This first simile in a canto that is heavily similetic seems deliberately difficult. Puzzled out, it compares the sevenfold spirit of the Church Triumphant, toward which all in the procession now turn for guidance as they do above in the Empyrean, to the Little Dipper, which locates the North Star for earthly navigators. The first heaven is either that of the moon (starting upward from earth) or the Empyrean (starting from the other end of Dante's universe). Since there are no groups of stars in either of these spheres, we realize immediately that we are here dealing with metaphoric language. (Sam Glucksberg's book [Understanding Figurative Language: From Metaphors to Idioms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)] on figurative language begins [p. 3] with the story of a colleague of his who, a linguist, was on his way to a conference in Israel. Interrogated by security personnel at the airport, he said he was going to a conference on metaphor. His interrogator wanted to know what metaphor is. When the linguist hesitated, as one might well do, he was dragged away for an hour's worth of detention and questioning before a local professor could vouch for his credentials and help set him on his way.) The sevenfold Spirit of God [see the note to Purg. XXIX.64-66]) seems clearly to be identified with the Holy Spirit, one aspect of the triune God in the Empyrean. Porena (comm. to vv. 1-9) points out that the stars of the constellation Ursa (whether Major or Minor) were construed as seven ploughing oxen, septem triones, as is reflected in Dante's word 'settentrïon' (which may reflect Virgil's 'septem... trioni' at Georgics III.381). Sapegno (comm. to verse 1) noted that Dante had already (Rime C.29) referred to 'le sette stelle gelide unquemai' (referring to Europe, located in the hemisphere that 'never [loses] the seven freezing stars'), translating Boethius's 'septem gelidi triones' (seven frigid oxen – Cons. II.6m.10), also cited (later) in Monarchia II.viii.13. This higher sevenfold spirit, unlike Ursa Minor, never rises or sets but is constantly glowing with charity; it is also never hidden by a clouded sky, even though it is not visible to us because we exist in a 'cloud' of our own sinfulness.

The twenty-four elders, representing the Old Testament, turn toward the chariot as to the awaited messiah who, in His first coming, crowned their time of militance with peace and who now will come in Judgment. See Ephesians 2:14, 'Ipse enim est pax nostra' (For He is our peace), a text cited by Singleton (comm. to verse 9). Since the procession in the garden represents the Church Triumphant, the mystical body of Christ after its progress through history, it seems advisable to realize that we deal here with a scene that is meant to reflect the final advent of Christ for the Day of Judgment. See Singleton (Journey to Beatrice [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967 (1958)]), pp. 72-85, citing St. Bernard on the three advents of Christ (Patrologia Latina 183, col. 35ff.). See also Thomas Merton (“Le Sacrement de l'Avent dans la spiritualité de saint Bernard,” Dieu Vivant 23 [1953], pp. 23-43), Mark Musa (Advent at the Gates [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1974]), and the note to Purgatorio VIII.103-108.

The elder who sings alone is clearly the Song of Songs, whether the book itself or its 'author,' Solomon, his words repeating the phrasing 'Veni..., veni..., veni' of the Canticle of Canticles 4:8 ('Come from Lebanon, my bride, come from Lebanon, come'). We would be forgiven if we believed we were about to witness a wedding ceremony of some kind, featuring Beatrice in the role of bride. A strange 'wedding' it will turn out to be, characterized by tears more than by smiles. In fact, no canto in the poem displays more words for weeping than this one (Inferno XXXIII has exactly as many): lagrime (vv. 91, 145), lagrimando (54), piangere (56, 57, 107, 141).

Eugenio Chiarini (“Purgatorio Canto XXX,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967]), p. 1112, points out that these verses constitute the longest sentence (12 lines) in the poem.

The reference is to the trumpet blast that will summon the souls of the dead to judgment (I Corinthians 15:52).

The word 'hallelujah' seems so familiar that it may be surprising to discover that it occurs (and occurs four times) only in a single biblical text, the nineteenth chapter of John's Book of Revelation, where the saints (Apoc. 19:1, 19:3), the elders and the four gospel beasts (Apoc. 19:4), and a great multitude (Apoc. 19:6, reasonably understood as the souls of the blessed, to whom, in fact, Dante refers here) all cry out this word in welcome of the coming reign of the true God and of his Judgment.

There have been and remain disputes about the words voce (voice) and alleluiare as well as the grammatical construction in verse 15. We have followed Petrocchi (La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata [Florence: Le Lettere, 1994 (1966)], vol. I, Introduzione), pp. 218-20, in agreement with the decisions he has made, which seem all the stronger for being in complete accord with the gloss found in Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to vv. 13-18): the saved souls will sing songs of praise with the restored bodily instruments they possessed in their first lives. The manuscript tradition produced two major variants here, alleviare (to lighten) rather than alleluiare (to sing hallelujah), carne (flesh) rather than voce. Some also question (e.g., Chiavacci Leonardi [Purgatorio, con il commento di A. M. C. L. (Milan: Mondadori, 1994)], p. 903) the notion that Dante is here using a rare (for him) ablative absolute, as most believe he in fact is. In order to support that reading, such as Chiavacci Leonardi must interpret the verb alleluiare to mean 'to make beautiful with a hallelujah,' which, given the context of Revelation 19, seems palliative, a rather latter-day pre-Raphaelite reading of the verse.

As will arise all those who will be saved at the Last Judgment, a hundred angels ('ministers and messengers of life eternal') rise up upon the chariot itself to welcome Beatrice, who, in a moment, will come to it. Where do these angels come from? We are not told whether they suddenly manifest themselves upon the chariot now just as Beatrice comes, or descended from the Empyrean with her, or with the chariot when it came to show itself to Dante in Eden. See the notes to Purgatorio XXXI.77-78 and XXXII.89-90.

These Beatricean angels have a pre-history. In Vita nuova XXIII.7 Dante imagines Beatrice's death and sees a band of angels who return with her to heaven, mounting after a little white cloud, and singing 'Osanna in altissimis.' Charles Singleton (Commedia, Elements of Structure [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965 (1954)]), p. 57, was perhaps the first to make the necessary connections between that scene and this one. This procession began with voices singing 'Hosanna' (Purg. XXIX.51); Beatrice returns with her host of angels and again she is obscured by a cloud. The affinities between the two scenes and the Bible are even more suggestive than Singleton noticed. In the prose of Vita nuova XXIII Dante says that he seemed to hear the words 'Osanna in excelsis.' The precise phrase occurs – strange as it may seem, given its familiarity – only once in the Latin New Testament, in Mark 11:10.

