As a continuation of its predecessor, this canto begins with Dante's concerns about his blindness. The verb dubbiava underlines the combination of fear and uncertainty that he is experiencing, as Sapegno (comm. to vv. 1-2) points out (citing Francesco da Buti [comm. to vv. 1-12]); he reflects on some of the previous and varying meanings of the verb dubbiare (Inf. IV.18 and Purg. XX.135: being fearful; Purg. III.72: being dubious).

For the noun spiro, see Paradiso XXIV.32, where it refers to Peter's “breath” (and see the related verb [spirò] at XXIV.82; and XXV.82, with similar significance for James as well). Thus each apostle is identified with the word connected to the spiration of the Holy Spirit; it is probably not accidental that all three of them are associated with this spiration in Paradiso XXV.132.

The verb risensarsi (to get back any one of one's [lost] senses) is probably a Dantean invention, as Isidoro del Lungo (comm. to vv. 4-6) suggests.

These lines bring back to mind a similar tactic on the part of Virgil (Inferno XI.10-15), where Dante's olfactory sense must be rested from the infernal stench before the downward journey into the pit may be continued; therefore, Virgil, in order to pass the time profitably, offers his “lecture” on the order of the sins. Here, in response to Dante's temporary blindness, John will use the time to give Dante his examination on Love, which begins with the next tercet.

Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 121, points out that here the verb ragionare, so intimately connected with the phrase d'amore (and thus “to speak of love”) in Dante's own and other amorous lyrics, here is put to the service of discussing a higher form of love, the third (and highest) of the three theological virtues (see Paul's statement to that effect [that among faith, hope, and love, “the greatest of these is love”] in I Corinthians 13:13). (The verb is repeated in verse 21.)

At the same time, it is necessary to keep in mind, as Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 1-18) reminds us, citing Thomas (ST I-II, q. 65, a. 5), the necessary relations among Charity, Faith, and Hope. We may be tempted to conclude that, like the Persons of the Trinity, the presence of one of them implies the presence of both the other two.

The protagonist's blindness, John assures him, is but temporary. For the reference, see Acts 9:10-18, where Ananias, a disciple of Christ, is sent to cure Saul of his blindness. Once he does so, Paul begins to preach Jesus Christ. This is thus the pivotal moment in the life of Saul/Paul. While Beatrice, bringing back Dante's sight, is thus Ananias-like, there is much less at stake here, and the comparison may seem at least a bit overblown. James Gaffney (“Dante's Blindness in Paradiso XXV-XXVI: An Allegorical Interpretation,” Dante Studies 91 [1973]: 101-12) argues that Dante abandons Thomistic precepts here and turns to the Platonic-Augustinian tradition, particularly as available in Saint Bonaventure's Itinerarium mentis in Deum. This, according to Gaffney, represents a further stage in his spiritual progress, a stage corresponding to the second category of contemplation, of “what is within the soul,” according to Bonaventure's distinctions. His vision restored and spiritually re-directed, the Pilgrim eventually enters the third category of contemplation, that “above the soul.”

The past participle, smarrita, of the verb smarrire (to confuse, discourage, bewilder) is used to suggest Dante's inner state in Inferno I.3, II.64, V.72, X.125, and XIII.24 (see the note to Inf. X.125). In most of those situations, the protagonist felt sympathy for the damned. Here, in the penultimate occurrence of the word to indicate his inner state, his loss of the faculty of vision is not the result of his sinfulness, but represents only a temporary failing (a result of his remaining tendency to see with carnal eyes?) in his increasing capacity to understand things divine. A final occurrence of the verb to indicate that condition awaits (Par. XXXIII.77); there it will refer to a rather different (and loftier) “confusion” on the protagonist's part.

Giovanni Getto (“Canto XXVI,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 933) has observed that this canto enters into an intimate relationship with the Vita nuova (see also Kevin Brownlee, “Paradiso XXVI,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995 {1990}], p. 390). And these verses, more pointedly than most in this cantica dedicated to Dante's love for Beatrice, recall the physical basis of Dante's first desires for her (and one also refers to the even clearer sexual reference of that Virgilian reminiscence found in a similar moment, Purg. XXX.46-48, equating Beatrice and Dido). The language here is unmistakably reminiscent of the language of sexual desire found in Dante's lyrics (and in those of other poets). Reassembling arguments made in her three previous essays in this vein, Regina Psaki (“Love for Beatrice: Transcending Contradiction in the Paradiso,” in Dante for the New Millennium, ed. Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storey [New York: Fordham University Press, 2003], pp. 115-30) argues that Dante's heavenly love for Beatrice conflates that early form of love in his present one. Opponents of this view are accused of “cultural nervousness about the notion that sexual love may be sacred” (p. 119). Nonetheless, it is difficult to believe that Dante wants his reader to think that the old flame still burns beneath angelic clothing; and it is still more difficult to believe that, at least within the confines of the Comedy, he would consider any form of extramarital sexual love “sacred.”

Dante's answer is simple (at least it seems so at first). Love “reads” instruction to him, as might a professor at the Sorbonne. The poet's word leggere refers to the practice of instruction in theology from which the word “lecture” derives (for a previous use, see Par. X.137); see Poletto (comm. to Par. X.136-138). Dante's heart is instructed by the Holy Spirit to love God.

