by Dante
96. According to Ovid, Jason was the builder of the first ship (“primaeque ratis molitor” [Metam. VIII.302]). For the history of the Argo-motif, see Curtius (Curt.1950.1), favoring Ovid (Metam. VII.120), which assuredly lies behind Dante’s earlier reference to Jason’s voyage (see the note to Par. II.17–18), but does not seem quite so good a fit here.
The image of Neptune looking up from beneath the sea is reminiscent of what the poet tells us in Canto XXXI.73–78, where he looked up at Beatrice as though he were immersed in the deepest point in the sea and she were at the highest point in the earth’s atmosphere. Both sightings involve the word effige (features), the first time as Beatrice’s likeness, the second (Par. XXXIII.131), that of Jesus. The fact that Neptune saw the shadow (ombra) of the Argo makes it at least probable that the poet hoped we would consider that voyage as the prefiguration of his own (see Hollander [Holl.1969.1], p. 232).
And as for Ovidian inspiration for what is sometimes considered a Dantean invention, Hollander (Holl.1969.1), p. 222, has argued for the impact of the last line (721) of Ovid’s Book VI, describing the Argo setting sail from Iolcos: “Per mare non notum prima petiere carina” (The first keel to cleave an unknown sea). That would leave Neptune alone unaccounted for. To be sure, we find him looking up from the seabed (wherever Dante found the source of the image) earlier in this very poem, Inferno XXVIII.83–84, where, in his only other appearance, he witnesses Malatestino’s treachery as he has witnessed similar crimes on the part of Greeks (gente argolica), the “bad Argonauts” succeeding Jason, as it were. [return to English / Italian]
97. For Dante’s “sospesa,” Gilson (Gils.1924.1), p. 59, cites the prologue of Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum for a similar use of the word suspensio to denote the mind’s ecstatic rapture in its contemplation of God. [return to English / Italian]
98. When Dante looked at Beatrice in Eden, the angels cried out (Purg. XXXII.9) that he was “troppo fiso!” (too fixed), in the sense that he was confounding the physical and the spiritual in his appreciation of Beatrice. Now there can be no question of that, since “fixation” on God is the condition of blessedness for eternity, as the following two tercets make absolutely plain. [return to English / Italian]
100–105. Not only is the intellect satisfied by gazing on God, but the will is, too; for what other good, as object of the will, can supervene? [return to English / Italian]
106–108. For a final time, the poet, having nearly completed a poem that has just reported having seen and understood the underlying principle ordering the entire universe, insists that, compared to the truth of that vision, his work is mere baby talk. (See the note to Par. XV.121–123 and Hollander [Holl.1980.2].) [return to English / Italian]
111–114. Preparing us to see the Trinity through his eyes, the poet reassures us that he harbors no heretical notions about God’s nature(s); if He is three, that does not mean that He is other than one; if He is one, that does not mean that He is other than three. Even the protagonist’s vastly improved powers still have one more stage of visionary capacity to reach, one in which he will be able to experience the unchanging Trinity with his changed sight. [return to English / Italian]
115–117. The Trinity is first experienced as three circles inhering in a single space, distinguished only by their colors, not their sizes, which are identical. [return to English / Italian]
116–120. Bonanno (Bona.2001.1), p. 224, suggests that the rhymes here deliberately echo those found in Donna me prega, vv. 51–55 (miri, tiri, giri), with subversive intent, and indeed sees the entire final canto as entering into a corrective debate with the understanding of the nature of love proposed in Cavalcanti’s canzone. [return to English / Italian]
118–120. The tercet, as characterized by Carroll (comm. to vv. 115–123) as presenting “what Aquinas calls the Relations of Divinity according to the Procession of Persons out of identity of substance—the Relations of Paternity, Generation and Spiration (Summa, I, q. 28). From the circle of the Father appeared reflected the circle of the Son, as Iris [rainbow] from Iris [rainbow]; and from both was breathed forth equally the fire of Love which is the Holy Spirit (on the Procession of the Spirit from both Father and Son, and the filioque controversy, see above [Carroll’s comm.], on Par. X.1–6). We must not think of these in the form of three rainbows one within another, or even as the three colours of a rainbow, for these are also one within another. The ‘one dimension’ shows that Dante conceived of them as co-existing in the one space, though he does not explain how he was able to see the three colours distinct within each other.” One supposes that they manifested themselves as changing colors. Dante does not assign a particular color either to Father or Son; the Holy Spirit, as Love, is understandably red. [return to English / Italian]
121. For this last use of fioco (weak, indistinct) in the poem, see Hollander (Holl.1983.1), tying together Vita nuova XXIII (see pp. 76–77), Inferno I.63, and this verse (pp. 150–51). For a similar view, see Bologna (Bolo.2002.1), p. 461. Torraca seems to have been the first commentator (and, among those gathered in the DDP, he seems to have been followed only by Mestica [comm. to this tercet]) even to note that we have seen this term before in Inferno I.63, but has no further comment. Hollander suggests that “this use of the word is intended to make us consider Virgil’s initial fiochezza, with all its metaphoric insistence on the fact that he had failed to speak the Word. In this respect, the two poets find themselves once again together at the end, reunited in their failures, and yet so very far from one another, separated by the ground of their failures” (p. 151).