These verses draw Dante's imagining of Beatrice's departure from this life in Vita nuova into obvious relation to his presentation of her return to earth here in the garden of Eden. In both cases the word 'Hosanna' associates her with Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem: in the Vita nuova, the New Jerusalem that is life eternal in the Empyrean; here, a triumphant descent to earth modeled on Christ's return in judgment. It is thus that one can answer Peter Armour's question (Dante's Griffin and the History of the World: A Study of the Earthly Paradise [“Purgatorio” XXIX-XXXIII] [Oxford: Clarendon, 1989], pp. 56-58): if Beatrice represents Christ (and Armour believes that she does), then how can the griffin also do so? The griffin stands for Christ as the equivalent of his Church, His mystical body, represented by the chariot. The reader might imagine a film version of this scene, with all the 'characters' in the procession (but not Dante and Matelda – or Statius and Virgil) as cartoon figures, and Beatrice played by a living actress. The Church Triumphant, appearing on this unique occasion in the earthly paradise for the instruction of Dante, is otherwise always located in the Empyrean (whence it will descend for his instruction in actuality, not only symbolically, in Paradiso XXIII), awaiting a future and final series of events. Beatrice comes as Christ will come in that future, in the Second Coming (his third advent – see the note to vv. 8-9). This temporal distinction helps us to understand that there is indeed a difference between the symbolic griffin and Beatrice as figure of Christ to come in judgment, that there is not a question of 'two Christs,' but of two differing kinds of representation of the same Christ. In Purgatorio XXXII.89-90 we learn that the griffin has returned to the Empyrean, leaving Beatrice and the chariot behind in the garden, now representing the Church Militant's career from its founding into the fourteenth century.

The rare word basterna has caused difficulty. Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 13-18) says that it is a vehicle made of soft skins, used to transport noble women; he suggests that it fits the context here because it is drawn by two animals (this chariot, he notes, is pulled by a two-natured beast) and because Beatrice is the most noble of women. According to Servius's gloss of Aeneid VIII.666 (cited first by Lombardi [comm. to this verse] and then by Trucchi [comm. to vv. 13-21]), the basterna was a cart, festooned with veils, found in Gaul, where it was used to transport chaste matrons to sacred festivals.

The Latin phrase ad vocem tanti senis (at the words of so great an elder) is Dante's own, opening a series of three rhyming Latin endings of lines, the next two from Mark and Virgil respectively. The effect is to make three Latin 'authors,' Dante, Mark, and Virgil, each contribute part of a Latin verse for the advent of Beatrice.

Beatrice's hundred angels cite the first of the two master texts for this poem found in this tercet, the Bible and the Aeneid. The clause 'Blessèd are you who come' (with the adjective given a startling masculine ending, not the feminine that would seem a more fitting accompaniment to Beatrice) is derived from the account of Christ's entry into Jerusalem found in Mark 11:9-10: 'And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, “Hosanna; Blessèd is he that comes (Benedictus qui venit) in the name of the Lord. Blessèd be the kingdom of our father David, that comes in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest” (Hosanna in excelsis).' While Matthew (21:9) and John (12:13) also report the 'Hosanna' and the blessedness of him who comes in fulfillment of the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9, only Mark has the words almost exactly as Dante has them in this passage and in Vita nuova XXIII.7 (see the note to vv. 16-18 and Hollander [“Dante's Use of the Fiftieth Psalm,” Dante Studies 91 (1973)], p. 146).

Dante could just as easily have said 'benedicta' as 'benedictus'; neither rhyme nor meter forced his hand. We must therefore understand that the scandalous regendering of Beatrice caused by the correct citation of Mark's gospel is deliberate. It seems clear that the poet wants his reader to realize that her meaning, her eventual identity, is totally involved in Christ. And thus she comes as Christ, not as herself. See the similar remark of Chiavacci Leonardi (comm. Par. XVIII.63), for whom Beatrice is the 'clear manifestation of divine reality.'

The angelic strewing has reminded commentators, at least since the time of Daniello (comm. to vv. 19-21), of the strewing of palm fronds in the path of Jesus on what became known as Palm Sunday.

The Latin is Virgilian (Aen. VI.883): 'Give lilies with full hands.' This is the climax of Anchises' tearful and prophetic speech about the future of Rome and the dreadful loss of Marcellus, the adoptive son of Augustus who was to rule Rome after the emperor's death, but who beat his 'father' to the grave. In Virgil's text the lilies are flowers of mourning; in Dante's they seem rather to be associated with (according to Pietro di Dante [comm. to verse 20]) the Song of Songs (2:1), when the bride describes herself as the lilium convallium, 'lily of the valley,' a wildflower, not a cultivated plant. Dante will later associate lilies with the apostles (Par. XXIII.74). Traditionally, a flowering bough in the form of a lily was borne by the angel Gabriel in depictions of the Annunciation, denoting the chastity of Mary (see Fallani's comment to Par. XXIII.112). It seems clear that here the lilies are relocated symbolically, losing their tragic tone for a 'comic' and celebratory one; they have a positive and redemptive valence, not the funerary significance that they have in Virgil's line. At the same time, for those of us who are thinking of Virgil as well as of Beatrice, they do underline our (and soon Dante's) sadness at this 'death' of Virgil in the poem. In that respect the verse functions in both a 'Beatricean' and a 'Virgilian' mode. For a remarkably 'Dantean' and Christian reading of Virgil's verse by St. Ambrose, see Lino Pertile (La puttana e il gigante: Dal Cantico dei Cantici al Paradiso Terrestre di Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1998]), p. 64.

This is the closest Dante comes to giving a piece of Virgil's Latin text an uninterrupted verbatim presence in his poem. His Italian 'oh,' however, does interrupt the flow of the Virgilian line. It seems more than possible that the exclamation is spoken, since it is uttered by her angels, to mark the moment of Beatrice's appearance on the chariot. This may also be the moment at which Virgil disappears – although that hypothesis is perhaps less sustainable. That the Italian interjection 'oh!' is meant to reflect Isidore of Seville's description (Etym. I.xiv) of interjections (literally, according to Isidore, words placed between other words) as being difficult to translate into any other language, see Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983]), p. 143, n. 46. The fact that Virgil's sad and beautiful Latin line is interrupted by an Italian interjection was probably dictated by more than the metrical requirements of Dante's hendecasyllabic line.

