On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante

“… following the Peripatetics, I say, as they believe, that the arts and sciences derive their true and real distinctions from objects, not insofar as they are things, but insofar as they are (forgive me, all you strictly Tuscan writers, the necessity of this word) knowable [scibili] and, if one can speak so, artificiable. … And whoever looks for the reason why the poet is obligated at the very least in his storytelling to use this mode of the credible may rest content with the following reason: because the poet must speak to the people, among whom are many rude and uneducated men, and If he were to discuss knowable things in a mode appropriate to the sciences, they would not understand. And so he treats his subject in a credible mode, that is, instructing by means of comparisons and similitudes taken from sensible things, and the people, who understand that in sensible things truth resides in a way that is revealed by the poet, easily believe for this reason that the same is true of intelligible things. From this we are able to conclude that it is not denied to the poet to treat things pertinent to the sciences and the speculative intellect, but he treats them in a credible manner making idols and poetic images, as Dante, with intellectual nature and the intelligible world itself with idols and images most beautifully to all eyes.”– Giacopo Mazzoni (1548-1598)

I

Observable and harmonic idea

Of the credible impossible.

The comic artisan laughs:

Poetry is an art made with verse, number, and harmony, singly or together, imitative of the credible marvelous, and invented by the human intellect to represent the images of things suitably.

II

Fabricable numbered work

Both incredible and possible

The heroic soldier roars:

Poetry is a game made with verse, number, and harmony, singly or together, imitating the credible marvelous, and invented by the human intellect in order to delight.

III

Imitable metered idol,

Marvelous Dante

The tragic magistrate cries:

Poetry is a game made with verses, number, and harmony, singly or together, imitating the credible marvelous and invented by the civil faculty to delight the people in a useful way.