Quanto tra l'ultimar de l'ora terza
e 'l principio del dì par de la spera
che sempre a guisa di fanciullo scherza,
tanto pareva già inver' la sera
essere al sol del suo corso rimaso;
vespero là, e qui mezza notte era.
E i raggi ne ferien per mezzo 'l naso,
perché per noi girato era sì 'l monte,
che già dritti andavamo inver' l'occaso,
quand' io senti' a me gravar la fronte
a lo splendore assai più che di prima,
e stupor m'eran le cose non conte;
ond' io levai le mani inver' la cima
de le mie ciglia, e fecimi 'l solecchio,
che del soverchio visibile lima.
Come quando da l'acqua o da lo specchio
salta lo raggio a l'opposita parte,
salendo su per lo modo parecchio
a quel che scende, e tanto si diparte
dal cader de la pietra in igual tratta,
sì come mostra esperïenza e arte;
così mi parve da luce rifratta
quivi dinanzi a me esser percosso;
per che a fuggir la mia vista fu ratta.
“Che è quel, dolce padre, a che non posso
schermar lo viso tanto che mi vaglia,”
diss' io, “e pare inver' noi esser mosso?”
“Non ti maravigliar s'ancor t'abbaglia
la famiglia del cielo,” a me rispuose:
“messo è che viene ad invitar ch'om saglia.
Tosto sarà ch'a veder queste cose
non ti fia grave, ma fieti diletto
quanto natura a sentir ti dispuose.”
Poi giunti fummo a l'angel benedetto,
con lieta voce disse: “Intrate quinci
ad un scaleo vie men che li altri eretto.”
Noi montavam, già partiti di linci,
e “Beati misericordes!” fue
cantato retro, e “Godi tu che vinci!”
Lo mio maestro e io soli amendue
suso andavamo; e io pensai, andando,
prode acquistar ne le parole sue;
e dirizza'mi a lui sì dimandando:
“Che volse dir lo spirto di Romagna,
e 'divieto' e 'consorte' menzionando?”
Per ch'elli a me: “Di sua maggior magagna
conosce il danno; e però non s'ammiri
se ne riprende perché men si piagna.
Perché s'appuntano i vostri disiri
dove per compagnia parte si scema,
invidia move il mantaco a' sospiri.
Ma se l'amor de la spera supprema
torcesse in suso il disiderio vostro,
non vi sarebbe al petto quella tema;
ché, per quanti si dice più lì 'nostro,'
tanto possiede più di ben ciascuno,
e più di caritate arde in quel chiostro.”
“Io son d'esser contento più digiuno,”
diss' io, “che se mi fosse pria taciuto,
e più di dubbio ne la mente aduno.
Com' esser puote ch'un ben, distributo
in più posseditor, faccia più ricchi
di sé che se da pochi è posseduto?”
Ed elli a me: “Però che tu rificchi
la mente pur a le cose terrene,
di vera luce tenebre dispicchi.
Quello infinito e ineffabil bene
che là sù è, così corre ad amore
com' a lucido corpo raggio vene.
Tanto si dà quanto trova d'ardore;
sì che, quantunque carità si stende,
cresce sovr' essa l'etterno valore.
E quanta gente più là sù s'intende,
più v'è da bene amare, e più vi s'ama,
e come specchio l'uno a l'altro rende.
E se la mia ragion non ti disfama,
vedrai Beatrice, ed ella pienamente
ti torrà questa e ciascun' altra brama.
Procaccia pur che tosto sieno spente,
come son già le due, le cinque piaghe,
che si richiudon per esser dolente.”
Com' io voleva dicer “Tu m'appaghe,”
vidimi giunto in su l'altro girone,
sì che tacer mi fer le luci vaghe.
Ivi mi parve in una visïone
estatica di sùbito esser tratto,
e vedere in un tempio più persone;
e una donna, in su l'entrar, con atto
dolce di madre dicer: “Figliuol mio,
perché hai tu così verso noi fatto?
Ecco, dolenti, lo tuo padre e io
ti cercavamo.” E come qui si tacque,
ciò che pareva prima, dispario.
Indi m'apparve un'altra con quell' acque
giù per le gote che 'l dolor distilla
quando di gran dispetto in altrui nacque,
e dir: “Se tu se' sire de la villa
del cui nome ne' dèi fu tanta lite,
e onde ogne scïenza disfavilla,
vendica te di quelle braccia ardite
ch'abbracciar nostra figlia, o Pisistràto.”
E 'l segnor mi parea, benigno e mite,
risponder lei con viso temperato:
“Che farem noi a chi mal ne disira,
se quei che ci ama è per noi condannato?”
Poi vidi genti accese in foco d'ira
con pietre un giovinetto ancider, forte
gridando a sé pur: “Martira, martira!”
E lui vedea chinarsi, per la morte
che l'aggravava già, inver' la terra,
ma de li occhi facea sempre al ciel porte,
orando a l'alto Sire, in tanta guerra,
che perdonasse a' suoi persecutori,
con quello aspetto che pietà diserra.
Quando l'anima mia tornò di fori
a le cose che son fuor di lei vere,
io riconobbi i miei non falsi errori.
Lo duca mio, che mi potea vedere
far sì com' om che dal sonno si slega,
disse: “Che hai che non ti puoi tenere,
ma se' venuto più che mezza lega
velando li occhi e con le gambe avvolte,
a guisa di cui vino o sonno piega?”
“O dolce padre mio, se tu m'ascolte,
io ti dirò,” diss' io, “ciò che m'apparve
quando le gambe mi furon sì tolte.”
Ed ei: “Se tu avessi cento larve
sovra la faccia, non mi sarian chiuse
le tue cogitazion, quantunque parve.
Ciò che vedesti fu perché non scuse
d'aprir lo core a l'acque de la pace
che da l'etterno fonte son diffuse.
Non dimandai 'Che hai?' per quel che face
chi guarda pur con l'occhio che non vede,
quando disanimato il corpo giace;
ma dimandai per darti forza al piede:
così frugar conviensi i pigri, lenti
ad usar lor vigilia quando riede.”
Noi andavam per lo vespero, attenti
oltre quanto potean li occhi allungarsi
contra i raggi serotini e lucenti.
Ed ecco a poco a poco un fummo farsi
verso di noi come la notte oscuro;
né da quello era loco da cansarsi.
Questo ne tolse li occhi e l'aere puro.
As much as 'twixt the close of the third hour
And dawn of day appeareth of that sphere
Which aye in fashion of a child is playing,
So much it now appeared, towards the night,
Was of his course remaining to the sun;
There it was evening, and 'twas midnight here;
And the rays smote the middle of our faces,
Because by us the mount was so encircled,
That straight towards the west we now were going
When I perceived my forehead overpowered
Beneath the splendour far more than at first,
And stupor were to me the things unknown,
Whereat towards the summit of my brow
I raised my hands, and made myself the visor
Which the excessive glare diminishes.
As when from off the water, or a mirror,
The sunbeam leaps unto the opposite side,
Ascending upward in the selfsame measure
That it descends, and deviates as far
From falling of a stone in line direct,
(As demonstrate experiment and art,)
So it appeared to me that by a light
Refracted there before me I was smitten;
On which account my sight was swift to flee.
"What is that, Father sweet, from which I cannot
So fully screen my sight that it avail me,"
Said I, "and seems towards us to be moving?"
"Marvel thou not, if dazzle thee as yet
The family of heaven," he answered me;
"An angel 'tis, who comes to invite us upward.
Soon will it be, that to behold these things
Shall not be grievous, but delightful to thee
As much as nature fashioned thee to feel."
When we had reached the Angel benedight,
With joyful voice he said: "Here enter in
To stairway far less steep than are the others."
We mounting were, already thence departed,
And "Beati misericordes" was
Behind us sung, "Rejoice, thou that o'ercomest!"
My Master and myself, we two alone
Were going upward, and I thought, in going,
Some profit to acquire from words of his;
And I to him directed me, thus asking:
"What did the spirit of Romagna mean,
Mentioning interdict and partnership?"
Whence he to me: "Of his own greatest failing
He knows the harm; and therefore wonder not
If he reprove us, that we less may rue it.
Because are thither pointed your desires
Where by companionship each share is lessened,
Envy doth ply the bellows to your sighs.
But if the love of the supernal sphere
Should upwardly direct your aspiration,
There would not be that fear within your breast;
For there, as much the more as one says 'Our,'
So much the more of good each one possesses,
And more of charity in that cloister burns."
"I am more hungering to be satisfied,"
I said, "than if I had before been silent,
And more of doubt within my mind I gather.
How can it be, that boon distributed
The more possessors can more wealthy make
Therein, than if by few it be possessed?"
And he to me: "Because thou fixest still
Thy mind entirely upon earthly things,
Thou pluckest darkness from the very light.
That goodness infinite and ineffable
Which is above there, runneth unto love,
As to a lucid body comes the sunbeam.
So much it gives itself as it finds ardour,
So that as far as charity extends,
O'er it increases the eternal valour.
And the more people thitherward aspire,
More are there to love well, and more they love there,
And, as a mirror, one reflects the other.
And if my reasoning appease thee not,
Thou shalt see Beatrice; and she will fully
Take from thee this and every other longing.
Endeavour, then, that soon may be extinct,
As are the two already, the five wounds
That close themselves again by being painful."
Even as I wished to say, "Thou dost appease me,"
I saw that I had reached another circle,
So that my eager eyes made me keep silence.
There it appeared to me that in a vision
Ecstatic on a sudden I was rapt,
And in a temple many persons saw;
And at the door a woman, with the sweet
Behaviour of a mother, saying: "Son,
Why in this manner hast thou dealt with us?
Lo, sorrowing, thy father and myself
Were seeking for thee;"—and as here she ceased,
That which appeared at first had disappeared.
Then I beheld another with those waters
Adown her cheeks which grief distils whenever
From great disdain of others it is born,
And saying: "If of that city thou art lord,
For whose name was such strife among the gods,
And whence doth every science scintillate,
Avenge thyself on those audacious arms
That clasped our daughter, O Pisistratus;"
And the lord seemed to me benign and mild
To answer her with aspect temperate:
"What shall we do to those who wish us ill,
If he who loves us be by us condemned?"
Then saw I people hot in fire of wrath,
With stones a young man slaying, clamorously
Still crying to each other, "Kill him! kill him!"
And him I saw bow down, because of death
That weighed already on him, to the earth,
But of his eyes made ever gates to heaven,
Imploring the high Lord, in so great strife,
That he would pardon those his persecutors,
With such an aspect as unlocks compassion.
Soon as my soul had outwardly returned
To things external to it which are true,
Did I my not false errors recognize.
My Leader, who could see me bear myself
Like to a man that rouses him from sleep,
Exclaimed: "What ails thee, that thou canst not stand?
But hast been coming more than half a league
Veiling thine eyes, and with thy legs entangled,
In guise of one whom wine or sleep subdues?"
"O my sweet Father, if thou listen to me,
I'll tell thee," said I, "what appeared to me,
When thus from me my legs were ta'en away."
And he: "If thou shouldst have a hundred masks
Upon thy face, from me would not be shut
Thy cogitations, howsoever small.
What thou hast seen was that thou mayst not fail
To ope thy heart unto the waters of peace,
Which from the eternal fountain are diffused.
I did not ask, 'What ails thee?' as he does
Who only looketh with the eyes that see not
When of the soul bereft the body lies,
But asked it to give vigour to thy feet;
Thus must we needs urge on the sluggards, slow
To use their wakefulness when it returns."
We passed along, athwart the twilight peering
Forward as far as ever eye could stretch
Against the sunbeams serotine and lucent;
And lo! by slow degrees a smoke approached
In our direction, sombre as the night,
Nor was there place to hide one's self therefrom.
This of our eyes and the pure air bereft us.
This belabored opening has bothered any number of readers. Benvenuto, commenting on its six verses, remarks that all Dante means to say is that it is the hour of Vespers, and that he does so by means of circumlocution ('per unam circuitionem verborum'). However, Arnaldo Bonaventura (Il canto XV del “Purgatorio” [(“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”), Florence: Sansoni, 1902]), pp. 9-10, chides Venturi (comm. to verse 3) for labeling the construction a 'miserabile similitudine' (perfectly dreadful simile) and remarks that such lighthearted moments are also to be found in the Psalms of David and in the epics of Homer and of Virgil. Cachey (“Purgatorio XV,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana]: Special Issue,12 [supplement], 1993), pp. 212-14, following, as he says, Longfellow (comm. to verse 1), and who speaks of Dante's poetry as being playful, has learned to enjoy the poetic playfulness of vv. 1-40, so long softly ridiculed and even characterized as a result of the poet's letting us see his worst (pedantic) side. Longfellow, bringing a fellow poet's perspective to the passage, had realized that Dante is not a stuffed owl and perceived that his fellow poet is having a little fun with himself and with us: 'Dante states this simple fact with curious circumlocution, as if he would imitate the celestial sphere in this scherzoso movement. The beginning of the day is sunrise; consequently the end of the third hour, three hours after sunrise, is represented by an arc of the celestial sphere measuring forty-five degrees. The sun had still an equal space to pass over before his setting. This would make it afternoon in purgatory, and midnight in Tuscany, where Dante was writing the poem.' For a similar time-telling passage see Purgatorio III.25-26 and the accompanying note. Here, however, Dante underlines his ludic propensity in his first rhyme: terza-scherza, as though to imply that this very tercet is itself playful.
It is to Cachey's credit that he builds his treatment of the entire canto on his sense of this initial burst of 'childish' enthusiasm. Exuberance is the strand that ties together many elements of the canto, from its beginning to its end, juxtaposing youthful, innocent play against older 'high seriousness.' The morning sun is not currently shining on the mount of purgatory but is summoned in order to begin the canto, and is then followed by a series of benign presences: Dante (both as poet and as protagonist); the Angel of Mercy; Virgil's representation of the loving souls in paradise, including Beatrice; the twelve-year-old Jesus and his mildly chastising mother; the youth who kissed the daughter of Pisistratus and this non-judgmental father; the youthful martyr Stephen; the 'drunken' protagonist. The exuberant love of God and ecstatic awareness of His presence eventually fills the canto. Mario Marti (“Purgatorio XV,” in Letture dantesche. II. “Purgatorio,” ed. G. Getto [Florence: Sansoni, 1965 (1961)], pp. 63-79, deserves credit for seeing the canto's virtues, given its history of relative neglect among the commentators, and especially its engagement with light, a theme insisted upon even more forcefully by Tibor Wlassics (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” in Filologia e critica dantesca: Studi offerti a Aldo Vallone [Florence: Olschki, 1989]), pp. 172-74, who comments upon the many words for light found in vv. 7-33 and reflects that they function as corrective responses to the darkness that typified our experience of Envy. He might have added that Canto XV exists as a sort of island of light between the blindness of Envy and the encompassing black smoke of Wrath, which the protagonist will enter at the end of this canto.
For a review of the debate as to whether the word spera (verse 2) refers to the sun itself, the celestial sphere it occupies (or still other things) see Enzo Esposito (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1969]), pp. 171-74.
The travelers, proceeding to their right as they climbed the mountain, have now moved some 90o along the circle of which it is the center. The sun, at 3pm, is thus to the northwest as it heads west ahead of them. Where it was behind them before (Purg. III.16-18), it now stands directly before them, brighter than it has been, to Dante's sight, at any point yet in the poem. This excess of light will carry forward into the brightness of the ecstatic light that is soon to flood the inner eye of the protagonist.
Poletto (comm. to this tercet) calls attention to the passage in Convivio (III.ix.10) in which Dante says that Aristotle had confuted Plato's notion that our eyesight went out from us to take cognizance of external things, arguing (correctly, adds Dante) that things that we perceive through the eyes (lo visibile – the noun that Dante uses here) strike upon our senses, not the senses on them. See Inferno X.69.
This simile introduces a 'second sun' to Dante's dazzled glance, now the reflected radiance of the angel, as seems clear from the context and despite some early commentators who believe this is the direct beam of the light of God or of the sun itself. It seems to be neither, nor indeed the direct beam of brightness from the angel of this second terrace. As the elaborate simile and the sequential description of the light make plain enough, the light bounces down, like Pele's most famous goal, in a World Cup final some years ago, and then up, under Dante's protective hand, so that the angle of incidence is the same as the angle of reflection (V), notions established, for Dante, by such authorities as Euclid and Albertus Magnus. For Dante's knowledge of the phenomenon see Convivio II.iii.vi (where he refers to the science of perspective, or optics) and Paradiso I.49-50. Poletto (comm. to this passage) reviews the debate over whether the light comes straight from God to the angel to Dante or bounces from the angel off the ground and back up and strongly supports the second view. And Dante's two evasive actions (shading his eyes with his hand as the angel approaches; turning away when the reflected ray bounces under that hand) come close to guaranteeing this reading. Carroll (comm. to vv. 10-24) adds a moral dimension to this interpretation: where the light shining from the Angel of Humility (Purg. XII.89-90) was relatively demure, the light of this angel, countering the meanness of Envy even when reflected off the livid stone floor of this terrace, is brilliant with the loving mercy of God.
