by Dante
37. Brezzi (Brez.1989.1), p. 448, underlines the importance of the concept of contingency in this canto, first at verse 16 (“contingenti”) and then here (“contingenza”), as opposed to those things that are eternal. (See also the “cluster” of concern with contingent things in Par. XIII.63, XIII.64, and XIII.69.) The word (used as a verb) will reemerge for a final appearance in Paradiso XXV.1. [return to English / Italian]
43–99. Cacciaguida’s lengthy personal prophecy of the course of Dante’s future life, the ninth and final one in the poem (stopping, strictly speaking, at verse 93, it is nonetheless exactly the same length as the preceding eight put together), eclipses all that we have learned from the four in Inferno (Ciacco, VI.64–75; Farinata, X.79–81; Brunetto, XV.55–57, 61–66, 70–75; Vanni Fucci, XXIV.143–150) and the four found in Purgatorio (Currado Malaspina, VIII.133–139; Oderisi, XI.140–141; Bonagiunta, XXIV.37–38; Forese, XXIV.82–90). See Pasquini (Pasq.1996.1), p. 419. This is clearly meant to be taken as the most important prognostication of Dante’s personal involvement in the political affairs of his world. If we consider that each of the first two canticles has four such passages and that this one, coming in the central canto of the third, is so detailed, it becomes clear that it is meant to overwhelm in importance all those that have preceded.
Chiarenza (Chia.1983.3), p. 145, juxtaposes the two Ovidian myths found in this canto, Phaeton and Hippolytus (see the note to vv. 46–48), arguing that the first is emblematic of damnation, the second of salvation. [return to English / Italian]
43–45. The first commentator to be clear about the problems of this passage is Fallani (comm. to this tercet), referring to his gloss on Purg. IX.144, in which he cites Casimiri’s lecture of 1924. Casimiri insisted that there were no instances of singing to organ accompaniment until the fifteenth century. Fallani is of the opinion that some of the early commentators (e.g., Jacopo della Lana, the Ottimo, Francesco da Buti, the Anonimo Fiorentino), when speaking of “il cantare degli organi,” probably were referring only to the harmony established by two or more voices singing different notes, not to the musical instrument, the organ. For earlier discussion of this material, see the note to Purgatorio IX.139–145. And see Heilbronn-Gaines (Heil.1995.2), arguing that here the singular form organo clearly marks this reference as being to vocal polyphony, while the plural organi (as in Purg. IX.144) refers to the musical instrument.
No matter how discordant the sounds of his great-great-grandson’s coming travails may seem, Cacciaguida would seem to be insisting, they will eventually be heard as harmony, at least once Dante’s task is completed. [return to English / Italian]
46–48. At least since the time of Scartazzini, commentators have recognized that the word indicating a cruel stepmother (noverca: Phaedra, Florence) and that indicating a man unjustly exiled (immeritum: Hippolytus, Dante) are found in a passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (XV.497–505). Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) point out that the words exul immeritus found in four of Dante’s thirteen epistles likely come from this passage in Ovid and that Hippolytus, as a result, should be considered a figura Dantis. And for Dante’s sense of himself as sharing with Ovid the experience of exile, see the note to verses 55–57.
