by Dante
90
che ciò ch’i’ dico è un semplice lume.
La forma universal di questo nodo →
credo ch’i’ vidi, perché più di largo,
93
dicendo questo, mi sento ch’i’ godo.
Un punto solo m’è maggior letargo → →
che venticinque secoli a la ’mpresa →
96
che fé Nettuno ammirar l’ombra d’Argo. →
Così la mente mia, tutta sospesa, →
mirava fissa, immobile e attenta, →
99
e sempre di mirar faceasi accesa.
A quella luce cotal si diventa, →
che volgersi da lei per altro aspetto
102
è impossibil che mai si consenta;
però che ’l ben, ch’è del volere obietto,
tutto s’accoglie in lei, e fuor di quella
105
è defettivo ciò ch’è lì perfetto.
Omai sarà più corta mia favella, →
pur a quel ch’io ricordo, che d’un fante
108
che bagni ancor la lingua a la mammella.
Non perché più ch’un semplice sembiante
fosse nel vivo lume ch’io mirava,
111
che tal è sempre qual s’era davante; →
ma per la vista che s’avvalorava
in me guardando, una sola parvenza,
114
mutandom’ io, a me si travagliava.
Ne la profonda e chiara sussistenza →
de l’alto lume parvermi tre giri →
117
di tre colori e d’una contenenza;
e l’un da l’altro come iri da iri →
parea reflesso, e ’l terzo parea foco
120
che quinci e quindi igualmente si spiri.
Oh quanto è corto il dire e come fioco →
al mio concetto! e questo, a quel ch’i’ vidi,
123
è tanto, che non basta a dicer “poco.”
O luce ettema che sola in te sidi, →
sola t’intendi, e da te intelletta
126
e intendente te ami e arridi!
Quella circulazion che sì concetta → →
pareva in te come lume reflesso,
129
da li occhi miei alquanto circunspetta,
dentro da sé, del suo colore stesso, →
mi parve pinta de la nostra effige: →
132
per che ’l mio viso in lei tutto era messo.
Qual è ’l geomètra che tutto s’affige →
per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova,
135
pensando, quel principio ond’ elli indige,
tal era io a quella vista nova:
veder voleva come si convenne →
138
l’imago al cerchio e come vi s’indova; →
ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne: →
se non che la mia mente fu percossa
141
da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne.
A l’alta fantasia qui mancò possa; → →
ma già volgeva il mio disio e ’l velle, →
sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa, →
145
l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. →
Notes
PARADISO I
* * *
1–36. Dante clearly offers these verses as an introduction to the third and final cantica as a whole. So much is dealt with in them, and in precisely such a way as to set Paradiso off from the rest of the poem, that it is perhaps worth considering them as a unit before attempting to come to grips with particular lines. One burden of these remarks (and of the specific glosses that follow them) is that Dante is once again (see, e.g., Purg. XXIV.52–54) playing a dangerous game as he addresses his role as poet. He presents himself, if in hidden ways (in modern political parlance, he “preserves deniability”), as being inspired by God to write this part of the poem (a barely hidden claim in the first two canticles as well). At the same time he allows us to believe, if we are uncomfortable with that claim here, that he is only doing what all poets do, invoking deities for poetic inspiration as has been conventional since Homer’s time. And so here we shall find him referring to Apollo (I.13), Mt. Parnassus (I.16), the satyr Marsyas (I.20), and Daphne (in the form of the laurel tree—I.25). Yet all those classicizing gestures do not quite obfuscate the clear postclassical network of the necessary Christian appurtenances of a poem that begins by remembering its culmination and conclusion, the vision of God in the Empyrean.