The notion that these lines themselves reflect a source in Virgil (Aen. VIII.22-25) was perhaps first suggested by Poletto and enjoys some currency.
Virgil's promise that eventually Dante's eyes, as his soul becomes more fit for the task, will be able to look upon angelic radiance without turning away is fulfilled at least in Purgatorio XXX, vv. 10 and 18, where this word for 'angel,' messo (or messaggiero) – 'messenger,' is next (and for the last time) employed (it was introduced to the poem in Inf. IX.85).
The 'stairway' to the third terrace will be less steep than those to Pride and Envy. The slowly disappearing P's on Dante's brow, the increasing lightness of his being, the increasing ease of the ascent, all these elements underline the general improvement of the penitent's moral condition, comparable to that of a patient who has survived a crisis and now grows rapidly stronger.
A portion of the fifth Beatitude in Matthew (5:7), 'Blessèd are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,' is here accompanied by an Italian phrase. In one later moment (on the terrace of Gluttony, Purg. XXIV.151-154) Dante will set the angel's recasting of one of the Beatitudes in Italian. Here he offers biblical Latin conjoined with a subsequent Italian expression. Various issues have puzzled various commentators of this somewhat surprising conjunction. (1) What biblical text do these words paraphrase? (2) Who speaks, the angel or the penitents that Dante leaves behind? (3) Are the words directed to Dante or are they some sort of general expression? (4) Why does the speaker (whoever it is who speaks) resort to Italian?
(1) Most commentators after Daniello (comm. to verse 39) are drawn to the subsequent text in this chapter in Matthew's gospel (5:12), Jesus's conclusion of his sermon, in which he tells those who are true to Him to 'rejoice (gaudete) and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven'; others (after Pietro di Dante [Pietro1, to verse 39]), however, prefer Paul's words in Romans 12:21: 'Be not overcome by evil, but overcome (“vince”) evil with good'; still others (comforted by Longfellow [comm. to verse 39]), Revelation 2:7: 'To him who overcomes (“vincenti”) will I give to eat of the tree of life.' It is difficult to be sure which of these is the most apt, but context, proximity, and support in many commentaries give the text in Matthew a certain advantage.
In order to answer the last three questions, it is probably necessary to consider the entire program of the angelic utterances to Dante during his penitential ascent of the mountain. These moments occur as follows: Purgatorio XII.110-111; XV.38-39; XVII.68-69; XIX.49-50; XXII.5-6; XXIV.151-154; XXVII.8-9. In each of the last five of these the text clearly and specifically attributes the words to the angel. Only the first and second are, when we first read them, opaque, but surely allow the possibility that some other source accounts for them (most probably the souls of the penitents of the terrace that Dante is about to leave). Nonetheless, it is at the very least probable that the angel speaks on these first two occasions as well. Given the fact that this is the case on each and every later terrace, we must surely allow that this seems the wisest hypothesis to follow. We should also take note of the facts that on the sixth terrace the angel paraphrases a Beatitude in Italian rather than reciting a phrase from it in Latin (Purg. XXIV.151-154) and that, on the seventh, his practice is exactly as we find it here: Latin for the citation of the Beatitude, Italian for his concluding advice to Dante (Purg. XXVII.8-9; 10-12). And there is one further common element in the second and seventh scenes: in all the others there is specific reference to the angel's wing or feathers erasing a 'P' from Dante's forehead; in these two scenes there is no such description, thus leading us to speculate that the angel's Italian utterance is probably meant to coincide with the erasure, a linguistic gesture that accompanies the undescribed act of absolution, as Esposito (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1969]), p. 181, suggests for this occurrence. That three angels speak Italian, two in part, one wholly, is a suggestive detail in a poem that is raising the vernacular to a level it had not sought heretofore. (For the program of Italian in the speech of angels see Kevin Brownlee (“Why the Angels Speak Italian: Dante as Vernacular Poeta in Paradiso XXV,” Poetics Today 5 [1984], pp. 597-610); for that of the Beatitudes in this cantica see the note to Purg. XII.110.) It seems likely that here the angel speaks, addressing Dante in Italian.
The protagonist, now freed, as we perhaps are meant to understand, from the P of Envy, is rapidly improving. It is he, and not Virgil, who insists on using the traveling time for self-improvement; he would like, in a sort of postlude to the terrace of Envy, to understand the remark of Guido del Duca (Purg. XIV.86-87): 'O race of men, why do you set your hearts on things that of necessity cannot be shared?' The moral consequence of such affection is to envy the possessor of what one longs for but cannot have; we remember that Satan, barely created (see Par. XXIX.55-57), immediately was prideful against his Maker (because of his envy of His power).
The word 'Romagna' occurs four times in the poem, twice in Inferno and twice in Purgatorio (Inf. XXVII.39; Inf. XXXIII.154; Purg. V.67; and here). That section of Italy thus refers to Guido da Montefeltro, Fra Alberigo, Jacopo del Cassero (as well as to Buonconte da Montefeltro), and to Guido del Duca, perhaps indicating that neither family nor region determines one's likelihood to be damned or saved.
Virgil's gloss on Guido's words in the last canto distinguishes earthly desires for individual possessions from heavenly enjoyment of the common good. Commentators, beginning with Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 43-57), cite the following passage from Augustine's City of God (XV.v): 'nullo [enim modo] fit minor, accedente seu permanente consorte, possessio bonitatis, quam tanto latius quanto concordius individua sociorum possidet charitas' ([goodness] is in no way lessened when it is shared, whether fleetingly or permanently, but grows the more the love of it spreads in others – Latin quoted from the version found in Pietro's commentary). While Picone (“Canto XV,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Purgatorio, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2001]), pp. 231-32, prefers the candidacy of a passage in a sonnet of Giacomo da Lentini ('Or come pote sì gran donna entrare'), the context and expression are extremely close to the passage in Augustine.
If Dante's will to learn is good, his capacities still flag, held back by his earthly view of riches and of the very nature of possession, which he can only conceive as selfish. In Convivio (III.xv.10) Dante had understood very well what his fictive self here still does not comprehend: 'li santi non hanno tra loro invidia' (the saints have no envious feelings about one another). Scartazzini (comm. to verse 74) was perhaps the first commentator to produce this citation in this context.
Virgil's final resolution of Dante's problem insists on the centrality of love as antidote to envy. Indeed, words for love (amore, carità, amare, ama) occur four times within seven lines. Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992], p. 330, n. 39), also notes the insistence on più (more) in vv. 55-62 (an astounding seven occurrences in eight lines, the densest presence of a single word in any passage of the poem, one might add) and here (vv. 73-74), perhaps underlining the need for the incremental conceptual refinement necessary for the redefinition of human affection toward a better end.
Virgil's phrasing here relies on the notion that bodies of light themselves attract light. Singleton (comm. to this verse) cites passages to this effect in St. Thomas (ST I-II, q. 85, a. 2, resp.) and in Dante (Conv. III.xiv.3).
The word ardore is, for Wlassics (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” in Filologia e critica dantesca: Studi offerti a Aldo Vallone [Florence: Olschki, 1989]), p. 166, the key word of this canto, uniting the notions of flame and of affection in its main significations.
Beatrice's second naming in Purgatorio (see VI.46; XVIII.48). In her first nominal appearance (after Inf. II.70 and II.103, where she is first named by Virgil and then herself), she first seems to be associated with hope (VI.32; 35); in her third, with faith (XVIII.48). Is she here associated with charity? If she is, what is the consequence for the traditional identification of Beatrice as 'Revelation' or 'Theology' (and of Virgil as 'Reason')? (Beatrice is named 63 times in all in the poem; Virgil, 31.) See the note to Purgatorio XVIII.46-48.
The clear reference here to the erasure of the second P earlier on calls attention to the problem that Dante has set for us, to determine exactly when this happened. See the note to vv. 38-39.
Dante's failure to respond to Virgil here perhaps prepares us for his more dramatic inability to communicate with his guide at the sudden appearance of Beatrice (Purg. XXX.43-51). It also has the effect of underlining the totally present and commanding nature of what he experiences in his raptus: there is nothing else that can hold his attention.
We now probably expect, on the basis of the experience we have had of the first two terraces, a description of the terrace upon which the travelers have just set foot (Purg. X.20-33, XIII.1-9). Its suppression here is obviously deliberate (we will find it, postponed as it is, only at the end of the canto at vv. 139-145 and then continuing into the next canto). In this way the poet underlines the heightened importance of the visionary experience granted to the protagonist on this terrace.
The three visions that follow are set off from the narrative by a precise vocabulary of vision, one that Dante had established as early as in his Vita nuova (see Hollander [“Vita Nuova: Dante's Perceptions of Beatrice,” Dante Studies 92 (1974)], pp. 3-7). This begins at once with the verse 'Ivi mi parve in una visione...' (There it seemed to me... in a... vision...), a formulation that needs at least its verb to take its meaning. If that verb were a form of vedere (to see), Dante's usual practice would assure us that he was describing a dream, indeed a 'Macrobian' dream, a 'fictive' visio that required allegorical explanation. The next line, however, adds two crucial terms, the adjective estatica (ecstatic) and the verb esser tratto (to be drawn up). These technical terms, the first of which occurs only once in the poem's universe, establish the radical difference between this visionary experience and that obtained in conventional dreams, for here what is at stake is the sort of sight that was given to such as Paul and John in the New Testament (and, as we shall see in a few lines, to St. Stephen as well).
In Dante the verb parere can have two quite different meanings (a common enough phenomenon in early modern poems – see Spenser, for instance, who 'specializes' in the first usage) – 'seem' (thus expressing a potentially limited or even non-existent truthfulness) or 'appeared' (to indicate something perceived that is actually present). The verbs parere and apparire are used throughout this passage (vv. 85, 93, 94, 102) to indicate presences that are experienced as being in fact present to the beholder in his ecstatic seeing; this is true as well of the verb vedere (vv. 87, 106, 109), used each time to indicate what has truly been made manifest to the beholder.
Momigliano's discussion of this passage points out that the verbs used to indicate what the protagonist sees in his rapture are in their infinitive form (vedere, v. 87; dir, v. 97; risponder, v. 103; ancider, v. 107; chinarsi, v. 109), thus lending to the experience a sense of timeless, placeless intensity – precisely, one is encouraged to add, in accord with the nature of ecstatic experience.
What is the precise meaning of the word visïone as it is used here? In Vita nuova the word was used six times to denote dreaming and, at the conclusion, once to denote 'vision' (in the Pauline or Johannine sense – see Hollander [“Vita Nuova: Dante's Perceptions of Beatrice,” Dante Studies 92 (1974)], p. 9). In the Commedia it is used a total of 10 times, as follows: Purg. IX.18; here; Purg. XVII.34 (in the same sense as here); Purg. XIX.56; Par. III.7; Par. XIV.41; Par. XIV.49 (in all these three last cases denoting the power of sight in general); Par. XVII.128; Par. XXIII.50; Par. XXXIII.62. In Purgatorio IX, XIX, and in Paradiso XXIII it denotes 'dream.' The other four occurrences include the usage which gave the poem a working title for some commentators (i.e., 'La visione di Dante Alighieri') at Paradiso XVII and XXXIII. That leaves us with the two uses here on the terrace of Wrath. How do we construe them? Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 85-87) offers the following bit of medieval etymologizing for the word 'ecstasy' (extasis): 'ab ex, quod est extra, et stasis, quod est status, quasi extra suum statum' (from ex, that is, outside, and stasis, that is, state: as though outside oneself). The word visïone modified by estatica denotes a very special kind of seeing, one that the poem will return to only with its final vision in the Empyrean. Thus the mode of presentation of the exemplars of meekness is, within the fiction, a preparation of the protagonist for his eventual opportunity to see God 'face to face.' Outside the fiction, it is a test of the reader's capacity to understand the nature of Dantean poetics, reliant upon claims that are, to say the very least, unusual for a poet to make for his poem, one that will finally offer us precisely una visïone estatica. Here the text offers us a foretaste of that final visionary moment.
The first exemplar is, as we have learned to expect, Mary. The narrative that clearly lies behind Dante's condensation of it is found in Luke's gospel (Luke 2:40-48). Mary, Joseph, and the twelve-year-old Jesus travel to Jerusalem at Passover and then the parents leave the city. In a remarkable moment, reflected in contemporary accounts of children left behind in cars or on school buses, they assume the boy is among their traveling companions and finally, discovering that he is not, return to Jerusalem to seek him out. Three days later they find him in the temple, explaining a thing or two to the rabbis (a moment that this writer had brought to mind when the fourteen-year-old Aaron Hollander [no relation] pointed out an error made by this Hollander in the first Collegiate School Colloquium in February of 2000.) If Dante abbreviates the rest of the episode in Luke, Mary's words to her son are translated almost precisely from Luke's Latin into Italian: 'Fili, quid fecisti nobis sic? Ecce pater tuus et ego dolentes quaerebamus te.' Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 85-105) point out that it is Dante's practice to translate Mary's Latin words from their religious sources with precision, probably as a sign of reverence.
Jesus as young genius is so palpably present that we need to remind ourselves that he is not the exemplary figure here; that is, indeed, his mother, who scolds him as gently as a scold may scold – as any former child will testify, remembering similar encounters with sterner mothers.
The second exemplar, once again a parent, is the sixth-century B.C. Athenian tyrant Pisistratus, known to Dante in this particular, according to many commentators (perhaps beginning with Pietro di Dante [Pietro1, comm. to vv. 94-96]), from Valerius Maximus, author of that first-century compendium of classical history and lore, Facta et dicta memorabilia, who tells the tale almost precisely as Dante retells it here. However, as Giampietro Marconi, in his entry “Valerio Massimo” (ED.1976.5) points out, none of the six passages in the Commedia traditionally cited as being of Valerian provenance may in fact be so. Of all the six (the other five occur as follows: Inf. XII.107-108; Inf. XXVII.7-12; Purg. XII.55-57; Purg. XXII.145; Purg. XXIX.115-116), he says, this one is the most likely to be so, although it might roughly as easily be derived from John of Salisbury's Policraticus, a text with which we are certain Dante was familiar. In short, the question of direct Dantean knowledge of Valerius's work is currently not resolved.
Like the first of these three exemplary scenes, this one also begins with the portrait of a mother. Where the parents of Jesus are united in benevolence, those of the daughter of Pisistratus are divided; this mother, reminiscent of the haughty Michal (see Purg. X.65 and note), leaves the performance of a loving forgiveness to her husband.
The wife of Pisistratus refers to the myth of the naming of Athens which Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to these verses) says derives from Augustine's retelling of the myth, found earlier in Varro, in De civitate Dei XVIII.9. During the kingship of Cecrops, when Athena (Minerva) and Poseidon (Neptune) both wanted to name the city, the other gods chose Athena because her gift was the olive tree, seen as more useful to humans than Poseidon's gift of a spring. Pietro also refers to the version of the tale found in Ovid (Metam. VI.70-102).
The artistry of Dante's treatment of the third and final exemplar, St. Stephen, the first martyr (Acts 7:54-59), is greatly admired; e.g., by Francesco De Sanctis (Opere, vol. 5 [Turin: Einaudi, 1967 (1869)]), who, while not offering the passage an extended treatment in his Dantean writings between 1853 and 1859, nonetheless refers to it warmly and frequently, making his admiration clear (pp. 27, 333, 420, 466). Among the three narratives exemplifying meekness, this is the only one in which that meekness is found in the youthful protagonist of the exemplary tale rather than in a parent. Arnaldo Bonaventura (Il canto XV del “Purgatorio” [(“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”) Florence: Sansoni, 1902]), p. 29, sees that the progression of figures that benefit from the forgiveness which runs counter to wrath has a purposeful order: from a beloved son, to a relative stranger, to one's enemies. Anyone would forgive the twelve-year-old Jesus his 'night out' in the temple; anyone, upon reflection, should perhaps forgive the youthful flamboyance of the amorous pursuer of a king's daughter; hardly anyone would choose to forgive his murderers.
Botterill's entry for “Martyrdom” in the The Dante Encyclopedia (Richard Lansing, ed., [New York: Garland, 2000]), pp. 595-97, cites Isidore of Seville's definition of martyrs as 'those who have suffered agonies in order to bear witness to Christ' (Etymologies VII.xi) and goes on to point out that Jesus, for His death on the cross, was in a real sense the first martyr to the Christian faith.