As Cacciaguida begins his lengthy series of predictions concerning Dante’s life, we may perhaps remember that two passages in Inferno (X.130–132 and XV.88–90) surely seem to promise that Beatrice will be the one to reveal to Dante the course of his future life. Several readers have advanced hypotheses in order to account for Dante’s obvious change in plan, most notably Marguerite Mills Chiarenza. For a summary of her argument, see the note to Inferno X.130–132. [return to English / Italian]
46. Chiarenza (Chia.1966.1 [and see also Chia.1983.3]) was perhaps the first to examine the import to Dante of the rest of the tale of Hippolytus: his restoration from death and his ensuing life in exile from Athens under the name “Virbius.” She argues that Dante could have known this part of Hippolytus’s tale from Virgil (Aen. VII.777) and from Ovid (Metam. XV.497–546 [a connection first observed by Jacopo della Lana, comm. to vv. 46–48, if without naming Virbius]). (Dante might not have required the authority of Servius [alluded to by Chiarenza] who etymologizes Hippolytus’s posthumous name as “bis vir” [twice a man], but simply seen these obvious Latin roots himself.) Chiarenza’s conclusion is that the Virbius tradition gives Dante much more than a political self-justification, namely, a sense of his own spiritual second life. On the other hand, it does limn in precise parallel the Florentine’s escape from the political dangers of the world of “Thebes” (in Inferno an insistent stand-in for the ailing and divided city of man on earth, the city of destruction that surely reminded the poet of the internecine woes of Florence [see Inf. XIV.69; XX.32; XXV.15; XXX.2; XXX.22; XXXII.11; XXXIII.89; there are three references to the Greek city in Purgatorio, but these are rather more neutral in tone]). [return to English / Italian]
49–51. If the reader has been missing Virgil, this canto brings his name back into play (see the note to verse 19). And if the reader has missed the presence of one of Dante’s favorite whipping boys, Pope Boniface VIII, here he is, officiating over a corrupt Roman clergy that makes its profit out of selling Christ. We might almost be back in Inferno XIX rather than at the midpoint of Paradiso. [return to English / Italian]
51. How to translate tutto dì? We have decided, finding little help in the commentaries, that the phrase is more likely to refer to an imagined single long day in the “marketplace” of the Vatican rather than to an endless succession of days. Both solutions are found in the commentaries, the second more often. However, it seems to us that the sense of “all day long” is both more caustic and less obvious. [return to English / Italian]
52–54. The poet looks back at his banishment, an “injured party” indeed, from Florence; then he turns to God’s swift retributive justice, evident at least in the death of Boniface in 1303. Some dates that are pertinent here: Boniface was plotting against the Florentine White Guelphs as early as April 1300 (or so Dante probably believed); Dante was nearly certainly in Rome circa October 1301; on 27 January 1302 the Whites were banished from Florence. Possibly the most painful period in Dante’s life is rehearsed in these lines.
Perhaps encouraged by the use of the same noun at verse 69, where it obviously does refer to a political party, some take the noun parte in verse 52 to refer to the White Guelphs. On the other hand, since Cacciaguida’s entire prophecy is directed toward Dante’s personal future, we probably should understand that Dante himself is the “offended party” whose innocence will be proclaimed in the vengeance he will enjoy once God intervenes to set things right. However, the first to take the passage in this way appear to have been the sixteenth-century commentators Alessandro Vellutello and Bernardino Daniello (comms. to this tercet); nearly all the earlier ones take the victims to be the exiled White Guelphs (including Dante, of course). Since we will shortly hear, in only thinly veiled ways, of the enmity Dante felt from his fellow Whites in exile (vv. 61–66), it would be extremely odd for him to think of them as sharing his status as victim here. It really seems necessary to believe that this parte, like that in verse 69, is a party of one.
Vellutello, perhaps following the lead of Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 46–57) in citing these particulars, is of the opinion that signs of Dante’s “revenge” were evident in the various Florentine disasters of the spring of 1304; these are recounted more fully elsewhere (in his comm. to Inf. XXVI.7–9): the collapse of the Ponte alla Carraia because of the vast crowds of those who had assembled on the bridge to watch a spectacle enacted on the river below in which Hell was displayed (a “spectacle” that Dante himself would within several years begin to produce in writing, possibly with this one in mind); the civil war between the White and the Black Guelphs; and the terrible fire that destroyed seventeen hundred houses in the city (see Villani, Cron. VIII.70–71). Over the years there have been other candidates as well. The facts that these events were so cataclysm
ic (two major disasters and a civil war), involved such dramatic loss of life and destruction of property, seemed indeed like God’s punishment upon the city, and occurred so soon after Dante was exiled (a mere two years) all combine to give continuing support to Vellutello’s hypothesis. Of course, there were other notable events that the poet might have considered the result of God’s hand smiting the enemies of Dante Alighieri, “a Florentine by birth but not in his behaviors” (as he describes himself in the salutation of the Epistle to Cangrande), for instance the death of Boniface VIII in 1303 (the choice of some commentators) or of Corso Donati in 1308 (the choice of others). However, everything in this lengthy passage is centered both on Dante and on his feckless fellow Florentines. For this reason Vellutello’s interpretation seems more worthy of attention than others. [return to English / Italian]