This third simile in the canto, when compared with the convoluted first one, is simplicity itself, as though Beatrice's presence itself called for a less self-conscious artistry on the part of the poet. Nonetheless, once again Dante's beloved is associated, at least intrinsically, by the iconography of the rising sun, with Christ. For a discussion of this and many other of the poet's similarly ineffable experiences in the earthly paradise see Giusppe Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002]), pp. 223-42.

Beatrice, described first by her apparel, is crowned with the olive branch, traditionally symbolic of peace but also associated with wisdom, since the olive was sacred to the goddess of wisdom, Minerva. The three colors that she wears associate her with faith (white), hope (green), and charity (red), the three theological virtues we have already seen in the procession (Purg. XXIX.121-126).

Beatrice died in June of 1290; it is now either the end of March or early April of 1300 (see the note to Inf. I.1) and thus about two months fewer than ten years since she died. If the action of the poem indeed did begin, in Dante's mind, on Friday 25 March 1300 (see the note to Purg. II.94-105), this day is Wednesday 30 March 1300 or 3/30/1300, literally a perfect day, a ten composed of three threes (Beatrice's number in VN XXIX.3 is nine, or three squared). For a recent study of the numerological aspects of Beatrice see Carlo Vecce (“Beatrice e il numero amico,” in Beatrice nell'opera di Dante e nella memoria europea 1290-1990, ed. Maria Picchio Simonelli [Florence: Cadmo, 1994], pp. 101-35).

Virgil had been overcome by stupore (amazement) a short while ago (see the note to Purg. XXIX.55-57); now it is Dante's turn. Not even the man who wrote of Beatrice can encompass the fact of her miraculous nature now that he finally experiences it directly and completely. It will take him another cantica adequately to understand what she means.

The line is clearly reminiscent (if the reminiscence was apparently only first noted by Torraca in 1905 [comm. to vv. 34-39]) of the opening of Dante's lyric (Rime XCI), 'Io sento sì d'Amor la gran possanza' (So much do I feel Love's mighty power). Just as was the case with Matelda (see the note to Purg. XXVIII.43-48), Dante's concupiscent memories and thoughts are at odds with the nature of Beatrice. Yes, she looks exactly like the woman with whom he fell in love in Florence; but now it is clear (as it should have been then) that she loves him only in Christ. This distinction will be insisted on at Purgatorio XXXII.7-9.

The difference in the loves represented by the earlier poem (composed in the middle years of the 1290s?) and by this one is emblematized by the capital letter of Amor (Love, as in 'the god of Love,' Cupid) in the first, and its absence here. It is, of course, impossible to know whether either or both of these words for amor was in fact capitalized by Dante, especially since questions of punctuation and of capitalization in medieval manuscripts are simply not resolvable (except, perhaps, when we have an autograph to guide us). All one can say is that modern editors have done well in this instance, that it would make sense for Dante to have done as they have.

For Dante's earlier references to his first being smitten by Beatrice while he was still in his childhood, in fact in his ninth year (i.e., while he was still eight), see Vita nuova II.2 (Andreoli [comm. to verse 42]); Vita nuova XII.7 (Poletto [comm. to vv. 41-48]); and Rime CXI.1-2 (Singleton [comm. to verse 42]).

The logistics of the movement of the little band of poets (Dante, Virgil, Statius) requires that, since Dante has turned 90^o to face the pageant across the narrow stream, and since they had been proceeding due east, Virgil is behind him, and thus to his left. Had the directions necessitated Virgil's being to his right, it seems likely that Dante might have chosen not to indicate that. His turning to the left – the morally less acceptable side – in Virgil's direction gives further grounds for Beatrice's reproof.

Again Virgil is thought of as a mamma, that strikingly 'vernacular' word we have heard applied to him before (in company with the same rhyme words) in the salutation addressed to him by Statius (see Purg. XXI.95-99 and the note to Purg. XXI.97-99). See also Inferno XXXII.9 and the note to XXXII.1-9.

Virgil, it may seem, is strangely feminized in Dante's gesture toward him. However, if we consider his nurturing role in the eyes of the protagonist, the term is less disturbing. And once we observe Dante's attempt to deal with Beatrice's asperity and her 'masculine' demeanor, we can see that the dynamic of this scene is built upon the reversal of gender roles, Virgil now seeming gentle and mothering, while Beatrice, coming as Christ in judgment (see the note to vv. 16-18), like an admiral (see verse 58 and note), seems more like an unforgiving father. Whatever contemporary theoreticians of gender and of 'gendered writing' may choose to make of this, it must first be observed that the reversals of a usual set of expectations make sense in the economy of the scene. For a concise guide to Dante's adventures at the hands of practitioners of the 'new new criticism' of the second half of the twentieth century, see Gary Cestaro, “Theory and Criticism (Contemporary),” in The Dante Encyclopedia (ed. Richard Lansing [New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 815-818. His list includes 'American New Criticism, structuralism, reader response theory, semiotics, post-structuralism and deconstruction, Marxist critique, psychoanalysis, feminism, race and gender studies, queer theory.' His examples and bibliography furnish an excellent starting point for anyone interested in pursuing such lines of inquiry.

Lombardi (comm. to this verse), against the grain of the more usual understanding of this hapax, which holds that the word means 'uncertainty,' or 'hopeful expectation,' says that it here is a noun formed from the verb respirare (to breathe), here in the sense that indicates the panting breath of a terrified child. Campi (comm. to vv. 43-45) suggests that this is, if ingenious, a forced reading, and prefers that of Bianchi (comm. to this verse) who locates the source of Dante's rhyme word in Provençal respieit, or 'trust.' Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) accepts this reading but criticizes Bianchi for not having credited Vincenzo Nannucci (Voci e locuzioni italiane derivate dalla lingua provenzale, Firenze, 1840, pp. 121-123). We have followed Nannucci's and Bianchi's interpretation in our translation.

For a possible citation here of the sestina of Arnaut Daniel, 'Lo ferm voler,' in particular verses 4-6 of its second stanza, 'Non ai membre no.m fremisca, neis l'ongla, / Aissi cum fai l'enfas denant la verga, / Tal paor ai que.ill sia trop de m'arma,' see Marianne Shapiro (“Purgatorio XXX: Arnaut at the Summit,” Dante Studies 100 [1982], pp. 71-76). She translates the verses as follows: 'I have no member that does not tremble, not even my fingernail, like a child before the rod. So much do I fear that I am hers too much in soul.' In support of Shapiro's hypothesis that Dante indeed did know and use Arnaut's sestina, about which, perhaps from some 'anxiety of influence,' he is officially silent, one can point, in addition to the fact that he himself chose to write a sestina ('Al poco giorno'), to Vita nuova XII.2, 'm'addormentai come un pargoletto battuto lagrimando' (I went to sleep, weeping like a little boy who has been beaten [Dante had just been denied the salute of Beatrice]), and to what seems an even clearer citation in Inferno VI.24, where Cerberus 'non avea membro che tenesse fermo' (There was no part of him he held in check), as was first noted by Mazzoni (Il canto VI dell'“Inferno” in Nuove letture dantesche [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967]), p. 53.