The youthfulness of Dante's portrayal of Stephen (as giovinetto) has caused controversy, beginning with Scartazzini's (comm. to this verse) objection that here Dante had fallen into a small error, since the Book of Acts portrayed Stephen as a mature man (homo, vir: e.g., Acts 6:5, 6:13). In Scartazzini's view, in a lapse of memory Dante had conflated the descriptions of Stephen and St. Paul, present as the youthful (adulescentis) Saul as a witness to the martyrdom (Acts 7:57). To this argument Poletto (comm. to vv. 106-108) objects, demonstrating that in Dante adolescence lasted until one is 25, while youth included the period between 25 and 45 (Conv. IV.xxiv.1-3), and also pointing out that Scipio and Pompey (Par. VI.52) are described as 'youths' (giovanetti), 33 and 25 years old, respectively, at the time of those great victories to which Dante refers. Sarolli, “Stefano” (ED.1976.5), is also in this camp. Vandelli, refurbishing the Scartazzini commentary to this verse argues that the description of Stephen's face as 'angelic' (faciem eius tamquam faciem angeli – Act.6:15) and a sermon attributed to St. Augustine (discovered by Orazio Bacci ca. 1902) stating that the proto-martyr shed his blood in the flower of his youth, both deprive Scartazzini's point of its force. It seems clear, nonetheless, that Dante wanted to make Stephen seem more innocent in his youthfulness; Arnaldo Bonaventura (Il canto XV del “Purgatorio” [(“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”) Florence: Sansoni, 1902]), p. 28, suggests that his practice here is much like that by which he made the sons of Ugolino younger, thus creating a more piteous scene in Inferno XXXIII. See the note to vv. 1-6 of this canto.
Esposito (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1969]), p. 189, cites Fedele Romani (“Il martirio di S. Stefano: Nota dantesca,” in Raccolta di studî critici dedicata ad Alessandro D'Ancona, festeggiandosi il XL anniversario del suo insegnamento [Florence: Barbera, 1901]), pp. 539-42, for possible sources of this scene in the visual arts, as well as Arnaldo Bonaventura (Il canto XV del “Purgatorio” [(“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”) Florence: Sansoni, 1902]), pp. 28-29, who suggested the possible influence of Giotto's depiction of the stoning in the old Duomo outside Arezzo, destroyed in 1561.
In Acts the words of the maddened crowd supplied here by Dante are not given. Wlassics (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” in Filologia e critica dantesca: Studi offerti a Aldo Vallone [Florence: Olschki, 1989]), p. 170, argues that Stephen's persecutors shout to themselves, not to one another, as almost all commentators (and translators) insist. Before him Casini/Barbi (comm. to this verse) do allow for this possibility, but only Mattalia, also commenting on it, had previously chosen this option. This interpretation is supported by at least one pressing consideration: in the source text (Act. 7:56) the stoners of Stephen are specifically described as, having stopped up their ears, crying out with a loud voice and rushing upon their victim. They are shouting rather to screw up their courage than to exhort one another – they are shouting as do those who charge in battle, wrestling with their fear. Our translation preserves this understanding of the verse.
What is seen by 'the eyes that are open to Heaven' is described in the source text in Stephen's own words (it is notable that Dante suppresses the words spoken by the proto-martyr and adds those spoken by his persecutors). Here is what he says he sees (Acts 7:56): 'Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.' It is precisely these words, reporting his vision, that cause his murderers to stop up their ears and attack him in their offended rage. In this moment in the poem, we may reflect, Dante's eyes (referred to, just before the visions begin, as luci vaghe [eager eyes] at verse 84) are as open to Stephen's martyrdom as Stephen's are to his heavenly vision.
The final action of these exemplary protagonists of mercy is obviously the most dramatic in the program: Stephen forgiving his murderers even as they murder him. His 'look' would 'unlock compassion' in anyone who beheld it – perhaps even his persecutors, but surely any decent Christian soul witnessing his martyrdom, including, just now, the protagonist.
On each terrace there is poetic space reserved for some sort of reaction on the part of the poet or protagonist (and, at times, his guide) to the experience of exemplarity. Of the thirteen other passages devoted to these transitional moments (Purg. X.94-99; Purg. XII.64-69; Purg. XIII.40-42; Purg. XIV.142-151; Purg. XVII.40-45; Purg. XVIII.127-129; Purg. XVIII.139-142: Purg. XX.34-36; Purg. XX.121-123; Purg. XXIII.1-6; Purg. XXIV.127-132; Purg. XXV.136-139; Purg. XXVI.49-51) none is even nearly as lengthy as this one, twenty-four verses; in fact only once is such a passage as long as three tercets, while this one extends over eight. It is clear that the poet wanted to direct our attention to the importance of this exchange between guide and protagonist.
Virgil's reactions give rise to a number of questions. Does or does not Virgil see the visions vouchsafed Dante? Is his response (vv. 120-123) evidence that he does not understand the nature of Dante's experience (as Dante seems to believe at vv. 125-126)? If a reader believes that to be the case, how does that reader respond to Virgil's insistence that he indeed knows Dante's innermost thoughts (vv. 127-138)?
The structure of the fifteenth canto is formed by three moments of Virgilian interpretation of phenomena:
10-39: Dante cannot behold the angel: Virgil explains the nature of the problem;
40-81: Dante did not understand Guido del Duca's words in the last canto: Virgil gives the necessary commentary, acknowledging Beatrice's higher authority;
115-138: Dante has a series of ecstatic visions: Virgil insists on explaining that he knows very well what they involved and says that he only calls attention to Dante's condition in order to spur him on.
In the first two scenes Virgil is clearly correct and thoroughly in control of the situation; in this last sequence he does not exactly issue triumphant.
The literal sense is not difficult: Dante was not seeing that which was present before his fleshly eyes; from that point of view (the merely physical one) he is delusional, is seeing what does not exist, seeing erroneous phantasms instead of what his physical eyes would report. But such 'errors' as these are the very heart of truth, or, in an extreme case of litotes (deliberate understatement), are, at the very least, 'not false.' See the discussion in Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992]), pp. 151-53.
Virgil's first response to Dante's 'awakening' back in the world of lesser truth is a bit brutal in its colloquial insistence on a less than noble cause for his condition. For Dante's apparent drunkenness see Glending Olson (“Inferno XXVII and the Perversions of Pentecost,” Dante Studies 117 [1999]), pp. 25-26. Olson addresses the relationship between these and the seemingly 'drunken' words of Boniface VIII, as described by Guido da Montefeltro in Inferno XXVII.99. The context of Acts 2:13 is clearly present here as well: witnessing the apostles speaking in tongues after the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them, the cynical pronounce them to be 'drunk with new wine.' It is interesting to see that Virgil is associated, in his response to Dante, similarly filled with the Spirit, with those who denied the action of the Holy Spirit in the apostles (see Lauren Scancarelli Seem [“Dante's Drunkenness and Virgil's Rebuke (Purg. 15.115-138),” Quaderni d'italianistica 12 (1991)], p. 74). Constance Breinin (Princeton '82) has also suggested the resonance here of Isaiah (Isaiah 28:7), where 'the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink...; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.' Seem (p. 74) points out that Dante's 'drunken' condition here, shortly after he has heard Beatrice's name (XV.77), mirrors his being 'come inebriato' (as though drunk) when he first saw Beatrice, as recorded in Vita nuova III.
Dante's response to Virgil intrinsically explains his physical condition as the result of his being in a state which granted him the ability to see that which, apparently, Virgil did not and could not see. If Virgil did not know this before he asked his question, he does know this much now – not what Dante saw, but the nature of his seeing: ecstatic vision. Dante here shares the iconography of another closed-eyed visionary, John the Divine; see Purgatorio XXIX.143-144, where John, represented as the last book of the New Testament, Revelation, is seen, like Dante here, walking in a visionary state with his eyes closed, 'dormendo.'
Virgil's claim for knowledge of even the least particular of Dante's mental awareness must be taken with skepticism (see discussion of Musa's arguments in the note to vv. 134-135).
What does Virgil know? We have some information with which to answer this question. On the terrace of Pride Virgil and Dante found the two sets of opposing exemplars displayed in marble carvings. Having seen the first set of these, once they had seen the second they could infer something about the structure of purgation and about its symbolic landscape. As a result, once Virgil hears the voices flying overhead, representing Charity, the virtue contrasted with Envy, he immediately understands that there will be a second set of sounds before the travelers leave the terrace (see the note to Purg. XIII.37-42). His situation here is more difficult, for he has seen nothing to indicate this terrace's mode of exemplary instruction. According to him, he reads Dante's mind. Perhaps we should view his claim with a certain dubiety. Dante speaks, announcing that he is seeing things that are not visible; as soon as Virgil connects that information with the physical signs that his 'drunken' charge is exhibiting, he understands: the exempla on this terrace are delivered through ecstatic vision, an experience reserved for only the elect. He knows that these visions must present positive figures of the opposing virtue, precisely 'to open your heart to the waters of peace,' as he tells Dante. No matter who may have been present in Dante's visions to represent meekness (and even Virgil may have by now divined that Mary will be the first of these), the meaning of the exemplars here will always be the same: to pour the water of peace upon the fires of wrath in the heart.
Bosco/Reggio are undoubtedly correct in suggesting that the two previous major possibilities debated in the commentaries over the literal sense of these verses are both less than convincing and go on to plead that in these verses Dante uses 'an imprecise expression.' It is difficult, surely, but not necessarily imprecise. See Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992]), p. 152, whose explanation of the literal sense is, while not entirely clear, much as our own. Dante's 'senseless' staggering reminds Virgil of the condition of those who see only with the inner eye, i.e., who are deprived of the sensuous organ of sight while they are rapt in a vision. Fernando Salsano (“Purgatorio Canto XV,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967]), pp. 568-70, reflects upon the debate as it came into his time. Cachey (“Purgatorio XV,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana]: Special Issue,12 [supplement], 1993), pp. 222-23, offers a more up-to-date review of various interpretations: (1) The current majority view has Virgil referring to himself as being sentient and thus unlike those who are fooled by outward appearances when they see someone faint without understanding the reason for the syncope; (2) another group would have Virgil denying that he is one who sees only with mortal eyes that cease their function in death. Achille Tartaro (“Il Canto XV del Purgatorio,” in Purgatorio: letture degli anni 1976-'79, ed. Silvio Zennaro, Casa di Dante in Roma [Rome: Bonacci, 1981]), p. 341, moved the question to better ground: (3) Virgil is referring to Dante's eyes and body (as indeed the context would suggest). However, Tartaro, too, has difficulty with the reasons behind Virgil's protestation (p. 321): 'I did not ask “What's wrong?” because of your appearance, which was that of a man who stares with unseeing eyes, his body having lost all vital spirit, but to spur your steps.' The only interpretation, however, that seems to offer a clear understanding of the difficult passage is one based on a comprehension of the tensions that exist here between the protagonist and his guide. Such a reading has been put forward by Lauren Scancarelli Seem (“Dante's Drunkenness and Virgil's Rebuke [Purg. 15.115-138],” Quaderni d'italianistica 12 [1991], pp. 71-82), who argues that what is at stake is Virgil's attempt to show that he has indeed known the nature of Dante's vision, that he did not think Dante was merely 'drunk.' And thus we can understand what he says as follows: 'I did not ask what was wrong with you because you were having a vision – of course, I understood that – but only because it was now time to get you back on the track.' As Musa has pointed out (see the notes to Inf. XVI.115 and XXIII.25), there is no evidence in the poem, despite Virgil's claim in Inferno XXIII (repeated here), that he actually can read the protagonist's mind – a capacity reserved for Beatrice and the other saved souls who interview Dante in the heavens. Our reading of the entire passage eventually depends on whether we accept Virgil's protestations here or question them. For a step-by-step analysis of the difficult details that have so afflicted the commentators, see Lauren Scancarelli Seem (“Dante's Drunkenness and Virgil's Rebuke [Purg. 15.115-138],” Quaderni d'italianistica 12 [1991]), pp. 75-80.
The description of this terrace, postponed from its expected space (see the note to vv. 82-84), begins now, as we first perceive the black smoke of anger that will cover the travelers and the penitents for the entirety of the following canto, the darkest part of Purgatorio.
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Quanto tra l'ultimar de l'ora terza
e 'l principio del dì par de la spera
che sempre a guisa di fanciullo scherza,
tanto pareva già inver' la sera
essere al sol del suo corso rimaso;
vespero là, e qui mezza notte era.
E i raggi ne ferien per mezzo 'l naso,
perché per noi girato era sì 'l monte,
che già dritti andavamo inver' l'occaso,
quand' io senti' a me gravar la fronte
a lo splendore assai più che di prima,
e stupor m'eran le cose non conte;
ond' io levai le mani inver' la cima
de le mie ciglia, e fecimi 'l solecchio,
che del soverchio visibile lima.
Come quando da l'acqua o da lo specchio
salta lo raggio a l'opposita parte,
salendo su per lo modo parecchio
a quel che scende, e tanto si diparte
dal cader de la pietra in igual tratta,
sì come mostra esperïenza e arte;
così mi parve da luce rifratta
quivi dinanzi a me esser percosso;
per che a fuggir la mia vista fu ratta.
“Che è quel, dolce padre, a che non posso
schermar lo viso tanto che mi vaglia,”
diss' io, “e pare inver' noi esser mosso?”
“Non ti maravigliar s'ancor t'abbaglia
la famiglia del cielo,” a me rispuose:
“messo è che viene ad invitar ch'om saglia.
Tosto sarà ch'a veder queste cose
non ti fia grave, ma fieti diletto
quanto natura a sentir ti dispuose.”
Poi giunti fummo a l'angel benedetto,
con lieta voce disse: “Intrate quinci
ad un scaleo vie men che li altri eretto.”
Noi montavam, già partiti di linci,
e “Beati misericordes!” fue
cantato retro, e “Godi tu che vinci!”
Lo mio maestro e io soli amendue
suso andavamo; e io pensai, andando,
prode acquistar ne le parole sue;
e dirizza'mi a lui sì dimandando:
“Che volse dir lo spirto di Romagna,
e 'divieto' e 'consorte' menzionando?”
Per ch'elli a me: “Di sua maggior magagna
conosce il danno; e però non s'ammiri
se ne riprende perché men si piagna.
Perché s'appuntano i vostri disiri
dove per compagnia parte si scema,
invidia move il mantaco a' sospiri.
Ma se l'amor de la spera supprema
torcesse in suso il disiderio vostro,
non vi sarebbe al petto quella tema;
ché, per quanti si dice più lì 'nostro,'
tanto possiede più di ben ciascuno,
e più di caritate arde in quel chiostro.”
“Io son d'esser contento più digiuno,”
diss' io, “che se mi fosse pria taciuto,
e più di dubbio ne la mente aduno.
Com' esser puote ch'un ben, distributo
in più posseditor, faccia più ricchi
di sé che se da pochi è posseduto?”
Ed elli a me: “Però che tu rificchi
la mente pur a le cose terrene,
di vera luce tenebre dispicchi.
Quello infinito e ineffabil bene
che là sù è, così corre ad amore
com' a lucido corpo raggio vene.
Tanto si dà quanto trova d'ardore;
sì che, quantunque carità si stende,
cresce sovr' essa l'etterno valore.
E quanta gente più là sù s'intende,
più v'è da bene amare, e più vi s'ama,
e come specchio l'uno a l'altro rende.
E se la mia ragion non ti disfama,
vedrai Beatrice, ed ella pienamente
ti torrà questa e ciascun' altra brama.
Procaccia pur che tosto sieno spente,
come son già le due, le cinque piaghe,
che si richiudon per esser dolente.”
Com' io voleva dicer “Tu m'appaghe,”
vidimi giunto in su l'altro girone,
sì che tacer mi fer le luci vaghe.
Ivi mi parve in una visïone
estatica di sùbito esser tratto,
e vedere in un tempio più persone;
e una donna, in su l'entrar, con atto
dolce di madre dicer: “Figliuol mio,
perché hai tu così verso noi fatto?
Ecco, dolenti, lo tuo padre e io
ti cercavamo.” E come qui si tacque,
ciò che pareva prima, dispario.
Indi m'apparve un'altra con quell' acque
giù per le gote che 'l dolor distilla
quando di gran dispetto in altrui nacque,
e dir: “Se tu se' sire de la villa
del cui nome ne' dèi fu tanta lite,
e onde ogne scïenza disfavilla,
vendica te di quelle braccia ardite
ch'abbracciar nostra figlia, o Pisistràto.”
E 'l segnor mi parea, benigno e mite,
risponder lei con viso temperato:
“Che farem noi a chi mal ne disira,
se quei che ci ama è per noi condannato?”
Poi vidi genti accese in foco d'ira
con pietre un giovinetto ancider, forte
gridando a sé pur: “Martira, martira!”
E lui vedea chinarsi, per la morte
che l'aggravava già, inver' la terra,
ma de li occhi facea sempre al ciel porte,
orando a l'alto Sire, in tanta guerra,
che perdonasse a' suoi persecutori,
con quello aspetto che pietà diserra.
Quando l'anima mia tornò di fori
a le cose che son fuor di lei vere,
io riconobbi i miei non falsi errori.
Lo duca mio, che mi potea vedere
far sì com' om che dal sonno si slega,
disse: “Che hai che non ti puoi tenere,
ma se' venuto più che mezza lega
velando li occhi e con le gambe avvolte,
a guisa di cui vino o sonno piega?”
“O dolce padre mio, se tu m'ascolte,
io ti dirò,” diss' io, “ciò che m'apparve
quando le gambe mi furon sì tolte.”
Ed ei: “Se tu avessi cento larve
sovra la faccia, non mi sarian chiuse
le tue cogitazion, quantunque parve.
Ciò che vedesti fu perché non scuse
d'aprir lo core a l'acque de la pace
che da l'etterno fonte son diffuse.
