Experiencing Divinity. János Arany’s Interpretation of Dante in 32 Lines

Abstract

In 1852 János Arany articulated his experience of Dante in an ode written to him “Dante”. Based on the lines of Inferno, I, 79-80, “Art thou that Virgil, then, that fountain-head / which poureth forth so broad a stream of speech?”, Dante’s oeuvre is presented as deep and vast waters. The Biblical language building up the complex image of the waters makes it possible to associate the scene of the ode with that of the account of Creation in the Bible “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”, Genesis 1: 2. This parallelism suggests that Dante’s poetry is comparable to that of the Creation of God. In the poem, the concept of the sublime serves as the common ground for both. I shall analyze the speaker’s view on the relationship among Dante’s poetry, divinity and the sublime.