Bellomo (Bell.1996.1), p. 55n., believes that the question of Dante’s Virgil needs to be reopened, beginning with a rereading of Bruno Nardi (Nard.1960.1), especially pp. 96–150. [return to English / Italian]
124–126. Ledda (Ledd.2002.1), p. 317n., says he is following Jacomuzzi in seeing that the protagonist’s final vision is of the Incarnation, and not the Trinity. Does one really have to make that choice? It would seem to be preferable to see it as Trinitarian, which includes the vision of Jesus as spirit in flesh, as He is. [return to English / Italian]
127–132. Finally, Dante sees the Humanity of the Trinity, the Son, Jesus Christ, incarnate within the circle that abstractly represents the Second Person. Once again the differing colors of the Persons are insisted on, and once again (see the note to vv. 118–120) Dante does not report the color of the Son (nor of the Father).
It took centuries until a commentator (Scartazzini [comm. to verse 131]) realized that this image contained a reference to St. Paul (Philippians 2:7), “but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” This is currently a fairly widespread perception, but the only other writer in the DDP to observe it is Grandgent (comm. to verse 131).
The enormous presence of the Bible in the poem has at times simply overwhelmed its observers. This is a case in point. Moore (Moor.1896.1), pp. 321–34, lists over six hundred possible citations in all Dante’s works, the bulk of them in the Commedia. Thus one needs to deal cautiously with Steiner’s accountancy (Stei.2001.1), p. 89, which counts the actual citations (rather than more general forms of reference) as two in Inferno, eight in Purgatorio, and a dozen in Paradiso. [return to English / Italian]
127. This is the final use of this word, whether as an abstract noun meaning “concept” or “conceiving” or a transitive verb (to conceive [an idea—see Inf. XII.13 for the first and only use of the verb to mean “to conceive offspring,” although there is more than an overtone of that sense here]). There have been twelve previous uses of the noun or of the verb (Inf. XXVI.73, XXXII.4; Par. III.60, XV.41, XVIII.86, XIX.12, XXII.33, XXIV.60, XXIX.81 and 132, XXXIII.68 and 122), which has more uses in this canto than in any other (three). See the note to Paradiso XV.40–42. See also Ledda (Ledd.2002.1), pp. 316–19. [return to English / Italian]
130–132. See Dronke (Dron.1965.1), pp. 389–90, and Baranski (Bara. 2000.1), pp. 173–74, 217, both cited by Gils
on (Gils.2004.1), p. 174n., as synthesizing Platonism and Aristotelianism. [return to English / Italian]
131. For notice of a possible reflection here of the fourth and final stage of loving God in St. Bernard’s De diligendo Deo, see Hollander (Holl.1976.2), p. 35 (repr. Holl.1980.2): “Commentators have for a long time annotated this passage with a reference to Philippians 2:7” (as we have seen [note to vv. 127–132], that is barely true; only two of them in the last 150 years). Hollander goes on to show that Bernard, in De diligendo Deo (Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq and H. M. Rochais, Vol. III [Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1963], p. 142), resorts to the same Pauline passage in a highly similar context, describing the height of the mystical love of God, when one loves oneself in God. For Bernard’s four stages in the love of God and their possible relation to the stages in the Comedy (first suggested by a student at Princeton, Donald J. Mathison, in 1968), see the note to Purgatorio XXVII.139–141. For later discussions that are in agreement, see Mazzoni (Mazz.1997.1), p. 176, as well as Moevs (Moev.2005.1), p. 81. And see E. G. Gardner (Gard.1913.1), p. 118, for the relation of De diligendo Deo X.27–28 to Dante’s spiritual preparedness for the final vision. [return to English / Italian]
133. For a study of this penultimate simile, a meditation on how Dante may be said to have “squared the circle,” see Herzman and Towsley (Herz.1994.1). See also Ledda (Ledd.2002.1), p. 317n. [return to English / Italian]
