This warm-hued and extended simile opens a canto that has long been admired as one of the most lyrical of the entire Commedia. It contains more similes than any canto since Purgatorio XXX (which has seven) and Paradiso XIV (eight), by merit of offering seven in all (and two simple comparisons). In contrast, the preceding two cantos together offered only a single striking example (XXI.34-42). When one considers them, their burden unabashedly religious and explanatory, one senses at once the differing register introduced by the presence here of affective poetry.

The first nine verses of the simile portray a mother bird awaiting the dawn so that she can find the food with which to feed her nestlings; the final tercet makes the terms of the comparison clear: Beatrice hopes soon to be able to nourish Dante with a vision of the final and best thing knowable by humankind, eternal beatitude in the presence of God. Nonetheless, for all the resemblances (and few of Dante's similes are as “neat” as this one) between mother bird and Beatrice, between soon-to-be-awake, soon-to-be-satisfied nestlings and Dante, we also can see that there is at least one crucial difference here as well. In the imagined earthly scene, the physical sun rises in the east; in the reported scene in the eighth sphere, the metaphoric “sun” descends from the zenith, a supernatural sun having risen at noon, as it were. Dante's theologized “transvaluation of value,” so crucial a part of his strategy, especially in Paradiso, following examples found in the teaching of Jesus, is observable here. What will the joys of Heaven be like? Like the pleasure of being fed, but having nothing to do with eating; like the pleasure of the bride when her bridegroom comes to her, but having nothing to do with sexuality; like the pleasure of possessing great wealth, but having nothing to do with money. A fine American Dantist, Joseph Mazzeo, when teaching this cantica years ago, used to enjoy deploying his own parable to make a similar point. A Christian father is explaining to his child, curious about death, that after this life there is another in Paradise, with God and the saved, and that life there is completely happy, no one desiring anything other than what is already in hand. The child, not quite convinced that death will be so satisfying a country, has a further question: “But, Daddy, will there be ice cream in Paradise?” Dante's answer, imitating answers already found at hand in Christ's parables, would not be apparently ascetic, but would allow us to keep our prospective enjoyment of our human appetites intact even as we overcome them. It is a brilliant strategic coup, sublimation avant la lettre. Mazzeo's parable needs to undergo a Dantean revision: “You like ice cream? O my child, the joys of Heaven are so much sweeter.”

See Cesare Federico Goffis (“Canto XXIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 838) for notice of Dante's reliance here on Lactantius's De ave Phoenice, vv. 39-42, in the portrait of his mother bird, as was first claimed by Enrico Proto (BSDI 22 [1915], pp. 72-73). This attribution is now supported by a number of commentators. The passage presents the bird at the top of a tree, turned to where the sun will rise and waiting for its rays. However, for a lengthy discussion of why the bird should be considered a nightingale (and not a lark), see Maurizio Perugi (“Canto XXIII,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 364-67), with bibliography in the notes. It is something of a surprise that Lactantius's poem does not enter into his discussion. It is even more of one that Manlio Simonetti's article “Lattanzio” (ED III [1971]), while mentioning the poem, does not report on its possible presence behind these verses. For the possible (if unlikely) presence of Lactantius as a character in the Commedia, see the note to Par. X.118-120. Some have objected that the phoenix, as near-immortal bird, does not seem appropriate to this context and deny its presence behind Dante's lines. Lactantius, who lived into the early fourth century, was imbued with the Christian faith, so much so that he was hired by the emperor Constantine to instruct his children. It is not certain he was in fact the author of the poem; what is certain is that, as a Christian symbol (precisely of the reborn Christ), the bird, whoever was its author, is appropriate to the atmosphere of Dante's moment, preparing for a vision of Christ in His flesh.

It seems entirely fitting that a canto centrally devoted to the mother of Jesus begin with this image of the selfless and loving mother bird. Such is the retrograde nature of some commentators that they debate whether this bird is meant to be taken as male or female. Umberto Bosco (Dante vicino [Caltanissetta: Sciascia, 1966], p. 347, n. 5) demonstrates that, in the likely source found in the Fioretti, St. Francis addresses the model uccello's companions as sorores (sisters), thus probably offering those who need them grounds, transcending mere good sense, upon which to settle the question. While it is true that the gender of the bird is not specified, and while male birds do indeed care for nestlings, the context of the simile and of the canto as a whole makes a father bird an otiose thought.

The phrase dolci nati (sweet brood) may have its origin in Virgil, Georgics II.523, “dulces... nati,” in that glowing tableau of the bucolic life in the “good old days” of pre-Roman Italy. Indeed, as Bosco points out in his introductory note to this canto, there are many classical references peeking out at us from these lines, including that one. Apparently the first to cite this passage in the Georgics was Scartazzini (comm. to this verse); see also Aristide Marigo (“Le Georgiche di Virgilio fonte di Dante,” Giornale dantesco 17 [1909]: 31-44).

For the blackness of the night that hides things from view, Tommaseo was the first to point to Virgil (Aen. VI.271-272): “ubi caelum condidit umbra / Iuppiter, et rebus nox abstulit atra colorem” (when Jupiter has buried the sky in shade, and black Night has stolen from the world her hues [tr. H.R. Fairclough]).

There seems no reason to honor the views of those who see in the aspetti disïati anything other than the “faces” of the nestlings. Yet some believe that the phrase refers to the locations of nourishment for the young birds or even the “aspects” of the soon-to-rise Sun.

As Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 4-6) points out, words for “desire” and “desiring” occur four times in this canto (see also vv. 14, 39, 105).

The bird now ventures from the nest farther along the branch, where the leaves are less thick, in order to have a better view of sunrise.

For the medieval alba (a love-song, lamenting the coming of dawn, sung to one's beloved after a night of lovemaking), see Jonathan Saville (The Medieval Erotic “Alba” [New York: Columbia University Press, 1972]). And see Picone (“Miti, metafore e similitudini del Paradiso: un esempio di lettura,” Studi Danteschi 63 [1989 {1994}]: 211-13) for the relevance also of the religious alba. Picone points out that in Dante's scene the dawn is a welcome presence, betiding the renewal of affection rather than the sad time of necessary separation for lovers.