Non dimandai 'Che hai?' per quel che face
chi guarda pur con l'occhio che non vede,
quando disanimato il corpo giace;
ma dimandai per darti forza al piede:
così frugar conviensi i pigri, lenti
ad usar lor vigilia quando riede.”
Noi andavam per lo vespero, attenti
oltre quanto potean li occhi allungarsi
contra i raggi serotini e lucenti.
Ed ecco a poco a poco un fummo farsi
verso di noi come la notte oscuro;
né da quello era loco da cansarsi.
Questo ne tolse li occhi e l'aere puro.
As much as 'twixt the close of the third hour
And dawn of day appeareth of that sphere
Which aye in fashion of a child is playing,
So much it now appeared, towards the night,
Was of his course remaining to the sun;
There it was evening, and 'twas midnight here;
And the rays smote the middle of our faces,
Because by us the mount was so encircled,
That straight towards the west we now were going
When I perceived my forehead overpowered
Beneath the splendour far more than at first,
And stupor were to me the things unknown,
Whereat towards the summit of my brow
I raised my hands, and made myself the visor
Which the excessive glare diminishes.
As when from off the water, or a mirror,
The sunbeam leaps unto the opposite side,
Ascending upward in the selfsame measure
That it descends, and deviates as far
From falling of a stone in line direct,
(As demonstrate experiment and art,)
So it appeared to me that by a light
Refracted there before me I was smitten;
On which account my sight was swift to flee.
"What is that, Father sweet, from which I cannot
So fully screen my sight that it avail me,"
Said I, "and seems towards us to be moving?"
"Marvel thou not, if dazzle thee as yet
The family of heaven," he answered me;
"An angel 'tis, who comes to invite us upward.
Soon will it be, that to behold these things
Shall not be grievous, but delightful to thee
As much as nature fashioned thee to feel."
When we had reached the Angel benedight,
With joyful voice he said: "Here enter in
To stairway far less steep than are the others."
We mounting were, already thence departed,
And "Beati misericordes" was
Behind us sung, "Rejoice, thou that o'ercomest!"
My Master and myself, we two alone
Were going upward, and I thought, in going,
Some profit to acquire from words of his;
And I to him directed me, thus asking:
"What did the spirit of Romagna mean,
Mentioning interdict and partnership?"
Whence he to me: "Of his own greatest failing
He knows the harm; and therefore wonder not
If he reprove us, that we less may rue it.
Because are thither pointed your desires
Where by companionship each share is lessened,
Envy doth ply the bellows to your sighs.
But if the love of the supernal sphere
Should upwardly direct your aspiration,
There would not be that fear within your breast;
For there, as much the more as one says 'Our,'
So much the more of good each one possesses,
And more of charity in that cloister burns."
"I am more hungering to be satisfied,"
I said, "than if I had before been silent,
And more of doubt within my mind I gather.
How can it be, that boon distributed
The more possessors can more wealthy make
Therein, than if by few it be possessed?"
And he to me: "Because thou fixest still
Thy mind entirely upon earthly things,
Thou pluckest darkness from the very light.
That goodness infinite and ineffable
Which is above there, runneth unto love,
As to a lucid body comes the sunbeam.
So much it gives itself as it finds ardour,
So that as far as charity extends,
O'er it increases the eternal valour.
And the more people thitherward aspire,
More are there to love well, and more they love there,
And, as a mirror, one reflects the other.
And if my reasoning appease thee not,
Thou shalt see Beatrice; and she will fully
Take from thee this and every other longing.
Endeavour, then, that soon may be extinct,
As are the two already, the five wounds
That close themselves again by being painful."
Even as I wished to say, "Thou dost appease me,"
I saw that I had reached another circle,
So that my eager eyes made me keep silence.
There it appeared to me that in a vision
Ecstatic on a sudden I was rapt,
And in a temple many persons saw;
And at the door a woman, with the sweet
Behaviour of a mother, saying: "Son,
Why in this manner hast thou dealt with us?
Lo, sorrowing, thy father and myself
Were seeking for thee;"—and as here she ceased,
That which appeared at first had disappeared.
Then I beheld another with those waters
Adown her cheeks which grief distils whenever
From great disdain of others it is born,
And saying: "If of that city thou art lord,
For whose name was such strife among the gods,
And whence doth every science scintillate,
Avenge thyself on those audacious arms
That clasped our daughter, O Pisistratus;"
And the lord seemed to me benign and mild
To answer her with aspect temperate:
"What shall we do to those who wish us ill,
If he who loves us be by us condemned?"
Then saw I people hot in fire of wrath,
With stones a young man slaying, clamorously
Still crying to each other, "Kill him! kill him!"
And him I saw bow down, because of death
That weighed already on him, to the earth,
But of his eyes made ever gates to heaven,
Imploring the high Lord, in so great strife,
That he would pardon those his persecutors,
With such an aspect as unlocks compassion.
Soon as my soul had outwardly returned
To things external to it which are true,
Did I my not false errors recognize.
My Leader, who could see me bear myself
Like to a man that rouses him from sleep,
Exclaimed: "What ails thee, that thou canst not stand?
But hast been coming more than half a league
Veiling thine eyes, and with thy legs entangled,
In guise of one whom wine or sleep subdues?"
"O my sweet Father, if thou listen to me,
I'll tell thee," said I, "what appeared to me,
When thus from me my legs were ta'en away."
And he: "If thou shouldst have a hundred masks
Upon thy face, from me would not be shut
Thy cogitations, howsoever small.
What thou hast seen was that thou mayst not fail
To ope thy heart unto the waters of peace,
Which from the eternal fountain are diffused.
I did not ask, 'What ails thee?' as he does
Who only looketh with the eyes that see not
When of the soul bereft the body lies,
But asked it to give vigour to thy feet;
Thus must we needs urge on the sluggards, slow
To use their wakefulness when it returns."
We passed along, athwart the twilight peering
Forward as far as ever eye could stretch
Against the sunbeams serotine and lucent;
And lo! by slow degrees a smoke approached
In our direction, sombre as the night,
Nor was there place to hide one's self therefrom.
This of our eyes and the pure air bereft us.
This belabored opening has bothered any number of readers. Benvenuto, commenting on its six verses, remarks that all Dante means to say is that it is the hour of Vespers, and that he does so by means of circumlocution ('per unam circuitionem verborum'). However, Arnaldo Bonaventura (Il canto XV del “Purgatorio” [(“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”), Florence: Sansoni, 1902]), pp. 9-10, chides Venturi (comm. to verse 3) for labeling the construction a 'miserabile similitudine' (perfectly dreadful simile) and remarks that such lighthearted moments are also to be found in the Psalms of David and in the epics of Homer and of Virgil. Cachey (“Purgatorio XV,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana]: Special Issue,12 [supplement], 1993), pp. 212-14, following, as he says, Longfellow (comm. to verse 1), and who speaks of Dante's poetry as being playful, has learned to enjoy the poetic playfulness of vv. 1-40, so long softly ridiculed and even characterized as a result of the poet's letting us see his worst (pedantic) side. Longfellow, bringing a fellow poet's perspective to the passage, had realized that Dante is not a stuffed owl and perceived that his fellow poet is having a little fun with himself and with us: 'Dante states this simple fact with curious circumlocution, as if he would imitate the celestial sphere in this scherzoso movement. The beginning of the day is sunrise; consequently the end of the third hour, three hours after sunrise, is represented by an arc of the celestial sphere measuring forty-five degrees. The sun had still an equal space to pass over before his setting. This would make it afternoon in purgatory, and midnight in Tuscany, where Dante was writing the poem.' For a similar time-telling passage see Purgatorio III.25-26 and the accompanying note. Here, however, Dante underlines his ludic propensity in his first rhyme: terza-scherza, as though to imply that this very tercet is itself playful.
It is to Cachey's credit that he builds his treatment of the entire canto on his sense of this initial burst of 'childish' enthusiasm. Exuberance is the strand that ties together many elements of the canto, from its beginning to its end, juxtaposing youthful, innocent play against older 'high seriousness.' The morning sun is not currently shining on the mount of purgatory but is summoned in order to begin the canto, and is then followed by a series of benign presences: Dante (both as poet and as protagonist); the Angel of Mercy; Virgil's representation of the loving souls in paradise, including Beatrice; the twelve-year-old Jesus and his mildly chastising mother; the youth who kissed the daughter of Pisistratus and this non-judgmental father; the youthful martyr Stephen; the 'drunken' protagonist. The exuberant love of God and ecstatic awareness of His presence eventually fills the canto. Mario Marti (“Purgatorio XV,” in Letture dantesche. II. “Purgatorio,” ed. G. Getto [Florence: Sansoni, 1965 (1961)], pp. 63-79, deserves credit for seeing the canto's virtues, given its history of relative neglect among the commentators, and especially its engagement with light, a theme insisted upon even more forcefully by Tibor Wlassics (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” in Filologia e critica dantesca: Studi offerti a Aldo Vallone [Florence: Olschki, 1989]), pp. 172-74, who comments upon the many words for light found in vv. 7-33 and reflects that they function as corrective responses to the darkness that typified our experience of Envy. He might have added that Canto XV exists as a sort of island of light between the blindness of Envy and the encompassing black smoke of Wrath, which the protagonist will enter at the end of this canto.
For a review of the debate as to whether the word spera (verse 2) refers to the sun itself, the celestial sphere it occupies (or still other things) see Enzo Esposito (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1969]), pp. 171-74.
The travelers, proceeding to their right as they climbed the mountain, have now moved some 90o along the circle of which it is the center. The sun, at 3pm, is thus to the northwest as it heads west ahead of them. Where it was behind them before (Purg. III.16-18), it now stands directly before them, brighter than it has been, to Dante's sight, at any point yet in the poem. This excess of light will carry forward into the brightness of the ecstatic light that is soon to flood the inner eye of the protagonist.
Poletto (comm. to this tercet) calls attention to the passage in Convivio (III.ix.10) in which Dante says that Aristotle had confuted Plato's notion that our eyesight went out from us to take cognizance of external things, arguing (correctly, adds Dante) that things that we perceive through the eyes (lo visibile – the noun that Dante uses here) strike upon our senses, not the senses on them. See Inferno X.69.
This simile introduces a 'second sun' to Dante's dazzled glance, now the reflected radiance of the angel, as seems clear from the context and despite some early commentators who believe this is the direct beam of the light of God or of the sun itself. It seems to be neither, nor indeed the direct beam of brightness from the angel of this second terrace. As the elaborate simile and the sequential description of the light make plain enough, the light bounces down, like Pele's most famous goal, in a World Cup final some years ago, and then up, under Dante's protective hand, so that the angle of incidence is the same as the angle of reflection (V), notions established, for Dante, by such authorities as Euclid and Albertus Magnus. For Dante's knowledge of the phenomenon see Convivio II.iii.vi (where he refers to the science of perspective, or optics) and Paradiso I.49-50. Poletto (comm. to this passage) reviews the debate over whether the light comes straight from God to the angel to Dante or bounces from the angel off the ground and back up and strongly supports the second view. And Dante's two evasive actions (shading his eyes with his hand as the angel approaches; turning away when the reflected ray bounces under that hand) come close to guaranteeing this reading. Carroll (comm. to vv. 10-24) adds a moral dimension to this interpretation: where the light shining from the Angel of Humility (Purg. XII.89-90) was relatively demure, the light of this angel, countering the meanness of Envy even when reflected off the livid stone floor of this terrace, is brilliant with the loving mercy of God.
The notion that these lines themselves reflect a source in Virgil (Aen. VIII.22-25) was perhaps first suggested by Poletto and enjoys some currency.
Virgil's promise that eventually Dante's eyes, as his soul becomes more fit for the task, will be able to look upon angelic radiance without turning away is fulfilled at least in Purgatorio XXX, vv. 10 and 18, where this word for 'angel,' messo (or messaggiero) – 'messenger,' is next (and for the last time) employed (it was introduced to the poem in Inf. IX.85).
The 'stairway' to the third terrace will be less steep than those to Pride and Envy. The slowly disappearing P's on Dante's brow, the increasing lightness of his being, the increasing ease of the ascent, all these elements underline the general improvement of the penitent's moral condition, comparable to that of a patient who has survived a crisis and now grows rapidly stronger.
A portion of the fifth Beatitude in Matthew (5:7), 'Blessèd are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,' is here accompanied by an Italian phrase. In one later moment (on the terrace of Gluttony, Purg. XXIV.151-154) Dante will set the angel's recasting of one of the Beatitudes in Italian. Here he offers biblical Latin conjoined with a subsequent Italian expression. Various issues have puzzled various commentators of this somewhat surprising conjunction. (1) What biblical text do these words paraphrase? (2) Who speaks, the angel or the penitents that Dante leaves behind? (3) Are the words directed to Dante or are they some sort of general expression? (4) Why does the speaker (whoever it is who speaks) resort to Italian?
(1) Most commentators after Daniello (comm. to verse 39) are drawn to the subsequent text in this chapter in Matthew's gospel (5:12), Jesus's conclusion of his sermon, in which he tells those who are true to Him to 'rejoice (gaudete) and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven'; others (after Pietro di Dante [Pietro1, to verse 39]), however, prefer Paul's words in Romans 12:21: 'Be not overcome by evil, but overcome (“vince”) evil with good'; still others (comforted by Longfellow [comm. to verse 39]), Revelation 2:7: 'To him who overcomes (“vincenti”) will I give to eat of the tree of life.' It is difficult to be sure which of these is the most apt, but context, proximity, and support in many commentaries give the text in Matthew a certain advantage.
In order to answer the last three questions, it is probably necessary to consider the entire program of the angelic utterances to Dante during his penitential ascent of the mountain. These moments occur as follows: Purgatorio XII.110-111; XV.38-39; XVII.68-69; XIX.49-50; XXII.5-6; XXIV.151-154; XXVII.8-9. In each of the last five of these the text clearly and specifically attributes the words to the angel. Only the first and second are, when we first read them, opaque, but surely allow the possibility that some other source accounts for them (most probably the souls of the penitents of the terrace that Dante is about to leave). Nonetheless, it is at the very least probable that the angel speaks on these first two occasions as well. Given the fact that this is the case on each and every later terrace, we must surely allow that this seems the wisest hypothesis to follow. We should also take note of the facts that on the sixth terrace the angel paraphrases a Beatitude in Italian rather than reciting a phrase from it in Latin (Purg. XXIV.151-154) and that, on the seventh, his practice is exactly as we find it here: Latin for the citation of the Beatitude, Italian for his concluding advice to Dante (Purg. XXVII.8-9; 10-12). And there is one further common element in the second and seventh scenes: in all the others there is specific reference to the angel's wing or feathers erasing a 'P' from Dante's forehead; in these two scenes there is no such description, thus leading us to speculate that the angel's Italian utterance is probably meant to coincide with the erasure, a linguistic gesture that accompanies the undescribed act of absolution, as Esposito (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1969]), p. 181, suggests for this occurrence. That three angels speak Italian, two in part, one wholly, is a suggestive detail in a poem that is raising the vernacular to a level it had not sought heretofore. (For the program of Italian in the speech of angels see Kevin Brownlee (“Why the Angels Speak Italian: Dante as Vernacular Poeta in Paradiso XXV,” Poetics Today 5 [1984], pp. 597-610); for that of the Beatitudes in this cantica see the note to Purg. XII.110.) It seems likely that here the angel speaks, addressing Dante in Italian.
The protagonist, now freed, as we perhaps are meant to understand, from the P of Envy, is rapidly improving. It is he, and not Virgil, who insists on using the traveling time for self-improvement; he would like, in a sort of postlude to the terrace of Envy, to understand the remark of Guido del Duca (Purg. XIV.86-87): 'O race of men, why do you set your hearts on things that of necessity cannot be shared?' The moral consequence of such affection is to envy the possessor of what one longs for but cannot have; we remember that Satan, barely created (see Par. XXIX.55-57), immediately was prideful against his Maker (because of his envy of His power).
The word 'Romagna' occurs four times in the poem, twice in Inferno and twice in Purgatorio (Inf. XXVII.39; Inf. XXXIII.154; Purg. V.67; and here). That section of Italy thus refers to Guido da Montefeltro, Fra Alberigo, Jacopo del Cassero (as well as to Buonconte da Montefeltro), and to Guido del Duca, perhaps indicating that neither family nor region determines one's likelihood to be damned or saved.
Virgil's gloss on Guido's words in the last canto distinguishes earthly desires for individual possessions from heavenly enjoyment of the common good. Commentators, beginning with Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 43-57), cite the following passage from Augustine's City of God (XV.v): 'nullo [enim modo] fit minor, accedente seu permanente consorte, possessio bonitatis, quam tanto latius quanto concordius individua sociorum possidet charitas' ([goodness] is in no way lessened when it is shared, whether fleetingly or permanently, but grows the more the love of it spreads in others – Latin quoted from the version found in Pietro's commentary). While Picone (“Canto XV,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Purgatorio, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2001]), pp. 231-32, prefers the candidacy of a passage in a sonnet of Giacomo da Lentini ('Or come pote sì gran donna entrare'), the context and expression are extremely close to the passage in Augustine.
