To guard man from such warring elements
this mountain soared so high that no earth vapor
could rise above the gate of penitence.
Now since the air revolves in one conjoint
and perfect circuit with The Primal Motion,
unless its wheel is broken at some point;
here at this altitude, where it goes round
in its pure state, it strikes the foliage
which, being dense, is made to give off sound.
The stricken plant impregnates the pure air
with its particular powers, which are then borne
on the great wheel and scattered everywhere;
and the other earth, according to the powers
of soil and climate in its various zones,
conceives and bears its various fruits and flowers.
When this is understood there, no man need
believe it strange when plants take root and spring
out of the earth without apparent seed.
Know, too, the sacred soil on which you stand
is bursting-full of species of all sorts,
and bears fruits never picked by human hand.
The water you see here is from no source
that needs replenishment from cloudy vapors,
like streams that rise and fall: with constant force
it leaves a fountain that receives again,
from God’s Will, every drop that it pours forth
to the two streams it sends across this plain.
On this side, it removes as it flows down
all memory of sin; on that, it strengthens
the memory of every good deed done.
It is called Lethe here: Eunoë there.
And one must drink first this and then the other
to feel its powers. No sweetness can compare
with the savor of these waters. And although
you may at once, and with no more instruction,
drink your soul’s fill from the eternal flow,
let me bestow one thing more for good measure.
Though I exceed my promise, I cannot think
what I add now will meet with your displeasure.
Those ancients who made songs to celebrate
man’s Age of Gold, placed probably on Parnassus
this perfect garden of his first pure state.
Here mankind lived its innocent first days.
Here is the Eternal Spring and every fruit.
This is the nectar that the poets praise.”
She paused. I turned around to face my lords,
the poets whose strains had honored ancient song,
and saw they had received her final words
with smiles that lingered yet upon their faces;
then turned back to that lady of glad graces.
NOTES
3. softened the new light: In its green shade. It is the morning of the Wednesday after Easter, the beginning of Dante’s fourth day on the Mountain, and the last of his Divine Journey, for he will complete his tour of Heaven in less than a day. I started out: Note that for the first time it is Dante who leads the way in his new state as “king of himself.”
11. that quarter: The West.
20. the pine wood there on Chiassi’s shore: Chiassi (now Classe) was the seaport of Ravenna in 1300. It is now a desolate place left behind by the recession of the Adriatic.
21. Aeolus: In ancient mythology the god who kept the winds in his cave and controlled their blowing. the Sirocco: The South Wind, which in Italy is the wind from Africa.
36. everblooming May: See line 143. It is eternally springtime in the Earthly Paradise.
40. a lady, all alone: Matilda. She may be taken, as foreshadowed in Dante’s dream of Leah and Rachel, to symbolize the Active Life of the Soul. She is the innocence that guides Dante through the Earthly Paradise to Beatrice. Thus, she is the intermediary between Human Reason and the various manifestations of Beatrice as Divine Love, Faith, the Contemplative Life of the Soul, and the Church Triumphant, among others.
There has been a great deal of speculation among commentators concerning her possible historical identity. Dante clearly treats her as someone he recognizes at once, for he does not ask her name. And later (XXXIII, 119) when her name is mentioned, he asks none of his usual questions about her identity.
Nevertheless there seems to be no point in trying to identify her with any historic person. The allegorical point may very well be that, having achieved the Earthly Paradise by his own active pursuit of the Good, Dante instantly recognizes the Active Life of the Soul. He has, moreover, just had a prophetic dream of her coming.
45. sunned yourself in Love’s own rays: In the light of God.
50. Persephone: Daughter of Demeter (whose name signifies “Mother Earth”), the goddess of vegetation. One day, as Persephone was gathering flowers in a field, she was carried off to the lower world by Hades (with the consent of Zeus, her father). At the insistence of Demeter, Zeus sent Hermes to fetch her back. Persephone, however, had eaten a quarter of a fateful pomegranate and, in consequence, could only return for three quarters of each year, being forced to return to the lower world for the fourth quarter.
Thus Persephone represents the vegetative cycle, spending spring, summer, and fall with Demeter (as Mother Earth) but descending to the lower world (into the ground) for the winter. When she is in the lower world she rules beside her husband as the goddess of the dead, but she forever returns to her mother as the virgin daughter (spring). Matilda not only reminds Dante of Persephone, but of Persephone as she was in that original springtime before she was carried off to the lower world.
51. she, the Spring: The flowers fell from Persephone’s arms when Hades abducted her. Dante certainly means “the Spring” as both those lost flowers, and as the unchanging springtime of the world’s first innocence. The myth, of course, is obviously concerned with the idea of virgin innocence, and as obviously related to the Christian myth of the Fall.
