Purgatorio (The Divine Comedy series Book 2)

by Dante

  Oderisi, nonetheless, must have reformed his ways very early, since the late-repentant spend equal time in ante-purgatory as they did while they were unrepentant on earth. Or perhaps Dante thought or knew that he had died earlier than we think. [return to English / Italian]

  91–93. Oderisi’s outburst subtly changes the topic of his discourse from human talent and ability to its reception among other human beings. Where before he had spoken of Franco’s honor, he now bewails the emptiness of these same talents as recipients of the praise conferred by fame.

  The phrase “com’ poco verde in su la cima dura” (literally: how briefly lasts the green upon the top) has never been adequately explained. What object does the poet have in mind for the noun cima? Hollander (Holl.1994.1) has argued—citing its next use in the poem, Purgatorio XV.13, where it refers to Dante’s forehead, the space above his eyebrows—that it refers to exactly that part of our physiognomy here and that the green is the green of the laurel. The language of the passage, which addresses the question of the brief limits of fame unless a “dark age” allows fame to continue for longer than it usually does (by not producing other “winners” quickly), seems clearly to reflect exactly such a concern—one that was not far, as we know from Paradiso XXV.1–9, from this poet’s mind. [return to English / Italian]

  94–96. Giovanni Cimabue (ca. 1240–1308) was a highly praised Florentine painter. His pupil, Giotto di Bondone (ca. 1267–1337), is given credit by art historians for changing the nature of Italian painting, moving from the “flat” tradition to “roundness,” representations that seemed more realistic than anything seen before him. (In this vein see Boccaccio’s treatment of him in Decameron VI.v.5.)

  The notion that Dante is in this passage putting Giotto’s art ahead of Cimabue’s is baseless, though widespread. Dante may himself have admired Giotto’s painting more than Cimabue’s, but that is not the point here. All that Oderisi is saying is that, in accord with what he has just said about fame being brief unless a dark age assures the last “laureate” his continuing green reward, Cimabue had the public’s cry but now Giotto has it. There is no evaluation of the relative worth of the work of these two masters stated or implied. [return to English / Italian]

  97–98. Moving his attention from painting to poetry, Oderisi says the same thing about Guido Guinizzelli (ca. 1225–1276) and Guido Cavalcanti (ca. 1250–1300): one held the highest place in the public’s esteem until the other displaced him. A problem here arises from Dante’s use of the noun gloria, which can mean “reputation, fame” in the vulgar sense, or “just renown for great deeds,” or “heavenly glory” (as in the experience of paradise). The word occurs some twenty-two times in the poem and has this first meaning less frequently than it has either of the other two, e.g., in Inferno III.42, where it is explained that the neutral angels are not in hell lest they be placed lower than the rebel angels, who might then have “boasting rights” over them. But the word has just been used in its most negative form seven lines earlier: the “vana gloria” that prompts our desire for fame. In this reading, the more recent Guido (Cavalcanti) has taken the public’s laurel from Guinizzelli. [return to English / Italian]

  99. While there is still some dispute about the reference, most now agree that Dante is clearly pointing to himself as the one who will in turn replace Cavalcanti in the “nest” of the public’s admiration.

  Stierle (Stie.2001.1), p. 163, thinks Oderisi predicts Dante’s “triumph” here and believes that Dante meant us to take from his words the understanding that he believes pride a necessary and positive aspect of his own ingegno and not entirely to be dispraised. To medieval readers this would surely have seemed an inappropriate reading. On the other hand, recent modern readers, with whose work Stierle seems not to be acquainted, have tried to make essentially the same case: Barolini (Baro.1992.1), pp. 133–37, and Marks (Mark.1992.1). For a response see Hollander (Holl.1994.1). [return to English / Italian]

  100–108. Oderisi’s moralizing is pungent and clear: earthly fame is not worth even a moment’s affection. It is difficult to justify any positive role for earthly fame in light of these forceful words. [return to English / Italian]

  105. These are babytalk words for bread (pappo = pane) and money (dindi = denaro). [return to English / Italian]

  109–114. Without as yet naming him, Oderisi tells the cautionary tale of Provenzan Salvani, “Ghibelline of Siena, where he was at the head of affairs at the time of the great victory over the Florentine Guelfs at Montaperti, Sept. 4, 1260; it was he who at the Council of Empoli after the battle advocated the destruction of the city of Florence, which was averted by the firmness and patriotism of Farinata (Inf. X.91); he was Podestà of Montepulciano in 1261; he met his death in an engagement with the Florentines at Colle, in Valdelsa, June 11, 1269, when he was taken prisoner and beheaded” (T). It is curious that, of these two great Ghibelline leaders, Dante has condemned Farinata (who saved the city) to hell and saved Provenzan (who wanted to destroy it). [return to English / Italian]

