Authors: Dante
1–6.
Perhaps it is the result of the only necessary relative absence of narrative in
Paradiso
, but the opening passages of many of its cantos show contorted construction and convoluted phrasing, an authorial self-consciousness that is more present than it had been in the first two
cantiche
. Narrative has its own excuse for being; theology at least seems to require justification, perhaps nowhere more so than in a poem. These two tercets are among those least afflicted, but still are not exactly easy. A possible paraphrase is: “The will that would perform good deeds and that always reveals itself in well-purposed love (as does evil will in a love of the things of this world) silenced the singing that God Himself makes harmonious.” That is, the dancing choir of saints (see
Par.
XIV.109–123) grew quiet (and ceased moving) in order to welcome Dante to this heaven and to invite his questions. Their “harmony” is, in Dante’s metaphor, the result of God’s “hand” having tuned the “strings” of the “instrument” that their voices represent.
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1–2.
The themes of love and will may remind us of the discourse in the middle cantos of
Purgatorio
, Marco Lombardo’s lofty praise of the (free) will.
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1.
A question here involves the verb, whether it is a form of
liquare
(to liquify) or
liquere
(to make manifest). Most choose the latter alternative, believing Dante treated the second-conjugation Latin verb as though it were among those of the first conjugation and also made it reflexive. Since it occupies the rhyme position, thus preparing the reader to grant the poet a perhaps larger amount of license, it is difficult to fault this view, and we have followed it in our translation.
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4–6.
For the recent deployment of a similar image (of a stringed instrument that has been tuned), see
Paradiso
XIV.118–120.
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7–12.
Resembling an indirect address to the reader, this passage begins with a rhetorical question (vv. 7–9) and ends in an apothegm. The courtesy of these saved souls in ceasing their joyful celebrative behavior in order to attend to a still-mortal being is adduced as evidence for the efficacy of prayer and as a rebuke to all on earth who think present pleasures exceed in value such exalted ones as these.
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8.
The word
sustanze
here, like
sussistenze
in the last canto (
Par.
XIV.73), does not refer to angels but to saved souls. See the note to
Paradiso
XIII.59.
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12.
This is the third time the word
amor
(love) appears in these verses: See also lines 2 and 11. After
Inferno
V, with 10 appearances in 68 lines (and two “triplets” at vv. 61–69 and 100–106, occurring in nine and seven lines, respectively), this is one of the densest groupings of the word in the poem, with three occurrences in 11 lines.
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13–24.
Only the first nine verses of this passage formally constitute a simile. From the first (e.g., Jacopo della Lana [comm. to vv. 13–18]), commentators have insisted that the celestial phenomena are not falling stars, but ignited vapors, referring to Aristotle’s
Meteora
as their authority. Beginning with Daniello (comm. to vv. 13–15), later commentators have sought a classical poetic source for this “shooting star” in one of three places: in Ovid (
Metam.
II.319–322 [Phaeton]) or in Virgil (
Georg
. I.365–367 [stars falling from the skies]) and
Aen
. II.692–703 (the portentous shooting star or—more likely—comet that appears to Anchises’ request for an omen of Jupiter’s approval of his flight from Troy). Since the neighboring tercet’s context (vv. 25–27) aligns Anchises with Cacciaguida, that has seemed to some the more likely source. However, it is only in Ovid that we find words that seem to be mirrored in Dante’s description of the celestial phenomenon: The star has not in fact fallen, if it seemed to have fallen (“etsi non cecidit, potuit cecidisse videri”).
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22–24.
That is, in its approach before its descent, this “star” follows the right angle made by the “arm” and the “stem” of the cross. For Dante’s earlier treatment of the cross of Mars, see
Convivio
II.xiii.22: “This is also why in Florence, at the beginning of its ruin, there was seen in the sky in the shape of a cross a great quantity of these vapors which accompany the star of Mars” (tr. R. Lansing).
The apsidal chapel dedicated to the local martyr of Ravenna, St. Apollonaris, in the church dedicated to his memory, S. Apollinare in Classe, displays over the altar a mosaic cross that has jewels depicted as being embedded in it, with Christ’s face as the central jewel, located at the transverse of its two elements. Is it possible that Dante was thinking of that particular cross? We do not know whether he visited Ravenna before he moved there, circa 1317–19, nor when he composed these cantos (but see the last paragraph of the note to
Par.
IX.29–30, reporting on the possibility that that canto reflected the pressure of the recent past, the years
1314–15). Petrocchi’s dating of the composition of the last
cantica
would have it begun circa 1317. And so it is at least possible that the greater portion of
Paradiso
was composed in Ravenna. At any rate, Jeffrey Schnapp (Schn.1986.1), pp. 171–203, offers detailed arguments that locate various architectural features of Ravenna in the texts of the central cantos of
Paradiso
, including the mosaic found in this chapel, with its jeweled cross (pp. 180–85).
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24.
Alabaster is a creamy white stone, softly translucent, so that it could, when hollowed in such a way as to contain wax and a wick, be used as a light (particularly for votive purposes). Dante goes existing technology one better, imagining the cross of Mars as hollow and somehow having moving lights within that space.
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25–27.
All are in agreement about the Virgilian provenance of this simile. Itself representing paternal affection, it is perhaps the most obvious and filial affection shown by the poet to
his
poetic father, Virgil, since he left the poem in the earthly paradise (
Purg.
XXX). See
Aeneid
VI.684–686, a description of the shade of Anchises welcoming his living son to the Elysian Fields. (See the note to
Purgatorio
II.79–81.) What exactly we are to make of the reference is a matter of some dispute and more than a little complexity.
