Il libro di Paolo e Francesca: amori veri e falsi nella Divina Commedia

For Dante and Christianity it is certainly not sex, nor adultery per se or promiscuity, which leads us to mortal sin capable of killing our soul, closing us in hell: and in this sense we can think of fundamental emblems, like the woman of Samaria, the adulteress and the Magdalene of the Gospel. A sincere sexuality radiated with love, True Love, always leads gradually to the glory of heaven: this is the message hidden in the symbols of the Divine Comedy. The cause of inner death and anguish that makes us deeply unhappy (and therefore ‘imprisoned’... – captivi diaboli) is instead the superficiality of our experience of love, rancor and hypocrisy together with the desire to overwhelm others, as in the famous case of Paolo and Francesca. The latter is analyzed in this study with cross-references to the love legends of Lancelot and Tristan, as well as to the poetic love between Arnaut Daniel and Bertrand de Born. The theme of homoeroticism is therefore addressed with regard to Brunetto Latini in hell, however considering that Dante’s vision symbolically shows us that sodomy, as an external act of the body induced by a spontaneous and immediate impulse of the senses, is not in itself a cause of damnation. As can be observed among the various spirits of carnal lovers in purgatory and paradise, the death of the soul seems for the poet to be connected only to an inner risk, an ambiguous limit which is narcissism and selfish isolation within our intellect or political practice. In his tolerant erotic morality, Dante seems to be influenced by the Joachimite movements of the Free Spirit.