On Cloud Nine

Posted in Letters on Thursday, June 2nd, 2011 by Mark Pastore

June 2, 2011 marked Incanto’s ninth anniversary.  The number nine held special meaning for the poet Dante Alighieri, a man whose life and works have influenced many over the centuries, including inspiring me to a new life as a restaurateur.  Incanto’s ninth anniversary is thus a perfect moment for paying a few respects, to both the man and the number.

Dante explains the significance of the number nine in Vita Nuova (1295), written a couple decades before work on La Commedia was underway in earnest.  For starters, Dante first met his muse Beatrice Portinari at the beginning of her ninth year and the end of his (he was nine, she was eight).  After learning of the death of Beatrice’s father, Folco Portinari, Dante fell ill for nine days out of sympathy for Beatrice’s loss.  From a cosmological viewpoint, Dante’s view of the afterlife is that there are “nine heavens”; Dante conceives of nine circles in both hell and purgatory as well. Interestingly, cultures as varied as ancient Mesopotamia and Polynesia also incorporate a system of nine heavenly levels.

The root of nine is the divine number three (i.e., the Trinity: Father, Son & Holy Spirit).  Important numbers found in Dante’s works are therefore always multiples of three.  The rhyming scheme in La Commedia is called terza rima, in which the middle line of each three-line stanza rhymes with the first and third lines of the following stanza.  Excluding the prelude to Inferno (which takes place in the mortal world, outside of the gates of hell), there are 99 verses of poetry in La Commedia, 33 verses for each of the three parts of the afterlife.  Three and nine are – quite simply – essential to understanding Dante.

The architect Filippo Brunelleschi, a fellow Florentine who lived the century after Dante’s, demonstrated his respect for Dantesque numerology for eternity, in the masonry of a church.  The famous Duomo of Florence (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore), stood incomplete for more than 50 years, without a dome to cover its massive apse.  Brunelleschi was able to span the 45-meter space by employing an ingenious solution based upon two interlocking domes.  The outer, thinner, dome employs a series of nine masonry circles – mirroring Dante’s nine circles of heaven – as critical elements, used to buttress the fragile structure from within.  Completed in 1436, the Duomo remains to this day the largest brick-and-mortar dome ever constructed.  Modern engineering analysis has demonstrated that, without the nine masonry circles, the outer dome would collapse.

Dante’s numerical vision lives on in contemporary culture, via idioms such as “cloud nine” and “ninth circle of hell.”  Both are expressions of the extremities of pleasure or suffering.

As fortune would have it, Incanto shares its June 2 birthday with Dante himself.  He was born in 1265; Incanto in 2002. This was not something we planned, rather, something we discovered several months after Incanto opened.  This propitious coincidence strengthened our already existing relationship between Incanto and the Poet.

As a literal text, La Commedia tells the story of an imperfect mortal soul in its quest for divine understanding.  How does this relate to Incanto? One sense of the relationship is that I’ve always found comfort in the notion that Incanto’s numerous imperfections might someday be forgiven, provided that each day we are sincere in pursuing the ideal, not merely the ordinary, in our work.

Looking back on nine years of Incanto – a restaurant conceived and led by a naïve and entirely inexperienced restaurateur – we have certainly experienced our share of mis-steps and stumbles along the way. But we’ve had numerous memorable high notes in that time as well.  Hopefully, our shortcomings have not typically been the result of a lack of ideals. In many instances, one could argue the exact opposite, in fact.

Thursday June 2, 2011 is Incanto’s ninth anniversary (and of course also Dante’s birthday as well). If you’re dining with us then, please tell your server you’re in to celebrate Dante’s birthday – and let us pour you a glass of Prosecco for a toast.  On behalf of all of us at Incanto, thank you for your patronage, we are looking forward to the next nine years!