137–138. See Kay (Kay.2002.1), pp. 30–31, for the notion, advanced as a follow-up to his examination of the Vitruvian nature of Dante’s calculations of the dimensions of both the giants (Inf. XXX) and of Satan (Inf. XXXIV), that what Dante sees is Vitruvius’s image of man inscribed in a circle, his umbelicus at the center of the circle, his fingers and toes at the circumference, in what is the eventual model for Leonardo da Vinci’s far more famous design. As charming as this notion is, the word effige in Dante (Par. XXXI.77, XXXIII.131) seems rather to indicate, as is generally the case in Italian, the visage, not the whole human body. [return to English / Italian]
138. Jacomuzzi (Jaco.1965.1) offers a reading of these verses and of the poem as a whole in the mode of a theologically determined fourfold allegoresis. For discussion, with some bibliography, of Italian and American treatments of theological allegory in the poem, see Hollander (Holl. 2001.1), pp. 37–39 and p. 188, nn. 55–57. [return to English / Italian]
139–141. For insistence on the role played, in this final vision, of both the Benjamin major of Richard of St. Victor and the Itinerarium mentis in Deum of Bonaventure, see Gilson (Gils.1924.1), pp. 56–57. Gilson (pp. 62–63) concludes that, given these two sources, Dante’s vision is not a Pauline raptus (a function of the intellect), but a Franciscan exstasis (a function of the affective capacity). This, however, and despite Gilson’s authority, is not the general current opinion, which rather insists that Dante did have a Pauline raptus (as the entire cantica has been preparing us to grant). For instance, Güntert (Gunt.2002.2), p. 507, cites Aquinas (ST II–II, q. 175, a. 3), distinguishing among three kinds of vision (but for an earlier and similar treatment see Pertile [Pert.1981.1], pp. 6–7). After discussions that are in strong agreement with positions taken on the issues by Augustine, Thomas explains, in his Reply to Objection 1: “Man’s mind is rapt by God to the contemplation of divine truth in three ways. First, so that he contemplates it through certain imaginary pictures (per similitudines quasdam imaginarias), and such was the ecstasy that came upon Peter [Acts 10:10–16]. Secondly, so that he contemplates the divine truth through its intelligible effects (per intelligibiles effectus); such was the ecstasy of David, who said (Psalm 115 [116]:11): ‘I said in my excess: Every man is a liar.’ Thirdly, so that he contemplates it in its essence (in sua essentia). Such was the rapture of Paul, as also of Moses; and not without reason, since as Moses was the first Teacher of the Jews, so was Paul the first ‘Teacher of the gentiles’ ” (tr. from the website of the Catholic Encyclopedia). It is typical of Gilson, a Dominican himself, to downplay the importance of Dominicans in favor of Franciscans. His graciousness is a model to us all. However, it may be that he is simply incorrect here. The reader will note that here, even at the conclusion of the great poem, commentators are divided among Franciscan and Dominican positions on the issues. For the difficult history of the intertwined strands of knowledge and love in St. Thomas, in whom, at least apparently, such distinctions would be clearer than they are in Dante, see Sherwin (Sher.2005.1). In Dante, we find at moments, like this one, knowledge eclipsing the claims of love; at others, that dynamic would seem to be reversed. One comes away with the feeling that Dante responds fully to the main competing voices in this continuing dialectic, “Franciscans” (Francis himself, Bonaventure, Bernard, and perhaps Joachim as well), who privilege love (but not against knowledge), and “Dominicans” (Thomas primissimus inter impares, but Albertus Magnus and Remigius Girolamus as well), who privilege knowledge (but not against love). For an article that strongly supports the notion that Dante was closely aware of the text of Ezechiel, see Bognini (Bogn.2007.1). [return to English / Italian]
142–145. The final four lines are divided into two parts, the first referring to an apparent failure (“Here my exalted vision lost its power”), in which the protagonist/poet, so recently rewarded with the comprehension of Everything (verse 141), loses that vision, which is blotted out by his reemergent humanity. And then the poem’s final sentence, begun with an adversative, ma (but), tells a quite different story: The protagonist’s interior motions, that of his affective power (the will) and that of his intellective power (his transmuted desire), both move in harmony with God’s cosmos. [return to English / Italian]