The problem for the reader results from the phrasing of the thought “whatever scripture Love teaches me in loud or gentle tones.” Since the precise meaning of this tercet is much contested, there are many instances of commentators who outdo themselves in improbable readings (for a review, see Scartazzini [comm. to vv. 17-18]; his own attempt, however, leaves much to be desired with respect to the last four words [o lievemente o forte]). To characterize them with the words of Origen, hurling invective at those copyists of the Gospels who twisted the sense of the text in order to arrive at a meaning of which they approved, such commentators are guilty of “perverse audacity” (see Bart D. Ehrman [Misquoting Jesus {San Francisco: Harper, 2005}], p. 52). For an instance of exactly such critical behavior with regard to this tercet, see Karlheinz Stierle (“Canto XXVI,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 406-7); he attempts to relate the Amore who “reads” to Dante here to Paolo and Francesca reading the voice of Amore in Inferno V; his argument concludes with the detail (which is obviously intended as a final flourish): alfa and o are the “determinative vowels” of their names: Paolo and Francesca. However, see Carroll (comm. to vv. 1-18): “Much difficulty is made of these words, but the meaning is quite simple: 'God is the beginning and the end of all my love.' The figurative form is taken from the Alpha and Omega of Revelation 1:8: God is the entire alphabet of the sacred writings which love reads to his soul – the scripture of the universe. Many meanings are suggested for 'o lievemente o forte,' 'with light voice or strong': such as reason and revelation, or human and Divine love, or God loved for Himself and for His benefits. Dante's own words which follow seem to me to give the answer. The loud voice corresponds to the arguments of Philosophy and the assurance of Revelation in ll. 25-45; and the low voice to the secondary causes of love in ll. 55-66. But whether low or loud, God is the one and only object of love.” Daniello (comm. to this tercet) had offered a somewhat similar observation: God commands us to love first of all Himself and then His creatures. For a different view, see Benvenuto (comm. to this tercet), interpreting “lievemente o forte” as “easy or difficult,” a view accepted by Simone Marchesi (“A Rhetoric of Faith: Dante's Poetics in the Transition from De vulgari eloquentia to the Commedia” [Doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 2002]).

For “Alfa ed O” Dante is of course citing John's own words (Apoc. 1:8, 21:6, 22:13), as he has already done in the Epistle to Cangrande (XIII.90): “And since, when the Beginning or First, which is God, has been reached, there is nought to be sought for beyond, inasmuch as He is Alpha and Omega [Alfa et O], that is, the Beginning and the End, as the Vision of John tells us, the work ends in God Himself, who is blessed for evermore, world without end” (tr. P. Toynbee).

See vv. 40-42, where he has John quote Exodus 33:19, another evident biblical citation in the canto. Thus he intrinsically presents himself as citing himself (from his own epistle) citing John (in the Apocalypse), while he presents John as citing Moses. John, at least, shows a certain amount of authorial modesty.

For “lo ben” (the good), see Inferno III.18, “il ben dell'intelletto” (the good of the intellect), or, as most commentators agree, God.

For some bibliography dealing with this verse, see Sebastiano Valerio (“Lingua, retorica e poetica nel canto XXVI del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 22 [2003], p. 98, n. 65), citing not only Nardi's discussion (“Perché 'Alfa ed O' e non 'Alfa ed Omega' [Nota a Par. XXVI, 17],” in his Saggi e note di critica dantesca [Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1966 {1964}], pp. 317-20) but three studies by Del Popolo from the 1990s. Nardi demonstrated that the reading he had grown up with (“Alfa ed Omega”) is metrically impossible.

Surpassing even Inferno V, where it appeared ten times in 68 lines, the word amor has its most dense occurrence in the Commedia here, seven times in forty-five lines. Other notably amor-filled passages occur in Purgatorio XVII.85-136, a total of eight occurrences in 52 lines; XVIII.14-104, nine occurrences in 91. See the note to Paradiso XV.12.

The words mi mise in cura (made me hesitate) are not understood by everyone in the same way, with some believing that they mean “gave me a reason,” an opinion that we do not share.

John asks the protagonist to go down to a second level in his disquisition on this theological virtue, to put his answer through a “finer sieve.” However, and as Singleton (comm. to vv. 1-79) points out, “no definition of love is given in the examination, as it is with faith and hope. This serves to stress the fact that love is primarily a matter of the will, not of the intellect. Dante is simply asked what he loves, and why.”

Dante replies briefly but thoroughly, refining his first response (vv. 13-18). Love is imprinted in him by two agents, philosophical arguments and “authority,” or, in a shorthand of sorts, Aristotle and the Bible.

For the gist of these tercets, see Tozer's paraphrase: “The argument derived from Reason is this: – That which is good awakens love in the soul of him who understands its nature, and the love increases in proportion as the goodness is greater. Consequently, the Being who is perfect goodness must attract more love than any other object.”

To whom does Dante refer here? Aristotle is the nearly unanimous opinion of the commentators, who are divided only about the precise passage, whether in the Metaphysics, the Ethics, or On Causes (attributed to Aristotle during the Middle Ages), explaining how the spheres' love for the godhead set the universe into motion.