Surprisingly, this may be the first obvious citation of Virgil’s text (
Aen
. VI.684–686) in quite some time and it is surely the most vibrant one so far in
Paradiso
. While there have been several at least generally Virgilian contaminations, this is the first pellucidly precise one since
Paradiso
VIII.9. Before that, the last great Virgilian flowering occurred in
Purgatorio
XXX (vv. 21, 48, 49–51, 52, 59–60—see Hollander [Holl.1993.1], pp. 317–18). From the beginning of the
Paradiso
it may have seemed that Virgil had been left behind as the main classical source in favor of Ovid (see the last paragraph of the note to
Par.
I.68). For discussion see Hollander (Holl.1983.1), pp. 134–35.
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26.
It is a commonplace in the commentaries to say that “musa” here means “poet.” See, among others, Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 25–27): “qui major musa, idest poeta, latinorum est” (who was the greatest muse, that is, poet, among the Romans). And see
Convivio
IV.xxvi.8, where Dante refers to Virgil as “lo maggiore nostro poeta,” and
Monarchia
II.iii.6, where the Latin master is “divinus poeta noster Virgilius.” However, Bosco/Reggio (comm. to
Par.
XVIII.33) offer strong reasons for taking
musa
to mean the text of the
Aeneid
rather than its author.
The first commentator apparently even to sense the possible condescension toward Virgil in this verse was Steiner (comm. to vv. 26–27), who attempts to downplay its significance. That it took seven hundred years for a reader to say that this compliment might even seem to be backhanded is, one might say, remarkable. Dante could easily have avoided introducing this concern about how much faith we should give to Virgil’s poem as a record of event. Merely to lodge the doubt is enough to identify Dante’s motive, which is to call into question Virgil’s final authority when faced with the certainties of the world of Revelation, in which the protagonist now finds himself. (Of course, we can turn the same question back onto Dante, whose poem also may not merit our belief, either; it is a dangerous game that he has chosen to play. And he knows that.) Mattalia (comm. to verse 26) is a good deal more firm than Steiner and sees the point of Dante’s insistence on the fictitious nature of Virgil’s account, but goes on to claim that Dante believed in the historicity of the events he narrates (a difficult position to accept as soon as one asks the inevitable question, “Do the events narrated as taking place in the Elysian Fields have any verifiable reality outside of Virgil’s text?”). The firmest sense of the failing being lodged against Virgil found in contemporary commentaries is perhaps that of Singleton (comm. to verse 26), sending the reader to his comment on
Inferno
II.13. And see the note to
Inferno
II.28, above. Nonetheless, the first clear statement of the problematic aspects of these dubiety-creating references to the
Aeneid
is probably Grandgent’s (comm. to
Inf.
II, intro. note): “It is worth noting that in introducing the example of Aeneas, Dante begins with ‘tu dici che …,’ and a few lines further on he uses the phrase ‘questa andata onde gli dai tu vanto’; so in
Par.
XV, 26, referring to the same episode, he adds ‘se fede merta nostra maggior Musa,’ meaning Virgil. These expressions seem to imply a mental reservation with regard to the literal veracity of Aeneas’s adventure.” And see Hollander (Holl.1983.1), pp. 135–36.
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28–30.
This is the only tercet in the poem entirely in Latin: “O blood of mine, O grace of God poured down from above, to whom, as to you, shall the gates of heaven ever been opened twice.” Indeed, only St. Paul is, alongside of Dante, in such glorious company, as far as we (or Dante) can know.
While it has pronouncedly Virgilian and biblical elements, the tercet is also Dante’s brief answer to an unspoken challenge (until Giovanni del Virgilio, around 1320, had the dubious taste to offer him a chance at the laurel from Bologna in exchange for a truly worthy poem, a political one cast, more nobly than was this lowly
Comedy
, in Latin [see the note to
Par.
IX.29–30]). He undoubtedly earlier had come into contact with others who thought that he should have eschewed the vernacular to write his poem in Latin, in the tradition of classical poetry. That, after all, is what Albertino Mussato had done.
For an overview of the situation of Latin writing in relation to the formation and development of the European vernaculars, see Marc Van Uytfanghe (Vanu.2003.1).
The Virgilian elements in the tercet include the words
sanguis meus
, widely recognized as a citation of
Aen
. VI.835. Anchises is addressing Julius Caesar and asking him to cast away his sword (rather than put it to use in bloody civil war): “proice tela manu, sanguis meus!” That speech ends with Anchises’ fervid hope that Rome will spare the defeated and bring down the prideful (
Aen
. VI.853: “parcere subiectis et debellare superbos”). If that was her mission, Virgil knows how badly she failed in it. But there is a much less frequently cited possible second citation, in verse 30, a reference to the Sibyl’s admonition; if Aeneas is so eager for his perilous journey, she will guide him. She expresses the danger awaiting him in two examples of passage into the land of the dead and back (
Aen
. VI.134–135), twice crossing the Styx, twice seeing black Tartarus (bis Stygios innare lacus, bis nigra videre / Tartara). It can certainly be argued that what Dante has done here is to take the fairly glum passage in Virgil and brighten the context considerably, the futile challenge to civil discord in Rome become the crusader’s welcome to his “son,” Aeneas’s journey through Hell become this son’s unique voyage to salvation.
That Cacciaguida’s first words are in Latin, both biblical (at least generically) and Virgilian, accomplishes one of Dante’s aims. It establishes his ancestor as speaker of the doubly significant “grammatical” tongue, that of God and man, Church and empire. As Dante’s spiritual and fleshly father, he is perfectly fitted to meet his son’s needs.
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