We are fortunate in the fact that the first dozen of these opening verses are the subject of a commentary written by no less an expert than Dante himself, in his Epistle to Cangrande, which now, after the evidence that it was known and extensively cited by Andrea Lancia circa 1345, as Luca Azzetta (Azze.2003.1) has demonstrated, cannot easily be denied its Dantean paternity (and especially not by those for whom a major piece of negative evidence against the authenticity of the document was the complete absence of direct reference to Dante’s authorship in the fourteenth century). Dante himself marks off these thirty-six verses as introductory, referring to the rest of the cantica (Par. I.37–XXXIII.145) as its pars executiva (executive portion), i.e., the narrative (of which he says nothing, if he seems to promise to do so). In fact, his detailed treatment (the pars executiva, as it were, of his epistle) is reserved, interestingly enough, only for the first dozen of these three dozen lines, which receive some four pages of analysis (we might reflect that, had the commentator continued at this rate, he would have produced a document of some sixteen hundred pages for Paradiso alone). Then the commentator begins to treat his subject at breakneck speed: The last terzina of the group (vv. 10–12) receives only a single brief sentence of attention, while the following fifteen verses (13–27) are glossed even more hurriedly.
Except for Scartazzini, a happy and fairly early exception, few exegetes have made wide use of the Epistle in their responses to the opening of the Paradiso (if Charles Singleton, in his “Special Note” to the canto, and Umberto Bosco/Giovanni Reggio [comm. to vv. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7–9, 12, 13] offer notable exceptions; see also Baldelli [Bald.1993.2]). To do so properly would overburden these pages; therefore, the interested reader is directed to a fuller treatment of this document in the commentary to the opening five tercets of the canto in the Princeton Dante Project (www.princeton.edu/dante).
Dante’s practice as composer of prologues to each of his three cantiche is diverse, as may be readily observed in the following table:
Paradiso, it seems clear, required more painstaking justification than anything before it, and this, the fifth of the nine invocations in the poem (see the note to Inf. II.7–9) is by far the most elaborate, requiring eight tercets for its development. We shall return to the invocatory portion of the introduction to Paradiso shortly; here we may simply observe that the self-reflective poetic gestures made in those eight tercets occupy fully two-thirds of this introductory poetic space. [return to English / Italian]
1. The phrasing “di colui che tutto move” (of Him who moves all things) is unmistakably derived from Aristotle’s “unmoved mover” (see Metaphysics XII.7), familiar in Scholastic writings, as Scartazzini (1900, comm. to this verse) insists. “La gloria,” on the other hand, initiates and controls the Scholastic definition in order to Christianize its terminology. (“Glory” is notably and understandably absent from Aristotle’s or Thomas’s discussion of the first mover.) The word has various possible meanings in the Commedia (see the article “gloria” by Sebastiano Aglianò [ED III (1975)], pp. 240–42): for example, it may represent earthly renown, a shining quality, the state of blessedness. Here it may retain some of its more earthly resonance, but in only the highest sense: God’s shining forth from his beatitude, the most “famous” of all things that exist. [return to English / Italian]
2–3. The Let
ter to Cangrande devotes well over a page to these verses, arguing that we are to find the glory of God’s Being reflected in all that exists in His secondary creation; likewise, His essence, or His intellect, lies at the heart of all the substances found in the created universe. Thus it is not surprising that we find a gradation among even the things that God has made, some being more or less corruptible than others. Dante offers no examples in this difficult passage, but it is clear that he is thinking of the angels at the highest end of creation, and the less exalted forms of matter (e.g., rocks, mud) at the lowest. The words penetra (pervades, penetrates) and risplende (shines [with reflected light]) distinguish between God’s unmediated glory and its reflection, its quality various as what it is reflected by. [return to English / Italian]
4–12. For the interrelated phenomena in Paradiso (beginning with this passage) of “the seeing and understanding of the protagonist—with their related difficulties—and the ability to remember and to express his experience—with their related difficulties,” see the densely supported observations of Giuseppe Ledda (Ledd.2002.1), pp. 243–98. [return to English / Italian]
4–6. The reference to St. Paul’s ascent to the heavens is unmistakable (II Corinthians 12:3–4) and has long been acknowledged (at least since the time [ca. 1385] of Francesco da Buti [comm. to vv. 1–12]). For a particularly incisive treatment, see Landino on this tercet. More recently, see the extended treatment by Giuseppe Ledda (Ledd.2002.1), pp. 243–59. And see Di Scipio (Disc.1995.1), p. 253, for the pertinence here of the concept of excessus mentis (but see the previous recognitions of Sapegno [in his comment to vv. 6–9] and a few other modern commentators). For the Pauline background of the concept, see Di Scipio (Disc.1995.1), pp. 153–55. [return to English / Italian]