Dante now adduces two texts in evidence, the first plainly identifiable. It reports that God says to Moses (Exod. 33:19), “Ego ostendam omne bonum tibi” (I will make all My goodness pass before you). Perhaps the first commentator to deal with the context of this passage was Vellutello (comm. to vv. 40-42), noting that it continues by having God reveal to Moses only His “back parts,” not His face. Apparently he was the only commentator to do so before Carroll, whose discussion is informative (comm. to vv. 19-45): “It seems to me difficult to believe that Dante, when quoting this, did not remember that God proceeds to say: 'Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me and live.... Thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.' And, as I understand it, the passage which he takes from the New Testament is chosen just because it is the fulfillment of the imperfect revelation given to Moses.” Then Carroll turns to the less clearly identified source: “It is taken from St. John's writings, the particular reference being much disputed.... Dante is thinking of all [of John's writings] as one proclamation of the secret of heaven to earth; and if so, 'the beginning of the high heralding' is the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel. Now it happens that the closing words of the Prologue allude to this very fulfillment of the imperfect revelation through Moses of which I have spoken: 'The law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.' The evident connection of this with the passage quoted from Moses seems to me conclusive. Moses saw the back of God; Christ reveals the 'secret' of heaven – the bosom of the Father [...]. [W]hat Dante wants is a passage of Scripture in proof that God has revealed himself as the supreme object of the love of man, and that is certainly not absent from the Prologue; it is indeed specially emphasized in verse 18 to which I refer. I lay stress on two points: (1) Dante is not singling out one of John's writings – they all constitute the highest proclamation of the secret of heaven; (2) the connection, to my mind very obvious, between Exodus 32:19-23 and John 1:17-18. It is perhaps not a mere fancy to find some slight corroboration of this interpretation in the word 'grida' of l. 44 – 'the high heralding which cries the secret' of heaven – an echo of John 1:15, where it is written that Christ's herald 'John bare witness and cried, saying, This was he,' etc.”

For Guido Cavalcanti's version of this statement, see Vita Nuova (III.14): “Vedeste, al mio parere, onne valore” (I think that you beheld all worth – tr. M. Musa), as cited by Sebastiano Valerio (“Lingua, retorica e poetica nel canto XXVI del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 22 [2003], pp. 90-91). And see the discussion of Exodus 33:19 in the note to vv. 40-45.

The word preconio (proclamation, message) and the word arcano (mystery) is each a hapax. Benvenuto begins the understanding that this preconio is the opening verse of John's Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word.” However, and as Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) argues, most of the ancient commentators are of the opinion that the Apocalypse is on Dante's mind here; he follows them. It would have been hard to oppose the combined authority of Benvenuto and Scartazzini; the former's judgment (supported, as it was in this particular, by that of Francesco da Buti) should perhaps have weighed more heavily with the latter. More recently, Brenda Deen Schildgen (Dante and the Orient [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002]) takes a wider approach in trying to locate the passage in biblical exegesis.

John accepts Dante's answer. Depending on whether the verb guarda is to be taken as a present indicative (as we translate it) or as an imperative strongly influences one's understanding of the tercet. See, inter alia, discussions in Scartazzini (comm. to verse 44), brusquely dismissive (if perhaps rightly so) of those who decide for the imperative, and Bosco/Reggio (comm. to verse 44), more balanced in keeping the options open.

John now sets his third question for the protagonist, involving the subjects of what draws him (by pulling him with corde [cords]) and what goads him (by bites of its denti [teeth]) toward God. The reader may be reminded of the stimuli on the seven terraces of the purgatorial mountain, which featured (see, e.g., Purg. XIV.147) freno or richiamo (“curb” or “lure”). In Paradiso XXVIII.12, Beatrice's eyes will be presented as the “cord” (in the sense of “noose”) that captured him.

In response to Venturi's complaint against the bitterness of Dante's metaphor for such a sweet feeling (love), Lombardi (comm. to verse 51) points out that Dante has always used harsh metaphors for love (presented as burning, wounding, etc.).

The authors of the Gospels were portrayed as four different creatures, the “four living creatures” of Apocalypse 4:7: Matthew as man, Mark as lion, Luke as ox, John as eagle.

Carroll (comm. to vv. 46-63) continues his global explanation of this passage: “But [John's] examination is not finished. 'The Eagle of Christ' pursues the subject into its secondary causes. We come at this point to the scripture which Love reads with a low voice (l. 18) – the collateral and subsidiary sources of charity, or as John puts it, the cords that draw, and the teeth that bite into the heart.” And then, interpreting the verses 58-60, Carroll concludes: “In other words, the creation of the world and man, the cross of Christ, and the hope of glory: these are 'the teeth' with which the love of God bites into his heart, for all are operations of that love. Yet it is to be noted that they are not 'the interior act of charity,' the clinging of the soul to God, but only cords to draw men to the act.”

Once more Dante turns to the large motif of the exodus to express his personal journey from sin to redemption. See the previous uses of pelago (Inf. I.23 and Par. II.5).

Scartazzini (comm. to verse 65) was apparently the first (and still among the few) to see that Dante was again resorting to the text of John's Gospel (John 15:1): “Ego sum vitis vera et Pater meus agricola est” (I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser). See also Singleton (comm. to this tercet), Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet), and Giovanni Getto (“Canto XXVI,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 941). It is also true that none of these cites Scartazzini, or indeed anyone else.

