Authors: Dante
55–57.
It has become fairly usual (beginning with Tommaseo [comm. to this tercet]) for commentators to cite
Aeneid
VI.625–627, for example, Poletto (comm. to vv. 55–60): “No, had I a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, and voice of iron, I could not sum up all the forms of crime, or rehearse all the tale of torments” [tr. H. R. Fairclough]. The Sibyl is here reacting to what she and Aeneas might have seen had they entered Tartarus instead of proceeding to the Elysian Fields. Since we are seeing the inhabitants of the Christian version of those “fields,” the passage in the
Aeneid
seems doubly apt.
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56.
Polyhymnia is mentioned as one of the nine Muses by all the early commentators; most of them go on to identify her with memory rather than a specific artistic form, as she is in handbooks today (with the sacred hymn). The first commentator to associate her with hymns was Andreoli (comm. to vv. 55–57), etymologizing her Greek name; with him she becomes, for the modern commentary tradition, the Muse “of many hymns.”
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61–63.
Read as literally as it probably should be, Dante’s remark indicates that his poem
right now
is “representing Paradise,” and doing so for the very first time. That is why he required a preparatory invocation (
Par.
XXII.121–123) for this portion of the poem (now combined with an at least equally attention-summoning “non-invocation,” vv. 55–63). True Paradise is found only, one may respond, after
Paradiso
XXX.90, once Dante begins to see the courts of Heaven as they are. However, singularly and strikingly, it is here, in the Fixed Stars, that he is allowed to see those who dwell there, whom he will see again once he himself has reached the Empyrean. In this vein, among many, see Goffis (Goff.1968.1), p. 826,
referring to this canto as beginning the “second part” of
Paradiso
. However, see Benvenuto da Imola, for the kind of misapprehension that dogs him whenever Dante represents himself as having looked upon reality. Here is Benvenuto’s response to this tercet: “
figurando il paradiso
, that is, representing poetically, figuratively; for this passage does not represent real things.…”
Scartazzini (comm. to verse 61) documents the confusion caused by these lines: If “figurando il paradiso” means “representing [true] paradise,” that is, the Church Triumphant, citizenry of the Empyrean (and that is not everyone’s understanding, if it seems to be a just one), then why does the “sacred poem” indeed “have to make a leap”? There is a fairly straightforward interpretation: The poem “overleaps” an intervening heaven, the Primum Mobile, in finding its subject matter in those who inhabit the Empyrean. It is in that sense that he is like a man “who finds his path obstructed” and has to leap over the impediment.
Tommaseo (comm. to this tercet) puts it into relationship with
Inferno
XXXII.9, where Dante is concerned with the difficulty of describing the bottom of the universe (here, with the top of it). There we find, immediately following this expression of concern, an invocation; here, immediately preceding an expression of similar difficulty, a non-invocation.
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61.
In the
Commedia
the word
paradiso
has only a single presence outside the
cantica
that bears its name (
Purg.
I.99). Its first clear reference to the Empyrean (rather than to the celestial regions in general) perhaps occurs only in its sixth appearance, in
Paradiso
(XV.36).
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64–66.
This is an “indirect address to the reader,” as it were; for the extent of the real kind in the poem, see the notes to
Inferno
VIII.94–96 and
Paradiso
X.22–27.
Daniello, Lombardi, Tommaseo, Scartazzini, Torraca (all in their comments on this tercet) cite Horace’s much-quoted passage (“sumite materiam”) from his
Ars poetica
(vv. 38–41): “Take a subject, you writers, equal to your strength, and ponder long what your shoulders refuse, and what they are able to bear. Whoever shall choose a theme within his range, neither speech will fail him, nor clearness of order” (tr. H. R. Fairclough). Torraca reminds the reader that Dante had earlier cited this passage in
De vulgari eloquentia
(II.iv.4).
The altogether possible pun on Homer’s name, unrecorded in the commentaries, in Dante’s rephrasing of Horatian
humerus
(shoulder) as
òmero mortal
(mortal shoulder), since
Omèro
is Homer’s name in Italian (see
Inf.
IV.88), was noted in the 1970s by Professor Janet Smarr, while she was a graduate student at Princeton. That Dante may have for a moment thought of himself as the “Italian Homer” would not come as a surprise. If he did, the profoundly famous Homer (see Horace,
Ars poetica
401:
insignis Homerus
), by any stretch of the imagination “immortal,” has an Italian counterpart in the very mortal Dante. For Dante’s earlier reference to a Homeric being seeming like a god (and thus immortal), see
Vita nuova
II.8.
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67–69.
This tercet, recapping the nautical imagery that shapes the beginnings of each of the last two canticles of the poem, allows us to realize that, in some real sense, Dante put forward this canto as a liminal space, at the border of the infinite, as it were. In that perspective, the text that follows directly after this one is the final third of
Paradiso
XXX, where we are again in the direct presence of Eternity.
These verses pick up various thematic elements from earlier in the poem. For the “little bark” with its unworthy readers, see
Paradiso
II.1; for the
Commedia
as a
legno
, see
Paradiso
II.3; for the angelic steersman as
celestial nocchiero
, see
Purgatorio
II.43. We have progressed to that point at which the poet has himself become the pilot who will not spare himself in guiding us to our heavenly destination.