This language for Beatrice's attitude recalls that found in Purgatorio XIX.26, where Beatrice (if that is she in Dante's dream), is santa e presta (holy and alert); in that dream it is Dante who makes “straight” the deformed witch he wants to love.

Unriddled, these lines indicate the heavenly equivalent of noon on earth, the zenith of the universe. We remember that the physical sun lies below the place where Dante finds himself. Beatrice is expecting “sunrise” there, at the zenith, not at the “horizon.” The descent of the blessed spirits of the Empyrean, naturally, is from “true north,” the very top of the universe. Lombardi points out (comm. to these verses) that the heavenly Jerusalem is directly over the earthly one; this “supernatural sunrise” calls our attention to the fact that the “sun” that is about to “dawn” is indeed extraordinary.

The Sun at its zenith seems to “move” more slowly because it covers the smaller part of its arc, as seen by us; see Tozer (comm. to Purg. XXXIII.103-105): “At noon the sun is brightest, and the imagination naturally conceives that it pauses or slackens its speed when it reaches the highest point of its course.”

Dante, as nestling, must await his “food.” Like the subject it describes, delayed satisfaction both for giver and recipient, the passage continues to draw out that moment of satisfaction, until the “sun” is finally described as having risen.

While a great deal of preparation has led up to this moment (and it should now be clear that it is this moment that necessitated the invocation in the last canto), it is nonetheless a vast surprise, once we realize that what has just occurred is a “visit” by the entire Church Triumphant to the second of the heavenly spheres beneath the placeless, timeless Empyrean. There the object of their “visit” is no other and no more than Dante Alighieri, “a Florentine by birth but not in his behaviors.” There are few moments in the poem, not even the final vision of the triune God, that come close to reaching the level of daring found here. However, for a barely controlled outburst against those commentators who believe this, see Porena (comm. to this tercet); according to him, there appear here only souls subjected to the influence of the stars in this realm, and thus not those we have seen in the preceding seven heavens, each group of whom was subject to the influence of the first seven heavens, Moon through Saturn. That may look like a reasonable, sensible, even a correct formulation. The problem is that Porena is confused about the roles of the various heavens in the shaping of our human propensities. He might have learned from Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to this tercet) that: “the eighth sphere, as is affirmed in the second Canto and elsewhere, distributes its power through the spheres of the lower planets.” Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 13-24) shares this understanding, as do some other subsequent commentators. For a summary of the three major “schools” of interpretation of this tercet, see Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 20-21).

The saved who dwell with Christ are thought of as the souls that have been harvested by Him (some in the Harrowing [see Inf. IV.52-63], slightly fewer than half of them later), in part because of the positive qualities bred in them by the stars at their birth. Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 104, suggests that the descent of these souls from the Empyrean may mimic that described in the Apocalypse (Apoc. 21:2), “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,...” (descendentem de coelo a Deo). (Tommaseo is apparently the only other commentator ever to advert to this passage with reference to this canto, and he does so only at vv. 118-120.)

There has been and remains dispute as to who exactly comes down to be seen by Dante. Some embarrassment is felt on the poet's behalf had he wanted the reader to believe that all the saints in Heaven came down to greet him. Embarrassing or not, that seems the only possible reading: tutto il frutto (all the fruit) does not allow for a more modest, gentlemanly selectivity.

We are forced also to reflect that Dante has seen some of these souls before. If all of them now descend, their number includes all the souls since Piccarda whom he has already seen in the various seven previous heavens. (It is not surprising that the poet does not insist on this fact.) Poor Benedict, just having made his way back to the Great Monastery atop the heavens being informed that it's time to head back down for yet another glimpse of the Florentine visitor. No rest for the joyful.

Why did Dante choose to live so dangerously among us, his readers? And why did he choose this particular place for this extraordinary first vision of the Empyrean (since he has not yet reached it, it comes down to him)? No commentator in the DDP has noted what surely other readers have, that this canto is most propitiously “numbered.” No, not twenty-three, but ninety. As the ninetieth canto of the poem, this is the fitting place both for Beatrice to make her final unveiling and present herself not as accommodating mirror but as herself (nine is, after all, “her number”) and for the other saints to make themselves seen. For another and similar numerological hypothesis, see the note to Par. XXIII.90.

For a meditation on the “triumph of Christ” announced by Beatrice, see Renzo Lo Cascio (“Il canto XXIII del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 76-92).

The by-now customary (and, within the poet's strategy, necessary) upward gradation in Beatrice's joy as she gets nearer her God may seem more justified here than at other times. She is now once more in the presence of those with whom she shares Eternity; and now for the first time she is accompanied by her Dante. She is “home,” and escorting Dante to his home as well.

The phrase sanza costrutto (“without putting it in words”) is a bit unusual. For more on costrutto, see the note to Paradiso XII.67. Mattalia (comm. to this verse) explains that it means “the parts and elements of 'discourse'” and goes on to suggest that, in De vulgari eloquentia, Dante refers to it as constructio, that is, the building blocks of language. The word appears four other times in the poem (see Inf. XI.30; Purg. XXVIII.147; Par. XII.67; Par. XXIX.31). Its use this many times may reflect the fact that it happens to rhyme with tutto.