See Giovanni Getto (“Canto XXVI,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], pp. 942-43), discussing Dante's formula for concluding the apostles' examinations of him on the three theological virtues. These occur at Paradiso XXIV.112-114, XXV.97-99, and in these verses. Getto finds the three texts sharing the following earmarks: each passage (1) is contained in no more or no less than a single terzina; (2) contains reference to Dante's completion of his utterance; (3) cites the opening words of the celebrative song raised at its conclusion; (4) includes some description of the quality of that song; (5) refers to those who sang it.

Once again we find a Latin hymn (the Sanctus), which had become a part of the liturgy, performed in Italian (“Holy, holy, holy”). See the note to Paradiso XXIV.113-114. The original Sanctus is found in both Isaiah 6:3 and Apocalypse 4:8 (where it follows the description of the “four living creatures” [see the note to verse 53]).

This simile portrays Dante/Saul becoming Dante/Paul as a result of the ministrations of Beatrice, who restores his temporarily vanquished sight. See the note to vv. 9-12.

Dante seems to have been fascinated by the processes both of falling to sleep and of awakening from it. Is there another work from this period that has more frequent or more detailed references to both? See, for example, Inferno I.111, III.136, XXV.90, XXX.136-141, XXXIII.38; Purgatorio IX.11, IX.33-42, IX.63, XV.119-123, XVII.40-42, XVIII.87-88, XVIII.143-145, XXVII.92, XXVII.113, XXXII.64-69; XXXII.76-78; Paradiso XXXII.139. With respect to the challenge he offers (Purg. XXXII.69) to those who would do the impossible and portray falling to sleep, he himself does imposingly well.

See Patrick Boyde (Perception and passion in Dante's “Comedy” [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], pp.74-75) for an analysis of the “mechanics” of seeing in these six lines.

The verb ab[b]or[r]ire (or, as we believe, ab[b]or[r]are) – and both forms (along with others, as well) are found with orthographical variants in the interpretive tradition – has caused a great deal of puzzlement. See Gino Casagrande (“Parole di Dante: 'abborrare,'” Studi Danteschi 63 [1991 {1997}]: 177-90) for a thorough study of the history of the problem, concluding that (1) the verb is nearly certainly the first conjugation one, used by Dante twice in Inferno (XXV.144; XXXI.24); (2) it probably, on the basis of observations found in Uguccione da Pisa, derives from a Latin synonym for balbus (not speaking clearly [see Purg. XIX.7 and Par. XXVII.130 and 133]) and here means “loses the power of speech.” Casagrande, following Porena (comm. to vv. 73-75), treats the form of the verb here as metaplasmic, that is, believing that Dante, his hand forced by the exigencies of rhyme, has switched conjugational endings (-ire) for (-are). Our translation accepts the basic interpretation of Porena (as restated by Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 73-75]) – but does not accept the new reading proposed by Casagrande, for the reason that the action resulting from Beatrice's intervention is not that the protagonist can speak clearly so much as it is that he can see better (see verse 79). Since what is revealed as the object of his eventually clear vision is still another soul, it would seem reasonable to argue that what at first appears unclear to the protagonist is that “fourth light,” what turns out to be the radiance of Adam. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 73-75) also follow Porena, but keep the sense of the verb as “confound” (a matter of not seeing clearly), a view that Casagrande does not accept.

For the word quisquilia, a hapax in Dante, see Amos 8:6, where it is a hapax in the Bible, indicating the chaff from grain.

The totally unexpected “fourth light,” we habitual readers realize, without surprise, is Adam. If we remember our first reading, we probably recall our amazement at what Dante (who reports himself “stupefatto” [dazed]) has done, putting the first father before us for an interview about Edenic existence.

For the word stupefatto, see Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 125, citing Acts 9:7, all the more plausible as a reference, given the Pauline context of the canto (introduced at vv. 10-12). “The men who were traveling with him [Saul] stood speechless [stupefacti], hearing the voice but seeing no one.” Jesus, invisible, has called Saul to Him. Saul rises from the ground blind and is led by the hand by his fellow travelers into Damascus, where he will be cured of his blindness as the new man, Paul, by Ananias.

The theological dimensions of this tercet are large indeed: God the Father created all things and then Adam, who gazes up at his maker with the love sponsored by the Holy Spirit. That love is made manifest in turn by the redemptive act of Christ, who has saved fallen Adam and some of those who were born in his sinfulness.

This is an at least somewhat puzzling simile, equating Beatrice with a gust of wind, forcing the top of a tree down from its normal inclination upward. It then goes on to equate Dante with that treetop, regaining its natural upward direction once the gust has blown itself out. The meaning is plain, but the negative associations that surround Beatrice seem strange; nonetheless, the positive ones that accompany Dante's desires to do something of which Beatrice approves eventually govern our understanding.

Adam was, by tradition, thought to have been created by God as though he were thirty or (more usually) thirty-three years old (thus matching the years of Christ on earth). Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 91-93) remarks that the protagonist's phrasing is not very kind, since it brings to Adam's mind the appetite (for the apple) that caused his fall.

On this passage see Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy”[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], pp. 101-2), distinguishing between Adam as indeed ripe in himself, as he was made by God (and now again is), and the creature he had mistakenly thought he could improve by opposing God's will and stealing His forbidden fruit.

