by Dante
94–96. Sordello interrupts Virgil’s heavenly discourse to call his (and, once again, not Dante’s) attention to the drama unfolding in the garden. [return to English / Italian]
97–102. We have seen this “snake” before, in Inferno XXXIV, imprisoned for his arrogant assault on God. Now we see him replaying his role in the Fall, licking himself in prideful self-absorption as he plans another assault, now that he has lost his first battle, upon humankind. Both Sordello’s urgency in interrupting Virgil’s notice of the heavens’ beauties and the fact that no opposition has as yet deployed its forces have the effect of creating uncertainty (and fear) in the naïve onlooker and in the reader. This serpent seems dangerous indeed, as he was when he tempted Eve in Eden, but in fact is not, as we presently discover. [return to English / Italian]
103–108. Dante’s attention to the snake kept the rapid defensive action of the angels from his view until they suddenly enter his field of vision, immediately thwarting the plans of the snake. We now see why their swords are blunted: they have no need of them because this serpent is powerless to offend. This drama is precisely that, a play, by which the onlookers, now safe in their potentially (but definitively) saved state, may be reminded of their sinful lives—their vulnerability to the serpent—and the grace that has rewarded their goodness with salvation. Mark Musa (Musa.1974.1) examines this scene as a representation of Christ’s recurring second advent, as set forth by St. Bernard in his First Sermon on the Advents. Between His first (when He came to earth to save humankind) and final coming (at the end of time, to judge and rule the world), Christ is understood as coming into the heart of each successive believer. For Heilbronn (Heil.1972.1), who accepts Musa’s view, the intervention of the angels represents “an allegorical enactment of the intermediate Advent—that is, the coming of Christ into the hearts of the faithful in this world” (p. 46). [return to English / Italian]
109–111. Heilbronn (Heil.1972.1), p. 55, argues that it is to Nino’s companion’s credit (we will shortly discover that this is Currado Malaspina) that he never takes his eyes from Dante, whose presence marks the really important event taking place here, against the backdrop of this now familiar play, in which nothing is really happening, for all its symbolic significance. The play reflects the past, Dante’s physical presence in purgatory in the present, and the future—Dante’s among Currado’s family in Lunigiana and Currado’s hopes for prayer from them, never expressed, but clear from all the similar requests we have already heard from others. [return to English / Italian]
115–120. The valley of the river Magra, flowing through Lunigiana, home of the Malaspina family. For Currado and his grandfather see note to vv. 61–66. Currado’s disclaimer is probably meant to be taken as a sign of his modesty (his grandfather was the real Currado), as is his awareness that his love of the world must be purged above on the mountain. [return to English / Italian]
121–129. Dante’s words in praise of the valor and generosity of the house of Malaspina in 1300 are in fact words of thanks for the hospitality of Franceschino Malaspina in Lunigiana in 1306 (and, according to Boccaccio, in his Vita di Dante [Bocc.1974.1], p. 483, of Moroello Malaspina as well [see Dante’s letter to Moroello, his fourth Epistle, ca. 1307]). [return to English / Italian]
130–132. This verse has been variously interpreted. If we agree that capo is the subject (and not the object) of the sentence, as almost all do, then we may choose among the following solutions: the wicked chief who corrupts the world may be Satan, the pope (and then surely Boniface VIII), Rome (with its corrupt papacy and no emperor in her saddle), or bad governance in general. Whichever solution Dante may himself have had in mind, it is clear that any and all of these solutions “work,” and are, in fact, interrelated. If Satan is the “prince of darkness” who leads most humans astray, his minions on earth (corrupt popes, pusillanimous emperors), or even corrupt leadership generally understood, all point to a common failing and a common cause: weak humans falling under the influence of those who govern poorly. From this failing only the Malaspina family is currently exempt. [return to English / Italian]
133–139. “Va” (or, literally, “Go”) seems here to have the same sense that it sometimes has in Shakespeare, i.e., “Go to,” meaning “Enough of such words.” Currado, embarrassed by Dante’s praise of his family, goes on to promise his interlocutor that he indeed will have cause to praise it more in 1306 (i.e., before the sun returns to the constellation Aries seven years from now). [return to English / Italian]
PURGATORIO IX
1–9. Like Inferno IX, this ninth canto is both liminal, marking the boundary between two large areas, and filled with classical reference. And it is the first entire canto devoted to the transition from one poetic zone to another since Inferno XXXI. This sort of self-conscious poetic behavior puts us on notice, from the very outset, that we need to pay particular attention here.