This verse is a translation of Dido's climactic utterance admitting that she has fallen in love with Aeneas, thus breaking her vows of chastity to her dead husband, Sichaeus (Aen. IV.23): 'Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae' (I recognize the traces of the ancient flame). For a lengthy consideration of this celebrated verse see Roberto Mercuri (“'Conosco i segni dell'antica fiamma,'” Cultura neolatina 31 [1971], pp. 237-93).

Near the conclusion of Virgil's tragic fourth Georgic (vv. 525-527), Orpheus's severed head cries out to his lost Eurydice. It is a moment that could define the tragic spirit, a decapitated voice giving vent to Orpheus's misery at the loss of his wife:

...Eurydicen vox ipsa et frigida lingua,
a miseram Eurydicen! anima fugiente vocabat,
Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripae.

...'Eurydice' that very voice and frozen tongue,
'Oh wretched Eurydice!' it called as the soul escaped,
'Eurydice' the banks gave back along the stream.

It seems more than clear that Dante's three-verse farewell to Virgil is modeled on Orpheus's three-verse farewell to Eurydice. While surprisingly few twentieth-century commentators have heard that echo in these lines, even they seem unaware that it had been heard a few centuries ago (ca.1568) by Bernardino Daniello (comm. to these verses), as was pointed out by Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983]), pp.132-34. Now that we have a published text of the commentary of Trifon Gabriele (ca. 1525, comm. to verse 49), we can see that he was the first to notice this clear citation. He was echoed by his student, Daniello, who, however, as was fairly often the case, failed to acknowledge his teacher's teaching. It was only cited again, once more without citation of earlier notice, in 1900 by Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 50-51). Edward Moore (Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante [Oxford: Clarendon, 1969 (1896)]), pp. 20-21, 177-178, also discusses this 'beautiful and touching' citation, and those few who do refer to an earlier source in recent years (e.g., Singleton [comm. to these verse]; Mazzotta [Dante, Poet of the Desert (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)], p. 186; Chiavacci Leonardi [Purgatorio, con il commento di A. M. C. L. (Milan: Mondadori, 1994)], pp. 888-89) refer only to Moore. Still others cite the passage with little or no reference to those who had in fact discovered the quotation, e.g., John Freccero (Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986]), in “Manfred's Wounds” (1983), p. 208; Guglielmo Gorni (“Beatrice agli Inferi,” in Omaggio a Beatrice (1290-1990), ed. R. Abardo [Florence: Le Lettere, 1997]), p. 156 (citing Vandelli's resuscitation of Scartazzini's commentary, but apparently unaware of the ancient lineage of the citation).

Freccero, pp. 207-8, has noted a program of 'effacement' in Dante's three citations of Virgil here. In verse 21 a Latin quotation; in verse 48 a literal Italian translation; in these lines, what he characterizes as 'the merest allusion.' This last may seem a bit too 'effacing.' See Hollander (“Le opere di Virgilio nella Commedia di Dante,” in Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia: Autorità e sfida poetica, ed. A. A. Iannucci [Ravenna: Longo, 1993]), pp. 249, 317-18, who believes it is a full-fledged citation. See also Antonio Stäuble (“Beatrice ritrovata. Il sistema delle citazioni in Purgatorio XXX, 1-47,” in Carmina semper e citharae cordi. Études de philologie et de métrique offertes à Aldo Menichetti, ed. M. C. Gérard-Zai, P. Gresti, S. Perrin, P. Vernay, M. Zenari [Geneva: Editions Slatkine, 2000], pp. 315-22) for a discussion of some of these citations.

For the provisional hypothesis that Dante does not develop his persona as Orpheus in the Commedia because he has in Convivio (II.1.1) presented Orpheus as non-historical, as the very example of poetic allegory's fictive practice, see Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], p. 47n.; “Dante Theologus-Poeta,” Dante Studies 94 [1976], pp. 119-20). This is to counter the opinion of Zygmunt Baranski (“Notes on Dante and the Myth of Orpheus,” in Dante: mito e poesia. Atti del secondo Seminario dantesco internazionale, ed. M. Picone and T. Crivelli [Florence: Cesati, 1999]), p. 140n., that 'Dantists have failed to acknowledge the peculiarity of the poet's choice of Orpheus as an illustrative example of “poetic allegory.”' See also Guglielmo Gorni (“Beatrice agli Inferi,” in Omaggio a Beatrice (1290-1990), ed. R. Abardo [Florence: Le Lettere, 1997]), pp. 153-58, for the notion that Dante indeed means us to read him as the 'new' Orpheus. For a possible earlier instance of Dante's identifying himself with Orpheus, see Paola Rigo (“La discesa agli Inferi nella Vita Nuova,” in her Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante [Florence: Olschki, 1994]), p. 31, arguing that Dante's self-starting tongue in Vita nuova XIX.1 reflects Virgil's phrase 'vox ipsa et frigida lingua' (Georgics IV.525) describing Orpheus as he begins his lament.

For the suggestion that Dante's loss of Virgil resembles Aeneas's loss of Anchises, see the remark of Earl Jeffrey Richards cited in Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983]), p. 143, n. 47, and Hollander (“Le opere di Virgilio nella Commedia di Dante,” in Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia: Autorità e sfida poetica, ed. A. A. Iannucci [Ravenna: Longo, 1993]), p. 317, n. 298, pointing to the appositeness of Aeneid III.710-711: 'I lose my father, Anchises,... best of fathers, you leave me to my weariness.'

The sense of this verse is that all that Eve lost and Dante has now regained could not ease his pain at the loss of Virgil. Kevin Brownlee (“Dante, Beatrice, and the Two Departures from Dido,” Modern Language Notes 108 [1993], pp. 1-14), in an essay dedicated to his student Lauren Scancarelli Seem, who is credited with having developed the hypothesis Brownlee puts forward, argues that the departures of Virgil and eventually Beatrice as his guides are both modeled on the scenes involving Aeneas's two departures from Dido in the Aeneid (IV.441-449; VI.467-473).