If Dante's will to learn is good, his capacities still flag, held back by his earthly view of riches and of the very nature of possession, which he can only conceive as selfish. In Convivio (III.xv.10) Dante had understood very well what his fictive self here still does not comprehend: 'li santi non hanno tra loro invidia' (the saints have no envious feelings about one another). Scartazzini (comm. to verse 74) was perhaps the first commentator to produce this citation in this context.
Virgil's final resolution of Dante's problem insists on the centrality of love as antidote to envy. Indeed, words for love (amore, carità, amare, ama) occur four times within seven lines. Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992], p. 330, n. 39), also notes the insistence on più (more) in vv. 55-62 (an astounding seven occurrences in eight lines, the densest presence of a single word in any passage of the poem, one might add) and here (vv. 73-74), perhaps underlining the need for the incremental conceptual refinement necessary for the redefinition of human affection toward a better end.
Virgil's phrasing here relies on the notion that bodies of light themselves attract light. Singleton (comm. to this verse) cites passages to this effect in St. Thomas (ST I-II, q. 85, a. 2, resp.) and in Dante (Conv. III.xiv.3).
The word ardore is, for Wlassics (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” in Filologia e critica dantesca: Studi offerti a Aldo Vallone [Florence: Olschki, 1989]), p. 166, the key word of this canto, uniting the notions of flame and of affection in its main significations.
Beatrice's second naming in Purgatorio (see VI.46; XVIII.48). In her first nominal appearance (after Inf. II.70 and II.103, where she is first named by Virgil and then herself), she first seems to be associated with hope (VI.32; 35); in her third, with faith (XVIII.48). Is she here associated with charity? If she is, what is the consequence for the traditional identification of Beatrice as 'Revelation' or 'Theology' (and of Virgil as 'Reason')? (Beatrice is named 63 times in all in the poem; Virgil, 31.) See the note to Purgatorio XVIII.46-48.
The clear reference here to the erasure of the second P earlier on calls attention to the problem that Dante has set for us, to determine exactly when this happened. See the note to vv. 38-39.
Dante's failure to respond to Virgil here perhaps prepares us for his more dramatic inability to communicate with his guide at the sudden appearance of Beatrice (Purg. XXX.43-51). It also has the effect of underlining the totally present and commanding nature of what he experiences in his raptus: there is nothing else that can hold his attention.
We now probably expect, on the basis of the experience we have had of the first two terraces, a description of the terrace upon which the travelers have just set foot (Purg. X.20-33, XIII.1-9). Its suppression here is obviously deliberate (we will find it, postponed as it is, only at the end of the canto at vv. 139-145 and then continuing into the next canto). In this way the poet underlines the heightened importance of the visionary experience granted to the protagonist on this terrace.
The three visions that follow are set off from the narrative by a precise vocabulary of vision, one that Dante had established as early as in his Vita nuova (see Hollander [“Vita Nuova: Dante's Perceptions of Beatrice,” Dante Studies 92 (1974)], pp. 3-7). This begins at once with the verse 'Ivi mi parve in una visione...' (There it seemed to me... in a... vision...), a formulation that needs at least its verb to take its meaning. If that verb were a form of vedere (to see), Dante's usual practice would assure us that he was describing a dream, indeed a 'Macrobian' dream, a 'fictive' visio that required allegorical explanation. The next line, however, adds two crucial terms, the adjective estatica (ecstatic) and the verb esser tratto (to be drawn up). These technical terms, the first of which occurs only once in the poem's universe, establish the radical difference between this visionary experience and that obtained in conventional dreams, for here what is at stake is the sort of sight that was given to such as Paul and John in the New Testament (and, as we shall see in a few lines, to St. Stephen as well).
In Dante the verb parere can have two quite different meanings (a common enough phenomenon in early modern poems – see Spenser, for instance, who 'specializes' in the first usage) – 'seem' (thus expressing a potentially limited or even non-existent truthfulness) or 'appeared' (to indicate something perceived that is actually present). The verbs parere and apparire are used throughout this passage (vv. 85, 93, 94, 102) to indicate presences that are experienced as being in fact present to the beholder in his ecstatic seeing; this is true as well of the verb vedere (vv. 87, 106, 109), used each time to indicate what has truly been made manifest to the beholder.
Momigliano's discussion of this passage points out that the verbs used to indicate what the protagonist sees in his rapture are in their infinitive form (vedere, v. 87; dir, v. 97; risponder, v. 103; ancider, v. 107; chinarsi, v. 109), thus lending to the experience a sense of timeless, placeless intensity – precisely, one is encouraged to add, in accord with the nature of ecstatic experience.
What is the precise meaning of the word visïone as it is used here? In Vita nuova the word was used six times to denote dreaming and, at the conclusion, once to denote 'vision' (in the Pauline or Johannine sense – see Hollander [“Vita Nuova: Dante's Perceptions of Beatrice,” Dante Studies 92 (1974)], p. 9). In the Commedia it is used a total of 10 times, as follows: Purg. IX.18; here; Purg. XVII.34 (in the same sense as here); Purg. XIX.56; Par. III.7; Par. XIV.41; Par. XIV.49 (in all these three last cases denoting the power of sight in general); Par. XVII.128; Par. XXIII.50; Par. XXXIII.62. In Purgatorio IX, XIX, and in Paradiso XXIII it denotes 'dream.' The other four occurrences include the usage which gave the poem a working title for some commentators (i.e., 'La visione di Dante Alighieri') at Paradiso XVII and XXXIII. That leaves us with the two uses here on the terrace of Wrath. How do we construe them? Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 85-87) offers the following bit of medieval etymologizing for the word 'ecstasy' (extasis): 'ab ex, quod est extra, et stasis, quod est status, quasi extra suum statum' (from ex, that is, outside, and stasis, that is, state: as though outside oneself). The word visïone modified by estatica denotes a very special kind of seeing, one that the poem will return to only with its final vision in the Empyrean. Thus the mode of presentation of the exemplars of meekness is, within the fiction, a preparation of the protagonist for his eventual opportunity to see God 'face to face.' Outside the fiction, it is a test of the reader's capacity to understand the nature of Dantean poetics, reliant upon claims that are, to say the very least, unusual for a poet to make for his poem, one that will finally offer us precisely una visïone estatica. Here the text offers us a foretaste of that final visionary moment.
The first exemplar is, as we have learned to expect, Mary. The narrative that clearly lies behind Dante's condensation of it is found in Luke's gospel (Luke 2:40-48). Mary, Joseph, and the twelve-year-old Jesus travel to Jerusalem at Passover and then the parents leave the city. In a remarkable moment, reflected in contemporary accounts of children left behind in cars or on school buses, they assume the boy is among their traveling companions and finally, discovering that he is not, return to Jerusalem to seek him out. Three days later they find him in the temple, explaining a thing or two to the rabbis (a moment that this writer had brought to mind when the fourteen-year-old Aaron Hollander [no relation] pointed out an error made by this Hollander in the first Collegiate School Colloquium in February of 2000.) If Dante abbreviates the rest of the episode in Luke, Mary's words to her son are translated almost precisely from Luke's Latin into Italian: 'Fili, quid fecisti nobis sic? Ecce pater tuus et ego dolentes quaerebamus te.' Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 85-105) point out that it is Dante's practice to translate Mary's Latin words from their religious sources with precision, probably as a sign of reverence.
Jesus as young genius is so palpably present that we need to remind ourselves that he is not the exemplary figure here; that is, indeed, his mother, who scolds him as gently as a scold may scold – as any former child will testify, remembering similar encounters with sterner mothers.
The second exemplar, once again a parent, is the sixth-century B.C. Athenian tyrant Pisistratus, known to Dante in this particular, according to many commentators (perhaps beginning with Pietro di Dante [Pietro1, comm. to vv. 94-96]), from Valerius Maximus, author of that first-century compendium of classical history and lore, Facta et dicta memorabilia, who tells the tale almost precisely as Dante retells it here. However, as Giampietro Marconi, in his entry “Valerio Massimo” (ED.1976.5) points out, none of the six passages in the Commedia traditionally cited as being of Valerian provenance may in fact be so. Of all the six (the other five occur as follows: Inf. XII.107-108; Inf. XXVII.7-12; Purg. XII.55-57; Purg. XXII.145; Purg. XXIX.115-116), he says, this one is the most likely to be so, although it might roughly as easily be derived from John of Salisbury's Policraticus, a text with which we are certain Dante was familiar. In short, the question of direct Dantean knowledge of Valerius's work is currently not resolved.
Like the first of these three exemplary scenes, this one also begins with the portrait of a mother. Where the parents of Jesus are united in benevolence, those of the daughter of Pisistratus are divided; this mother, reminiscent of the haughty Michal (see Purg. X.65 and note), leaves the performance of a loving forgiveness to her husband.
The wife of Pisistratus refers to the myth of the naming of Athens which Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to these verses) says derives from Augustine's retelling of the myth, found earlier in Varro, in De civitate Dei XVIII.9. During the kingship of Cecrops, when Athena (Minerva) and Poseidon (Neptune) both wanted to name the city, the other gods chose Athena because her gift was the olive tree, seen as more useful to humans than Poseidon's gift of a spring. Pietro also refers to the version of the tale found in Ovid (Metam. VI.70-102).
The artistry of Dante's treatment of the third and final exemplar, St. Stephen, the first martyr (Acts 7:54-59), is greatly admired; e.g., by Francesco De Sanctis (Opere, vol. 5 [Turin: Einaudi, 1967 (1869)]), who, while not offering the passage an extended treatment in his Dantean writings between 1853 and 1859, nonetheless refers to it warmly and frequently, making his admiration clear (pp. 27, 333, 420, 466). Among the three narratives exemplifying meekness, this is the only one in which that meekness is found in the youthful protagonist of the exemplary tale rather than in a parent. Arnaldo Bonaventura (Il canto XV del “Purgatorio” [(“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”) Florence: Sansoni, 1902]), p. 29, sees that the progression of figures that benefit from the forgiveness which runs counter to wrath has a purposeful order: from a beloved son, to a relative stranger, to one's enemies. Anyone would forgive the twelve-year-old Jesus his 'night out' in the temple; anyone, upon reflection, should perhaps forgive the youthful flamboyance of the amorous pursuer of a king's daughter; hardly anyone would choose to forgive his murderers.
Botterill's entry for “Martyrdom” in the The Dante Encyclopedia (Richard Lansing, ed., [New York: Garland, 2000]), pp. 595-97, cites Isidore of Seville's definition of martyrs as 'those who have suffered agonies in order to bear witness to Christ' (Etymologies VII.xi) and goes on to point out that Jesus, for His death on the cross, was in a real sense the first martyr to the Christian faith.
The youthfulness of Dante's portrayal of Stephen (as giovinetto) has caused controversy, beginning with Scartazzini's (comm. to this verse) objection that here Dante had fallen into a small error, since the Book of Acts portrayed Stephen as a mature man (homo, vir: e.g., Acts 6:5, 6:13). In Scartazzini's view, in a lapse of memory Dante had conflated the descriptions of Stephen and St. Paul, present as the youthful (adulescentis) Saul as a witness to the martyrdom (Acts 7:57). To this argument Poletto (comm. to vv. 106-108) objects, demonstrating that in Dante adolescence lasted until one is 25, while youth included the period between 25 and 45 (Conv. IV.xxiv.1-3), and also pointing out that Scipio and Pompey (Par. VI.52) are described as 'youths' (giovanetti), 33 and 25 years old, respectively, at the time of those great victories to which Dante refers. Sarolli, “Stefano” (ED.1976.5), is also in this camp. Vandelli, refurbishing the Scartazzini commentary to this verse argues that the description of Stephen's face as 'angelic' (faciem eius tamquam faciem angeli – Act.6:15) and a sermon attributed to St. Augustine (discovered by Orazio Bacci ca. 1902) stating that the proto-martyr shed his blood in the flower of his youth, both deprive Scartazzini's point of its force. It seems clear, nonetheless, that Dante wanted to make Stephen seem more innocent in his youthfulness; Arnaldo Bonaventura (Il canto XV del “Purgatorio” [(“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”) Florence: Sansoni, 1902]), p. 28, suggests that his practice here is much like that by which he made the sons of Ugolino younger, thus creating a more piteous scene in Inferno XXXIII. See the note to vv. 1-6 of this canto.
Esposito (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1969]), p. 189, cites Fedele Romani (“Il martirio di S. Stefano: Nota dantesca,” in Raccolta di studî critici dedicata ad Alessandro D'Ancona, festeggiandosi il XL anniversario del suo insegnamento [Florence: Barbera, 1901]), pp. 539-42, for possible sources of this scene in the visual arts, as well as Arnaldo Bonaventura (Il canto XV del “Purgatorio” [(“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”) Florence: Sansoni, 1902]), pp. 28-29, who suggested the possible influence of Giotto's depiction of the stoning in the old Duomo outside Arezzo, destroyed in 1561.
In Acts the words of the maddened crowd supplied here by Dante are not given. Wlassics (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” in Filologia e critica dantesca: Studi offerti a Aldo Vallone [Florence: Olschki, 1989]), p. 170, argues that Stephen's persecutors shout to themselves, not to one another, as almost all commentators (and translators) insist. Before him Casini/Barbi (comm. to this verse) do allow for this possibility, but only Mattalia, also commenting on it, had previously chosen this option. This interpretation is supported by at least one pressing consideration: in the source text (Act. 7:56) the stoners of Stephen are specifically described as, having stopped up their ears, crying out with a loud voice and rushing upon their victim. They are shouting rather to screw up their courage than to exhort one another – they are shouting as do those who charge in battle, wrestling with their fear. Our translation preserves this understanding of the verse.
What is seen by 'the eyes that are open to Heaven' is described in the source text in Stephen's own words (it is notable that Dante suppresses the words spoken by the proto-martyr and adds those spoken by his persecutors). Here is what he says he sees (Acts 7:56): 'Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.' It is precisely these words, reporting his vision, that cause his murderers to stop up their ears and attack him in their offended rage. In this moment in the poem, we may reflect, Dante's eyes (referred to, just before the visions begin, as luci vaghe [eager eyes] at verse 84) are as open to Stephen's martyrdom as Stephen's are to his heavenly vision.
The final action of these exemplary protagonists of mercy is obviously the most dramatic in the program: Stephen forgiving his murderers even as they murder him. His 'look' would 'unlock compassion' in anyone who beheld it – perhaps even his persecutors, but surely any decent Christian soul witnessing his martyrdom, including, just now, the protagonist.
On each terrace there is poetic space reserved for some sort of reaction on the part of the poet or protagonist (and, at times, his guide) to the experience of exemplarity. Of the thirteen other passages devoted to these transitional moments (Purg. X.94-99; Purg. XII.64-69; Purg. XIII.40-42; Purg. XIV.142-151; Purg. XVII.40-45; Purg. XVIII.127-129; Purg. XVIII.139-142: Purg. XX.34-36; Purg. XX.121-123; Purg. XXIII.1-6; Purg. XXIV.127-132; Purg. XXV.136-139; Purg. XXVI.49-51) none is even nearly as lengthy as this one, twenty-four verses; in fact only once is such a passage as long as three tercets, while this one extends over eight. It is clear that the poet wanted to direct our attention to the importance of this exchange between guide and protagonist.
Virgil's reactions give rise to a number of questions. Does or does not Virgil see the visions vouchsafed Dante? Is his response (vv. 120-123) evidence that he does not understand the nature of Dante's experience (as Dante seems to believe at vv. 125-126)? If a reader believes that to be the case, how does that reader respond to Virgil's insistence that he indeed knows Dante's innermost thoughts (vv. 127-138)?
The structure of the fifteenth canto is formed by three moments of Virgilian interpretation of phenomena:
10-39: Dante cannot behold the angel: Virgil explains the nature of the problem;
40-81: Dante did not understand Guido del Duca's words in the last canto: Virgil gives the necessary commentary, acknowledging Beatrice's higher authority;
115-138: Dante has a series of ecstatic visions: Virgil insists on explaining that he knows very well what they involved and says that he only calls attention to Dante's condition in order to spur him on.
In the first two scenes Virgil is clearly correct and thoroughly in control of the situation; in this last sequence he does not exactly issue triumphant.
The literal sense is not difficult: Dante was not seeing that which was present before his fleshly eyes; from that point of view (the merely physical one) he is delusional, is seeing what does not exist, seeing erroneous phantasms instead of what his physical eyes would report. But such 'errors' as these are the very heart of truth, or, in an extreme case of litotes (deliberate understatement), are, at the very least, 'not false.' See the discussion in Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992]), pp. 151-53.