  115–117. For the biblical passages that underlie this image of the fleetingness of grass as being similar to human ambitions in this life see the Old Testament (Isaiah 28:4, 38:27, 40:6; Psalms 89:6 [90:5–6]), as noted by Tommaseo (1837). [return to English / Italian]

  118–119. This is Dante’s first and not last (see Purg. XIII.133–138) admission of his pridefulness. [return to English / Italian]

  126. Here again is the word sodisfar. See note to vv. 70–72. Provenzan is completing his satisfactio operis before Dante’s eyes, so intent on it that he is not allowed a speaking part, but has Oderisi as his mouthpiece. [return to English / Italian]

  127–132. If Provenzan died in 1269 and was (as is obvious) more than thirty-one years old when he died, the protagonist wants to know how, if the sentence in ante-purgatory is a year for each year spent in failure to repent and if Provenzan apparently, from Oderisi’s narrative, died in his presumption, he can have come up here so quickly. We should remember that Dante was not surprised (see note to vv. 88–90) at Oderisi’s quick advent (perhaps less than a year separating his death and his arrival), somehow understanding that Oderisi had purged his pride quite early in his life and chosen to live for God. Why Dante might have thought so is not known. [return to English / Italian]

  133–138. Oderisi’s third speech, devoted to Provenzan, shows Dante that, in his lifetime, Provenzan had come to grips with his pride. [return to English / Italian]

  135. The phrasing here has its roots in—is indeed a translation of—a passage in Bonaventure’s life of St. Francis, the Legenda maior (II.7), “omni deposita verecundia,” where Francis, setting aside all shame, becomes a mendicant. The attribution, which seems undeniable, has made its way into the commentary tradition over the last one hundred years, often unassigned. Bosco/Reggio and Marks (Mark.1992.1), p. 177 (n. 55), give credit to Passerini in 1898. [return to English / Italian]

  139–142. And just as Provenzan humbled himself in public by his own volition, Dante will have humility thrust upon him by his own people when the Black Guelphs will exile him from Florence in 1302. For the predictions of Dante’s personal fortunes in the poem see note to Inferno VI.64–66. [return to English / Italian]

  PURGATORIO XII

  1–3. Dante and Oderisi are continuing their movement forward in humility, purging their pride in their differing ways until such time as Virgil will insist on Dante’s pursuing other instruction. Strictly speaking, in ancient Greece a “pedagogue” was a slave whose task it was to guide children to school and supervise their conduct generally (but not to teach them); in ancient Rome the slave was frequently a Greek and had similar responsibilities, but also introduced the children to the beginning study of Greek. Dante’s word, pedagogo, here in one of its first appearances in the Italian vernacular, according to the Grande Dizionario (Batt.1961.1), has a brief but important role (occurring twice) in a single biblical passage, Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians 3:24–25 (Longfellow [1867] seems to
have been the first to note the possible connection). In that passage Paul imagines us as having once been, under the Old Testament, guided by the paedagogus (the Law) but as now being taught by Christ, and thus as no longer requiring such guidance. This Dantean hapax (a word occurring only once in a given universe of words) may reflect that biblical near-hapax.

  For the yoke that binds these two “oxen” see the commentary of Fallani (1965) and Scott’s lectura (Scot.2001.1), p. 174: “For my yoke is easy and my burden light” (Matthew 11:29–30)—the words of Christ preaching to potential followers. [return to English / Italian]

  4–6. Virgil’s metaphor is probably developed, as Bosco/Reggio (1978) insist, on Aeneid III.520: “velorum pandimus alas” (we spread the wings of our sails), a passage cited by many commentators at Inferno XXVI.125, “de’ remi facemmo ali” (we turned our oars to wings).

  Petrocchi, in his reading of the line, overturns the previously favored opinion that Dante’s text read vele (sails), but has the disadvantage of forcing the poet into a very mixed metaphor, “wings and oars.” We would have followed the older reading, “sails and oars.” [return to English / Italian]

  7–9. The protagonist walks erect, as Ovid describes humans doing so as to be distinguished from brutes (Metam. I.84–86). Benvenuto cites Ovid’s words and mentions the additional authority of Cicero, Sallust, and Juvenal on this matter in his comment to this passage.