The second simile in the canto compares the Moon, when it is largest and brightest, surrounded by the other astral presences, to this “sun,” irradiating the host of the blessed. There can be no doubt as to what this “sun” is. For here Dante is looking at (if unable to see) the living light that is Jesus Christ, like His mother, present here in the resurrected flesh worn, at least now, before the General Resurrection, by them alone. Some commentators, perhaps puzzled by the strange and lone occurrence in which the assembled citizenry of the Empyrean descends as a unit to the nether heavens, believe that this “sun” is a “symbol” of Christ; however, we are meant to understand that it is Christ (see the note to vv. 31-33). Here is Jacopo della Lana (comm. to these verses) on this passage: “Or qui dà esemplo come la substanzia della umanità di Cristo, ch'era sopra tutti li predetti beati, luceva più di tutti, e tutti li illuminava, simile a questo sensibile sole, che illumina tutti li corpi celesti” (Now [Dante] here gives an example of how the substance of the humanity of Christ, which was above all the aforementioned blessed souls, shone more brightly than all of them, and illumined them all, just as does this material Sun, which illumines all the heavenly bodies).

For Trivia, the Moon, see Picone (“Miti, metafore e similitudini del Paradiso: un esempio di lettura,” Studi Danteschi 63 [1989 {1994}], pp. 213-17). He insists on a source, not in Horace or Virgil, as is proposed by some, but in Ovid (Metam. III.138-252). Picone's treatment of Dante's interpretation of Actaeon resembles Brownlee's reading of his Semele (see the note to Par. XXI.5-12); it is a subversive reading of the “tragic” original, in which Actaeon is torn apart by his own hounds. Now Dante/Actaeon finds a better resolution.

For a study of the formal elements of this tercet, see Aldo Scaglione (“Imagery and Thematic Patterns in Paradiso XXIII,” in From Time to Eternity: Essays on Dante's “Divine Comedy,” ed. T.G. Bergin [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967], pp. 157-72).

The resurrected body of Christ shines down upon Dante's blinded eyes. Singleton, who on seven separate occasions in his comments to this canto insists that what we witness of Christ's presence is not to be taken literally but “symbolically,” here (comm. to vv. 31-32) believes that “Sustanza is used in the scholastic sense (substantia), denoting that which has separate existence, as contrasted with 'accident,' which is a quality existing in a substance. See Dante's use of these terms in Vita nuova XXV.1-2. With this term the stress is rather on the human Christ. The whole vision is symbolic, however – a point not to be forgotten.” In fact “the whole vision” is to be taken as the most “real” experience Dante has yet had, as any such seeing of Christ in His flesh would have to be.

In a single verse Dante culminates his long and varying experience of Beatrice in this recognition of what her guidance has meant and where it has finally led him. When she came to him as mediatrix, one whose being was imprinted by Christ in order to lead him back to his Savior, he was often uncertain. Now the identity between them is finally sensed on his pulses, and he is properly grateful. This is a line that many readers find themselves greatly moved by, without perhaps being able to verbalize the reasons for their emotion. It was amazing, he must reflect, that she had faith in such as him.

For an essay on the relationship between Beatrice and Virgil as Dante's guides, see Arianna Punzi (“'Oh Beatrice, dolce guida e cara!' [Paradiso XXIII, v. 34],” Critica del testo 2 [1999]: 771-99). For the sense that Dante, here and elsewhere, has totally revised his earlier and earthly sense of Beatrice, see Paolo Cherchi (“Dante e i trovatori,” in Le culture di Dante. Atti del quarto Seminario dantesco internazionale, ed. Michelangelo Picone et al. [Florence: Cesati, 2004], p. 99): “This is the true praise. Beatrice loses nothing of her physical beauty; indeed, she remains the most fair among the fair. However, the 'diseroticization,' so to speak, comes... from Dante, who comes to understand, at a certain point in his narrative, that the lady whom he desires is truly 'venuta da cielo in terra a miracol mostrare'” (come from Heaven to earth to reveal a miracle – VN XXVI.6).

Franco Masciandaro's lectura of this canto (“Paradiso XXIII,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana} 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], pp. 329-51) demonstrates the importance of aesthetic concerns throughout this particularly beautiful canto.

For the only other use of the Provençalism sobranza (overwhelms), see the note to Paradiso XX.97.

Beatrice's discourse leaves little doubt but that she and Dante are gazing on Jesus Himself. See I Corinthians 1:24, Paul's description of Christ as “the power of God and the Wisdom of God.”

It was 4302 years that Adam waited for Christ to harrow him from Limbo. See the note to Paradiso XXVI.118-120.

The third simile of the canto compares the swelling lightning bolt, escaping from the cloud that can no longer contain it, and falling, against its nature, downward, to Dante's mind, swelling with its rapt vision of Christ, escaping from its “container,” and becoming other than it had been.

Dante's meteorology (for this phenomenon Steiner [comm. to vv. 40-42] cites Albertus Magnus, Meteor. I.iv.7) held that lightning resulted when contention between fiery and aquatic elements within a cloud resulted in the fiery part becoming too large and bursting the edges of the acqueous envelope, as it were. Theorists of the phenomenon were hard pressed to explain why this excess of fire should, only in this instance, fall downward rather than follow its natural inclination up.

The noun dape (Latin dapes, viands), a hapax in the poem, shows Dante's hand once again being forced by rhyme. Lombardi (comm. to this verse) refers to the hymn composed by St. Ambrose, describing a saintly man who thus “dapes supernas obtinet” (obtains supernal food).

It seems clear that the author wishes us to understand that the protagonist, blinded by Christ, has had a Pauline (or Johannine) raptus.

Dante's vision has now readied him, if not to see Christ in His splendor, then at least to be able to have a version of that experience with respect to Beatrice. Heretofore, she has made herself his mirror (e.g., Par. XVIII.13-18); now she invites him to see her as herself; in the previous sphere (Par. XXI.4-12, XXI.63, XXII.10-11) he was denied her smile (which he last saw in Mars [Par. XVIII.19]). Now he possesses the capacity to behold her true being, since his experience of the Church Triumphant under Christ has raised his ability to deal with such lofty things.

As Kevin Brownlee points out (“Ovid's Semele and Dante's Metamorphosis: Paradiso 21-22,” in Rachel Jacoff and Jeffrey T. Schnapp, eds., The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante's “Commedia” [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991], pp. 230-31), this marks the completion of the “Semele program” in bono, Dante's being able to look upon his “goddess” in her true nature.

