Authors: Dante
20.
For a meditation on the “triumph of Christ” announced by Beatrice, see Lo Cascio (Loca.1974.1), pp. 76–92.
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22–24.
The by-now customary (and, within the poet’s strategy, necessary) upward gradation in Beatrice’s joy as she gets nearer her God may seem more justified here than at other times. She is now once more in the presence of those with whom she shares Eternity; and now for the first time she is accompanied by her Dante. She is “home,” and escorting Dante to his home as well.
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24.
The phrase
sanza costrutto
(“without putting it in words”) is a bit unusual. For more on
costrutto
, see the note to
Paradiso
XII.67. Mattalia (comm. to this verse) explains that it means “the parts and elements of ‘discourse’ ” and goes on to suggest that, in
De vulgari eloquentia
, Dante refers to it as
constructio
, that is, the building blocks of language.
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25–30.
The second simile in the canto compares the Moon, when it is largest and brightest, surrounded by the other astral presences, to this “sun,” irradiating the host of the blessed. There can be no doubt as to what this “sun” is. For here Dante is looking at (if unable to see) the living light that is Jesus Christ, like His mother, present here in the resurrected flesh worn, at least now, before the general resurrection, by them alone. Some commentators, perhaps puzzled by the strange and lone occurrence in which the assembled citizenry of the Empyrean descends as a unit to
the nether heavens, believe that this “sun” is a “symbol” of Christ; however, we are meant to understand that it
is
Christ (see the note to vv. 31–33). Here is Jacopo della Lana (comm. to these verses) on this passage: “Or qui dà esemplo come la substanzia della umanità di Cristo, ch’era sopra tutti li predetti beati, luceva più di tutti, e tutti li illuminava, simile a questo sensibile sole, che illumina tutti li corpi celesti” (Now [Dante] here gives an example of how the substance of the humanity of Christ, which was above all the aforementioned blessed souls, shone more brightly than all of them, and illumined them all, just as does this material Sun, which illumines all the heavenly bodies).
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25–27.
For Trivia, the Moon, see Picone (Pico.1994.2), pp. 213–17. He insists on a source, not in Horace or Virgil, as is proposed by some, but in Ovid (
Metam.
III.138–252). Picone’s treatment of Dante’s interpretation of Actaeon resembles Brownlee’s reading of his Semele (see the note to
Par.
XXI.5–12); it is a subversive reading of the “tragic” original, in which Actaeon is torn apart by his own hounds. Now Dante/Actaeon finds a better resolution.
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31–33.
The resurrected body of Christ shines down upon Dante’s blinded eyes. Singleton, who on seven separate occasions in his comments to this canto insists that what we witness of Christ’s presence is not to be taken literally but “symbolically,” here (comm. to vv. 31–32) believes that “
Sustanza
is used in the scholastic sense (
substantia
), denoting that which has separate existence, as contrasted with ‘accident,’ which is a quality existing in a substance. See Dante’s use of these terms in
Vita nuova
XXV.1–2. With this term the stress is rather on the human Christ. The whole vision is symbolic, however—a point not to be forgotten.” In fact “the whole vision” is to be taken as the most “real” experience Dante has yet had, as any such seeing of Christ in His flesh would have to be.
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34.
In a single verse Dante culminates his long and varying experience of Beatrice in this recognition of what her guidance has meant and where it has finally led him. When she came to him as
mediatrix
, one whose being was imprinted by Christ in order to lead him back to his Savior, he was often uncertain. Now the identity between them is finally sensed on his pulses, and he is properly grateful. This is a line that many readers find themselves greatly moved by, without perhaps being able to verbalize the reasons for their emotion. It was amazing, he must reflect, that she had faith in such as him.
For an essay on the relationship between Beatrice and Virgil as Dante’s guides, see Punzi (Punz.1999.1). For the sense that Dante, here and elsewhere, has totally revised his earlier and earthly sense of Beatrice, see Paolo Cherchi (Cher.2004.1): “This is the true praise. Beatrice loses nothing of her physical beauty; indeed, she remains the most fair among the fair. However, the ‘diseroticization,’ so to speak, comes … from Dante, who comes to understand, at a certain point in his narrative, that the lady whom he desires is truly ‘venuta da cielo in terra a miracol mostrare’ ” (come from Heaven to earth to reveal a miracle—
VN
XXVI.6).
Masciandaro’s
lectura
of this canto (Masc.1995.1) demonstrates the importance of aesthetic concerns throughout this particularly beautiful canto.
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35.
For the only other use of the Provençalism
sobranza
(overwhelms), see the note to
Paradiso
XX.97.
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37–39.
Beatrice’s discourse leaves little doubt but that she and Dante are gazing on Jesus Himself. See I Corinthians 1:24, Paul’s description of Christ as “the Wisdom of God.”
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39.
It was 4,302 years that Adam waited for Christ to harrow him from Limbo. See the note to
Paradiso
XXVI.118–120.
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40–45.
The third simile of the canto compares the swelling lightning bolt, escaping from the cloud that can no longer contain it, and falling, against its nature, downward, to Dante’s mind, swelling with its rapt vision of Christ, escaping from its “container,” and becoming other than it had been.
Dante’s meteorology (for this phenomenon Steiner [comm. to vv. 40–42] cites Albertus Magnus,
Meteor
. I.iv.7) held that lightning resulted when contention between fiery and aquatic elements within a cloud resulted in the fiery part becoming too large and bursting the edges of the aqueous envelope, as it were. Theorists of the phenomenon were hard pressed to explain
why
this excess of fire should, only in this instance, fall downward rather than follow its natural inclination up.
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43.