Virgil's first response to Dante's 'awakening' back in the world of lesser truth is a bit brutal in its colloquial insistence on a less than noble cause for his condition. For Dante's apparent drunkenness see Glending Olson (“Inferno XXVII and the Perversions of Pentecost,” Dante Studies 117 [1999]), pp. 25-26. Olson addresses the relationship between these and the seemingly 'drunken' words of Boniface VIII, as described by Guido da Montefeltro in Inferno XXVII.99. The context of Acts 2:13 is clearly present here as well: witnessing the apostles speaking in tongues after the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them, the cynical pronounce them to be 'drunk with new wine.' It is interesting to see that Virgil is associated, in his response to Dante, similarly filled with the Spirit, with those who denied the action of the Holy Spirit in the apostles (see Lauren Scancarelli Seem [“Dante's Drunkenness and Virgil's Rebuke (Purg. 15.115-138),” Quaderni d'italianistica 12 (1991)], p. 74). Constance Breinin (Princeton '82) has also suggested the resonance here of Isaiah (Isaiah 28:7), where 'the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink...; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.' Seem (p. 74) points out that Dante's 'drunken' condition here, shortly after he has heard Beatrice's name (XV.77), mirrors his being 'come inebriato' (as though drunk) when he first saw Beatrice, as recorded in Vita nuova III.
Dante's response to Virgil intrinsically explains his physical condition as the result of his being in a state which granted him the ability to see that which, apparently, Virgil did not and could not see. If Virgil did not know this before he asked his question, he does know this much now – not what Dante saw, but the nature of his seeing: ecstatic vision. Dante here shares the iconography of another closed-eyed visionary, John the Divine; see Purgatorio XXIX.143-144, where John, represented as the last book of the New Testament, Revelation, is seen, like Dante here, walking in a visionary state with his eyes closed, 'dormendo.'
Virgil's claim for knowledge of even the least particular of Dante's mental awareness must be taken with skepticism (see discussion of Musa's arguments in the note to vv. 134-135).
What does Virgil know? We have some information with which to answer this question. On the terrace of Pride Virgil and Dante found the two sets of opposing exemplars displayed in marble carvings. Having seen the first set of these, once they had seen the second they could infer something about the structure of purgation and about its symbolic landscape. As a result, once Virgil hears the voices flying overhead, representing Charity, the virtue contrasted with Envy, he immediately understands that there will be a second set of sounds before the travelers leave the terrace (see the note to Purg. XIII.37-42). His situation here is more difficult, for he has seen nothing to indicate this terrace's mode of exemplary instruction. According to him, he reads Dante's mind. Perhaps we should view his claim with a certain dubiety. Dante speaks, announcing that he is seeing things that are not visible; as soon as Virgil connects that information with the physical signs that his 'drunken' charge is exhibiting, he understands: the exempla on this terrace are delivered through ecstatic vision, an experience reserved for only the elect. He knows that these visions must present positive figures of the opposing virtue, precisely 'to open your heart to the waters of peace,' as he tells Dante. No matter who may have been present in Dante's visions to represent meekness (and even Virgil may have by now divined that Mary will be the first of these), the meaning of the exemplars here will always be the same: to pour the water of peace upon the fires of wrath in the heart.
Bosco/Reggio are undoubtedly correct in suggesting that the two previous major possibilities debated in the commentaries over the literal sense of these verses are both less than convincing and go on to plead that in these verses Dante uses 'an imprecise expression.' It is difficult, surely, but not necessarily imprecise. See Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992]), p. 152, whose explanation of the literal sense is, while not entirely clear, much as our own. Dante's 'senseless' staggering reminds Virgil of the condition of those who see only with the inner eye, i.e., who are deprived of the sensuous organ of sight while they are rapt in a vision. Fernando Salsano (“Purgatorio Canto XV,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967]), pp. 568-70, reflects upon the debate as it came into his time. Cachey (“Purgatorio XV,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana]: Special Issue,12 [supplement], 1993), pp. 222-23, offers a more up-to-date review of various interpretations: (1) The current majority view has Virgil referring to himself as being sentient and thus unlike those who are fooled by outward appearances when they see someone faint without understanding the reason for the syncope; (2) another group would have Virgil denying that he is one who sees only with mortal eyes that cease their function in death. Achille Tartaro (“Il Canto XV del Purgatorio,” in Purgatorio: letture degli anni 1976-'79, ed. Silvio Zennaro, Casa di Dante in Roma [Rome: Bonacci, 1981]), p. 341, moved the question to better ground: (3) Virgil is referring to Dante's eyes and body (as indeed the context would suggest). However, Tartaro, too, has difficulty with the reasons behind Virgil's protestation (p. 321): 'I did not ask “What's wrong?” because of your appearance, which was that of a man who stares with unseeing eyes, his body having lost all vital spirit, but to spur your steps.' The only interpretation, however, that seems to offer a clear understanding of the difficult passage is one based on a comprehension of the tensions that exist here between the protagonist and his guide. Such a reading has been put forward by Lauren Scancarelli Seem (“Dante's Drunkenness and Virgil's Rebuke [Purg. 15.115-138],” Quaderni d'italianistica 12 [1991], pp. 71-82), who argues that what is at stake is Virgil's attempt to show that he has indeed known the nature of Dante's vision, that he did not think Dante was merely 'drunk.' And thus we can understand what he says as follows: 'I did not ask what was wrong with you because you were having a vision – of course, I understood that – but only because it was now time to get you back on the track.' As Musa has pointed out (see the notes to Inf. XVI.115 and XXIII.25), there is no evidence in the poem, despite Virgil's claim in Inferno XXIII (repeated here), that he actually can read the protagonist's mind – a capacity reserved for Beatrice and the other saved souls who interview Dante in the heavens. Our reading of the entire passage eventually depends on whether we accept Virgil's protestations here or question them. For a step-by-step analysis of the difficult details that have so afflicted the commentators, see Lauren Scancarelli Seem (“Dante's Drunkenness and Virgil's Rebuke [Purg. 15.115-138],” Quaderni d'italianistica 12 [1991]), pp. 75-80.
The description of this terrace, postponed from its expected space (see the note to vv. 82-84), begins now, as we first perceive the black smoke of anger that will cover the travelers and the penitents for the entirety of the following canto, the darkest part of Purgatorio.
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Quanto tra l'ultimar de l'ora terza
e 'l principio del dì par de la spera
che sempre a guisa di fanciullo scherza,
tanto pareva già inver' la sera
essere al sol del suo corso rimaso;
vespero là, e qui mezza notte era.
E i raggi ne ferien per mezzo 'l naso,
perché per noi girato era sì 'l monte,
che già dritti andavamo inver' l'occaso,
quand' io senti' a me gravar la fronte
a lo splendore assai più che di prima,
e stupor m'eran le cose non conte;
ond' io levai le mani inver' la cima
de le mie ciglia, e fecimi 'l solecchio,
che del soverchio visibile lima.
Come quando da l'acqua o da lo specchio
salta lo raggio a l'opposita parte,
salendo su per lo modo parecchio
a quel che scende, e tanto si diparte
dal cader de la pietra in igual tratta,
sì come mostra esperïenza e arte;
così mi parve da luce rifratta
quivi dinanzi a me esser percosso;
per che a fuggir la mia vista fu ratta.
“Che è quel, dolce padre, a che non posso
schermar lo viso tanto che mi vaglia,”
diss' io, “e pare inver' noi esser mosso?”
“Non ti maravigliar s'ancor t'abbaglia
la famiglia del cielo,” a me rispuose:
“messo è che viene ad invitar ch'om saglia.
Tosto sarà ch'a veder queste cose
non ti fia grave, ma fieti diletto
quanto natura a sentir ti dispuose.”
Poi giunti fummo a l'angel benedetto,
con lieta voce disse: “Intrate quinci
ad un scaleo vie men che li altri eretto.”
Noi montavam, già partiti di linci,
e “Beati misericordes!” fue
cantato retro, e “Godi tu che vinci!”
Lo mio maestro e io soli amendue
suso andavamo; e io pensai, andando,
prode acquistar ne le parole sue;
e dirizza'mi a lui sì dimandando:
“Che volse dir lo spirto di Romagna,
e 'divieto' e 'consorte' menzionando?”
Per ch'elli a me: “Di sua maggior magagna
conosce il danno; e però non s'ammiri
se ne riprende perché men si piagna.
Perché s'appuntano i vostri disiri
dove per compagnia parte si scema,
invidia move il mantaco a' sospiri.
Ma se l'amor de la spera supprema
torcesse in suso il disiderio vostro,
non vi sarebbe al petto quella tema;
ché, per quanti si dice più lì 'nostro,'
tanto possiede più di ben ciascuno,
e più di caritate arde in quel chiostro.”
“Io son d'esser contento più digiuno,”
diss' io, “che se mi fosse pria taciuto,
e più di dubbio ne la mente aduno.
Com' esser puote ch'un ben, distributo
in più posseditor, faccia più ricchi
di sé che se da pochi è posseduto?”
Ed elli a me: “Però che tu rificchi
la mente pur a le cose terrene,
di vera luce tenebre dispicchi.
Quello infinito e ineffabil bene
che là sù è, così corre ad amore
com' a lucido corpo raggio vene.
Tanto si dà quanto trova d'ardore;
sì che, quantunque carità si stende,
cresce sovr' essa l'etterno valore.
E quanta gente più là sù s'intende,
più v'è da bene amare, e più vi s'ama,
e come specchio l'uno a l'altro rende.
E se la mia ragion non ti disfama,
vedrai Beatrice, ed ella pienamente
ti torrà questa e ciascun' altra brama.
Procaccia pur che tosto sieno spente,
come son già le due, le cinque piaghe,
che si richiudon per esser dolente.”
Com' io voleva dicer “Tu m'appaghe,”
vidimi giunto in su l'altro girone,
sì che tacer mi fer le luci vaghe.
Ivi mi parve in una visïone
estatica di sùbito esser tratto,
e vedere in un tempio più persone;
e una donna, in su l'entrar, con atto
dolce di madre dicer: “Figliuol mio,
perché hai tu così verso noi fatto?
Ecco, dolenti, lo tuo padre e io
ti cercavamo.” E come qui si tacque,
ciò che pareva prima, dispario.
Indi m'apparve un'altra con quell' acque
giù per le gote che 'l dolor distilla
quando di gran dispetto in altrui nacque,
e dir: “Se tu se' sire de la villa
del cui nome ne' dèi fu tanta lite,
e onde ogne scïenza disfavilla,
vendica te di quelle braccia ardite
ch'abbracciar nostra figlia, o Pisistràto.”
E 'l segnor mi parea, benigno e mite,
risponder lei con viso temperato:
“Che farem noi a chi mal ne disira,
se quei che ci ama è per noi condannato?”
Poi vidi genti accese in foco d'ira
con pietre un giovinetto ancider, forte
gridando a sé pur: “Martira, martira!”
E lui vedea chinarsi, per la morte
che l'aggravava già, inver' la terra,
ma de li occhi facea sempre al ciel porte,
orando a l'alto Sire, in tanta guerra,
che perdonasse a' suoi persecutori,
con quello aspetto che pietà diserra.
Quando l'anima mia tornò di fori
a le cose che son fuor di lei vere,
io riconobbi i miei non falsi errori.
Lo duca mio, che mi potea vedere
far sì com' om che dal sonno si slega,
disse: “Che hai che non ti puoi tenere,
ma se' venuto più che mezza lega
velando li occhi e con le gambe avvolte,
a guisa di cui vino o sonno piega?”
“O dolce padre mio, se tu m'ascolte,
io ti dirò,” diss' io, “ciò che m'apparve
quando le gambe mi furon sì tolte.”
Ed ei: “Se tu avessi cento larve
sovra la faccia, non mi sarian chiuse
le tue cogitazion, quantunque parve.
Ciò che vedesti fu perché non scuse
d'aprir lo core a l'acque de la pace
che da l'etterno fonte son diffuse.
Non dimandai 'Che hai?' per quel che face
chi guarda pur con l'occhio che non vede,
quando disanimato il corpo giace;
ma dimandai per darti forza al piede:
così frugar conviensi i pigri, lenti
ad usar lor vigilia quando riede.”
Noi andavam per lo vespero, attenti
oltre quanto potean li occhi allungarsi
contra i raggi serotini e lucenti.
Ed ecco a poco a poco un fummo farsi
verso di noi come la notte oscuro;
né da quello era loco da cansarsi.
Questo ne tolse li occhi e l'aere puro.
As much as 'twixt the close of the third hour
And dawn of day appeareth of that sphere
Which aye in fashion of a child is playing,
So much it now appeared, towards the night,
Was of his course remaining to the sun;
There it was evening, and 'twas midnight here;
And the rays smote the middle of our faces,
Because by us the mount was so encircled,
That straight towards the west we now were going
When I perceived my forehead overpowered
Beneath the splendour far more than at first,
And stupor were to me the things unknown,
Whereat towards the summit of my brow
I raised my hands, and made myself the visor
Which the excessive glare diminishes.
As when from off the water, or a mirror,
The sunbeam leaps unto the opposite side,
Ascending upward in the selfsame measure
That it descends, and deviates as far
From falling of a stone in line direct,
(As demonstrate experiment and art,)
So it appeared to me that by a light
Refracted there before me I was smitten;
On which account my sight was swift to flee.
"What is that, Father sweet, from which I cannot
So fully screen my sight that it avail me,"
Said I, "and seems towards us to be moving?"
"Marvel thou not, if dazzle thee as yet
The family of heaven," he answered me;
"An angel 'tis, who comes to invite us upward.
Soon will it be, that to behold these things
Shall not be grievous, but delightful to thee
As much as nature fashioned thee to feel."
When we had reached the Angel benedight,
With joyful voice he said: "Here enter in
To stairway far less steep than are the others."
We mounting were, already thence departed,
And "Beati misericordes" was
Behind us sung, "Rejoice, thou that o'ercomest!"
My Master and myself, we two alone
Were going upward, and I thought, in going,
Some profit to acquire from words of his;
And I to him directed me, thus asking:
"What did the spirit of Romagna mean,
Mentioning interdict and partnership?"
Whence he to me: "Of his own greatest failing
He knows the harm; and therefore wonder not
If he reprove us, that we less may rue it.
Because are thither pointed your desires
Where by companionship each share is lessened,
Envy doth ply the bellows to your sighs.
But if the love of the supernal sphere
Should upwardly direct your aspiration,
There would not be that fear within your breast;
For there, as much the more as one says 'Our,'
So much the more of good each one possesses,
And more of charity in that cloister burns."
"I am more hungering to be satisfied,"
I said, "than if I had before been silent,
And more of doubt within my mind I gather.
How can it be, that boon distributed
The more possessors can more wealthy make
Therein, than if by few it be possessed?"
And he to me: "Because thou fixest still
Thy mind entirely upon earthly things,
Thou pluckest darkness from the very light.
That goodness infinite and ineffable
Which is above there, runneth unto love,
As to a lucid body comes the sunbeam.
So much it gives itself as it finds ardour,
So that as far as charity extends,
O'er it increases the eternal valour.
And the more people thitherward aspire,
More are there to love well, and more they love there,
And, as a mirror, one reflects the other.
And if my reasoning appease thee not,
Thou shalt see Beatrice; and she will fully
Take from thee this and every other longing.
Endeavour, then, that soon may be extinct,
As are the two already, the five wounds
That close themselves again by being painful."
Even as I wished to say, "Thou dost appease me,"
I saw that I had reached another circle,
So that my eager eyes made me keep silence.
There it appeared to me that in a vision
Ecstatic on a sudden I was rapt,
And in a temple many persons saw;
And at the door a woman, with the sweet
Behaviour of a mother, saying: "Son,
Why in this manner hast thou dealt with us?
Lo, sorrowing, thy father and myself
Were seeking for thee;"—and as here she ceased,
That which appeared at first had disappeared.
Then I beheld another with those waters
Adown her cheeks which grief distils whenever
From great disdain of others it is born,
And saying: "If of that city thou art lord,
For whose name was such strife among the gods,
And whence doth every science scintillate,
Avenge thyself on those audacious arms
That clasped our daughter, O Pisistratus;"
And the lord seemed to me benign and mild
To answer her with aspect temperate:
"What shall we do to those who wish us ill,
If he who loves us be by us condemned?"
Then saw I people hot in fire of wrath,
With stones a young man slaying, clamorously
Still crying to each other, "Kill him! kill him!"
And him I saw bow down, because of death
That weighed already on him, to the earth,
But of his eyes made ever gates to heaven,
Imploring the high Lord, in so great strife,
That he would pardon those his persecutors,
With such an aspect as unlocks compassion.
Soon as my soul had outwardly returned
To things external to it which are true,
Did I my not false errors recognize.
My Leader, who could see me bear myself
Like to a man that rouses him from sleep,
Exclaimed: "What ails thee, that thou canst not stand?
But hast been coming more than half a league
Veiling thine eyes, and with thy legs entangled,
In guise of one whom wine or sleep subdues?"
"O my sweet Father, if thou listen to me,
I'll tell thee," said I, "what appeared to me,
When thus from me my legs were ta'en away."
And he: "If thou shouldst have a hundred masks
Upon thy face, from me would not be shut
Thy cogitations, howsoever small.
What thou hast seen was that thou mayst not fail
To ope thy heart unto the waters of peace,
Which from the eternal fountain are diffused.
I did not ask, 'What ails thee?' as he does
Who only looketh with the eyes that see not
When of the soul bereft the body lies,
But asked it to give vigour to thy feet;
Thus must we needs urge on the sluggards, slow
To use their wakefulness when it returns."
