ravenna. Despite the restrictions brought about by the global pandemic, scholars and creative practitioners around the world ensured that the anniversary did not pass unnoticed, with online and in-person conferences, seminars, readings, performances, adaptations, translations and dialogues taking place on a daily basis. In Ireland too Dante’s anniversary was marked by a series of initiatives both scholarly and creative: the establishment at University College Cork of the Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland foregrounded a series of activities and research initiatives, including the Dante Dialogue Series of 2021;1 the Irish artist Liam Ó Broin exhibited his Dante-inspired 100 lithographs, Dante’s Divine Comedy, at Dublin Castle; and the musician and composer Elliot Murphy premiered his Dante’s Inferno on 30 September 2021.2 Though the Florentine poet never once mentions Ireland in his masterpiece, which he called simply the Commedia (the ‘Divine’ appellation is a much later addition), there is a curious sense in which Ireland played a not-insignificant role in both the poem’s rich imaginary landscape and in its afterlife in the creative sphere, providing an Irish Dante via Yeats, Joyce, Beckett and Heaney that ‘achieves things that are beyond the grasp of the English or Americans’.3 Why Dante and Ireland? What links Dante to this island specifically? Let me state from the outset that Ireland’s relationship with Dante is uniquely special; our experiencing of Dante is one that is protean, indeed vital to the creative energies of our best artists, mostly the literary ones. In Part II of this essay, I will trace the presence of Dante in Irish literature of the twentieth century and after. First, however, in Part I, I must turn to the rich Irish medieval tradition of vision literature, which in some cases predates Dante by several centuries, to see possible direct and indirect influences emerge. In some cases these texts stand as eloquent precursors to Dante’s poem. Since our very earliest literature in Ireland, the afterlife – its representations and configurations (Navigatio Sancti Brendani; Visio 125 Tnugdali) – [End Page 125] has exerted an enduring hold on the Irish imagination and indeed influenced European cultural expression in the Middle Ages. But let’s start in purgatory – St Patrick’s, that is. Umbiferi prefazi (Paradiso, XXX, 78) – Shadowy prefaces Legend states that while St Patrick was on Station Island he had a vision of the afterlife in a cave on the island. Station Island is an island in Lough Derg, in County Donegal. Legend attributes the colour of the lake (‘Red Lake’ in Irish) to the blood of a monster-serpent killed by St Patrick. Station Island has long been a place of Catholic pilgrimage. In 1184 a monk, who signed himself ‘H’ at the monastery of Saltrey near Cambridge, wrote about the experiences of the Irish knight Owein during his visit to Lough Derg: the Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii.4 Some forty years before H penned his story, Owein was allowed to enter the cave on the island and soon found himself surrounded by demons and cast into the fire. He was delivered by calling on the name of Christ. After multiple periods of torture, the knight finally made his way across a narrow bridge over hell and entered an earthly paradise, where souls await their entry into heaven. Owein returned to the world to tell others of his ordeal. Various versions and translations of the story became widely read across Europe. No one knows the source of Owein’s visions. One possibility is that medicinal (‘purgative’) herbs were burned in the cave. Some of these could have led to hallucinations. Ireland has evidence of ancient ‘sweathouses’ that were likely used in this way. The idea of St Patrick’s purgatory became famous, and Lough Derg soon became a popular place of pilgrimage. The Tractatus became arguably the most popular vision of purgatory in the Middle Ages and was quickly disseminated across Europe through vernacular translations. There is clear evidence in Italy of this identification of St Patrick with purgatory. One of...