4. Some commentators, perhaps beginning with Pietrobono (comm. to this verse), put forward the notion that the reference is to all ten heavens, that is, to the totality of this superterrestrial world. A few have also argued that the reference is to the outermost of the physical heavenly spheres, either the Crystalline or the Primum Mobile. However, it seems utterly clear that Dante is referring to the Empyrean, God’s “home” (insofar as He who is everywhere can be thought of as located in a particular anywhere as well). Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) was perhaps the first to refer to the Epistle to Cangrande as eventual justification of this reading: “And it is called the Empyrean, which is as much as to say, the heaven glowing with fire or heat; not that there is material fire or heat therein, but spiritual, which is holy love, or charity” (XIII.68—tr. P. Toynbee). [return to English / Italian]
5. It is difficult not to think of the heavenly experience granted St. Paul. [return to English / Italian]
7. For his several discussions of the language of desire in Dante, with special reference to Paradiso, see Lino Pertile (Pert.1990.1); (Pert.1993.2); (Pert.1998.2), pp. 87–133; (Pert.2001.1). And now see his global study of this subject (Pert.2005.2). [return to English / Italian]
9. On this verse, “che dietro la memoria non può ire” (that memory cannot follow after it), see Bruno Nardi (Nard.1960.3), who examines the understanding of the nature of memory as it is reflected in the traditions that develop from Aristotle and Augustine and come down into Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas in order to establish that “when our intellect comes near to the beatific vision of God …, it so immerses itself in it … that the memory and the image-receiving capacity of the mind are unable to contain it any longer” (p. 273). As Poletto and Tozer point out (comms. to vv. 7–9), Dante has explained this verse in the Epistle to Cangrande (XIII.77): “Et reddit causam dicens ‘quod intellectus in tantum profundat se’ in ipsum ‘desiderium suum’, quod est Deus, ‘quod memoria sequi non potest’ ” (And he gives the reason, saying that “the intellect plunges itself to such depth” in its very longing, which is for God, “that the memory cannot follow” [tr. P. Toynbee]). There is (mainly unexpressed) disagreement among the commentators as to whether the memory is with the intellect in its first experience of the Godhead and only loses that perception afterward, or, as Dante seems to be saying, is left behind at the outset in the intellect’s excitement. Whatever hypothesis one accepts, the result is the same, as the last verses of the poem will also announce: The vision of God cannot be contained in human memory; rather, we can only claim a memory of having had a memory, now lost. [return to English / Italian]
10–12. As though in preparation for the invocation that is to come in the following tercet, Dante resorts to a series of phrases or words laden with literary overtone, whether intrinsically or by the context offered from their other appearances in the Commedia: veramente (discussed in the following note), regno santo, mente, tesoro, materia, il mio canto. For instance, the “holy kingdom” (regno santo) that is Paradise may remind us of medieval poets’ assigning themselves geographic/political areas as subjects of their work (e.g., the “matter of Troy,” the “matter of France,” etc.); all the rest of these terms are also used by Dante in passages that refer to the writing of his poem. For materia, see Paradiso X.27, where Dante refers to the text of Paradiso as “that matter of which I have become the scribe.” [return to English / Italian]
10. While it is clear that, as commentators have pointed out, Dante’s conjunction (veramente, here “nevertheless”) mirrors the formality of the Latin conjunction verumtamen, it also necessarily exhibits the only partly hidden claim that this poem is a record of things that have truly (veramente) been observed. In 1791, Lombardi (comm. to this verse) was perhaps the first commentator to insist on the force of the Latin root, specifically denying the meaning of con verità, certamente, found in the earlier commentaries. It is, however, difficult to accept the notion that the obvious Italian meaning is utterly effaced in the Latinism. In accord with that view, Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 1–12) glosses veramente as “not in empty dreams.” Poetry, as commentators should realize perhaps more often than we do, has the propensity to open into a plurality of meanings that cannot be fully rendered in prose. (Dante, however, in Vita nuova XXV.10 clearly himself sponsors the notion that the meaning of poems are known to those who make them: “For, if any one should dress his poem in images and rhetorical coloring and then, being asked to strip his poem of such dress in order to reveal its true meaning, would not be able to do so—this would be a veritable cause for shame. And my best friend [Guido Cavalcanti] and I are well acquainted with some who compose so clumsily” [tr. M. Musa].)