We passed along, athwart the twilight peering
Forward as far as ever eye could stretch
Against the sunbeams serotine and lucent;
And lo! by slow degrees a smoke approached
In our direction, sombre as the night,
Nor was there place to hide one's self therefrom.
This of our eyes and the pure air bereft us.
This belabored opening has bothered any number of readers. Benvenuto, commenting on its six verses, remarks that all Dante means to say is that it is the hour of Vespers, and that he does so by means of circumlocution ('per unam circuitionem verborum'). However, Arnaldo Bonaventura (Il canto XV del “Purgatorio” [(“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”), Florence: Sansoni, 1902]), pp. 9-10, chides Venturi (comm. to verse 3) for labeling the construction a 'miserabile similitudine' (perfectly dreadful simile) and remarks that such lighthearted moments are also to be found in the Psalms of David and in the epics of Homer and of Virgil. Cachey (“Purgatorio XV,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana]: Special Issue,12 [supplement], 1993), pp. 212-14, following, as he says, Longfellow (comm. to verse 1), and who speaks of Dante's poetry as being playful, has learned to enjoy the poetic playfulness of vv. 1-40, so long softly ridiculed and even characterized as a result of the poet's letting us see his worst (pedantic) side. Longfellow, bringing a fellow poet's perspective to the passage, had realized that Dante is not a stuffed owl and perceived that his fellow poet is having a little fun with himself and with us: 'Dante states this simple fact with curious circumlocution, as if he would imitate the celestial sphere in this scherzoso movement. The beginning of the day is sunrise; consequently the end of the third hour, three hours after sunrise, is represented by an arc of the celestial sphere measuring forty-five degrees. The sun had still an equal space to pass over before his setting. This would make it afternoon in purgatory, and midnight in Tuscany, where Dante was writing the poem.' For a similar time-telling passage see Purgatorio III.25-26 and the accompanying note. Here, however, Dante underlines his ludic propensity in his first rhyme: terza-scherza, as though to imply that this very tercet is itself playful.
It is to Cachey's credit that he builds his treatment of the entire canto on his sense of this initial burst of 'childish' enthusiasm. Exuberance is the strand that ties together many elements of the canto, from its beginning to its end, juxtaposing youthful, innocent play against older 'high seriousness.' The morning sun is not currently shining on the mount of purgatory but is summoned in order to begin the canto, and is then followed by a series of benign presences: Dante (both as poet and as protagonist); the Angel of Mercy; Virgil's representation of the loving souls in paradise, including Beatrice; the twelve-year-old Jesus and his mildly chastising mother; the youth who kissed the daughter of Pisistratus and this non-judgmental father; the youthful martyr Stephen; the 'drunken' protagonist. The exuberant love of God and ecstatic awareness of His presence eventually fills the canto. Mario Marti (“Purgatorio XV,” in Letture dantesche. II. “Purgatorio,” ed. G. Getto [Florence: Sansoni, 1965 (1961)], pp. 63-79, deserves credit for seeing the canto's virtues, given its history of relative neglect among the commentators, and especially its engagement with light, a theme insisted upon even more forcefully by Tibor Wlassics (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” in Filologia e critica dantesca: Studi offerti a Aldo Vallone [Florence: Olschki, 1989]), pp. 172-74, who comments upon the many words for light found in vv. 7-33 and reflects that they function as corrective responses to the darkness that typified our experience of Envy. He might have added that Canto XV exists as a sort of island of light between the blindness of Envy and the encompassing black smoke of Wrath, which the protagonist will enter at the end of this canto.
For a review of the debate as to whether the word spera (verse 2) refers to the sun itself, the celestial sphere it occupies (or still other things) see Enzo Esposito (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1969]), pp. 171-74.
The travelers, proceeding to their right as they climbed the mountain, have now moved some 90o along the circle of which it is the center. The sun, at 3pm, is thus to the northwest as it heads west ahead of them. Where it was behind them before (Purg. III.16-18), it now stands directly before them, brighter than it has been, to Dante's sight, at any point yet in the poem. This excess of light will carry forward into the brightness of the ecstatic light that is soon to flood the inner eye of the protagonist.
Poletto (comm. to this tercet) calls attention to the passage in Convivio (III.ix.10) in which Dante says that Aristotle had confuted Plato's notion that our eyesight went out from us to take cognizance of external things, arguing (correctly, adds Dante) that things that we perceive through the eyes (lo visibile – the noun that Dante uses here) strike upon our senses, not the senses on them. See Inferno X.69.
This simile introduces a 'second sun' to Dante's dazzled glance, now the reflected radiance of the angel, as seems clear from the context and despite some early commentators who believe this is the direct beam of the light of God or of the sun itself. It seems to be neither, nor indeed the direct beam of brightness from the angel of this second terrace. As the elaborate simile and the sequential description of the light make plain enough, the light bounces down, like Pele's most famous goal, in a World Cup final some years ago, and then up, under Dante's protective hand, so that the angle of incidence is the same as the angle of reflection (V), notions established, for Dante, by such authorities as Euclid and Albertus Magnus. For Dante's knowledge of the phenomenon see Convivio II.iii.vi (where he refers to the science of perspective, or optics) and Paradiso I.49-50. Poletto (comm. to this passage) reviews the debate over whether the light comes straight from God to the angel to Dante or bounces from the angel off the ground and back up and strongly supports the second view. And Dante's two evasive actions (shading his eyes with his hand as the angel approaches; turning away when the reflected ray bounces under that hand) come close to guaranteeing this reading. Carroll (comm. to vv. 10-24) adds a moral dimension to this interpretation: where the light shining from the Angel of Humility (Purg. XII.89-90) was relatively demure, the light of this angel, countering the meanness of Envy even when reflected off the livid stone floor of this terrace, is brilliant with the loving mercy of God.
The notion that these lines themselves reflect a source in Virgil (Aen. VIII.22-25) was perhaps first suggested by Poletto and enjoys some currency.
Virgil's promise that eventually Dante's eyes, as his soul becomes more fit for the task, will be able to look upon angelic radiance without turning away is fulfilled at least in Purgatorio XXX, vv. 10 and 18, where this word for 'angel,' messo (or messaggiero) – 'messenger,' is next (and for the last time) employed (it was introduced to the poem in Inf. IX.85).
The 'stairway' to the third terrace will be less steep than those to Pride and Envy. The slowly disappearing P's on Dante's brow, the increasing lightness of his being, the increasing ease of the ascent, all these elements underline the general improvement of the penitent's moral condition, comparable to that of a patient who has survived a crisis and now grows rapidly stronger.
A portion of the fifth Beatitude in Matthew (5:7), 'Blessèd are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,' is here accompanied by an Italian phrase. In one later moment (on the terrace of Gluttony, Purg. XXIV.151-154) Dante will set the angel's recasting of one of the Beatitudes in Italian. Here he offers biblical Latin conjoined with a subsequent Italian expression. Various issues have puzzled various commentators of this somewhat surprising conjunction. (1) What biblical text do these words paraphrase? (2) Who speaks, the angel or the penitents that Dante leaves behind? (3) Are the words directed to Dante or are they some sort of general expression? (4) Why does the speaker (whoever it is who speaks) resort to Italian?
(1) Most commentators after Daniello (comm. to verse 39) are drawn to the subsequent text in this chapter in Matthew's gospel (5:12), Jesus's conclusion of his sermon, in which he tells those who are true to Him to 'rejoice (gaudete) and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven'; others (after Pietro di Dante [Pietro1, to verse 39]), however, prefer Paul's words in Romans 12:21: 'Be not overcome by evil, but overcome (“vince”) evil with good'; still others (comforted by Longfellow [comm. to verse 39]), Revelation 2:7: 'To him who overcomes (“vincenti”) will I give to eat of the tree of life.' It is difficult to be sure which of these is the most apt, but context, proximity, and support in many commentaries give the text in Matthew a certain advantage.
In order to answer the last three questions, it is probably necessary to consider the entire program of the angelic utterances to Dante during his penitential ascent of the mountain. These moments occur as follows: Purgatorio XII.110-111; XV.38-39; XVII.68-69; XIX.49-50; XXII.5-6; XXIV.151-154; XXVII.8-9. In each of the last five of these the text clearly and specifically attributes the words to the angel. Only the first and second are, when we first read them, opaque, but surely allow the possibility that some other source accounts for them (most probably the souls of the penitents of the terrace that Dante is about to leave). Nonetheless, it is at the very least probable that the angel speaks on these first two occasions as well. Given the fact that this is the case on each and every later terrace, we must surely allow that this seems the wisest hypothesis to follow. We should also take note of the facts that on the sixth terrace the angel paraphrases a Beatitude in Italian rather than reciting a phrase from it in Latin (Purg. XXIV.151-154) and that, on the seventh, his practice is exactly as we find it here: Latin for the citation of the Beatitude, Italian for his concluding advice to Dante (Purg. XXVII.8-9; 10-12). And there is one further common element in the second and seventh scenes: in all the others there is specific reference to the angel's wing or feathers erasing a 'P' from Dante's forehead; in these two scenes there is no such description, thus leading us to speculate that the angel's Italian utterance is probably meant to coincide with the erasure, a linguistic gesture that accompanies the undescribed act of absolution, as Esposito (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1969]), p. 181, suggests for this occurrence. That three angels speak Italian, two in part, one wholly, is a suggestive detail in a poem that is raising the vernacular to a level it had not sought heretofore. (For the program of Italian in the speech of angels see Kevin Brownlee (“Why the Angels Speak Italian: Dante as Vernacular Poeta in Paradiso XXV,” Poetics Today 5 [1984], pp. 597-610); for that of the Beatitudes in this cantica see the note to Purg. XII.110.) It seems likely that here the angel speaks, addressing Dante in Italian.
The protagonist, now freed, as we perhaps are meant to understand, from the P of Envy, is rapidly improving. It is he, and not Virgil, who insists on using the traveling time for self-improvement; he would like, in a sort of postlude to the terrace of Envy, to understand the remark of Guido del Duca (Purg. XIV.86-87): 'O race of men, why do you set your hearts on things that of necessity cannot be shared?' The moral consequence of such affection is to envy the possessor of what one longs for but cannot have; we remember that Satan, barely created (see Par. XXIX.55-57), immediately was prideful against his Maker (because of his envy of His power).
The word 'Romagna' occurs four times in the poem, twice in Inferno and twice in Purgatorio (Inf. XXVII.39; Inf. XXXIII.154; Purg. V.67; and here). That section of Italy thus refers to Guido da Montefeltro, Fra Alberigo, Jacopo del Cassero (as well as to Buonconte da Montefeltro), and to Guido del Duca, perhaps indicating that neither family nor region determines one's likelihood to be damned or saved.
Virgil's gloss on Guido's words in the last canto distinguishes earthly desires for individual possessions from heavenly enjoyment of the common good. Commentators, beginning with Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 43-57), cite the following passage from Augustine's City of God (XV.v): 'nullo [enim modo] fit minor, accedente seu permanente consorte, possessio bonitatis, quam tanto latius quanto concordius individua sociorum possidet charitas' ([goodness] is in no way lessened when it is shared, whether fleetingly or permanently, but grows the more the love of it spreads in others – Latin quoted from the version found in Pietro's commentary). While Picone (“Canto XV,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Purgatorio, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2001]), pp. 231-32, prefers the candidacy of a passage in a sonnet of Giacomo da Lentini ('Or come pote sì gran donna entrare'), the context and expression are extremely close to the passage in Augustine.
If Dante's will to learn is good, his capacities still flag, held back by his earthly view of riches and of the very nature of possession, which he can only conceive as selfish. In Convivio (III.xv.10) Dante had understood very well what his fictive self here still does not comprehend: 'li santi non hanno tra loro invidia' (the saints have no envious feelings about one another). Scartazzini (comm. to verse 74) was perhaps the first commentator to produce this citation in this context.
Virgil's final resolution of Dante's problem insists on the centrality of love as antidote to envy. Indeed, words for love (amore, carità, amare, ama) occur four times within seven lines. Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992], p. 330, n. 39), also notes the insistence on più (more) in vv. 55-62 (an astounding seven occurrences in eight lines, the densest presence of a single word in any passage of the poem, one might add) and here (vv. 73-74), perhaps underlining the need for the incremental conceptual refinement necessary for the redefinition of human affection toward a better end.
Virgil's phrasing here relies on the notion that bodies of light themselves attract light. Singleton (comm. to this verse) cites passages to this effect in St. Thomas (ST I-II, q. 85, a. 2, resp.) and in Dante (Conv. III.xiv.3).
The word ardore is, for Wlassics (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” in Filologia e critica dantesca: Studi offerti a Aldo Vallone [Florence: Olschki, 1989]), p. 166, the key word of this canto, uniting the notions of flame and of affection in its main significations.
Beatrice's second naming in Purgatorio (see VI.46; XVIII.48). In her first nominal appearance (after Inf. II.70 and II.103, where she is first named by Virgil and then herself), she first seems to be associated with hope (VI.32; 35); in her third, with faith (XVIII.48). Is she here associated with charity? If she is, what is the consequence for the traditional identification of Beatrice as 'Revelation' or 'Theology' (and of Virgil as 'Reason')? (Beatrice is named 63 times in all in the poem; Virgil, 31.) See the note to Purgatorio XVIII.46-48.
The clear reference here to the erasure of the second P earlier on calls attention to the problem that Dante has set for us, to determine exactly when this happened. See the note to vv. 38-39.
Dante's failure to respond to Virgil here perhaps prepares us for his more dramatic inability to communicate with his guide at the sudden appearance of Beatrice (Purg. XXX.43-51). It also has the effect of underlining the totally present and commanding nature of what he experiences in his raptus: there is nothing else that can hold his attention.
We now probably expect, on the basis of the experience we have had of the first two terraces, a description of the terrace upon which the travelers have just set foot (Purg. X.20-33, XIII.1-9). Its suppression here is obviously deliberate (we will find it, postponed as it is, only at the end of the canto at vv. 139-145 and then continuing into the next canto). In this way the poet underlines the heightened importance of the visionary experience granted to the protagonist on this terrace.
The three visions that follow are set off from the narrative by a precise vocabulary of vision, one that Dante had established as early as in his Vita nuova (see Hollander [“Vita Nuova: Dante's Perceptions of Beatrice,” Dante Studies 92 (1974)], pp. 3-7). This begins at once with the verse 'Ivi mi parve in una visione...' (There it seemed to me... in a... vision...), a formulation that needs at least its verb to take its meaning. If that verb were a form of vedere (to see), Dante's usual practice would assure us that he was describing a dream, indeed a 'Macrobian' dream, a 'fictive' visio that required allegorical explanation. The next line, however, adds two crucial terms, the adjective estatica (ecstatic) and the verb esser tratto (to be drawn up). These technical terms, the first of which occurs only once in the poem's universe, establish the radical difference between this visionary experience and that obtained in conventional dreams, for here what is at stake is the sort of sight that was given to such as Paul and John in the New Testament (and, as we shall see in a few lines, to St. Stephen as well).
In Dante the verb parere can have two quite different meanings (a common enough phenomenon in early modern poems – see Spenser, for instance, who 'specializes' in the first usage) – 'seem' (thus expressing a potentially limited or even non-existent truthfulness) or 'appeared' (to indicate something perceived that is actually present). The verbs parere and apparire are used throughout this passage (vv. 85, 93, 94, 102) to indicate presences that are experienced as being in fact present to the beholder in his ecstatic seeing; this is true as well of the verb vedere (vv. 87, 106, 109), used each time to indicate what has truly been made manifest to the beholder.
Momigliano's discussion of this passage points out that the verbs used to indicate what the protagonist sees in his rapture are in their infinitive form (vedere, v. 87; dir, v. 97; risponder, v. 103; ancider, v. 107; chinarsi, v. 109), thus lending to the experience a sense of timeless, placeless intensity – precisely, one is encouraged to add, in accord with the nature of ecstatic experience.
What is the precise meaning of the word visïone as it is used here? In Vita nuova the word was used six times to denote dreaming and, at the conclusion, once to denote 'vision' (in the Pauline or Johannine sense – see Hollander [“Vita Nuova: Dante's Perceptions of Beatrice,” Dante Studies 92 (1974)], p. 9). In the Commedia it is used a total of 10 times, as follows: Purg. IX.18; here; Purg. XVII.34 (in the same sense as here); Purg. XIX.56; Par. III.7; Par. XIV.41; Par. XIV.49 (in all these three last cases denoting the power of sight in general); Par. XVII.128; Par. XXIII.50; Par. XXXIII.62. In Purgatorio IX, XIX, and in Paradiso XXIII it denotes 'dream.' The other four occurrences include the usage which gave the poem a working title for some commentators (i.e., 'La visione di Dante Alighieri') at Paradiso XVII and XXXIII. That leaves us with the two uses here on the terrace of Wrath. How do we construe them? Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 85-87) offers the following bit of medieval etymologizing for the word 'ecstasy' (extasis): 'ab ex, quod est extra, et stasis, quod est status, quasi extra suum statum' (from ex, that is, outside, and stasis, that is, state: as though outside oneself). The word visïone modified by estatica denotes a very special kind of seeing, one that the poem will return to only with its final vision in the Empyrean. Thus the mode of presentation of the exemplars of meekness is, within the fiction, a preparation of the protagonist for his eventual opportunity to see God 'face to face.' Outside the fiction, it is a test of the reader's capacity to understand the nature of Dantean poetics, reliant upon claims that are, to say the very least, unusual for a poet to make for his poem, one that will finally offer us precisely una visïone estatica. Here the text offers us a foretaste of that final visionary moment.
