Dante's Nose

I’ve been trying to write the story of Dante’s bones. When I visited his tomb in Ravenna several years ago, I became fascinated by the story of the Franciscans who had hid them for more than 300 years. Who were they? What greed or loyalty or enlightened passion prompted and sustained such subterfuge from good Catholics? Who specifically were the Florentine agents intent on stealing them? Who were the vestal virgins who kept silent watch, tending the mystery? Who finally uncovered them, under what circumstances, at what historically significant moment and what oh what had been the impact of discovery? Was Florence still after them? Did Florence still want them for the magnificent tomb at Santa Croce? Or had the Florentines given up, having arrived at an easy-enough peace over most tourists believing Dante’s bones are in Santa Croce anyway?

Dante’s bones, like Santa Chiara’s hair, like pieces of the true cross—detritus in terms of their materiality, seemed absurdly value-less, and yet how these relics move through history and impinge on the imagination, rouse spirit, convince the credulous, dissuade the skeptic, resonate regardless—have power. Even among those who shrug and smirk, it seems the issues surrounding them cannot be ignored and I loved that idea, loved the symbolic value of the bones, loved how elusive they were.

Early in my search, I was led to Dorothy Sayers, to the introduction of her translation of the Inferno. She she does indeed tell the story of how Boccaccio told the story of the bones in his early and first biography of the poet. But Sayers is less interested in the bones per se than in a curious hidden parallel. She begins her account with the story of how Dante himself had hid the last thirteen cantos of the Paradisio behind a brick in his bedroom wall, presumably because he was “made uneasy by what his offspring might make of his last three heavens.” According to Boccaccio, those cantos were still immured at the time of Dante’s death, but in order to rescue the poem for history, Dante appeared to his son Giacopo in a dream and led him to excavate the final moldy pages. Sayers writes of the bones that “the adventure was repeated, many years later, with the author’s own body, which became, literally as one may say, a bone of contention between Ravenna and Florence.” She then goes on to tell of the box and how it was excavated during renovations of Bracciaforte Chapel, much to the wonder of everyone. The friars had heard rumor of a hidden treasure in their midst, but who would have guessed it was the missing Dante.

I loved the idea of these “parallel adventures,” though didn’t know quite how far I would go in believing them and surely did not think anything worthwhile could come out of pursuing them. Life is filled with so many echoing ironies, but what can one make of them? Better to stick with the concrete? But alas, I am helpless before such mysteries—compelled by them to read further and further. So here I was with Dorothy Sayers, reading more and more about her relationship to Dante, her conversion through him from writer of detective fiction to translator and Christian apologist. She spent the last years of her life translating the Comedy, but died before she could finish it. Died leaving behind—the self-same thirteen cantos-behind-the-wall that had so fascinated her when she wrote her introduction.

For nearly a decade my story has remained frozen at the precipice of Dorothy’s own “parallel adventure” into a realm no words, or even imaginings, can possibly reach. I’ve always assumed that if I set the story aside, some prompt from a colleague or nudge of serendipity would call it back, put a new spin on it, make it again compelling enough to pursue. And indeed, finally, that moment arose as I was checking my email yesterday and saw right there, on the Yahoo home page, my story of the bones amid an article of “breaking news”: A team of researchers had found Dante’s missing nose!

I am humbled as Dante has been humbled. I am a convert to the concrete, my own “parallel adventure” having arrived at a kind of resolution. Why lunge headlong into the gaping hole of specious inquiry when it is possible to reach out and touch something palpable as a nose? At long last I understand the value of the bones and how crucial the interests were of those who sought them. Never mind the particulars of how the experts constructed—with such conviction!—the shape of a nose from what must have been a gaping hole in Dante’s 700 year old skull. Never mind that the nose was constructed from a "bootleg model." I trust the news, the expertise of scientists and am credulous enough to believe I see the true reflection of the poet. I believe I see Dante. Now possibly the bones can be tucked back in their little scattola so they can rot in peace.