The tercet, while offering a simple comparison rather than, strictly speaking, a simile (see, e.g., Par. XXII.2-3, 4-6 for like phenomena), continues the similetic tonality of the canto. Here we find another comparison involving a state of mind (see the note to Inf. XXX.136-141). We may be reminded both of Dante's final vision of Beatrice in Christ in Vita nuova XLII and (if we have already read this poem at least once) of the final vision in Paradiso XXXIII. In both those cases, as here, there is at stake a visione that cannot be brought back to consciousness. In all three cases we are speaking of what is clearly presented as a true vision, not a dream, even if here this is compared to an ordinary dreamer's attempt to revive in himself the experience of the dream from which he has awakened. Our task as interpreters of text is not made easier by the fact that in Dante's Italian both ordinary dreaming and privileged sight of the highest kind may be signified by the same word, visione. For an attempt to demonstrate how carefully Dante developed and deployed necessary distinctions in his vocabulary of seeing as early as in his Vita nuova, see Hollander (“Vita Nuova: Dante's Perceptions of Beatrice,” Dante Studies 92 [1974]: 1-18).

In the last tercet the poet has used the verb vedere to register Dante's vision of Jesus, the “sun” that is too bright for him as yet to take in; Beatrice invites him to look upon her as she truly is (if he cannot yet sustain a vision of Christ). He had never before enjoyed, in the narrative of her presence in the Commedia, from Purgatorio XXX until right now, such beholding of Beatrice “face-to-face.” However, it seems probable that we are meant to consider that she was present to his vision in an at least approximately similar manifestation in the last chapter of the Vita nuova. And thus this moment is meant to draw that one back to mind. There, too, Beatrice was a living soul in the presence of God.

Poletto (comm. to vv. 49-54) notes that this hapax, the Latinism oblita (forgotten, faded from memory) is deployed in the Epistola a Cangrande (XIII.80). The context of that passage is perhaps remembered here: “This again is conveyed to us in Matthew, where we read that the three disciples fell on their faces, and record nothing thereafter, as though memory had failed them (quasi obliti). And in Ezechiel it is written: 'And when I saw it, I fell upon my face.' And should these not satisfy the cavillers, let them read Richard of St. Victor in his book On Contemplation; let them read Bernard in his book On Consideration; let them read Augustine in his book On the Capacity of the Soul; and they will cease from their cavilling” (tr. P. Toynbee). Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of these texts (particularly those of Richard of St. Victor and of Bernard) have been before our eyes in notes to the last contemplative heaven. This portion of the Epistola (XIII.77-84) is a fairly lengthy commentary on Paradiso I.7-9. The context is supplied by the extramundane experiences of Paul and Dante, those uniquely favored humans who had seen God in their ascent to the Empyrean.

Beatrice's “offer” to let Dante see her face-to-face, as she truly is, that is, blessed in the company of the elect, is the greatest gift she has ever bestowed on Dante. Among other things, it promises his own blessedness to come, for how would God sanction such a vision to a mortal bound to perdition? Cf. VN XIX.8, from Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore, “O mal nati, / io vidi la speranza de' beati.”

The language here, too, puts us in mind of the Vita nuova, now of the opening reference (VN I.1) to Dante's libro della mia memoria (book of my memory), in which Beatrice's significant presences are recorded. Strangely enough, because the self-citation does seem obvious, surprisingly few (ten) commentators to Paradiso XXIII refer to the Vita nuova as being focally present behind the phrasing of verse 54. Once again the first is Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 52-54).

Not even if all the most inspired (pagan) poets, inspired by all the Muses (led, in this consideration, by Polyhymnia, the one associated with sacred song), should come to Dante's aid, would that serve to reveal more than a tiny bit of the Christian truth he now saw in Beatrice. There is a small dispute between Hollander (“The Invocations of the Commedia,” Yearbook of Italian Studies 3 [1976]: 235-40) and Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], pp. 41-42) as to how to regard this “non-invocation.” Hollander insists that it betokens a dramatic rejection of the classical Muses, while Ledda sees it as part of a gradual program for downgrading their importance. The fact is, however, that, with a single exception, the Muses have not been part of an invocation since they were referred to by name or by clear periphrasis (quelle donne or sacrosante Vergini) in all four of the invocations in the first two canticles. And there is only one later one that involves a Muse. However, it also happens that most commentators think that the reference to diva Pegasëa is not a reference to one of the nine Muses (if the present writer is convinced that it is: see the notes to Par. XVIII.82-87 and XVIII.82). Once we reach the Empyrean (or its “outpost” in this canto) it may seem fair to refer to what happens in this passage as comprising “a fervent non-invocation,” the phrasing that triggered Ledda's objection. There happen to be in the poem nine invocations (no more than five of them addressed to traditional Muses) and nine references to the Muses; see Hollander (“The Invocations of the Commedia,” Yearbook of Italian Studies 3 [1976]: 235-40, n. 3), who also offers an account of the inaccuracies of Muse-counting from 1896-1973, from Scartazzini to Singleton. And now see The Dante Encyclopedia (ed. Richard Lansing [(New York: Garland, 2000], which has no entry for “invocations” but has one for “Muses, the,” which may mercifully be described as confused, undercounting invocations (three) and overcounting presences of the Muses (thirteen). Since we have known for a long time of the importance of the number nine to Dante, this failed accounting is surprising. But see Hollander's belated discussion (in his later version of this article [“The Tragedy of Divination in Inferno XX,” in Studies in Dante {Ravenna: Longo, 1980}, p. 32, n. 1a) of Fabio Fabbri (“Le invocazioni nella Divina Commedia,” Giornale dantesco 18 [1910]: 186), who lists the nine invocations correctly.

For strong claims for a greater than usually perceived reliance, in this passage, on Horace (to the exclusion of Cicero) for the formal matters of Dante's ars poetriae, see Zygmunt Baranski (“Three Notes on Dante and Horace,” Reading Medieval Studies 27 [2001]: 5-37).