The first exemplar is, as we have learned to expect, Mary. The narrative that clearly lies behind Dante's condensation of it is found in Luke's gospel (Luke 2:40-48). Mary, Joseph, and the twelve-year-old Jesus travel to Jerusalem at Passover and then the parents leave the city. In a remarkable moment, reflected in contemporary accounts of children left behind in cars or on school buses, they assume the boy is among their traveling companions and finally, discovering that he is not, return to Jerusalem to seek him out. Three days later they find him in the temple, explaining a thing or two to the rabbis (a moment that this writer had brought to mind when the fourteen-year-old Aaron Hollander [no relation] pointed out an error made by this Hollander in the first Collegiate School Colloquium in February of 2000.) If Dante abbreviates the rest of the episode in Luke, Mary's words to her son are translated almost precisely from Luke's Latin into Italian: 'Fili, quid fecisti nobis sic? Ecce pater tuus et ego dolentes quaerebamus te.' Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 85-105) point out that it is Dante's practice to translate Mary's Latin words from their religious sources with precision, probably as a sign of reverence.
Jesus as young genius is so palpably present that we need to remind ourselves that he is not the exemplary figure here; that is, indeed, his mother, who scolds him as gently as a scold may scold – as any former child will testify, remembering similar encounters with sterner mothers.
The second exemplar, once again a parent, is the sixth-century B.C. Athenian tyrant Pisistratus, known to Dante in this particular, according to many commentators (perhaps beginning with Pietro di Dante [Pietro1, comm. to vv. 94-96]), from Valerius Maximus, author of that first-century compendium of classical history and lore, Facta et dicta memorabilia, who tells the tale almost precisely as Dante retells it here. However, as Giampietro Marconi, in his entry “Valerio Massimo” (ED.1976.5) points out, none of the six passages in the Commedia traditionally cited as being of Valerian provenance may in fact be so. Of all the six (the other five occur as follows: Inf. XII.107-108; Inf. XXVII.7-12; Purg. XII.55-57; Purg. XXII.145; Purg. XXIX.115-116), he says, this one is the most likely to be so, although it might roughly as easily be derived from John of Salisbury's Policraticus, a text with which we are certain Dante was familiar. In short, the question of direct Dantean knowledge of Valerius's work is currently not resolved.
Like the first of these three exemplary scenes, this one also begins with the portrait of a mother. Where the parents of Jesus are united in benevolence, those of the daughter of Pisistratus are divided; this mother, reminiscent of the haughty Michal (see Purg. X.65 and note), leaves the performance of a loving forgiveness to her husband.
The wife of Pisistratus refers to the myth of the naming of Athens which Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to these verses) says derives from Augustine's retelling of the myth, found earlier in Varro, in De civitate Dei XVIII.9. During the kingship of Cecrops, when Athena (Minerva) and Poseidon (Neptune) both wanted to name the city, the other gods chose Athena because her gift was the olive tree, seen as more useful to humans than Poseidon's gift of a spring. Pietro also refers to the version of the tale found in Ovid (Metam. VI.70-102).
The artistry of Dante's treatment of the third and final exemplar, St. Stephen, the first martyr (Acts 7:54-59), is greatly admired; e.g., by Francesco De Sanctis (Opere, vol. 5 [Turin: Einaudi, 1967 (1869)]), who, while not offering the passage an extended treatment in his Dantean writings between 1853 and 1859, nonetheless refers to it warmly and frequently, making his admiration clear (pp. 27, 333, 420, 466). Among the three narratives exemplifying meekness, this is the only one in which that meekness is found in the youthful protagonist of the exemplary tale rather than in a parent. Arnaldo Bonaventura (Il canto XV del “Purgatorio” [(“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”) Florence: Sansoni, 1902]), p. 29, sees that the progression of figures that benefit from the forgiveness which runs counter to wrath has a purposeful order: from a beloved son, to a relative stranger, to one's enemies. Anyone would forgive the twelve-year-old Jesus his 'night out' in the temple; anyone, upon reflection, should perhaps forgive the youthful flamboyance of the amorous pursuer of a king's daughter; hardly anyone would choose to forgive his murderers.
Botterill's entry for “Martyrdom” in the The Dante Encyclopedia (Richard Lansing, ed., [New York: Garland, 2000]), pp. 595-97, cites Isidore of Seville's definition of martyrs as 'those who have suffered agonies in order to bear witness to Christ' (Etymologies VII.xi) and goes on to point out that Jesus, for His death on the cross, was in a real sense the first martyr to the Christian faith.
The youthfulness of Dante's portrayal of Stephen (as giovinetto) has caused controversy, beginning with Scartazzini's (comm. to this verse) objection that here Dante had fallen into a small error, since the Book of Acts portrayed Stephen as a mature man (homo, vir: e.g., Acts 6:5, 6:13). In Scartazzini's view, in a lapse of memory Dante had conflated the descriptions of Stephen and St. Paul, present as the youthful (adulescentis) Saul as a witness to the martyrdom (Acts 7:57). To this argument Poletto (comm. to vv. 106-108) objects, demonstrating that in Dante adolescence lasted until one is 25, while youth included the period between 25 and 45 (Conv. IV.xxiv.1-3), and also pointing out that Scipio and Pompey (Par. VI.52) are described as 'youths' (giovanetti), 33 and 25 years old, respectively, at the time of those great victories to which Dante refers. Sarolli, “Stefano” (ED.1976.5), is also in this camp. Vandelli, refurbishing the Scartazzini commentary to this verse argues that the description of Stephen's face as 'angelic' (faciem eius tamquam faciem angeli – Act.6:15) and a sermon attributed to St. Augustine (discovered by Orazio Bacci ca. 1902) stating that the proto-martyr shed his blood in the flower of his youth, both deprive Scartazzini's point of its force. It seems clear, nonetheless, that Dante wanted to make Stephen seem more innocent in his youthfulness; Arnaldo Bonaventura (Il canto XV del “Purgatorio” [(“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”) Florence: Sansoni, 1902]), p. 28, suggests that his practice here is much like that by which he made the sons of Ugolino younger, thus creating a more piteous scene in Inferno XXXIII. See the note to vv. 1-6 of this canto.
Esposito (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1969]), p. 189, cites Fedele Romani (“Il martirio di S. Stefano: Nota dantesca,” in Raccolta di studî critici dedicata ad Alessandro D'Ancona, festeggiandosi il XL anniversario del suo insegnamento [Florence: Barbera, 1901]), pp. 539-42, for possible sources of this scene in the visual arts, as well as Arnaldo Bonaventura (Il canto XV del “Purgatorio” [(“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”) Florence: Sansoni, 1902]), pp. 28-29, who suggested the possible influence of Giotto's depiction of the stoning in the old Duomo outside Arezzo, destroyed in 1561.
In Acts the words of the maddened crowd supplied here by Dante are not given. Wlassics (“Il canto XV del Purgatorio,” in Filologia e critica dantesca: Studi offerti a Aldo Vallone [Florence: Olschki, 1989]), p. 170, argues that Stephen's persecutors shout to themselves, not to one another, as almost all commentators (and translators) insist. Before him Casini/Barbi (comm. to this verse) do allow for this possibility, but only Mattalia, also commenting on it, had previously chosen this option. This interpretation is supported by at least one pressing consideration: in the source text (Act. 7:56) the stoners of Stephen are specifically described as, having stopped up their ears, crying out with a loud voice and rushing upon their victim. They are shouting rather to screw up their courage than to exhort one another – they are shouting as do those who charge in battle, wrestling with their fear. Our translation preserves this understanding of the verse.
What is seen by 'the eyes that are open to Heaven' is described in the source text in Stephen's own words (it is notable that Dante suppresses the words spoken by the proto-martyr and adds those spoken by his persecutors). Here is what he says he sees (Acts 7:56): 'Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.' It is precisely these words, reporting his vision, that cause his murderers to stop up their ears and attack him in their offended rage. In this moment in the poem, we may reflect, Dante's eyes (referred to, just before the visions begin, as luci vaghe [eager eyes] at verse 84) are as open to Stephen's martyrdom as Stephen's are to his heavenly vision.
The final action of these exemplary protagonists of mercy is obviously the most dramatic in the program: Stephen forgiving his murderers even as they murder him. His 'look' would 'unlock compassion' in anyone who beheld it – perhaps even his persecutors, but surely any decent Christian soul witnessing his martyrdom, including, just now, the protagonist.
On each terrace there is poetic space reserved for some sort of reaction on the part of the poet or protagonist (and, at times, his guide) to the experience of exemplarity. Of the thirteen other passages devoted to these transitional moments (Purg. X.94-99; Purg. XII.64-69; Purg. XIII.40-42; Purg. XIV.142-151; Purg. XVII.40-45; Purg. XVIII.127-129; Purg. XVIII.139-142: Purg. XX.34-36; Purg. XX.121-123; Purg. XXIII.1-6; Purg. XXIV.127-132; Purg. XXV.136-139; Purg. XXVI.49-51) none is even nearly as lengthy as this one, twenty-four verses; in fact only once is such a passage as long as three tercets, while this one extends over eight. It is clear that the poet wanted to direct our attention to the importance of this exchange between guide and protagonist.
Virgil's reactions give rise to a number of questions. Does or does not Virgil see the visions vouchsafed Dante? Is his response (vv. 120-123) evidence that he does not understand the nature of Dante's experience (as Dante seems to believe at vv. 125-126)? If a reader believes that to be the case, how does that reader respond to Virgil's insistence that he indeed knows Dante's innermost thoughts (vv. 127-138)?
The structure of the fifteenth canto is formed by three moments of Virgilian interpretation of phenomena:
10-39: Dante cannot behold the angel: Virgil explains the nature of the problem;
40-81: Dante did not understand Guido del Duca's words in the last canto: Virgil gives the necessary commentary, acknowledging Beatrice's higher authority;
115-138: Dante has a series of ecstatic visions: Virgil insists on explaining that he knows very well what they involved and says that he only calls attention to Dante's condition in order to spur him on.
In the first two scenes Virgil is clearly correct and thoroughly in control of the situation; in this last sequence he does not exactly issue triumphant.
The literal sense is not difficult: Dante was not seeing that which was present before his fleshly eyes; from that point of view (the merely physical one) he is delusional, is seeing what does not exist, seeing erroneous phantasms instead of what his physical eyes would report. But such 'errors' as these are the very heart of truth, or, in an extreme case of litotes (deliberate understatement), are, at the very least, 'not false.' See the discussion in Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992]), pp. 151-53.
Virgil's first response to Dante's 'awakening' back in the world of lesser truth is a bit brutal in its colloquial insistence on a less than noble cause for his condition. For Dante's apparent drunkenness see Glending Olson (“Inferno XXVII and the Perversions of Pentecost,” Dante Studies 117 [1999]), pp. 25-26. Olson addresses the relationship between these and the seemingly 'drunken' words of Boniface VIII, as described by Guido da Montefeltro in Inferno XXVII.99. The context of Acts 2:13 is clearly present here as well: witnessing the apostles speaking in tongues after the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them, the cynical pronounce them to be 'drunk with new wine.' It is interesting to see that Virgil is associated, in his response to Dante, similarly filled with the Spirit, with those who denied the action of the Holy Spirit in the apostles (see Lauren Scancarelli Seem [“Dante's Drunkenness and Virgil's Rebuke (Purg. 15.115-138),” Quaderni d'italianistica 12 (1991)], p. 74). Constance Breinin (Princeton '82) has also suggested the resonance here of Isaiah (Isaiah 28:7), where 'the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink...; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.' Seem (p. 74) points out that Dante's 'drunken' condition here, shortly after he has heard Beatrice's name (XV.77), mirrors his being 'come inebriato' (as though drunk) when he first saw Beatrice, as recorded in Vita nuova III.
Dante's response to Virgil intrinsically explains his physical condition as the result of his being in a state which granted him the ability to see that which, apparently, Virgil did not and could not see. If Virgil did not know this before he asked his question, he does know this much now – not what Dante saw, but the nature of his seeing: ecstatic vision. Dante here shares the iconography of another closed-eyed visionary, John the Divine; see Purgatorio XXIX.143-144, where John, represented as the last book of the New Testament, Revelation, is seen, like Dante here, walking in a visionary state with his eyes closed, 'dormendo.'
Virgil's claim for knowledge of even the least particular of Dante's mental awareness must be taken with skepticism (see discussion of Musa's arguments in the note to vv. 134-135).
What does Virgil know? We have some information with which to answer this question. On the terrace of Pride Virgil and Dante found the two sets of opposing exemplars displayed in marble carvings. Having seen the first set of these, once they had seen the second they could infer something about the structure of purgation and about its symbolic landscape. As a result, once Virgil hears the voices flying overhead, representing Charity, the virtue contrasted with Envy, he immediately understands that there will be a second set of sounds before the travelers leave the terrace (see the note to Purg. XIII.37-42). His situation here is more difficult, for he has seen nothing to indicate this terrace's mode of exemplary instruction. According to him, he reads Dante's mind. Perhaps we should view his claim with a certain dubiety. Dante speaks, announcing that he is seeing things that are not visible; as soon as Virgil connects that information with the physical signs that his 'drunken' charge is exhibiting, he understands: the exempla on this terrace are delivered through ecstatic vision, an experience reserved for only the elect. He knows that these visions must present positive figures of the opposing virtue, precisely 'to open your heart to the waters of peace,' as he tells Dante. No matter who may have been present in Dante's visions to represent meekness (and even Virgil may have by now divined that Mary will be the first of these), the meaning of the exemplars here will always be the same: to pour the water of peace upon the fires of wrath in the heart.
Bosco/Reggio are undoubtedly correct in suggesting that the two previous major possibilities debated in the commentaries over the literal sense of these verses are both less than convincing and go on to plead that in these verses Dante uses 'an imprecise expression.' It is difficult, surely, but not necessarily imprecise. See Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992]), p. 152, whose explanation of the literal sense is, while not entirely clear, much as our own. Dante's 'senseless' staggering reminds Virgil of the condition of those who see only with the inner eye, i.e., who are deprived of the sensuous organ of sight while they are rapt in a vision. Fernando Salsano (“Purgatorio Canto XV,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967]), pp. 568-70, reflects upon the debate as it came into his time. Cachey (“Purgatorio XV,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana]: Special Issue,12 [supplement], 1993), pp. 222-23, offers a more up-to-date review of various interpretations: (1) The current majority view has Virgil referring to himself as being sentient and thus unlike those who are fooled by outward appearances when they see someone faint without understanding the reason for the syncope; (2) another group would have Virgil denying that he is one who sees only with mortal eyes that cease their function in death. Achille Tartaro (“Il Canto XV del Purgatorio,” in Purgatorio: letture degli anni 1976-'79, ed. Silvio Zennaro, Casa di Dante in Roma [Rome: Bonacci, 1981]), p. 341, moved the question to better ground: (3) Virgil is referring to Dante's eyes and body (as indeed the context would suggest). However, Tartaro, too, has difficulty with the reasons behind Virgil's protestation (p. 321): 'I did not ask “What's wrong?” because of your appearance, which was that of a man who stares with unseeing eyes, his body having lost all vital spirit, but to spur your steps.' The only interpretation, however, that seems to offer a clear understanding of the difficult passage is one based on a comprehension of the tensions that exist here between the protagonist and his guide. Such a reading has been put forward by Lauren Scancarelli Seem (“Dante's Drunkenness and Virgil's Rebuke [Purg. 15.115-138],” Quaderni d'italianistica 12 [1991], pp. 71-82), who argues that what is at stake is Virgil's attempt to show that he has indeed known the nature of Dante's vision, that he did not think Dante was merely 'drunk.' And thus we can understand what he says as follows: 'I did not ask what was wrong with you because you were having a vision – of course, I understood that – but only because it was now time to get you back on the track.' As Musa has pointed out (see the notes to Inf. XVI.115 and XXIII.25), there is no evidence in the poem, despite Virgil's claim in Inferno XXIII (repeated here), that he actually can read the protagonist's mind – a capacity reserved for Beatrice and the other saved souls who interview Dante in the heavens. Our reading of the entire passage eventually depends on whether we accept Virgil's protestations here or question them. For a step-by-step analysis of the difficult details that have so afflicted the commentators, see Lauren Scancarelli Seem (“Dante's Drunkenness and Virgil's Rebuke [Purg. 15.115-138],” Quaderni d'italianistica 12 [1991]), pp. 75-80.
The description of this terrace, postponed from its expected space (see the note to vv. 82-84), begins now, as we first perceive the black smoke of anger that will cover the travelers and the penitents for the entirety of the following canto, the darkest part of Purgatorio.
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