Since most of the seven of the preceding uses of the adverb fairly obviously offer only the more usual Italian sense of the word (i.e., “truly,” “really”—as will most of the seven that follow), its undertone here is not easily muffled. [return to English / Italian]
11. The word tesoro is focal in a number of contexts as we move through the poem. For these, see the note to Paradiso XVII.121–122. Here Dante claims to have laid up in his memory the “treasure of Heaven” (see Matthew 19:21). [return to English / Italian]
12. For the concept behind Dante’s word materia, see the note to vv. 10–12, above. As for the noun canto, when it signifies “song” (and not “side” or “edge,” a meaning it has fully seven times, interspersed through all three cantiche), it is used twenty-four times in the poem, and includes reference to a gamut of “songs”: (1) classical epic (Inf. IV.95); (2) a specific canto or passage in the Commedia (Inf. XX.2; XXXIII.90; Purg. I.10; Par. V.16; V.139); (3) Dante’s former song, the second ode of the Convivio (Purg. II.107; II.131); (4) the Ulysses-seducing song of the Siren in Dante’s second Purgatorial dream (Purg. XIX.23); (5) songs of biblical derivation sung as part of the rite of purgation, that is, the Miserere sung by the penitents in ante-purgatory (Purg. V.27) and the Gloria in excelsis sung by the penitent avaricious at Statius’s liberation from his penitence (Purg. XX.140); (6) Charity’s directive song to which Faith and Hope measure the steps of their dance (Purg. XXIX.128); and finally (7) twelve songs in the Paradiso directed to or emanating from Heaven, first the holy songs of the Seraphim (Par.
IX.77) and, last, the Gloria sung by the Church Triumphant (if not by Jesus and Mary, already returned to the Empyrean—Par. XXVII.3). [return to English / Italian]
13–36. The author of the Epistle to Cangrande himself divides the introduction to Paradiso into two parts, vv. 1–12 and 13–36 (see Epist. XIII.48). While the invocation proper occupies only three verses, this entire passage supports and extends it. (For an intense consideration of Dante’s use of invocation, see Ledda [Ledd.2002.1], pp. 55–63.) [return to English / Italian]
13–15. The invocation of God, even if as the “good Apollo,” is, once one considers the poetic moment, almost a necessity. (Paulinus of Nola apostrophizes Christ as follows: “Salve o Apollo vere” [Save us, O true Apollo—Carmina II.51], as noted by Kantorowicz [Kant.1951.1], p. 228, among a plethora of similar expressions found in Greek [and some Latin] syncretistic passages.) Who else but God Himself can serve as the ultimate “muse” for a poem about the ultimate mysteries of the Christian faith? If the first two of these three verses indirectly but clearly associate Apollo with God (the word valore in verse 14 is used at least thrice again undoubtedly to refer to the Power of God the Father [Par. I.107, X.3, and XXXIII.81]), while the second indirectly but clearly associates Dante with St. Paul (see Inf. II.28, “lo Vas d’elezïone” [the Chosen Vessel]), since Dante, likewise, will be made God’s chosen vessel (vaso). And what of the gift that this poet seeks? The “belovèd laurel,” in this exalted context, becomes more than poetic fame, but the true immortality of those who are blessed for eternity, another and better kind of immortality: the “laurel” granted by God to his immortal (i.e., saved) poet, rewarded, among other things, for having written, under His inspiration, of Him. In the Epistle to Cangrande, Dante offers the following explanation of the reason poets call on higher authority: “For they have need of invocation in a large measure, inasmuch as they have to petition the superior beings for something beyond the ordinary range of human powers, something almost in the nature of a divine gift” (tr. P. Toynbee—the last phrase reads quasi divinum quoddam munus, representing an only slightly veiled reference to the theologized nature of his “Apollo”). For Dante’s single use of the Latinism muno, based on munus, see Paradiso XIV.33. We should not forget, if we insist on the pagan valence of Apollo, that Dante has already twice “transvaluated” a pagan god into the Christian deity: See Inferno XXXI.92 and Purgatorio VI.118 for the expression sommo Giove (highest Jove). This is surely the same phenomenon that we witness here.