For this trope (nursing Muses) as it is developed in the (only slightly?) later Eclogues, see Andreas Heil (“Die Milch der Musen,” Antike und Abenland 49 [2003]: 113-29). And see Gary Cestaro (Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003], pp. 139, 162, 166) for the Muses as nourishing in Purgatorio and Paradiso.

It has become fairly usual (beginning with Tommaseo [comm. to this tercet]) for commentators to cite Aeneid VI.625-627, for example, Poletto (comm. to vv. 55-60): “No, had I a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, and voice of iron, I could not sum up all the forms of crime, or rehearse all the tale of torments” [tr. H.R. Fairclough]. The Sibyl is here reacting to what she and Aeneas might have seen had they entered Tartarus instead of proceeding to the Elysian Fields. Since we are seeing the inhabitants of the Christian version of those “fields,” the passage in the Aeneid seems doubly apt. For the view that Georgics II.42-46 is still closer to Dante's passage (and includes the word ambages found at Par. XVII.31), see Mario Aversano (“Cultura e immagine: intertestualità dantesco-virgiliana,” L'Alighieri 27 [1986]: 22).

Polyhymnia is mentioned as one of the nine Muses by all the early commentators; most of them go on to identify her with memory rather than a specific artistic form, as she is in handbooks today (with the sacred hymn). The first commentator to associate her with hymns was Andreoli (comm. to vv. 55-57), etymologizing her Greek name; with him she becomes, for the modern commentary tradition, the Muse “of many hymns.”

Read as literally as it probably should be, Dante's remark indicates that his poem right now is “representing Paradise,” and doing so for the very first time. That is why he required a preparatory invocation (Par. XXII.121-123) for this portion of the poem (now combined with an at least equally attention-summoning “non-invocation, vv. 55-63). True Paradise is found only, one may respond, after Paradiso XXX.90, once Dante begins to see the courts of Heaven as they are. However, singularly and strikingly, it is here, in the Fixed Stars, that he is allowed to see those who dwell there, whom he will see again once he himself has reached the Empyrean. In this vein, among many, see Cesare Federico Goffis (”Canto XXIII,“ in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: ”Paradiso“, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 826), referring to this canto as beginning the ”second part“ of Paradiso. However, see Benvenuto da Imola, for the kind of misapprehension that dogs him whenever Dante represents himself as having looked upon reality. Here is Benvenuto's response to this tercet: ”figurando il paradiso, that is, representing poetically, figuratively; for this passage does not represent real things....“

Scartazzini (comm. to verse 61) documents the confusion caused by these lines: If ”figurando il paradiso“ means ”representing [true] paradise,“ that is, the Church Triumphant, citizenry of the Empyrean (and that is not everyone's understanding, if it seems to be a just one), then why does the ”sacred poem“ indeed ”have to make a leap“? There is a fairly straightforward interpretation: The poem ”overleaps“ an intervening heaven, the Primum Mobile, in finding its subject matter in those who inhabit the Empyrean. It is in that sense that he is like a man ”who finds his path obstructed“ and has to leap over the impediment.

Tommaseo (comm. to this tercet) puts it into relationship with Inferno XXXII.9, where Dante is concerned with the difficulty of describing the bottom of the universe (here, with the top of it). There we find, immediately following this expression of concern, an invocation; here, immediately preceding an expression of similar difficulty, a non-invocation.

For a meditation loosely based in this tercet, see Teodolinda Barolini (The Undivine ”Comedy“: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992]), pp. 218-46).

In the Commedia the word paradiso has only a single presence outside the cantica that bears its name (Purg. I.99). Its first clear reference to the Empyrean (rather than to the celestial regions in general) perhaps occurs only in its sixth appearance, in Paradiso (XV.36).

This is an ”indirect address to the reader,“ as it were; for the extent of the real kind in the poem, see the notes to Inferno VIII.94-96 and Paradiso X.22-27.

Daniello, Lombardi, Tommaseo, Scartazzini, Torraca (all in their comments on this tercet) cite Horace's much-quoted passage (”sumite materiam“) from his Ars poetica (vv. 38-41): ”Take a subject, you writers, equal to your strength, and ponder long what your shoulders refuse, and what they are able to bear. Whoever shall choose a theme within his range, neither speech will fail him, nor clearness of order“ (tr. H.R. Fairclough). Torraca reminds the reader that Dante had earlier cited this passage in De vulgari eloquentia (II.iv.4).

The altogether possible pun on Homer's name, unrecorded in the commentaries, in Dante's rephrasing of Horatian humerus (shoulder) as òmero mortal (mortal shoulder), since Omèro is Homer's name in Italian (see Inf. IV.88), was noted in the 1970s by Professor Janet Smarr, while she was a graduate student at Princeton. That Dante may have for a moment thought of himself as the ”Italian Homer“ would not come as a surprise. If he did, the profoundly famous Homer (see Horace, Ars poetica 401: insignis Homerus), by any stretch of the imagination ”immortal,“ has an Italian counterpart in the very mortal Dante. For Dante's earlier reference to a Homeric being seeming like a god (and thus immortal), see Vita nuova II.8, perhaps a reference to Nausicaa in the Odyssey, but for Dante, who is citing indirectly, without precise Homeric identity.

This tercet, recapping the nautical imagery that shapes the beginnings of each of the last two canticles of the poem, allows us to realize that, in some real sense, Dante put forward this canto as a liminal space, at the border of the infinite, as it were. In that perspective, the text that follows directly after this one is the final third of Paradiso XXX, where we are again in the direct presence of Eternity. And thus the necessity of a narrative 'leap.'

These verses pick up various thematic elements from earlier in the poem. For the ”little bark“ with its unworthy readers, see Paradiso II.1; for the Commedia as a legno, see Paradiso II.3; for the angelic steersman as celestial nocchiero, see Purgatorio II.43. We have progressed to that point at which the poet has himself become the pilot who will not spare himself in guiding us to our heavenly destination.