Every bride is both Adam's daughter and his daughter-in-law. Of course, the same holds true for grooms, if with genders exchanged. See Carroll (comm. to vv. 88-96), explaining that this verse is “an echo of St. Augustine's City of God, XV.16: 'Father and father-in-law are the names of two relationships.... But Adam in his single person was obliged to hold both relations to his sons and daughters, for brothers and sisters were united in marriage. So too Eve his wife was both mother and mother-in-law to her children of both sexes.'”

The poet (and protagonist) play with the convention established and embellished as we proceed through the last canticle: Souls in Heaven read the thoughts of others in the mind of God. That being true, the protagonist acknowledges, an unvoiced question begets its answer more rapidly, avoiding the time otherwise lost in verbal duplication. Adam himself will underline this point at some length (vv. 103-108).

This line has caused confusion, even anger, and (perhaps consequently) flights of fancy. It was only with Lombardi (comm. to vv. 97-102) that a commentator disagreed with the earlier commentators' assumption that the covering was the creature's own fur. Now almost all agree that the imagined animal is covered (if for a reason not readily discerned) with a cloth of some kind. (Porena [comm. to vv. 97-99] would eventually draw on a childhood experience, when he once carried a cat in a sack, to suggest that Dante was referring to a similarly ensacked feline.) Torraca (comm. to vv. 97-102) suggests the possible reference to a caparisoned horse (if Pézard mainly receives the credit for Torraca's in fact earlier observation), but then wisely backs away from making any definite identification; he continues by reminding us of the highly similar similetic moment in Paradiso VIII.52-54, in which Dante compares the glad soul of Charles Martel to a silkworm clothed in its own glowing light. (And see the earlier and altogether similar appreciation of Poletto [comm. to vv. 97-102].) This, one thinks, is assuredly the model for any attempt at an interpretation; however, it is rare that the verse has been considered in its light.

If one wanted to crown a particular exercise for its fervid imagination, one might well favor Daniello's opinion (comm. to vv. 97-102) that the image finds a precursor in Virgil's depiction (Georg. III.250-251) of male horses sniffing on the wind the maddening odor of female horses in heat and shuddering thereat. In short, a number of animals have been called (including, in addition to those already mentioned, piglets, dogs, even birds [in particular, the hooded falcon]), but none has been chosen.

See the note to vv. 95-96.

See Moore (Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the “Divina Commedia” [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1889]), pp. 483-86), supporting the traditional reading (“da te”) against that strange but, for some people, overpoweringly attractive variant, “Dante”: “There are few passages where we can pronounce with greater confidence as to the true reading than we can here...” (p. 483). A goodly number of Dantists are firmly committed to the notion that the appearance of the poet's name in the poem, his signature, as it were, occurs only once, as the first word spoken by Beatrice, in Purgatorio XXX.55. Such as they are most grateful to Moore's exertions, since there had been, before his intervention, more than a few who were most eager to find “Dante” uttered by Adam, the first namer (see Genesis 2:19-20).

Tozer (comm. to vv. 106-108) paraphrases Adam's remark as follows: “I see those wishes depicted in the mind of God, in which, as in a faithful mirror, the thoughts of His creatures are reflected; whereas their minds (and therefore your [i.e., Dante's] mind) cannot know what is passing in the mind of God, so that you cannot reach the same certainty.” He continues as follows: “According to this interpretation, pareglio is a substantive, meaning a 'parhelion' or mock-sun; from which sense – as a parhelion is a reflected or refracted image of the sun – it is taken to signify simply a 'reflexion.' The literal translation, then, of vv. 107-108 will be – 'who makes [H]imself the reflexion of (i.e., in [H]im are reflected) the other things (and, in particular, men's minds), while none of them makes itself a reflexion of [H]im ([H]is thoughts are not reflected in their minds).'” For an exhaustive (it contains more than 1,500 words) review of the word pareglio, which, if its general sense is understood, has caused considerable difficulty, see Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 106-108).

Adam “repeats” Dante's four questions: (1) How much time has passed since God put Adam in Eden? (2) How long did he reside there? (3) What caused God's anger against him? (4) What were the languages that he was given and that he developed? (This fourth question has been variously understood.)

Dante's “thought question,” intuited by Adam from the mind of God, included his reverent feelings toward Beatrice (unsurprisingly enough), who came to him in Eden, the very place that Adam lost, prepared to lead him on this great spiritual and intellectual journey.

The early commentators did not realize how problematic (and how important) this verse is. It presents Adam as having two separate linguistic “pools,” each deriving from a different source, from which he first gathered and then formed the first human speech. It was Lombardi (comm. to this verse), at the early dawn of the “modern age” in Dante studies, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, who first made the (fairly obvious) point that the first speaking task performed by Adam was to name the animals God had just created as sharers of his world (Genesis 2:19-20). What was the source of that language? I.e., did Adam learn it or was it innate in him, put there by God when He formed him from earth? Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 112-114) is (and correctly so) of the second opinion. Andreoli (comm. to this verse) appropriates Tommaseo's words to this effect, but then adds an important piece of evidence from Dante himself (De vulgari eloquentia [I.vi.4]): “I say that a certain form of language was created by God along with the first soul; I say 'form' with reference both to the words used for things, and to the construction of words, and to the arrangement of the construction; and this form of language would have continued to be used by all speakers, had it not been shattered through the fault of human presumption, as will be shown below” (tr. S. Botterill [italics added]). Thus did Dante at that time account for the origins of human vocabulary, of grammar, and of syntax; these all came directly from God and were inherent in Adam (and Eve, we imagine, though Dante never pays any positive attention to Eve as speaker; that is not something for which he considers her interesting). It is Adam who will name Eve virago (“woman” – Gen. 2:23). What Dante believed to have been Adam's creative process in developing his God-given language by adding words to it may be apparent here: From the pre-Hebrew equivalent of Latin vir, implanted in him by God, he derived “virago” (for “woman”).