Is this tercet a boundary stone for a “fourth part” of the
Commedia
, consisting in Dante’s experience of the Empyrean, begun here, only to be interrupted by six more cantos that take place in the last two spheres?
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67.
The word
pareggio
has caused difficulty. Its other use in the poem (
Par.
XXI.90) has not seemed problematic to the commentators (it is a verb form meaning “I match” or “I equal”). Here, on the other hand, where it is a predicate nominative, it has caused traffic jams. The value of the word in its two most favored forms (there have been as many as seven candidates at one time or another) is close enough that one may say that the difference is not worth a large investment of effort: Some sense of a voyage over an extensive piece of sea is what most think is meant, however they arrive at their conclusion.
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70–75.
That the protagonist is looking upon the Church Triumphant is beyond question, despite occasional shilly-shallying about how many of the saved are represented as having come down to be seen by Dante (since Beatrice’s words at verse 20 make it plain that all are here). The question that remains is
why
the poet engineered this extraordinary scene. The
commentators have not ventured an opinion, perhaps because they do not fully take in what an extraordinary moment this is. It is simply amazing to find that all the blessed have appeared in space and time, that is, in the Starry Sphere and before we enter the Empyrean. One might counter that this is similar to their appearances through the spheres. But there they came as “emissaries” of themselves; now they
are
themselves (without, of course, their flesh), and are arranged as they shall be for eternity. For a precise understanding of the difference, see Borzi (Borz.1989.1), p. 644: “Il Canto XXIII del
Paradiso
segna il passaggio dalla rappresentazione dei beati distribuiti, per ragioni didattiche, nei sette cieli, alla visione di un Paradiso còlto nella realtà teologica della sua unità” (Canto XXIII marks the passage from the representation of the blessed souls distributed, for didactic reasons, through the seven heavens, to the vision of a Paradise caught in the theological reality of its oneness).
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71.
The word
giardino
(garden), absent from the poem since
Purgatorio
VI.105, where it was used in the phrase “the garden of the empire,” now, referring to the members of the Church Triumphant, reappears. It will do so again at
Paradiso
XXVI.110, where it refers to the garden of Eden, and then in XXXI.97 and XXXII.39, where it will signify the Empyrean, Eden regained.
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73–75.
We hear that there are at least two kinds of flowers in this “garden” (verse 71). The single rose, by common consent, is Mary; the lilies, if with slightly less unanimous support, represent the apostles, leading humankind toward salvation in Christ (along “the right way”). See Jacopo della Lana (comm. to verse 74) on three reasons for identifying the lilies with the apostles: (1) because lilies are white (signifying faith), vermilion in their inner petals (signifying incorruptibility and charity), and fragrant (signifying preaching and hope).
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78.
For a second time (see vv. 31–33), the brightness of Jesus overwhelms Dante’s ability to look at Him. (The line literally means “the battle of the weak brows.”)
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79–84.
The precondition for this simile, as we finally will realize in verse 86, is that Jesus has withdrawn, going back up to the Empyrean. And so now He, as the Sun, shines through a rift in clouds and illuminates a spot of earth, representing, resolved from the simile, the host of Christ’s first triumph (the Harrowing) and the souls of all those saved after that.
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82–84.
On a beam of light passing through a cloud as an expression of Dante’s light physics, see Gilson (Gils.2000.1), pp. 150–69. Boyde (Boyd.1993.1), pp. 67–68, deals with its three prime elements:
luce
(the source of light),
lumen
(in Dante’s Italian,
raggio
, the beam along which the
luce
travels),
splendor[e]
(the surface that the light irradiates). Perhaps nowhere else in the poem is this arrangement articulated so neatly, each element receiving one line in the tercet, but that is not to say it is not often present. See the note to
Paradiso
XII.9.
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85–87.
Christ, addressed as His paternal attribute, Power, is now thanked by the poet for having made, by withdrawing, his experience of the scene possible. His overwhelming light, which is compared to the sun being present only through a chink in the clouds (His “ray” that illuminates the resplendent flowers in a field without blinding the onlooker by shining full on him as well), is thus only resplendent on the souls that constitute the “garden” of the Church Triumphant.
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88–89.
This passage brings out emotional responses in even hardened commentators, as demonstrated by a quick sampling of their responses to it in the DDP. And surely they are correct in thinking that Dante is revealing a personal trait, what a stern Protestant would describe, with perhaps an Anglo-Saxon
harrumph
, as “Mariolatry.” This is, nonetheless, one of the few touches in the poem that allow us to feel the presence of an ordinary human being beneath the writer’s words (we often are allowed to share Dante’s thoughts, only rarely his doings), one who is occupied with the details of daily living, praying to the Intercessor before he descends the stairs in a stranger’s house and then again after he climbs them in the evening (see
Par.
XVII.60).
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90.
For the significance of Mary’s appearing to be greater in size than the other saints, see the note to
Paradiso
XXII.28–29.
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91–102.
This little scene reflects a genre familiar from paintings of the time, an Annunciation, with its two familiar figures, the archangel Gabriel and the mother of Jesus. It ends with the canonical color for Mary, her earmark glowing blue. Porena (comm. to vv. 106–108), however, denies that the angelic presence here is that of Gabriel, urging rather the candidacy of an unnamed Seraph.
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