Is this tercet a boundary stone for a ”fourth part“ of the Commedia, consisting in Dante's experience of the Empyrean, begun here, only to be interrupted by six more cantos that take place in the last two spheres?

The word pareggio has caused difficulty. Its other use in the poem (Par. XXI.90) has not seemed problematic to the commentators (it is a verb form meaning ”I match“ or ”I equal“). Here, on the other hand, where it is a predicate nominative, it has caused traffic jams. The value of the word in its two most favored forms (there have been as many as seven candidates at one time or another) is close enough that one may say that the difference is not worth a large investment of effort: Some sense of a voyage over an extensive piece of sea is what most think is meant, however they arrive at their conclusion. See the note to Par. XXIII.67-69.

That the protagonist is looking upon the Church Triumphant is beyond question, despite occasional shilly-shallying about how many of the saved are represented as having come down to be seen by Dante (since Beatrice's words at verse 20 make it plain that all are here). The question that remains is why the poet engineered this extraordinary scene. The commentators have not ventured an opinion, perhaps because they do not fully take in what an extraordinary moment this is. It is simply amazing to find that all the blessed have appeared in space in the Starry Sphere, that is, before we enter the Empyrean. One might counter that this is similar to their appearances through the spheres. But there they came as ”emissaries“ of themselves; now they are themselves (without, of course, their flesh), and are arranged as they shall be for eternity. For a precise understanding of the difference, see Italo Borzi (”Il Canto XXIV,“ in ”Paradiso“: Letture degli anni 1979-'81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], p. 644): ”Il Canto XXIII del Paradiso segna il passaggio dalla rappresentazione dei beati distribuiti, per ragioni didattiche, nei sette cieli, alla visione di un Paradiso còlto nella realtà teologica della sua unità“ (Canto XXIII marks the passage from the representation of the blessed souls distributed, for didactic reasons, through the seven heavens, to the vision of a Paradise caught in the theological reality of its oneness).

The word giardino (garden), absent from the poem since Purgatorio VI.105, where it was used in the phrase ”the garden of the empire,“ now, referring to the members of the Church Triumphant, reappears. It will do so again at Paradiso XXVI.110, where it refers to the garden of Eden, and then in XXXI.97 and XXXII.39, where it will signify the Empyrean, Eden regained.

We hear that there are at least two kinds of flowers in this ”garden“ (verse 71). The single rose, by common consent, is Mary; the lilies, if with considerably less unanimous support (see, for instance, Lino Pertile [”Stile e immagini in Paradiso XXIII,“ The Italianist 4 {1984}, pp. 32-33 {n. 12}]), represent the apostles, leading humankind toward salvation in Christ (along ”the right way“). Pertile, citing two passages in Saint Bernard's Sermones in Cantica Canticorum, argues that they probably refer to all the blessed in the Rose. See Jacopo della Lana (comm. to verse 74) on three reasons for identifying the lilies with the apostles: (1) because lilies are white (signifying faith), vermilion in their inner petals (signifying incorruptibility and charity), and fragrant (signifying preaching and hope). As early as Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to this tercet), however, there was a wider understanding abroad: Pietro thought the lilies represented ”the apostles and the other saints,“ much as would Pertile. Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 70-87) says that the lilies represent ”the apostles, the Doctors [of the Church], and all of the blessed souls.“ Landino (comm. to vv. 73-74) thought of apostles, Doctors, and martyrs, as did Vellutello (comm. to this tercet), but putting these three in a historically more correct order, apostles, martyrs, and Doctors. Indeed, the context of the tercet would seem to limit the ”lilies“ to those who taught Christian doctrine to others, either by word or example, and thus perhaps not include all the inhabitants of the Rose, but more of them than the apostles. Similar interpretations mark the landscape of the commentaries into the early nineteenth century. However, beginning with Andreoli (comm. to vv. 74-75), there occurred one of those unaccountable shifts back to the earliest gloss (Lana's): the reference is, and is only, to the apostles. In the last two centuries there have only been a half dozen or so ”dissenters,“ the most recent of whom was Sapegno (comm. to vv. 73-74), but there is a compact majority supporting the oldest hypothesis.

For a second time (see Par. XXIII.31-33), the brightness of Jesus overwhelms Dante's ability to look at Him. (The line literally means ”the battle of the weak brows.“)

The precondition for this simile, as we finally will realize in verse 86, is that Jesus has withdrawn, going back up to the Empyrean. And so now He, as the Sun, shines through a rift in clouds and illuminates a spot of earth, representing, resolved from the simile, the host of Christ's first triumph (the Harrowing) and the souls of all those saved after that.

The mechanisms of display of the Church Triumphant manifest in this canto urge at least two perhaps unanswerable questions upon us: (1) Why did Dante choose to have the host of the blessed descend to the Starry Sphere? (2) Why did he decide to allow us this ”foretaste“ of the final sense of the ultimate reality that Canto XXXIII will bring us? It is not enough to say (as has been said above) that this ninetieth canto of the poem is numerically propitious. His tactic here calls so much attention to itself that one might say that Dante has chosen to live very, very dangerously. This event, unheard of in any form of Christian writing, the Church Triumphant descending back into the world of time (and for the education of a single failed Tuscan politician!), really seems, even from a poet not known for his restraint, excessive.

On a beam of light passing through a cloud as an expression of Dante's light physics, see Simon Gilson (Medieval Optics and Theories of Light in the Works of Dante [Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000], pp. 150-69). Patrick Boyde (Perception and passion in Dante's ”Comedy“ [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], pp. 67-68) deals with its three prime elements: luce (the source of light), lumen (in Dante's Italian, raggio, the beam along which the luce travels), splendor[e] (the surface that the light irradiates). Perhaps nowhere else in the poem is this arrangement articulated so neatly, each element receiving one line in the tercet, but that is not to say it is not often present. See the note to Paradiso XII.9.