  The word scemi, which we have translated as “shrunken,” has caused some discomfort. What exactly does it mean? Aurigemma (Auri.1970.1), pp. 109–10, claims that Oderisi’s dour prophecy of Dante’s future ills (XI.140–141) leaves the protagonist feeling monco (incomplete) until such time as that disaster will finally confront him. He is following the nearly unanimous view found in the earliest commentators. However, since the time of Landino (1481) the more usual interpretation relates Dante’s interior moral posture rather to his responses to Pride, whether in pity for the souls he now sees or in recognition of his own (former) pridefulness—the most usual version of that position today, expressed in the form that currently rules by Torraca (1905), who notes the “heavy swelling” (Purg. XI.119) of pride that Dante is getting under control. As a result, his thoughts are scemi in that they are lacking in pride. In other words, even if he has finally straightened up and begun walking as a confident human being, his thoughts remain bowed under the burden of the recognition of his pridefulness. [return to English / Italian]

  12. Dante’s new incredible lightness of being matches Virgil’s usual state as soul unencumbered by body; getting his pride under control, the protagonist experiences the greatest and quickest spiritual growth we will observe in him during his ascent of the mountain. [return to English / Italian]

  13–15. Now that Dante has experienced and embraced the positive exemplars of Humility, Virgil wants to confirm his new state by making him experience the negative exemplars of Pride in order to seal his “conversion” to humility. For exemplarity in the Middle Ages and in Dante see Delcorno (Delc.1989.1), esp. Chapter VI, “Dante e Peraldo,” pp. 195–227. And for his discussion of the exemplars in this canto as deriving in part from William Peraldus’s Summa vitiorum, see pp. 210–14; Delcorno shows that Dante’s list of six biblical exemplars of Pride is related to Peraldus’s first seven in his list of twelve biblical exemplars. Dante shares five of his six with Peraldus, substituting (for Adam) Nimrod (a choice, one might add, that underlines the poet’s understandable concern with language—see note to Inf. XXXI.67). Then, in typical Dantean fashion, he adds six pagan exemplars to his shortened and revised version of Peraldus’s list. For perhaps the first modern recognition of the importance of Peraldus’s listing and description of the vices for Dante, see Wenzel (Wenz.1965.1), pointing out that Pietro di Dante’s commentary to Purgatorio XVII (1340) relies strictly and extensively upon Peraldus’s phrasing (wherever he found his version of Peraldus’s text) for his description of the seven mortal sins. [return to English / Italian]

  16–24. The figured pavement upon which the travelers walk is compared in simile to the gravestones set into church floors bearing the indications of the dead person’s profession, family, or other identifying trait, as well as his or her likeness. [return to English / Italian]

  22–24. As was the case with God’s art found in the intaglios upon the mountainside, here too divine art knows no human equal (cf. Purg. X.32–33). [return to English / Italian]

  25–63. Reading down the left-hand margin of the verses, we find a series of repeated letters beginning a series of tercets. They spell out a word. Lia Baldelli, “acrostico” (ED I [1970], p. 44), points out that perception of Dante’s deployment of this technique escaped the attention of the early commentators; it was only in 1898 that Antonio Medin noticed the presence of the acrostic in these lines, the word VOM [or UOM, uomo, or “man”], while the presence of a similar acrostic, found at Paradiso XIX.115–141, yielding LVE [or LUE, “plague”], was only noted by Francesco Flamini in 1903. Most now accept the fact, despite a perhaps understandable modern distaste for such contrivance, that these two acrostics were deliberately constructed by the author (see, for more on Dante’s acrostic proclivities, Scott [Scot.2001.1], p. 176 and n.). For a discussion of negative critical reactions to the acrostic on aesthetic grounds, as well as of its function in its context here, see Aurigemma (Auri.1970.1), pp. 113–19. [return to English / Italian]

  25–27. Naturally, the first exemplar of the sin of pride is Satan, its avatar (see note to Inf. XXXI.28–33 for his association with those other emblems of Pride, the giants who stormed Olympus). He is intrinsically opposed to the first exemplar of humility, the Virgin Mary, as is evident. When Dante drew near to the end of his poem (Par. XXXIII.2), he underlined this with a verse in description of Mary, “umile e alta più che creatura” (humble and exalted more than any creature), reflecting his description of (the unnamed) Lucifer here, who was more noble when he was created than any other creature. Trucchi (1936) observes Dante’s borrowing from the Bible, his “folgoreggiando scender” (fall like lightning from the sky) echoing the similar phrase in Luke 10:18: “Satanam, sicut fulgur de coelo cadentem” ([I beheld] Satan as lightning fall from heaven). [return to English / Italian]