Its reference to Aurora, surprisingly enough, has made this passage among the most hotly debated of the poem. In the “orthodox” version of the classical myth, Aurora, goddess of the dawn, arose from her couch, where she slept with her aged husband, Tithonus, to rise in the sky on her chariot, announcing the coming of day. A brief and incomplete summary of the debate yields the following (for a summary of the essential arguments over the passage and an attempt to restore Benvenuto da Imola’s central and daring reading of it see Hollander [Holl.2001.2]): Moore (Moor.1903.1), pp. 74–85, essentially solved this problem almost a century ago, but in fact the early commentators (to whom Moore pays little attention) had already done so. Nearly all of them are quite sure that Dante has invented a second myth, one in which Tithonus is married to Aurora 1 (of the sun) but has a “relationship” with Aurora 2 (of the moon). The poetic facts are simple, according to Moore. The time is between 8:30 and 9 PM, the cold animal is the constellation Scorpio (and certainly not that belated other candidate, Pisces, arguments for which identification Moore competently dismantles), and thus the aurora we deal with is that of the moon.
For a review of these tormented verses and their tormentors (up to 1975) see Vazzana (Vazz.1981.1), pp. 180–85. And for one of the most interesting discussions of their meaning see Raimondi (Raim.1968.1), pp. 95–98. See also Cornish (Corn.2000.2), pp. 68–77. [return to English / Italian]
7–9. Much has been made of the phrase “where we were” by the “solar aurorans” in the hopes of counterposing the northern hemisphere (site of the solar Aurora at this hour in Italy) and the southern (where Dante and his companions are becoming sleepy). However, Dante is probably not contrasting the two hemispheres but the glow in the night sky of purgatory that spreads above them and the darkness of their surroundings as night advances. For a similar situation, consider Purgatorio II.8, the phrase “là dov’ i’ era” (there where I was) by which Dante refers to his situation in the southern hemisphere looking at the stars from there.
His figure of speech involves mixing metaphors, as the night is given feet, by which she measures her hours, and wings that do the same thing. The meaning is that the time is between 8:30 and 9 PM. [return to English / Italian]
10–11. Dante’s Adamic sleepiness, that is, the heaviness brought on by his physical being, is adumbrated by a later passage (Purg. XI.43–44), in which Virgil comments upon the difficulties experienced by this living soul as he climbs the mountain in his flesh (“la carne d’Adamo”). But the theme is introduced in the first canto of Inferno (I.10–12) where Dante’s “sleepiness” is associated with Adam’s, according to Hollander (Holl.1969.1), p. 81n., suggesting a figural relationship between the fallen Adam, sent forth into his exile from the garden, and the sinful Dante. [return to English / Italian]
13–15. Dante’s dream, occurring some nine hours after he fell asleep, takes place in the pre-dawn moments in which the swallow sings sadly perhaps (if we credit the mythographers, most certainly Ovid, Metam. VI.412–674) in memory of the rape of Philomel by her sister Procne’s husband Tereus and her subsequent metamorphosi
s into a swallow (in Dante’s version, where most others prefer the nightingale—see note to Purg. XVII.19–20, a passage that makes the swallow here necessarily Philomel). Tereus, like Tithonus, has had sexual concourse with each of two sisters—if we accept the notion that the opening passage of the poem posits a lunar aurora (see note to vv. 1–9, above). [return to English / Italian]