Christ, addressed as His paternal attribute, Power, is now thanked by the poet for having made, by withdrawing, his experience of the scene possible. His overwhelming light, which is compared to the sun being present only through a chink in the clouds (His ”ray“ that illuminates the resplendent flowers in a field without blinding the onlooker by shining full on him as well), is thus only resplendent on the souls that constitute the ”garden“ of the Church Triumphant. For some readers, this is the most beautiful and memorable simile in the poem - and no wonder.

This passage brings out emotional responses in even hardened commentators, as demonstrated by a quick sampling of their responses to it in the DDP. And surely they are correct in thinking that Dante is revealing a personal trait, what a stern Protestant would describe, with perhaps an Anglo-Saxon harrumph, as ”Mariolatry.“ This is, nonetheless, one of the few touches in the poem that allow us to feel the presence of an ordinary human being beneath the writer's words (we often are allowed to share Dante's thoughts, only rarely his doings), one who is occupied with the details of daily living, praying to the Intercessor before he descends the stairs in a stranger's house and then again after he climbs them in the evening (see Par. XVII.60). And, for discussion of another similar moment in the poem, see the note to Inf. XXXII.70-72.

For the significance of Mary's appearing to be greater in size than the other saints, see the note to Paradiso XXII.28-29. This ninetieth verse of the ninetieth canto celebrates Mary as the largest figure in Paradise. Is Dante deliberately managing the numbers here? See the note to vv. 19-21.

This little scene reflects a genre familiar from paintings of the time, an Annunciation, with its two familiar figures, the archangel Gabriel and the mother of Jesus. It ends with the canonical color for Mary, her earmark glowing blue. Porena (comm. to vv. 106-108), however, denies that the angelic presence here is that of Gabriel, urging rather the candidacy of an unnamed Seraph.

Mary is as elevated over all the other saints in Heaven as she exceeded in virtue all other living beings while she was on earth.

For the Virgin's crown, created by Gabriel's circling, see Carroll (comm. to vv. 91-108): ”Aquinas distinguishes between the essential bliss of heaven and the accidental reward. The essential bliss he calls the corona aurea, or simply aurea; and the accidental reward, aureola, a diminutive of aurea. All saints in the Fatherland receive the aurea, the essential bliss of perfect union of the soul with God; but the aureola, or accidental reward, is given only to those who, in the earthly warfare, have won an excellent victory over some special foe: virgins, martyrs, and doctors and preachers [Summa, Supp., q. xcvi, a. 1].“

Similetic in its feeling, this passage does without the trope's traditional markers but surely has telling effect: ”Ave Maria,“ for instance, would sound like a cloud crackling with thunder if compared with the ”song“ created by the angelic affection for Mary.

While the poet never explicitly says that Gabriel is singing, he makes it clear that the angel is indeed doing so by referring to him as a ”lyre.“

The Starry Sphere is the one most characterized by singing. (For the program of song in the last cantica, see the note to Par. XXI.58-60.) These words, which are attributable to none other than Gabriel (one notices that the poet's reticence forces the reader both to identify him and to understand that he is singing) are, perhaps surprisingly, the only words spoken (or sung) by a specific angel in this canticle. Cf. the only ones spoken by an angel in Inferno (Inf. IX.91-99). (There are many angelic verbal interventions as part of the ceremonies of Purgatorio and as part of the celebrations of Paradiso, but none is as non-formulaic as these two utterances.)

The word ventre (womb, belly), about as explicitly a low-vernacular word as a Christian poet could employ in this exalted context, brought forth a wonderfully numb-brained remark in complaint by Raffaele Andreoli (comm. to vv. 103-105): ”più nobilmente il Petrarca: 'Virginal chiostro'“ (Petrarch says this more nobly: ”virginal cloister“). Obviously Andreoli could not have read Erich Auerbach's essay ”Sermo humilis“ (in his Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, tr. R. Manheim [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965 {1958}], pp. 25-66) – if it is not clear that he would have benefited from doing so; nonetheless, his insistence on the desirability of a ”higher,“ more ”civilized“ stylistic level strikes a reader sympathetic to Dante's strategy as inept.

If we needed clarification, here it is: Jesus has returned, and Mary is about to return, to the Empyrean. As far as we can tell, all the other members of the Church Triumphant are meant to be understood as still being present down here in the eighth heaven.

The ”other lights“ are clearly the members of the Church Triumphant, not including Jesus and Mary.

Trucchi (comm. to these verses) considers this scene, surmounting those that previously reflected the Annunciation and the Coronation of the Virgin, a revisitation of her Assumption; as Carroll already had suggested (comm. to vv. 91-108), this scene represents ”the heavenly counterpart of the Assumption of the body of Mary, which, according to the belief of the Church, God did not suffer to see corruption. Like her Son, she rose from the dead on the third day, and was received by Him and the angels into the joy of Paradise.“

It would be like Dante to have worked those three major episodes in her life into his scene, the first representing her being chosen, the second her victory over death, and the third her bodily Assumption into Heaven, a reward she shares with her Son alone. The other commentators, with the exception of Carroll (comm. to vv. 109-129), do not mention it.

The poet refers to the Primo Mobile, the ninth sphere, also known as the Crystalline Sphere (because, even though it is material, it contains no other heavenly bodies in addition to itself). It is ”royal“ because it is the closest of the nine ”volumes“ (revolving heavens, or spheres) to God.

Since his eyes could not yet see the Crystalline Sphere, they of course could not follow Mary's rising still farther, that is, beyond that sphere and back ”home“ into the Empyrean.

Mary sowed her seed, Jesus, in the world.