65-66. Venus’ . . . her son: Cupid was playing with his mother one day when one of the arrows in his quiver scratched her breast by accident and she was smitten with love of Adonis, the son of Myrrha by her own father (see Inferno, XXX, 38, and note). Ovid tells the story in Metamorphoses, X, 525 ff.
69. that sprang up without seeds: Here and below in 109-111, 114-117, and 118-119, Dante refers to seeds and to plants springing up without seed. At this point he seems quite clearly to intend, as suggested by Genesis, that the newly created earth brought forth of itself. At other times he seems to intend something like the distribution of plants by wind-borne seeds. I have not been able to satisfy myself on the exact nature of his theory on this point. Note that he does not deny that most earthly plants grow from seed, but declares that some plants spring up without apparent seed. He could mean that new species arise in consequence of wind-borne influences from the Earthly Paradise, thereafter reproducing themselves from their seed.
70. three paces: May symbolize the three steps to true repentance (contrition, confession, and the rendering of satisfaction), thereby repeating the motif of the three steps that lead to the Gate.
71. Hellespont: Now called the Dardanelles, the strait between Europe and Asia Minor. It is famous for its raging currents. Xerxes: Son of Darius, the Persian king. In 485 B.C. Xerxes crossed the Hellespont on a bridge of ships to invade Greece. Decisively defeated in a sea battle off Salamis, Xerxes fled back across the Hellespont undone, thus leaving to all posterity a dire example of the downfall of pride.
73-74. Sestos and Abydos: Cities on the Hellespont in, respectively, Greece and Asia Minor. The Hellespont is about a mile wide between them. Leander: A young man of Abydos who fell in love with Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite at Sestos. Because of her position and of family opposition, they could not marry but decided to meet clandestinely every night, Leander swimming to her across the Hellespont, guided by a light from Hero’s tower. One night the light blew out and Leander lost his direct
ion, was carried off by the current, and drowned. The next morning Hero found his body washed ashore and threw herself into the current. The story of Hero and Leander has been told by countless poets, none of whom thought to provide him with a rowboat.
78. the nest of humankind: The Earthly Paradise is the Garden of Eden.
81. Delectasti me: Psalm XCII, “I will triumph in the works of Thy hands.” Matilda’s phrase is from verse 4: “For Thou, Lord, hast made me glad through Thy work” (Quia delectasti me, Domine, in factura tua). The light the psalm will give, of course, is the fact that Matilda smiles for sheer joy in God’s works.
87. what I heard a while ago: In XXI, 40-57, Statius told Dante that no rain nor snow could fall, nor any variation in the weather occur above the Gate. Dante’s confusion arises from the fact that he cannot see how to take the wind he feels, nor the waters he sees flowing, except as products of earthly weathers.
91. That Highest Good which only Itself can please: Two ideas central to Dante’s thinking are expressed in this phrasing.
The first is Dante’s idea of purification. God is conceived as perfect goodness. As such, He can be pleased only by perfect goodness. In that estate He made man. And to that spiritual state man, since the Fall, must strive to return in order to regain God, who will take to Himself only the perfection He originally created.
The second, basic to all Dante’s conception of the Earthly Paradise (and later of Heaven) is that perfection is unchangeable. God, being perfect, cannot change, since any change from perfection would necessarily be toward imperfection. It is the lot of fallen man that is beset by chance and change, he being imperfect. Thus the perfection of the fruit in the garden. And thus the perfect clearness of the waters, and the fact that they do not have their source in the chance changes of evaporation and condensation, but flow at a constant (unchanging) rate from the fountain of the Will of God.
97-99. When vapors of the earth and water meet: This is Dante’s basic conception of the origin of storms in the clash of earthy (fiery) and watery vapors (see Inferno, XXIV, 145-147). toward heat: Toward the Sun. These vapors (evaporations) are produced by heat and seek, by natural affinity, to rise to the Sun that called them forth.
103-108. Now since the air revolves in one conjoint . . . : The earth is conceived as standing still while the atmosphere moves from East to West at the constant rate imparted to it, as to the heavenly spheres, by the Primum Mobile. On the earth’s surface the air is deflected by many obstructions (surface turbulence) that make it flow in all directions, but at the altitude of the Earthly Paradise one experiences only the air’s unperturbed original motion. This is the “mild wind” Dante felt (lines 8-9), as it is the wind that makes the whole wood murmur (lines 17-18).
109-120. (See also note to line 69.) The phrasing here seems to suggest that all earthly plants have their origins in “virtues” or “powers” (somehow distinct from seeds). They impart these virtues to the wind that bears them around the world as wind-borne gifts of Heaven. On earth, if soil and climate favor, these “virtues” cause new species to spring up (which then reproduce themselves from their own seeds). But since no earthly soil and climate is perfect (unchanging), no zone on earth can raise all plants, whereas in the Earthly Paradise all created plants may be found, including species unknown to mankind since the Fall.