While it is clear that Dante had changed his thinking, by the time he was writing the Commedia, about the second part of this history of the language (the length of time that the original Adamic speech survived - see the note to verse 134), there is no reason to believe he had altered that first opinion very much, if at all: The first Adamic speech was given by God, but (and we may be surprised by this, as some today still are, even to the point of simply getting it wrong) it was given as perishable. It was, as we shall shortly see, the core, or seedbed, of the first vernacular and, like all vernacular speech, doomed to die out to be replaced by other always changeful “idioms.” God gave his Ursprache to Adam as a form, containing models for his development of vocabulary, of grammar, and of syntax. Simultaneously, He granted him the privilege of naming the animals himself. As a result, “dog,” “owl,” “lion,” were terms invented by Adam, not by God. The language that he got from God was thus immediately, even if it first served as a model, in flux, a part of the mortal world of becoming, as was, we shall shortly learn, the one word that we can safely assume he got directly from his Creator, His name. This was “I,” but became “El” (again, see the note to verse 134). (For the changefulness of God's own name, see Exodus 6:2-3: “I [Dominus] appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty [in Deo omnipotente], but by my name the Lord [Adonai] I did not make myself known to them”).

For the word idïoma, which we have here translated “language,” but which seems to be identified by Dante with vernacular speech, see the note to Paradiso XV.121-123, the passage in which it has its only other occurrence in the poem. On the language of Adam, see P.V. Mengaldo, “La lingua di Adamo,” ED (IV [1970]), pp. 47b-48b; Ruedi Imbach (Dante, la philosophie et les laïcs [Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1996], pp. 197-214). For the treatment of Adam in De vulgari eloquentia, see Maria Corti (Il viaggio testuale [Turin: Einaudi, 1993 {1978}], pp. 243-56).

When we consider the question of the differing linguistic projects apparent in De vulgari eloquentia and in the Commedia, it should become evident that, while seeming to be contradictory, they in fact respond to different needs. In the earlier text, Dante's project was to grammaticize the vernacular; in the Comedy, to vernacularize the grammatical. It is a matter of emphasis, since in both cases there is an urgent desire to valorize the vernacular. He would not, as would Milton later, begin by writing Latin verse. Nor does he compose verse in Latin until he wrote his two defensive Eclogues (in which he might appear to be saying, “I am perfectly capable of writing classical Latin verse whenever I choose to”). Nonetheless, if Italian was to be the vehicle for his poems, he was never without awareness that such a decision needed to be defended before the eyes of those in his audience, lay and clerical, who had “intellectual” (one might say philosophical - see, again, Imbach) interests that required the capacity to handle the language of dead Romans and living clergy. And so in De vulgari his effort is bent (as it was in Vita Nuova XXV and especially in Convivio I) on showing that the vernacular is absolutely capable of expressing everything that Latin can express. Having done so, feeling more confident in not being forced to defend the use of the vernacular in “serious” literature, as earlier he had felt he had to, he now can delight in showing the superiority of the vernacular in gestures of linguistic exuberance that he would never have earlier dared put forth (e.g., the words culo and mamma, to name but two). See, for a more detailed argument by this writer, Hollander (Dante: A Life in Works [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001]), pp. 54-74. And see Gary Cestaro (Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003]) for a quite different view of the subject, if one that has certain common interests.

Tozer summarizes the rest of the canto (comm. to these verses): “Of Dante's four questions, which have just been stated, Adam answers first No. 3 – 'What was the real cause of the Fall of Man?' (vv. 115-117); next No. 1 – 'How long a time had elapsed from the Creation to the present moment?' (vv. 118-123); then No. 4 – 'What language did Adam speak?' (vv. 124-138); and finally No. 2 – 'How long a time did he spend in the Earthly Paradise?' (vv. 139-142).”

Adam answers first the third question that Dante has put to him, a question which, as many commentators point out, reflects the gravest issue that Adam knows: his own disobedience that cost him and all our race Eden. This is “paradisal” behavior that we witness here; what sinner in Inferno would voluntarily recite his worst sin first (or at all)? There are a few exceptions, beginning with Ciacco (see Inf. VI.53), but most, as we saw, try to avoid this subject.