55–57. The protagonist has asked his ancestor to provision him against the “slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune” (verse 27); Cacciaguida now responds by referring to the sharpest wound of all: his exile. For Dante’s sense of himself as the Italian Ovid, see Smarr (Smar.1991.1). From her observation that Ovid casts himself in the role of wandering Ulysses in both the Tristia and the Ars amatoria, she argues that Dante takes Ovid as a negative version of himself. For another treatment of Ovid as Dante’s counterpart in exile, see Picone (Pico.1999.3). And see the note to vv. 46–48. [return to English / Italian]
58–60. One of the most celebrated tercets in the poem, bringing home to the reader the poet’s daily sense of abandonment in his exilic condition, a necessary guest even under the best of circumstances (and with the most benign of hosts). The poet’s understatement catches perfectly the rhythm of the exile’s daily round, going downstairs with perhaps some sense that this day may bring tidings betokening a possible return to Florence, and then mounting back up at night with the deadened senses of one who knows that life will probably merely continue as it is. [return to English / Italian]
58. Strangely enough, the meaning of this verse is much debated. From the beginning, all have agreed that it refers to the bitter taste of bread (or anything else) eaten in bitter conditions. The “unofficial commentary tradition,” that is, ordinary readers, however, senses a reference to the way bread is prepared in Florence (to this day): It is baked without salt. Pietrobono (comm. to vv. 58–60) is the first commentator even to refer to that fact and simply denies its relevance (thus revealing that some discussants had raised this issue), insisting on the larger and obvious meaning. (He cites the often-cited passage in Convivio [I.iii.4] in which Dante laments his exilic experience.) Fallani (comm. to vv. 58–60) explains that the salty taste is supplied by the exile’s tears.
Longfellow (comm. to this verse) cites several pertinent passages, including Ecclesiasticus 29:24 [29:31–32 in the Vulgate] and 40:28–29 [29–30]: “It is a miserable thing to go from house to house; for where thou art a stranger, thou darest not open thy mouth. Thou shalt entertain and feast, and have no thanks: moreover, thou shalt hear bitter words.…” “My son, lead not a beggar’s life, for better it is to die than to beg. The life of him that dependeth on another man’s table is not to be counted for a life.” [return to English / Italian]
61–69. Dante became “a party of one” (verse 69) when he was disgusted with the efforts of his fellow exiles to make their way back into Florence, circa 1304. His correctness (we imagine a large meeting in which Dante was able to accomplish what the American comedian Mort Sahl, some five minutes into one of his scabrous and rollicking routines, used to ponder: “Is there anyone here I haven’t offended yet?”) about the folly of their preparations was, as far as he was concerned, reflected in their crushing defeat (an army of more than 10,000 men was routed, leaving 400 dead behind) by the Black Guelphs at the fortress Lastra a Signa, three kilometers from the walls of Florence, on 20 July 1304, during which battle Dante was in Arezzo. By a twist of circumstance, that put him there on the very day Francesco Petrarca was born in that city. [return to English / Italian]
65–66. While some of the earlier commentators (e.g., Portirelli to vv. 61–69) see the red of bloody wounds to the head, the majority of them think only of the red of a guilty blush. Dante’s point would seem to be that theirs would be no ordinary blushes (infusing only the cheeks with color), but would cover their entire countenances, even up to the hairline. In modern times, Scartazzini (comm. to verse 66) began the tradition of seeing both meanings in the line. That line of attack has, however, had little success, and twentieth-century commentators are fairly evenly divided in choosing one or the other. However, the phrase does seem a strange way to indicate those lying dead on the field of battle, since we assume that most of them were not killed by blows to the head (nor imagined as having blood from their other wounds or from the wounds of others staining their heads), while all of his former allies must (in Dante’s view) now feel ashamed (i.e., are blushing) for having turned against him, reviling his opposition to their bankrupt and eventually anti-Florentine schemes. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 64–66) object that blushes cover one’s cheeks, not the forehead. But that, perhaps, is exactly Dante’s point: This is no ordinary blush, but burns on all the exposed parts of the face, “blushing to the roots of their hair,” as the English expression has it. [return to English / Italian]
67–69. The only other appearance of the noun bestialitade is in Inferno XI.83, where its meaning is much debated. See the note to Inferno XI.76–90 and Fosca’s commentary to that passage (vv. 79–84) for the minority opinion, followed here, that bestialitade refers to the lowest form of fraud, treachery, as surely Dante sees his supposed allies among the White Guelphs (and those fellow-traveling exiled Ghibellines who had joined forces with them), who deserted Dante’s advocacy of the proper initiative against the Black Guelph rulers of the city. (Of course we know nothing of the matter[s] in dispute, just that there was a dispute and that it was pivotal and had a dramatic result, the defeat at La Lastra.) We remember that Antenora was the zone of Cocytus in which we found those who had betrayed country or party (Inferno XXXII.70–XXXIII.90), possibly the very sin Dante attributed to his fellow exiles, effectively dooming the cause and leaving him to form a “party of one.”