130. Lethe: In classical mythology, a river of Hades from which the souls of the dead drink forgetfulness of their first existence. Dante, with his usual readiness to adapt ancient mythology to his own purposes, places it in the Earthly Paradise, and gives it the power (directly related to its original power) of washing from the souls who drink of it every last memory of sin. Note, too, that Dante’s Lethe (Inferno, XXXIV, 133) flows down to the bottom of Hell, bearing down to Satan, to be frozen into the filthy ice around him, the last lost vestiges of the sins of the saved.
Eunoë: Having adapted Lethe to his purpose, Dante invents as its complement Eunoë (the name meaning, literally, “good memory”) and gives it the power to strengthen every memory of good deeds done. The powers of the two rivers will not operate, however, unless one drinks from them in the right order. So drinking from them is surely an allegory of the way to Heaven: one must first drink of Lethe (leave all evil behind) and then of Eunoë (reawaken and strengthen every good in the soul).
146-147. the poets: Virgil and Statius would be two of the poets to whom Matilda refers. Dante turns around to see how they have taken her remarks about their errors. Finding them smiling at the receipt of such enlightenment, Dante turns back to Matilda. Line 146 and some of the detail of line 148 are my own invention, forced by the requirements of form and rhyme. Dante says literally: “I turned completely round to my poets, and saw they had received her last explanation with smiles; then turned my face to the gracious lady.”
Canto XXIX
THE EARTHLY PARADISE
The Banks of Lethe
The Heavenly Pageant
Chanting a blessing on those whose sins are forgiven, Matilda moves upstream along one bank of Lethe, and Dante keeps pace with her on the other side. A glorious light and a sweet melody grow on the air, filling Dante with such rapture that he cries out against Eve’s daring, through which such joys were lost to mankind.
Soon thereafter he sees the approach of THE HEAVENLY PAGEANT. It is led by SEVEN GOLDEN CANDELABRA that paint A SEVEN-STRIPED RAINBOW on the sky. Behind them come TWENTY-FOUR ELDERS (the Books of the Old Testament), and behind them FOUR BEASTS (the Four Gospels), who guard A TRIUMPHAL CHARIOT (the Church), drawn by a GRIFFON (Christ). At the right wheel of the Chariot dance THE THREE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES; at its left wheel, THE FOUR CARDINAL VIRTUES. This group is followed, in order, by TWO ELDERS representing Luke as the author of Acts and Paul as the author of the fourteen epistles; by FOUR ELDERS representing James, Peter, John, and Jude as authors of the four Catholic epistles; and finally by A SINGLE ELDER representing John as the author of Revelation.
When the Chariot reaches a point directly across from Dante, a thunderclap resounds, and the entire pageant halts upon that signal.
Her words done, she began her song again—
Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata—
as if in love when love is free of pain.
As nymphs of old went wandering alone
through the deep-shaded woodlands, some pursuing,
and others seeking to evade, the Sun;
so, then, she started up the riverside
and, on my own bank, I kept pace with her,
matching her little steps with shortened stride.
Some fifty paces each we moved this way,
when both banks curved as one; and now I found
my face turned to the cradle of the day.
Nor had we gone as far again, all told,
beyond the curve, when she turned to me, saying:
“Dear brother, look and listen.” And behold!—
through all that everlasting forest burst
an instantaneous flood of radiance.
I took it for a lightning-flash at first.
But lightning comes and goes. The light I saw
not only stayed on but grew more resplendent.
“What can this be?” I asked myself in awe.
And a sweet melody filled the bright air—
so sweet that I reproached in righteous zeal
Eve’s fatal recklessness. How could she dare?—
one woman alone, made but a moment since—
all heaven and earth obedient—to refuse
the one veil willed by High Omnipotence;
beneath which, had she stayed God’s acolyte,
I should have known before then, and for longer
those raptures of ineffable delight.
My soul hung tranced in joy beyond all measure
and yearning for yet more, as I moved on
through those first fruits of the eternal pleasure;
when, under the green boughs that spread before us
we had been hearing grew into a chorus.
O holy, holy Virgins, if for you
I ever suffered vigils, cold, or fasts,
occasion spurs me now to claim my due.
Empty all Helicon! Now is the time!
Urania, help me here with your full choir,
to bring things scarce conceivable to rhyme!
I saw next, far ahead, what I believed
were seven golden trees (at such a distance
and in such light the eye can be deceived);
but in a while, when I had drawn so near
that chance resemblances confused by distance
no longer made false images appear,
that power that reaps for reason’s mill could see
that they were candelabra; and in the chant
it heard the word Hosanna! ringing free.
Above the gold array flamed seven times seven
candles more lucent than the mid-month moon
at midnight in the calm of clearest heaven.
I turned about, amazed at what I saw,
to my good Virgil, and he answered me
in silence, with a look of equal awe.
The Divine Comedy Page 64