The noun
dape
(Latin
dapes
, viands), a hapax in the poem, shows Dante’s hand once again being forced by rhyme. Lombardi (comm. to this verse) refers to the hymn composed by St. Ambrose, describing a saintly man who thus “dapes supernas obtinet” (obtains supernal food).
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45.
It seems clear that the author wishes us to understand that the protagonist, blinded by Christ, has had a Pauline (or Johannine)
raptus
.
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46–48.
Dante’s vision has now readied him, if not to see Christ in His splendor, then at least to be able to have a version of that experience with respect to Beatrice. Heretofore, she has made herself his mirror (e.g.,
Par.
XVIII.13–18); now she invites him to see her as herself; in the previous sphere (
Par.
XXI.4–12, XXI.63, XXII.10–11) he was denied her smile (which he last saw in Mars [
Par.
XVIII.19]). Now he possesses the capacity to behold her true being, since his experience of the Church Triumphant under Christ has raised his ability to deal with such lofty things.
As Brownlee points out (Brow.1991.2), pp. 230–31, this marks the completion of the “Semele program”
in bono
, Dante’s being able to look upon his “goddess” in her true nature.
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49–51.
The tercet, while offering a simple comparison rather than, strictly speaking, a simile (see, e.g.,
Par.
XXII.2–3, 4–6 for like phenomena), continues the similetic tonality of the canto. Here we find another comparison involving a state of mind (see the note to
Inf.
XXX.136–141). We may be reminded both of Dante’s final vision of Beatrice in Christ in
Vita nuova
XLII and (if we have already read this poem at least once) of the final vision in
Paradiso
XXXIII. In both those cases, as here, there is at stake a
visione
that cannot be brought back to consciousness. In all three cases we are speaking of what is clearly presented as a true vision, not a dream, even if here this is
compared
to an ordinary dreamer’s attempt to revive in himself the experience of the dream from which he has awakened. Our task as interpreters of text is not made easier by the fact that in Dante’s Italian both ordinary dreaming and privileged sight of the highest kind may be signified by the same word,
visione
. For an attempt to demonstrate how carefully Dante developed and deployed necessary distinctions in his vocabulary of seeing as early as in his
Vita nuova
, see Hollander (Holl.1974.1).
In the last tercet the poet has used the verb
vedere
to register Dante’s vision of Jesus, the “sun” that is too bright for him as yet to take in; Beatrice invites him to look upon
her
as she truly is (if he cannot yet sustain a vision of Christ). He had never before enjoyed, in the narrative of her presence in the
Commedia
, from
Purgatorio
XXX until right now, such beholding of Beatrice “face-to-face.” However, it seems probable that we are meant to consider that she was present to his vision in an at least approximately similar manifestation in the last chapter of the
Vita nuova
.
And thus this moment is meant to draw that one back to mind. There, too, Beatrice was a living soul in the presence of God.
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50.
Poletto (comm. to vv. 49–54) notes that this hapax, the Latinism
oblita
(forgotten, faded from memory) is deployed in the
Epistola a Cangrande
(XIII.80). The context of that passage is perhaps remembered here: “This again is conveyed to us in Matthew, where we read that the three disciples fell on their faces, and record nothing thereafter, as though memory had failed them (
quasi obliti
). And in Ezekiel it is written: ‘And when I saw it, I fell upon my face.’ And should these not satisfy the cavillers, let them read Richard of St. Victor in his book
On Contemplation
; let them read Bernard in his book
On Consideration
; let them read Augustine in his book
On the Capacity of the Soul
; and they will cease from their cavilling” (tr. P. Toynbee). Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of these texts (particularly those of Richard of St. Victor and of Bernard) have been before our eyes in notes to the last contemplative heaven. This portion of the
Epistola
(XIII.77–84) is a fairly lengthy commentary on
Paradiso
I.7–9. The context is supplied by the extramundane experiences of Paul and Dante, those uniquely favored humans who had seen God in their ascent to the Empyrean.
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52–53.
Beatrice’s “offer” to let Dante see her face-to-face, as she truly is, that is, blessed in the company of the elect, is the greatest gift she has ever bestowed on Dante. Among other things, it promises his own blessedness to come, for how would God sanction such a vision to a mortal bound to perdition?
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54.
The language here, too, puts us in mind of the
Vita nuova
, now of the opening reference (
VN
I.1) to Dante’s
libro della mia memoria
(book of my memory), in which Beatrice’s significant presences are recorded. Strangely enough, because the self-citation does seem obvious, surprisingly few (ten) commentators to
Paradiso
XXIII refer to the
Vita nuova
as being focally present behind the phrasing of verse 54. Once again the first is Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 52–54).
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55–59.
Not even if all the most inspired (pagan) poets, inspired by all the Muses (led, in this consideration, by the one associated with sacred song, Polyhymnia), should come to Dante’s aid, would that serve to reveal more than a tiny bit of the Christian truth he now saw in Beatrice.
There happen to be in the poem nine invocations (no more than five
of them addressed to traditional Muses) and nine references to the Muses; see Hollander (Holl.1976.2), n. 3, who also offers an account of the inaccuracies of Muse-counting from 1896 to 1973, from Scartazzini to Singleton. Since we have known for a long time of the importance of the number nine to Dante, such failed accounting is surprising. But see Hollander’s belated discussion (in his later version of this article [Holl.1980.1], p. 32, n. 1a) of Fabio Fabbri (Fabb.1910.1), p. 186, who lists the nine invocations correctly.
For this trope (nursing Muses) as it is developed in the (only slightly?) later
Eclogues
, see Heil (Heil.2003.1). And see Cestaro (Cest.2003.1), pp. 139, 162, 166, for the Muses as nourishing in
Purgatorio
and
Paradiso
.
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