The context of this entire passage, vv. 52–75, is unabashedly Dante-centered, so much so that even the most zealous lover of this poet may feel the stinging warmth of embarrassment stealing up and over his face, blushing to the roots of his hair. [return to English / Italian]
70–71. Some commentators explain that, while Verona was not in fact the first place that Dante was received as he began his twenty years of exile (he did not arrive there for between one year and two [in 1303 or 1304] after he left Rome in 1302), it was nonetheless his first “real” shelter.
The succession of the Scaligeri, the ruling family of Verona in Dante’s time, was as follows: Mastino della Scala had become the ruler in 1262; he was succeeded by his brother Alberto in 1277. Alberto died in 1301 and was succeeded, in turn, by each of his three sons: Bartolommeo (who died in March 1304), Alboino (who died late in 1311, having just been named by Henry VII his imperial vicar, a title passed along at his death to his younger brother, who had joined him in joint rulership in 1308), and Cangrande (the youngest, born in 1291 and who died in 1329, eight years after Dante’s death). (Alberto also sired their illegitimate half brother Giuseppe, abbot of San Zeno [see Purg. XVIII.124].) According to what, after Petrocchi’s work, has become a widespread understanding, Dante left Verona soon after the accession of Alboino in 1304 and returned in 1312 or 1313, that is, once Cangrande had assumed sole power. It has become an assumption in Dante studies that for some reason Dante and Alboino just did not get along, thus explaining the poet’s eight years or more of absence from a city for which he obviously felt deep affection.
For a sketch of the historical situation after Cangrande’s accession to unshared power, after Alboino died in 1311, see Manselli (Mans.1966.1). Manselli takes Dante’s praise of Cangrande as genuine, since he was the only
one active on the scene whom Dante considered capable, both in his personal qualities and by virtue of his political position, of carrying out the lofty imperial mission unsuccessfully initiated by Henry VII.
There is a large literature devoted to what was at one time a vexed question: Which Scaliger governed Verona when Dante first arrived? Now just about all agree that it was Bartolommeo. For a summary of the dispute, in English, see Carroll (comm. to vv. 70–75). For a fuller treatment, summarizing the entire debate and concluding, with nearly all the early commentators, that Bartolommeo was indeed Dante’s first meaningful supporter in his exile, see Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 70–93). [return to English / Italian]
72. See Tozer (comm. to vv. 71–72): “The arms of the Scaligers were a golden ladder in a red field, surmounted by a black eagle, which was the imperial ensign.” Unfortunately for Dante’s sake, this insignia was not chosen by the Scaligeri (at the earliest, by Bartolommeo) before 1301. By making it present now, in 1300, the poet hurries history along faster than it wants to go. [return to English / Italian]
73–75. That is to say, Bartolommeo and Dante will grant one another’s requests even before the other can make them, while in most cases the granting follows much later than the asking (i.e., it may not be forthcoming at all). [return to English / Italian]
76–90. Commentators agree that this passage refers to Cangrande della Scala, one of the great figures of his time in northern Italy. He was indeed a “son of Mars,” a fearless and fabled warrior, and a man of, in Dante’s eyes, impeccable political convictions, an extreme supporter of Emperor Henry while he lived, and a man who refused to relinquish his title as imperial vicar even when the pope insisted that he do so (since there was no longer an emperor to be vicar to). For a portrait of the man and his court, see Carroll (comm. to vv. 76–93).