Hardly anyone dealing with this tercet recently (and this is particularly true with respect to American Dantists, who are perhaps more drawn to Ulysses than may seem reasonable) fails to discuss the obvious “quotation” in the phrase “il trapassar del segno” (the trespass of the boundary line) of Inferno XXVI.107-109: “... we reached the narrow strait / where Hercules marked off [segnò] the limits, / warning all men to go no farther.” Surprisingly, the only apparent mention in the commentaries collected in the DDP (but see, e.g., Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi [Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. {Milan: Mondadori, 1997}, p. 728]) is in Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 109-117), referring to this passage's relationship with the theme of transgression, as embodied in the canto of Ulysses. However, cf. (among others) Amilcare Iannucci (“Ulysses' folle volo: the Burden of History,” Medioevo romanzo 3 [1976]: 426); Peter Hawkins (“Trespassing on the Word: God's Book and Ours,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 47 [1979]: 47-53); Kevin Brownlee (“Paradiso XXVI,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995 {1990}], p. 394); and Teodolinda Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992], pp. 49, 52, 58, 106, 108, 112, and 238), whose treatment begins with reference to Nardi's consideration (“La tragedia di Ulisse,” in his Dante e la cultura medievale [Bari: Laterza, 1942], pp. 89-99) of both Ulysses and Adam as having trespassed boundaries. See also Giancarlo Rati (“Canto XXVI,” in Lectura Dantis Neapolitana: “Paradiso,” ed. P. Giannantonio [Naples: Loffredo, 2000 {1988}], pp. 513-14).

For a less than convincing emendation of Inferno XXVI.100, substituting arto (narrow) for alto (deep), see Guglielmo Gorni (“I riguardi di Ercole e l'arto passo di Ulisse,” Letteratura italiana antica 1 [2000]: 43-58).

The last occurrence of the noun cagione (reason, cause), of its 46 instances in the poem, is found here (and for the penultimate, see verse 113). As the poem concludes, discursive reasoning yields to more intuitive forms of understanding and expression.

The use of the noun essilio (exile) binds two other figures to Adam in having shared this bitter experience, Dante and Virgil (who sees his afterlife as exilic - see Purg. XXI.18). It is not surprising to find “Virgilio” as its rhyme in verse 118.

For the first notice of Adam's long life of exile from God's kingdom, first on earth and then in Limbo, see Purgatorio XXXIII.58-63 and the note thereto. See also the note to Paradiso IX.40 and to vv. 121-123, below.

Eusebius (whose dates were the basis for Jerome's authoritative Chronicon [which served most medieval encyclopedists, such as Isidore of Seville and Uguccione da Pisa]) is credited by the more recent commentators (beginning with Lombardi [comm. to vv. 119-120]) as being Dante's source for the 4,302 years between Adam's death and the Harrowing.

This represents the thirty-second and final appearance of Virgil's name in the poem. It thus occurs slightly more than half as often as that of Beatrice, which appears sixty-three times. (See the notes to Purg. XV.77 and Par. XVII.19.)

Adam says that he had lived on earth for 930 solar years (see Genesis 5:5). This means that he was harrowed (in A.D. 34) after 5,232 years (930 + 4,302) of sinful life, first on earth, then in Limbo, where his punishment was, apparently, to live without hope yet in desire. At least that is Virgil's description of the suffering of him and his co-sufferers in Limbo (Inf. IV.42: “without hope we live in longing”), and it certainly fits him and all other damned pagans. But what of the Hebrew saints, like Adam? During their time in Hell were they equally without hope? Or, because they believed in Christ to come, were they in fact hopeful? Adam, however, does refer to his time in Hell as being typified by “anguish” (verse 133). In short, this is not an issue that Dante has chosen to confront and we cannot say whether Dante thought that Adam and his eventually to-be-harrowed companions knew that Christ was coming for them or not, or whether they even hoped that He would.

Adam has now enjoyed 1,266 years of grace in Heaven. Adam's years coincide, of course, with the course of human life in general, 6,498 years along its road in 1300. See the note to Paradiso IX.40 for one traditional estimate of the future duration of human time. And see, for a fuller discussion of three views of that future, involving the Platonic Great Year (36,000 years), a medieval variant of that tradition (13,000 years), and St. Augustine's (possible) view that the world will last seven millennia, the last paragraph of the note to Inferno I.1 and the note to Paradiso IX.40.

Pietro di Dante explicitly identifies (comm. to vv. 124-132) Adam's first lingua as being vernacular speech. It was extinct, this tercet insists, before construction of the Tower of Babel began. Many have realized that this is a direct contradiction of what Dante had said in De vulgari (I.vi.4-7), where he specifically says that the first language was Hebrew and that it was spoken until after the construction of the Tower and until the Advent of Christ. (For a study of the literary history of this topos, see Arno Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel, 3 vols. [Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1957-60].)

From Genesis, Dante might have learned several things about the history of the language that squared with his spectacularly idiosyncratic theory of that history. The tenth chapter teaches that Noah's three sons (Japheth, Ham, and Shem) each had children, and all these groups of progeny spoke different languages (linguae); that is, the “confusion” was apparently in progress before the launch of Nimrod's “unachievable” architectural project. Nonetheless, Genesis 11 begins with the earth still being of a single tongue (terra labii unius), and this passage is what Dante “revises,” whatever justification he might have thought he had found, in the previous chapter, for doing so. God puts humankind into confusion for trying to build the tower (and that is the version found both in Genesis and in De vulgari); in the Commedia, however, the result of Babel is pre-Babelic. This is not the only time that we find Dante revising the text of the Bible to suit his own purpose. To seize on only one other blatant example, found in a neighboring passage in De vulgari (I.iv.2-3), Dante denies the authority of Genesis in making Eve the first speaker (God, he says, would not have wanted a woman to utter the first spoken word). And see his similarly high-handed treatment of classical text, e.g., of the Aeneid in Purgatorio XXII.40-41. Fortunately, there is a good deal of playfulness that lies behind these otherwise numbingly troglodytic gestures; nonetheless, there they are, and they are certainly challenging.