142. See the Grande Dizionario for a definition of facoltà: “the property of every being endowed with sense to perceive, revive, and represent in the soul sensations, perceptions, impressions, and images.” On fantasia and imaginazione, see Lepschy (Leps.1987.1). And see the notes to Purgatorio XVII.13–18 and 25. [return to English / Italian]
143. For discussion of Dante’s use of Latin in the poem, including this final instance, see the note to Paradiso IV.25. [return to English / Italian]
144. Pertile (Pert.2005.2), pp. 265–81 (a reprinting of an article published in 1995) and pp. 133–35, reopens the question of the meaning of this final image. The vast majority of readers have believed that Dante has a single wheel in mind (none more exigently and at greater length than Nardi [Nard.1944.1], pp. 337–50), all places on which move with uniform regularity. Pertile revives the view of those few twentieth-century readers who saw the tautological vacuity of this as a final image and, revisiting Ezechiel (1:19–21 and 10:16) and Boethius (Cons. II.m8.28–30), revives a better idea: Dante has two wheels in mind. Aversano (Aver.1984.2), pp. 203–6, also finds the source in Ezechiel (1:15–21), but in order to make a different point. But see Freccero (Frec.1986.1, pp. 246–50 of an essay entitled “The Final Image,” first published in 1964) for whom there is but one wheel, despite the fact that he thinks it reflects Ezechiel’s wheel within a wheel, which would seem to indicate two wheels.
For a new wrinkle, see Rizzardi (Rizz.2000.1), who makes a case for Dante’s having an image in mind that would become a staple in later ages: the universe as the movements in a mechanical clock. She bolsters her argument by pointing back to previous clock imagery (at Purg. VIII.85–87; Par. X.139–146 and Par. XXIV.13–18).
Whatever the metaphor controlling this passage, whether biblical or astronomical or mechanical, the simplest solution of the literal sense of the line is to understand that line 144, “as a wheel that is moved in just the same way,” is attached to the preceding (Latin) noun, velle. What the text then says is clear: “But already my desire was moving in a circle (around God), as was my will, revolving in just the same way.” This was precisely the understanding put forward by Torraca (comm. to vv. 143–145) over one hundred years ago that Bruno Nardi belittled (Nard.1944.1), p. 349n. The protagonist/poet’s soul has left our solar system behind and is moving
in a circle, not around our earth, but, like the angelic orders, around God. See Pertile’s concluding remarks on the last paradox in the poem: The pilgrim has found his peace in continual movement. It is not an accident that Goethe admired this final scene and used it in developing the conclusion of the second part of Faust. [return to English / Italian]
145. While the fact that the word stelle is the last word of each canticle would seem to have been an early and lasting perception, John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 133–145) appears to have been the first ever to have had it.
For the possibility that Dante’s stella reflects Ovid’s astra (Metam. XV.876) and his starry vision of his own personal immortality that concludes his great poem (vv. 871–879), reformulated by Dante to accord with quite a different (and less self-absorbed) view, see Levenstein (Leve.2003.1), p. 418.
For an essay on this “last word,” see Ahern (Aher.1984.1), who, while not referring to Ovid, argues that this canto couches its central concerns, conflating two metaphors, in the images of the heavens as book and of the stars as alphabet.
Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) points out that the presence of the same form of the verb muovere in the first and last lines of the cantica creates a sort of ring composition. He also points out that Dante’s practice in this regard resembles that found in canzoni of other poets in his time; he also suggests the pertinence of the ending (which happens to constitute its thirty-third paragraph) of the Epistle to Cangrande (XIII.90): “And since, when the Beginning or First, which is God, has been reached, there is nought to be sought for beyond, inasmuch as He is Alpha and Omega, that is, the Beginning and the End, as the Vision of John tells us, the work ends in God Himself, who is blessed for evermore, world without end” (tr. P. Toynbee). [return to English / Italian]