Dante's tears have reminded a number of readers, beginning with Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 55-57), of the tears of Boethius that were wiped away by Lady Philosophy in the Consolation of Philosophy I.ii(pr). See also Edward Moore (Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante [Oxford: Clarendon, 1969 (1896)]), p. 286, who speaks of the overall applicability of this passage to the situation in Dante's text; Scartazzini (comm. to verse 73); Poletto (comm. to vv. 67-75); Carroll (comm. to vv. 109-145); and Casini/Barbi (comm. to verse 73).

This verse is perhaps the climax of the poem. Everything before it leads here. And once Dante is named, his new mission begins to take form, first as Beatrice has him cleanse himself of his past crimes and misdemeanors. (His 'vacation' in the garden of Eden is over.) For the uniqueness of this self-nomination, see the note to v. 63, below.

For an attempt to deal with the postponement of the naming of the protagonist until this sixty-fourth canto of the poem (both Virgil [Inf. I.79] and Beatrice [Inf. II.70] are identified as soon as they appear), see Dino Cervigni (Dante's Poetry of Dreams [Florence: Olschki, 1986]).

It is in response to this verse that Dante's son Pietro offered his celebrated 'etymology' of his father's Christian name (comm. to verse 55): '...nominatus erat auctor Dantes, ita dabat, sive dedit se ad diversa; scilicet primo ad theologiam, secundo ad poetica' (the author was named Dante, as in 'he was giving' or 'he gave' himself to diverse things, first of all to theology and then to poetry). Hollander uses this passage as epigraph to his study “Dante Theologus-Poeta” (Dante Studies 94 [1976], pp. 91-136) as part of an insistence that the conventional term for more 'usual' poets who deal with lofty subjects, 'poeta-theologus,' needed to have its terms reversed ('theologus-poeta') for Dante in order to respect his unique self-presentation as one whose poetry meets the criteria of theological truth unswervingly and directly – or so he encourages us to believe.

The thrice-repeated verb piangere (weep) offered by Beatrice in reproof to Dante echoes and rebukes the thrice-repeated plangent calling of Virgil's name by Dante in vv. 49-51. For a wide-ranging meditation on the possible references of Beatrice's 'sword,' see Wayne Storey, “The Other Sword of Purgatorio XXX,” Dante Studies 107 (1989), pp. 85-99. However, no dantista has apparently ever cited the most likely source: 'nolite arbitrari quia venerim mittere pacem in terram; non veni pacem mittere sed gladium' (Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword – Matth. 10:34). Fewer than fifty verses earlier, at the beginning of this canto (v. 9), la gente verace, the Hebrew elect represented by the books of the Old Testament, 'al carro volse sé come a sua pace.' Like Jesus, Beatrice, appearing now as Christ in Judgment, will not bring Dante the pacem that he, too, like the disciples, hopes for and expects, but a gladium.

This striking and unsettling similetic presentation of Beatrice as admiral has drawn a mixed press. It is all very well to argue, as Hollander has done (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969]), pp. 122-23, 159, 190, that Dante has prepared for this moment by staging a significant series of voyages within the poem in which he calls attention to a commanding officer standing on a poopdeck. (The word poppa appears at some highly charged moments: Inf. XXVI.124, when Ulysses turns his poopdeck away from the east and XXVI.140, when the poop of his sinking vessel rises from the swallowing sea before its final plunge; Purg. II.43, the afterdeck upon which the 'heavenly pilot' stands as the saved souls come to shore; and now, in its penultimate appearance in the poem, the place where Beatrice seems to stand as she joins the pageant. The word will appear only once more, at Par. XXVII.146, in the last world-prophecy in the poem, when an eventually benevolent storm at sea will set our erring 'fleet' right, turning our poops to where our prows had been in our misdirected quests.) 'Admiral Beatrice' seems, nonetheless, a bit overdone to most of Dante's readers, including John Scott (“Dante's Admiral,” Italian Studies 27 [1972], pp. 28-40), who, like Hollander, sees the necessary theological trappings of her role, but is not altogether happy with the resultant poetic image. Joy Potter (“Beatrice Ammiraglio: Purgatorio XXX.58-66,” in Italiana: Selected Papers from the Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference of the American Association of Teachers of Italian, December 27-28, 1986, ed. Albert N. Mancini, Paolo Giordano, and Pier Raimondo Baldini [River Forest, Illinois: Rosary College, 1988], pp. 97-108) tries to reassure us that, given the allegorical nature and meaning of Beatrice, her appearance is only disconcerting to post-Romantic readers, while, in the same year but in a very different critical ambience, Jeffrey Schnapp (“Dante's Sexual Solecisms: Gender and Genre in the Commedia,” Romanic Review 79 [1988], pp. 143-63) considers the gender reversal present here part of a meditation upon such issues as the relationship between the 'feminine' world of vernacular lyric and the 'masculine' one of Latin epic. It still would seem reasonable to conclude that the poet expected his readers to be jolted by this simile's defeminization of Beatrice.

No other segment of the Commedia is as filled with similes as the first ninety-nine verses of this canto; there are seven in all. And they take up more than half of the text, fully fifty-five lines of it. This one (and we will not be confronted by another in this canto) is clearly meant to be read as climactic. If we are troubled by Dante's 'Admiral Beatrice,' we must also realize that the poet has chosen to disturb us in this way. Everything conspires to make us understand one absolutely essential thing: our author has gone out of his way to make us comprehend that, whatever appreciation Dante had of Beatrice in life, and however he remembered her after her death, despite what perhaps should have been something like a full and final revelation in the last chapter of the Vita nuova, he fell short of understanding her true nature – and thus the way he then should have and now must love her. As we shall see, even at Purgatorio XXXII.9 he still loves her as he used to, and is rebuked by the ladies representing the theological virtues for doing so.

Dante's insistence that he names himself only from necessity echoes a passage in Convivio (I.ii.12-14), in which Dante says that there are two reasons that excuse an author's speaking of himself: first, and as in the case of Boethius's Consolatio, in order to defend oneself from harm or against infamy; second, as in the case of Augustine's Confessions, in order to bring greatly useful instruction to others. Freccero (Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986]), in his article “Dante's Prologue Scene” (1966), deals with the Augustinian confessional mode as modeling and justifying Dante's own (pp. 1-3).