16–18. The greater truth, indeed the prophetic power, of dreams that came near morning was something of a commonplace in Dante’s time. See note to Inferno XXVI.7. Beginning with Torraca (1905), twentieth-century commentators have reminded readers that in Convivio II.vii.13 Dante adduced our awareness of our own immortality from the fact that our dreams foretold the future for us. [return to English / Italian]
19. The formulaic expression (mi parea + vedere) is an earmark of Dante’s description of seeing in dream; see also Inferno XXXIII.36; Purgatorio XV.85–87; XXVII.97–98. For the consistency in Dante’s oneiric vocabulary, dating back to the Vita nuova, see Hollander (Holl.1974.1), pp. 3–4. For studies in English of the three purgatorial dreams see Hollander (Holl.1969.1), pp. 136–58; Cervigni (Cerv.1986.1), pp. 95–180; Bara´nski (Bara.1989.1); see also Stefanini (Stef.1985.1). [return to English / Italian]
20–21. The reality corresponding to the eagle outside the dream is, naturally, St. Lucy (identified by Virgil in verse 55), who is bearing Dante higher up the mountain while he sleeps in her arms. But does this eagle have a symbolic valence? Some early commentators (the Ottimo the earliest) read the text strictly literally: the eagle is the bird of Jove (or, perhaps, Jove in the shape of an eagle). However, beginning with Pietro di Dante the eagle is allegorized as divine grace, and then, by various commentators up to and including Giacalone (1968), as one form of grace or another (e.g., prevenient, illuminating, etc.). In the twentieth century there was a vogue for a quite different allegorical reading, the eagle as symbol of empire. (To be sure, this is often, even usually, true in this highly political poem; in this context, however, it seems a forced reading.) It would seem most likely that a literal reading is the best procedure here, following the Ottimo (1333), and simply noting that this eagle is the one who flew off with Ganymede, as the context allows and encourages, i.e., Dante dreams that he was carried off by Jove. [return to English / Italian]
22–24. John of Serravalle (1416), following Benvenuto, allegorizes the eagle as divine grace and then equates Dante and Ganymede, thus making Dante “one who lived with the gods.” Casini/Barbi suggest that Dante had in mind Virgil’s phrase in Georgics I.24–25, “deorum / concilia” (company of the gods) when he wrote “al sommo consistoro”; whether he did or not, his meaning seems clear. Within the dream there is a certain aura of violence and fear (implicit reference to the forcible rape of Ganymede by Jove as eagle—see Aen. V.252–257) masking the happier nature of the event: Dante being carried aloft gently by Lucy, and indeed, in a still happier understanding, on the way to the Empyrean, where he will, for a while, share the company of the immortal blessed. [return to English / Italian]
25–27. The protagonist’s thought within his dream is striking. Since, within the dream, Dante is “thinking like Ganymede,” his thought refers to a place elevated from the normal, e.g., on this mountain near Troy. (Some commentators want to keep the usual imperial valence of the eagle by associating this Mt. Ida with Troy and thus empire; however, the point would rather seem to be that the place is elevated, not that it is Trojan.) And thus Dante would be thinking that only such extraordinary, i.e., “higher,” mortals like Ganymede and Dante Alighieri are chosen by the gods for their delight. And this thought, perfectly in accord with what we will find out on the first terrace of purgatory proper, associates Dante with the sin of pride. Once again, however, the “reality” tells a different story: the true God is not interested in Dante’s curly locks, but in his Christian soul; and He will pluck Dante up from the mount of purgatory for reasons better than those that motivated Jove.