  28–30. We finally catch a glimpse of Briareus, so important an absence in the amusing business that occupies Dante and Virgil in Inferno XXXI.97–105 (and see the corresponding note), when Virgil denies Dante the sight of this giant, whom he has described, in his Aeneid, as having fifty heads and one hundred arms. Dante makes him, from what we can see, an “ordinary” giant, a pagan version of Lucifer for his presumption in challenging Jove. Briareus is mentioned in the three major martial epics that Dante knew and used, Aeneid X.565, Thebaid II.596, Pharsalia IV.596. [return to English / Italian]

  31–33. Uniquely among the twelve sets of exemplars, the nonexemplary figures are the ones named (Apollo by his epithet Thymbraeus, Minerva by her second name [Pallas], and Mars), those who witnessed the defeat of the unnamed, exemplary giants (including Briareus), undone by the thunderbolts of Jove, their father. These exemplars are, in a wonderfully appropriate “punishment,” present only as disiecta membra, the scattered remains of the outsized human creatures they once were. [return to English / Italian]

  34–36. For Nimrod see the note to Inferno XXXI.70–81. He is accompanied by those who helped build the Tower of Babel on the plains of Shinar. See Genesis 10:8–10; 11:1–4. [return to English / Italian]

  37–39. Niobe was the wife of Amphion, king of Thebes, and mother of seven sons and seven daughters. When she boasted that she was a better mother than Latona, who had but two offspring (even though these were Apollo and Diana), in the Ovidian world it is clear what will happen next: the two arrow-shooting siblings wipe out the children of Niobe who, turned to stone, nonetheless bewails their loss with eternal tears that flow perpetually as mountain streams (Metam. VI.148–312). [return to English / Italian]

  40–42. Niobe’s biblical counterpart is King Saul. Re
lieved of his kingship by Samuel for failing to keep God’s commands, Saul fought against the Philistines at Gilboa. Mortally wounded and fearful of being captured by the enemy, he fell upon his sword (I Samuel 31:1–4). David’s subsequent curse on the surrounding mountains, the witnesses of this scene (II Samuel 1:21), asks that neither rain nor dew reach this place in Samaria.

  This exemplar of a prideful suicide throws into sharp relief the far different suicide of Cato the Younger, with reference to which Purgatorio opens. [return to English / Italian]

  43–45. Arachne’s presumption took the form of a challenge to Minerva in weaving. She (in this like Ovid himself? [Metam. VI.5–145]) produced a brilliant representation of the love affairs of the gods. Minerva, sensing herself unable to better this work of art, destroyed it, and Arachne determined to do away with herself. Minerva saved her life and turned the rope by which she was hanging herself into filament for this weaver turned spider. [return to English / Italian]

  46–48. Rehoboam, a son of Solomon, was chosen to become king of Israel. His pride was manifest in the way he scornfully refused to lessen the tribute demanded of his people, at which ten of the twelve tribes of Israel rebelled. When his representative, Aduram, was slain by the rebellious Israelites, Rehoboam ran away with unseemly haste, even though he was not being pursued (see I Kings 12:1–18). [return to English / Italian]

  49–51. In Statius’s Thebaid (IV.187–213), Alcmaeon, son of Amphiaraus, the seer (who is, in a certain sense, a stand-in for Statius himself [see note to Inf. XX.31–39]), is left with the task of avenging his father’s death. This came about after his wife, the mother of Alcmaeon, Eriphyle, betrayed his whereabouts to Polynices for the price of a necklace, with the result that Amphiaraus (see Inf. XX.31–36), who had foreseen the dreadful end of the civil war in Thebes and had hidden himself in order to escape his own death in it, ended up fighting and dying in the war. He pledged his son to avenge him, which indeed he did do by slaying his own mother. That the necklace, made by no less an artisan than Vulcan, had belonged to the goddess Harmonia marked Eriphyle’s pride in thinking herself worthy of wearing it. As was the case for Lucifer, the first exemplary figure in this listing, Eriphyle is not named. [return to English / Italian]