There was a tradition honored by many classical and medieval writers that one should only name oneself at the incipit and/or explicit of one's work (i.e., 'Here begins [or concludes] the such-and-such of so-and-so'). Years ago the present writer (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983], p. 133, n. 24) thought that he had discovered a notable fact. It is widely appreciated that Dante only named himself once in the body of any of his extended works, here in verse 55. What had not been noted was that his self-nomination echoed the only self-nomination found in the extended works of Virgil, indeed in the very Georgic (IV.563, 'Vergilium') that Dante had cited a few lines earlier (vv. 525-527 at Purg. XXX.49-51). With the publication of Trifon Gabriele's commentary (Annotationi nel Dante fatte con M. Trifon Gabriele in Bassano, ed. Lino Pertile [Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1993 (1525-27) – now included in the Dartmouth Dante Project]), it became apparent that at least one earlier commentator had made the same discovery in his comment to this verse, where he says that (comm. to verse 63), in naming himself, Dante wished to imitate Virgil's self-nomination ('volendo imitar Virgilio... illo Vergilium me tempore'). See also Boccaccio's Amorosa visione, where Boccaccio signs himself 'Giovanni di Boccaccio da Certaldo' in one of the acrostic sonnets that begin that work – the only occurrence of Boccaccio's name in his ten Italian extended fictions.

For the resonance here of an earlier claim, that his book is a true record of events, recording only what had actually occurred, see the note to Inferno XXIX.54-57.

The presence of the veil (velo) worn by Beatrice is insisted on fully three times (at vv. 31 and 67 as well), and the canto has also begun with this word (verse 3). (No other canto contains so many occurrences of the word.) The climax of this scene with Beatrice will occur when she, bride-like, unveils herself at the end of the next canto (Purg. XXXI.136-145).

The second (and now overt) reference to Minerva in association with Beatrice (see the note to vv. 31-33) probably, in conjunction with other references that are still more direct, associates her with Christ, or Sapience, the Word made flesh, the second person of the Trinity.

Verse 73 is problematic, as Singleton (comm. to verse 73) explains clearly: 'Guardaci: Commentators differ in their interpretation of ci here. It could be the pronoun, in which case Beatrice, in her regal manner, would be using the plural of majesty, speaking as a monarch would, in the first person plural. This reading is often accompanied by 'ben sem, ben sem' in the rest of the verse, continuing such a plural (sem = siamo). Or ci might be construed as the adverb qui, in which case the rest of the verse is usually given in the reading here adopted.'

That Beatrice speaks the word ben (here meaning 'really,' but also carrying its root sense, 'good' or 'well') three times in order to echo the triple iteration of 'Virgil' (vv. 49-51) and of 'weep' (vv. 56-57) was first noted by Tommaseo (comm. to these verses). He does not go on to suggest that the first two sets of repeated words are tinged with loss, while this one is charged with triumph, but he might have. For the contrastive self-namings of the Siren (Purg. XIX.19), 'Io son, io son dolce serena,' and of Beatrice, 'Ben son, ben son Beatrice' and of the way both may mirror or mimic the tetragrammaton, the ninth of Isidore of Seville's ten Hebrew names for God, transliterated by him as ia, ia (Etym. VII.i.16), see Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969]), p. 144n.

Beatrice's anger at wayward Dante, saved by mercies in Heaven that seem hardly to have been predictable, given his behavior, is not difficult to fathom. But he has survived. Now, face to face with the beatified woman who has interceded for him, he weeps for Virgil, compounding his failing past behavior by now missing his pagan guide instead of rejoicing in the presence of Beatrice.

This fairly obvious reference to Ovid's Narcissus (Metam. III.339-510) was perhaps first discussed by Kevin Brownlee (“Dante and Narcissus [Purg. XXX, 76-99],” Dante Studies 96 [1978], pp. 201-6). See the note to Inferno XXX.126-129 and that to vv. 85-99, below.

For the commentators' failure to recognize the problematic nature of this tercet, see Hollander (“Dante's Use of the Fiftieth Psalm,” Dante Studies 91 [1973]), p. 149, n. 2. As for the pointed reference to pedes meos (my feet), among the few who have believed that there is a 'solution' to Dante's riddle, there are two schools. What does it mean to say the angels 'did not sing past 'pedes meos''? Freccero (“Adam's Stand,” Romance Notes 2 [1961], pp. 115-18) and Pézard (ed., Dante Alighieri, Oeuvres complètes [Paris: Gallimard, 1965]), p. 1335, both believe that the reference is limited to the end of the ninth verse ('You [God] have not given me over to my enemies, but have set my feet in a spacious place') of Psalm 30 (31:8), the words pedes meos understood as reflecting Dante's newly gained freedom of the will to move about the garden as he chooses. Mineo (Profetismo e Apocalittica in Dante [Catania: Università di Catania, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, 1968]) and Hollander, partly because Dante's very way of expressing himself asks us to (if someone tells us he has not gone farther than nine we realize he is telling us that he did not reach ten), argue for the relevance of the next verse in Psalm 30, which is a citation of the opening verse of Psalm 50, 'Have mercy on me, O Lord,' the Miserere of David's penitential song that serves as source for Dante's first spoken words in the Commedia (Inf. I.65). In this understanding, the angels, intervening on Dante's behalf with stern Beatrice, deliberately stop short of the Miserere out of sympathy for poor Dante, so heavily chastised by Beatrice. (See the note to vv. 103-108, below.)

For a history of the exegesis examining Dante's tears, mainly given over to attack and counterattack over the issue of the contorted and artificial nature of the simile, see Francesco Mazzoni (“Un incontro di Dante con l'esegesi biblica [A proposito di Purg. XXX, 85-99],” in Dante e la Bibbia, ed. G. Barblan [Florence: Olschki, 1988]), pp. 180-89. Mazzoni goes on (pp. 189-90) to bring three sources to bear: first two similes in Ovid: the melting of Ovid's Narcissus in his self-love (Metam. III.486-490, a passage discussed in this context in the nineteenth century by Luigi Venturi and Cesari, according to Trucchi [comm. to vv. 88-90]; and see Kevin Brownlee [“Dante and Narcissus (Purg. XXX, 76-99),” Dante Studies 96 (1978), pp. 201-6] and R.A. Shoaf [“'Lo gel che m'era intorno al cor' (Purg. 30.97) and 'Frigidus circum praecordia sanguis' (Geo. 2.484): Dante's Transcendence of Virgil,” Lectura Dantis (virginiana) 5 (1989), pp. 30-45], for discussion of the liquefaction of Biblis when her brother, Caunus, rejects her incestuous love [Metam. IX.659-665, also previously noted by Trucchi (comm. to vv. 91-93)]). Mazzoni's major interpretive novelty (pp. 207-212) lies in his seeing Dante's tears as reflecting the liquefaction in Psalm 147:16-18 as commented on by St. Augustine (In Ps. CXLVII Enarratio [Patrologia Latina, XXXVIII, col. 1931]): 'He gives snow like wool; he scatters the hoarfrost like ashes. / He casts forth his ice like morsels; who can stand before his cold? / He sends out his word, and melts [liquefacit] them; he causes his wind to blow, and the waters flow.' Augustine's gloss has it that a sinner, 'frozen' in his sinfulness, may yet 'liquefy' and be saved.