The issue of Jove’s homosexual desire for Ganymede is mainly avoided in the commentaries. It is, nonetheless, noteworthy that, of the many myths available to Dante that might express the love of the gods for a particular mortal, he has chosen this one. For the question of Dante’s attitudes toward homosexuality see Hollander (Holl.1996.1). Durling (Durl.1996.1), pp. 559–60, on the basis of no known evidence, is of the opinion that Dante was of homosexual predisposition but had never acted on his desires. While that is probably more than can be shown to be true, the question of Dante’s rather “unmedieval” view of homosexuality (see concluding note to Inf. XVI) has not been dealt with as openly as it ought to be. [return to English / Italian]
28–30. The eagle’s descent may have still another Virgilian provenance: Aeneid XII.247–250, as Tommaseo (1837) was perhaps the first to suggest; he has been followed by a number of others. In that scene an eagle, described as “Jove’s golden bird,” offers an omen (arranged by Turnus’s sister, the nymph Juturna) when it dives from the sky to snatch a swan out of the water and carries it off as its prey. (This much of the drama bodes ill for the Trojans, but they are heartened, unfortunately for them, in the final result, when the rest of the waterfowl attack the eagle and it drops the swan.) The language is pertinent: Jove’s golden bird is attacking the “litoreas … avis turbamque sonantem / agminis aligeri” (the fowl along the shore, the clamorous crowd in their wingèd band). From among this agmen aliger the eagle picks one. For the pun available to Dante on his family name (Alighieri/aliger) see the note to Inferno XXVI.1–3. It seems possible that here Dante is conflating the two Virgilian passages in which a Jovian eagle seizes its prey and enjoying the coincidence that, in the last of them, that prey is associated with his own name, since he, too, while dreaming, is being lifted skyward in the talons of Jove.
The fire alluded to here is the ring of fire that was believed to surround the closer-to-earth sphere of air, just before one might reach the moon. That this is the “tanto … del cielo acceso” (so much of the sky set afire) of Paradiso I.79 was possibly first suggested by Lombardi (1791). Thereafter it became a commonplace in the commentaries. [return to English / Italian]
31–33. Once again the negative version of events put forth in the dream has a better meaning. It seemed that the eagle and Dante were consumed in the ring of fire high above the earth, while actually Dante and Lucia have risen to the gate of purgatory, as we shall shortly find out, and Dante is being awakened, not by the pain of death, but by the late-morning sun on his eyelids (verse 44). If there is a further significance to this detail, it would seem to refer to Dante’s eventual arrival at the true “sphere of fire,” the Empyrean. [return to English / Italian]
34–42. The poet describes the narrator’s awakening in terms that recall Statius’s text (Ach. I.247–250), describing the stratagem employed by Thetis, Achilles’ mother, in order to keep him from being “drafted” into the Trojan War. Taking him from the care of his tutor, the centaur Chiron (see Inf. XII.71), Thetis carries him in her arms, sleeping, to the island of Scyros. Again Dante adverts to a mythic narrative that has a tragic result; Thetis’s benevolent caution will not prevent the coming of Ulysses and Diomedes to Scyros and the eventual death of Achilles in the war. Dante’s “comic” reality counters the Statian tragedy: Achilles is carried down from his mountain homeland to an island from which he will go off to his death; Dante is carried up a mountain situated on an island toward his eventual homeland and eternal life. Rarely in the Commedia is the contrast between classical and Christian views, between tragedy and comedy, more present than in these classicizing passages that open this canto. It is also true that the protagonist, as he experiences these new things, behaves very much as the “old” man that he still is, and assumes that terror is a valid response to these miraculous events that, the reader can see, speak only of God’s love and protection for even such a sinner as Dante. [return to English / Italian]
43–45. Dante and Virgil have left their companions behind, down the mountain’s slope, and are fa
cing the east, the sun in their faces as the morning advances. [return to English / Italian]
52–63. As though to remind the reader that all the material relating to Dante’s dream did have a counterpart in reality, Virgil’s explanation “glosses” the dream as it explains the coming of Lucy, while Dante slept, at the solar aurora, nine hours after he had seen the lunar aurora. Sometime after dawn she began her ascent with Dante in her arms, leaving their companions in ante-purgatory. [return to English / Italian]