This final simile of the canto portrays the denizens of the Empyrean, currently visiting Dante in the eighth heaven, as infants reaching up with gratitude to their mommies who have just nursed them. We remember that, in the non-invocation (vv. 55-60), Dante referred to the Muses's milk that had nourished classical poets (verse 57), whose songs would not be much help at all in singing Beatrice's smile. That milk is evidently in contrast with the one referred to here. This milk, we understand, is a nourishing vernacular, one quite different from the Latin latte that is of little nutritional value for a Christian poet. (See Hollander [”Babytalk in Dante's Commedia,“ in Studies in Dante {Ravenna: Longo, 1980}, pp. 115-29].)

The word ”mamma“ has an interesting presence in this poem (see the notes to Inf. XXXII.1-9 and to Purg. XXI.97-99). It is used a total of five times, once in Inferno, twice in Purgatorio (last in Purg. XXX.44), and twice in this final canticle (first in Par. XIV.64). Here it picks up on its last use in Purgatorio. It is always a part of Dante's rather boisterous championing of the ”low vernacular,“ and never more naturally than in this warmly affectionate scene that represents the members of the Church Triumphant stretching upward in expression of their love for Mary.

Milan Kundera, exploring the manipulative nature of communist political rhetoric in his novel The Joke (New York: HarperCollins, 1982 [definitive English version revised by the author]), p. 171, portrays a bureaucrat making a speech that begins in sentimentality and progresses to unvarnished political harangue. Kundera characterizes the moment as follows, as the politician, unabashedly exploiting the rhetorical vein of the enthusiastic idealistic youths who had spoken before him, also ”spoke of spring, of flowers, of mamas and papas, he also spoke of love, which according to him bore fruit, but suddenly his vocabulary was transformed and the words duty, responsibility, the State, and citizen appeared; suddenly there was no more papa and mama, but father and mother....“ Dante would have loved it.

In the wake of Mary's ascent, following Jesus back up to the Empyrean, the rest of the members of the Church Triumphant sing her praise. From the beginning of the commentary tradition, with Jacopo della Lana (comm. to this verse), the hymn ”Queen of Heaven“ has been identified as an antiphon sung at Easter, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. (An antiphon is a responsive song, based on a Psalm, sung by the congregation, after the reading of that Psalm, which forms the text of the lesson at Matins or Vespers. This particular antiphon was used in the eight-day period defining the Easter season, Palm Sunday to Easter itself.) Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) gives the complete Latin text, six verses, each ending with the cry of praise ”hallelujah.“ (For the English text, see Singleton [comm. to this verse].) Both the third and sixth verses of the antiphon refer to the resurrection of Jesus; since He has recently (verse 86) Himself gone back up, we probably (and are meant to) think of His first ascent, in the flesh then as now. Porena (comm. to this verse) argues that we are supposed to think that only the first line of the antiphon is sung, because he does not believe that any reference to Christ's resurrection is here intended, but only to Mary's worthiness to reascend to the highest place in the universe. Had that been the case, Dante probably would have given us a clue, as he did in Purgatorio XXX.83-84, as to where the text was interrupted.

In our translation, we have mainly followed Carroll (comm. to vv. 130-139), who has Dante turning from his admiration of Mary to ”the heavenly treasures stored up in the Apostles. The metaphors, it must be confessed, are somewhat mixed. The Apostles are at once the sowers or the soil (depending on how we understand bobolce), and the chests in which the abundant harvest is stored. The harvest is not simply their own personal bliss, but the life and joy they have in the treasure of redeemed souls all round them in this Heaven, won in weeping in the Babylonian exile of earth, where for this wealth, they abandoned gold.“

Lino Pertile (”Le Egloghe, Polifemo e il Paradiso,“ Studi Danteschi 71 [2006]: 285-302) demonstrates that many elements found in this canto are reprocessed in Dante's first Eclogue, and goes on to hypothesize that this, the first modern European classical eclogue, was written soon after Dante had finished working on this canto, and that his reference, in the eclogue, to the ten ”pails of milk“ that he hopes soon to send to Giovanni del Virgilio, his poetic correspondent, are precisely the final ten cantos of the Paradiso, a bold and interesting idea first proposed by Carroll (comm. to Par. XXV.1-12).

The word bobolce, a hapax, one, more than most, the deployment of which is obviously forced by rhyme. See Enrico Malato, ”bobolca,“ ED I (1970), for the various interpretations. We believe that it probably refers, as most of the early commentators believed, to the apostles as ”sowers“ of the ”seeds“ of the new faith.

Lombardi (comm. to vv. 130-132) cites Venturi's wrathful response to Dante's choice of vocabulary in this instance, a word ”to locate in some 'pouch' of Inferno rather than be included in so high a place in Paradiso.“

The first tercet of the concluding seven-line flourish celebrates the victory of the triumphant Church, seen for the last time in this realm. There is no valediction for them, only celebration.

Pietro Alighieri (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 130-136) was apparently the first (and remains one of the surprisingly few) to note the presence here of an allusion to Psalm 136 [137]:1: ”By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion,“ a text Dante himself had previously remembered in Epistola VII.30 (as was noted by Poletto [comm. to vv. 130-135]).

It is worth noting here (it will be unmistakably clear in Paradiso XXXII) that Dante specifically refers to the Hebrews who were saved (”the treasure / they gained with tears of exile, / in Babylon“). It will come as a shock to some readers to learn that fully half of those in Paradise are, in fact, ancient Hebrews who believed in Christ as their savior. (See Par. XXXII.22-24.)

For the importance (and changing significance) of the word tesoro (treasure), see the note to Par. XVII.121.

Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 133-135) here puts into play both Matthew 6:20 (about laying up true treasure in Heaven) and 19:29 (”And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life“).

Now the poet sets all his attention on St. Peter, who will examine the protagonist on faith, the first of the three theological virtues, in Canto XXIV, serving as guide in the first and the last of the following four cantos. In this heaven, he will share speaking parts with two other of the original disciples, James and John, as well as with the first father, Adam. Peter will speak in both Paradiso XXIV (eight times for a total of 54 verses) and XXVII (an utterance in 36 verses and in two parts, both devoted to a ringing denunciation of the corrupt papacy).