The phrase 'living beams' is Dante's way of referring to trees as the eventual source of wooden beams that may be hewn from them.

Shoaf (“'Lo gel che m'era intorno al cor' [Purg. 30.97] and 'Frigidus circum praecordia sanguis' [Geo. 2.484]: Dante's Transcendence of Virgil,” Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 5 [1989], pp. 30-45) examines Dante's Christianizing reinterpretation of the second Georgic as part of his revision of Virgilian values for the Commedia, taking off from the line (Georg. II.484) 'frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis' ([But if] the chill blood about my heart bar [me from reaching those realms of nature]) that he sees reflected in this verse of Dante's.

The point of Beatrice's gentle rebuke of the angels is that they, aware of Dante's past sins and of his eventual salvation, are now seeing him primarily as a saved soul rather than as a formerly sinful one, as Beatrice now (and vehemently) does. In her view, they are celebrating his salvation prematurely because they are seeing it sub specie eternitatis, beyond the time that still holds him bound.

A paraphrase of the passage might run as follows: 'The words with which I shall respond to your pity for Dante are not addressed to you, who know all mortal contingency, past present and future, as a single present series of facts sub specie aeternitatis, but to him, so that his contrition may be commensurate with his fault.'

For the resonance of Ovid's tale of Argus (Metam. I.625-721), with his vision that seems limited, for all its seeing, when compared with the total sight of these angels, see Jessica Levenstein (“The Pilgrim, the Poet, and the Cowgirl: Dante's Alter-Io in Purgatorio XXX-XXXI,” Dante Studies 114 [1996]), pp. 194-95.

Pietrobono (comm. to vv. 109-111) points out that in Convivio (IV.xxi.7-8) Dante had already revealed his theory of the relationship among the elements of the individual human soul, the fathering sower, the embryo, and the astral influences of the constellations of the zodiac that shape its human talents. In this passage we hear about God, who breathes in last the vital element, the intellectual, or rational, soul. The passage at Purgatorio XXV.68-75 explains that the generation of the rational soul is performed directly by God; here we learn that not even the saved in the Empyrean nor the angels can understand the love that moves God in the creation of that soul in each of his human creatures.

It seems obvious to most readers today that the phrase vita nova refers, if in its Latin form, to Dante's first prosimetrum, the thirty-one poems collected with prose commentary known as The New Life. And it seemed so to at least one very early commentator, the Ottimo (in 1333, in his general note to the canto). However, here is the commentary of Benvenuto da Imola to this passage (comm. to vv. 109-117): 'This man, i.e., Dante, was such in his new life, i.e., in his boyhood; others, however, refer to his treatise De vita nova, which he composed in his youth. But it is surely ridiculous to do so, seeing that the author was ashamed of it in his maturity.' Benvenuto's enthusiastic pre-humanist reading of the Comedy will only accept an allegorical, theologized Beatrice who bears no resemblance to the mortal girl of the early work. Thus does he fail to grasp the central pretext of the entire poem, and surely of this extended scene in the garden of Eden. What seems most notable, perhaps, is the power of Benvenuto's opinion. None of the other early commentators who follow him mentions the book as being referred to here. It is only with Venturi (1732, comm. to verse 115) that we hear that it may also be referred to; this over-cautious estimate will be found in several others, such as Portirelli (comm. to vv. 109-117), Mestica (comm. to verse 115), and Del Lungo (comm. to vv. 115-116). It was, however, only Scartazzini – as is so often the case – who really tried to examine the issue frontally. His solution (comm. to verse 115) was to argue that the literal sense of 'new life' was 'youth,' but that the phrase referred to the regeneration of Dante's virtue by agency of Beatrice. One may feel it necessary to quibble with this estimate, since Dante first felt the power of Beatrice's goodness when he was just days from turning nine years old, and thus the traditional reading 'boyhood' (more disturbing to such as Scartazzini than 'youth') is correct. Scartazzini, however, is uncompromising and probably convincing in sensing that the reference is to the libello as well. How could it be otherwise? One can see in this dispute, which continues in muffled form even today, an outline of the way commentators influence the readings of other commentators, and thus eventually teachers, and finally students. Benvenuto's opinions are respected (and surely they should be, as he is clearly one of the most acute students of the poem), but sometimes slavishly. Similarly, Scartazzini's insistent judgments, frequently overstated and often too assured, are avoided by later commentators, for perhaps a series of reasons. Scartazzini was not only a German Swiss and a Protestant, but a Protestant clergyman. And perhaps most annoying of all to an Italian reader, he loved to belittle his adversaries and thought little or nothing of most of his Italian colleagues. One result of this, as a certain amount of consultation of the Dartmouth Dante Project will affirm, is that Scartazzini's tendentious and flawed but nonetheless great commentary (1900), reflecting the entries that were composed for his one-man Enciclopedia dantesca (published in Milano in 1896 and 1899, and then reissued in 1905, edited by Fiammazzo), is both pillaged and avoided in silence by many of those who came after him. For all his acerbity – even nastiness – his work deserves much more attention than it generally receives.

One finds, even among recent commentators, a certain desire to avoid committing oneself to what seems completely obvious: the phrase vita nova cannot help but call to mind, in this context, the work that records Beatrice's lasting impact on Dante, first in his 'new life' (when they were both children, a time to which Dante refers in verse 42: 'before I had outgrown my childhood') and then later on, as recorded in the book called 'The New Life.'

