Long time readers will know well how a recurring argument for our decade long work on Dante’s Comedy is the lack of the “fourth meaning” in Dante Scholarship in the last 200 years, or likely much longer.
Dante writes at 4 levels:
- Literal (what is literally happening)
- Allegorical (in effect all symbolism except the anagogical)
- Moral (which moral teaching is expressed)
- Anagogical (how this expresses growth and ascent upwards, spiritually)
Of which the last is the deepest and primary, per Dante himself. The word means “ana gogy” as in “up leading” in Greek, meaning that this level expresses insights and wisdom about spiritual growth and ascent towards the Divine, in short: the Soul’s Journey to God.
Until now this level has been dismissed, overlooked, or often deemed too “subjective” or “personal” to be the object of serious academic and intellectual study and discernment. But this is absurd. Even if this level might require personal experience to be fully understood, it is still defined as the primary meaning of the work. Thus it needs to be at the minimum explained in its intention, and for this we are now proposing an early version of a rational anagogical hermeneutical method:
Key elements are:
1st: the domain is already defined. The anagogical is per definition about Soul, God, Relationship, Growth. This is explicitly decided beforehand by the writer.
2nd: we propose 4 tools for discernment and evaluation. These should be dwelt in one by one. What is essential is the “Sequential Position” or what in some hermeneutics would be called the “systematic interpretation”. Passage by passage in a canto build on the elements established right before. Without tracking this sequentially, the options become almost limitless. Considering the steps before, the set of contingent possibilities narrows significantly.
3rd: The overall aim, as teleological, is also given with its definition: the Soul’s Journey to God. But to consider how the elements in a passage might map onto the interior of the spiritual life and journey, one has to take into consideration the spiritual state and “position” on this path, for the reader. Thus we have outlined three examples, though there are infinite levels between them. But one can consider for example a first starter on the spiritual path, and one who has been doing practice for many years (also with experiences), and one who has experienced theosis, a direct touch of the Divine, and a full dual perception of spiritual and material realities and their dynamics continually, perhaps permanently.
So the anagogical meaning cannot be “one thing”. This makes this type of discernment infinitely rich, but also requiring some practice. One has to combine the 4 tools with a certain sense of where on the path internally a reader is. A scene like Trajan and the Widow is significantly different for someone who has just discovered the spiritual life, compared to one who has tried to combine these aspects for ten or twenty years already.
This also means that the capacity to use this method grows with time and practice, and insights to the anagogical meaning itself. The recursiveness is built into the layer, and into the poem. Which also confirms a core anagogical idea: gazing gives further insights, which then amplifies the ability to gaze deeper, which then gives further insight, and so on. Infinite richness, and a recursive process.
And this is why this hermeneutical method is somewhat different in nature. You know the type of outcome, you have 4 tools, and then you consider this in light of the reader’s current advancement. This is the rational path to distill the anagogical meaning, from Dante’s Divine Comedy.