Edward Moore's essay, “The Reproaches of Beatrice” (Studies in Dante, Third Series: Miscellaneous Essays [Oxford: Clarendon, 1968 (1903)]), pp. 221-52, remains one of the most valuable attempts to deal with this convoluted expression of the single most important explanation Dante offers with regard to what he now conceives to have been his chief errors before he wrote the Commedia. For a similar view, one of ancient lineage, see Saverio Bellomo's edition (Expositio seu comentum super “Comedia” Dantis Allegherii [Florence: Le Lettere, 1989]) of Filippo Villani's commentary to the first canto of Inferno (ca. 1400 [now included in the Dartmouth Dante Project). Filippo refers (p. 50) to a commentary of his to Purgatorio XXX (unfortunately lost); he also refers to that canto, in other places, in such a way as to indicate he thought it was the key to an understanding of what we might call the 'autobiographical' aspect of the poem as it is essential to the eventual allegorical meaning Bellomo sees Villani as seeking (p. 9). The fact that Villani's first published work on Dante was devoted to Canto XXX gives us some idea of how important he thought this canto was, as does the mere fact that a commentary to the first canto of Inferno is peppered with references to the thirtieth of Purgatorio.

Ruggero Stefanini (“Canto XXX,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy”: Introductory Readings II: “Purgatorio”, ed. Tibor Wlassics [Charlottesville: Lectura Dantis, University of Virginia, 1993]), p. 456, gives a crisp account of Dante's possible sexual wanderings that may be referred to in these verses: 'The conclusion is inescapable: the poet confesses that down there in Florence, during the gay nineties, he was seduced by the counterfeited beauty of the 'femmina balba' [the stammering woman in the dream of the Siren in Purg. XIX.7]. The stressed lexical references leave no room for doubt: false images of good, which pay no promise in full; pits and chains that block the path to the Highest Good; attractions or immediate advantages that attract and distract; the song of the Sirens ('I am – she sang – I am a sweet siren' – XIX.19); longing for mortal and deceitful things that weigh down the wings of those who, instead, were created to fly upward (XII.95f.); the false pleasure of the present things, among which are to be included the pargolette [young girls] and the frivolous loves they inspire.' Like many modern students of the problem (e.g., Carroll [comm. to vv. 49-75], Joseph Mazzeo [Medieval Cultural Tradition in Dante's “Comedy” (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1960)], pp. 205-12; Hollander [Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969)], pp. 160-68; Bosco/Reggio [comms. (as numbered in the DDP version of their notes) to Purg. XXX.115-132; XXXI.31-36; XXXI.55-60; XXXIII.73-102; Picone [“La poesia romanza della Salus: Bertran de Born nella Vita Nuova,” Forum Italicum 15 (1981)], pp. 42-43), Stefanini avoids the simplistic answer that would make Dante guilty either of sexual or of intellectual deviance from his Beatrice and sees that both forms of misbehavior are involved. The precise nature of both sets of sins remains, one must admit, difficult to assess.

Beatrice offers an epitome of the main narrative of the Vita nuova, according to which for some sixteen years (1274-1290) she attempted to lead Dante to God, despite his natural sinful disposition. Unfortunately, even while she lived, the 'rich soil' of his soul grew weeds.

Upon Beatrice's death, and according to Dante's own report in the Vita nuova (chapters XXXV-XXXIX), he did indeed give himself to at least one other (altrui can be either singular or plural in Dante). His probably most egregious dalliance was with the donna gentile (noble lady) who sympathized with his distress. The lady is later allegorized, in Dante's Convivio, as the Lady Philosophy. (For discussion, see the note to Purg. XXXIII.85-90.)

For the 'today fully discredited' notion that Dante revised the ending of the Vita nuova in light of his new understanding of the donna gentile that he developed in the Convivio see the discussion, with bibliography, in Ruggero Stefanini (“Canto XXX,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy”: Introductory Readings II: “Purgatorio”, ed. Tibor Wlassics [Charlottesville: Lectura Dantis, University of Virginia, 1993]), p. 462 (n. 15), taking issue with Pietrobono, Nardi, and Branca and agreeing with Barbi and Marti. See, for a similar view, Selene Sarteschi, “Osservazioni intorno alla presunta doppia redazione della Via Nuova,” in her Per la “Commedia” e non per essa soltanto (Rome: Bulzoni, 2002 [1996]), pp. 13-58.

The sort of dream Beatrice prayed God to send Dante is probably well represented by the dream of the Siren in Purgatorio XIX.7-32. That accounts for the first part of Beatrice's formulation, i.e., Dante was given negative dreams about his disastrous love for the wrong lady. What about the second? What God-sent 'inspirations' was she granted in order to call him back to loving her even after her death? Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 133-134) offers a simple and compelling hypothesis (apparently silently acceded to by any number of later commentators, who make the same point without even a mention of his name). In Vita nuova XXXIX.1 Dante receives the image of the girlish Beatrice in his phantasy, the image-receiving part of his mind (one may compare the ecstatic visions vouchsafed him for the exemplary figures on the terrace of Wrath [and see the note to Purg. XV.85-114]). As he recounts (VN XXXIX.2-6), this vision of Beatrice had the necessary effect, and he resolved to love her yet again, turning away his affection from the donna gentile. And then, Scartazzini continues, he was allowed the final vision of Beatrice seated in the Empyrean (VN XLII.1). Thus, as seems clear, while Dante slept, God sent him dreams of what was unworthy in his love for the donna gentile; while he was awake, positive images of Beatrice. If this program is correctly perceived, it matches precisely the mode employed to teach penitents on the mountain, positive and negative examples teaching what to follow and what to flee. Unfortunately, even after such encouragement, Dante would fall again. See the note to Purgatorio XXXIII.85-90.

Poor Virgil! He has done the Christians sixty-four cantos' worth of service, guiding their great poet to his redemption and vision, and now the very lady who sought his help does not even mention his name; he is but 'colui' (the one who). Where is Virgil now? On his way back to Limbo, we must assume. And thus, we may also assume, to another sad welcome from his fellow poets once he is again (less than a week after he had already returned once [see the note to Inf. IV.80-81]) among them in his etterno essilio (eternal exile – Purg. XXI.18). We shall only hear his name twice more (Par. XVII.19 and XXVI.118) and never again from Beatrice, who only uses it once, in her first words, coupling it with Dante's (verse 55), and then to shame Dante for his affection for Virgil when there are more important feelings to be had.

As Beatrice wept in Virgil's presence in hell for Dante's sake (verse 141), so now it is Dante's turn to weep for the sins that made her intervention necessary. The angels may want to celebrate the eventual triumph of this saved Christian; Beatrice is here to make sure that he observes the ritual of the completion of purgation correctly, even on this trial run.