See P.V. Mengaldo, “lingua,” ED (III [1971]), p. 661b, discussing the source of this verse in Egidio Romano, De regimine principum (III.ii.24): “It is a natural thing that man should speak, and nature teaches him to do so; but whether the speech should be German or French or Tuscan nature does not instruct him. On the contrary, a man must himself learn it, either by himself or with the aid of others.”

Daniello (comm. to vv. 130-132) makes the astute observation that Dante is here citing the first line of the poem in Provençal he composes and attributes to Arnaut Daniel (it actually derives from a poem by Folchetto – see the note to Purg. XXVI.140-147 – “Tan m'abellis l'amoros pensamen”). See Purgatorio XXVI.140.

Adam dates the change in the pre-Hebrew vernacular as having occurred before his death at the age of 930. His words do not allow any greater precision than that.

It is striking that we do not hear his name in this scene (we have heard it five times in Inferno and Purgatorio). See Andrea Ciotti, “Adamo,” ED (I [1970]), pointing out that medieval Scriptural exegesis related Greek 'âdhâm to âdâhmah (“man” to “earth”), thus homo to humus. This would surely have been of interest to Dante, since it would tend to locate Adamic vernacular within the low style, Dante's own (or so at least he chose to present it as being).

This verse has been the cause of a great deal of confusion, as some of its interpreters are honest enough to admit. Scartazzini, after an exhaustive survey of the history of its interpretation, concludes with the notice that, while it is most embarrassing for a commentator to admit such a thing, he has not resolved its problems. (For another noteworthy attempt to clarify [if not to solve] the problem, see Porena [comm. to this verse].) The most enduring, among the several desperate stabs it has caused, has been the following: Vellutello (comm. to vv. 130-138) was apparently the first to claim that “I” was to be read numerically, as “one.” Another notion has periodically reappeared (after having been introduced by Scartazzini [comm. to this verse]): “I” (or “J”) is the first letter of “Jah” or “Jehovah.” A much rarer but still interesting proposed solution is only found as late as Trucchi's commentary (comm. to vv. 133-138): Dante wanted “I” and not “El” because “I” (or “J,” the same character in his Italian) was the first letter of “Jesus.” Nonetheless, the formulation that “I” equals “un” (“one”) found favor, over the years, with many interpreters (including several editors, who replace what is “I” in our text with “un”), beginning with Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 133-142). Lombardi (comm. to this verse) was apparently the first commentator to refer to Dante's earlier treatment of the nature of Adam's first word in De vulgari; he also pointed out that Dante was (whether deliberately or not he does not say) in disagreement with Isidore, who had been plain that “El” was the name that God was first called. That “I” as the number/name of God is a valid reading of this verse is reinforced by the presence of the same alpha-numerical pun on the Roman “i” as “one” at Paradiso XIX.128.

See Gino Casagrande (“'I s'appellava in terra il sommo bene' [Paradiso, XXVI, 134],” Aevum 50 [1976]: 249-73) for a careful consideration of the problems of this verse. He ends up linking it, through the commentary of the Ottimo ad loc., to Isidore's eighth (of ten appellations) name of God (Etym. VII.i), ia, itself connected to the Hebrew word alleluia, as praise of God's name. Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], p. 144n.) had previously argued for Isidore's ninth name of God, the tetragrammaton, transliterated as ia ia, as being the text that Dante had in mind, as evidenced by the parodic reference to it and the sixth name of God (“Ego sum, qui sum” [I am that I am]) found first in the Siren's self-naming (Purg. XIX.19), “Io son, io son dolce serena” and then corrected in Beatrice's self-naming (Purg. XXX.73), “Ben son, ben son Beatrice.” (All of these phrases have repetition as a common feature.) For the view that it is in Isidore's use of Jerome's writings in his formulation of the tetragrammaton as referring to God's ineffability that Dante finds the reason to reject El (the first name for God according to Dante in De vulgari eloquentia [Dve I.iv.4]) for I, see Phillip Damon (“Adam on the Primal Language,” Italica 38 [1961]: 60-62). (Gino Casagrande [ibid., pp. 266-71] reports that the eighth name, ia, indicates, according to Isidore, God's invisibility, not His ineffable nature.) For the whole question, see Porena's endnote to this canto (in his comm. to verse 134).

Hollander (“Babytalk in Dante's Commedia,” in Studies in Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1980], p. 128), returning to this subject, offers a hypothetical reason for Dante's change of mind: The poet wanted to associate his own vernacular Italian, in which the name of God coincides with Adamic pre-Hebrew vernacular, with that first of all vernaculars. And he might have cited (but in fact did not) the following passage in De vulgari (I.vi.2): “For whoever is so misguided as to think that the place of his birth is the most delightful spot under the sun may also believe that his own language – his mother tongue, that is – is pre-eminent among all others; and, as a result, he may believe that his language was also Adam's” (tr. S. Botterill). This mocking of boosters of their own inconsequential towns perhaps also conveys Dante's own hidden claim in the Commedia: Dante's version of Tuscan is to be seen as in some way resurrecting Adamic vernacular, coinciding in the vowel “I,” which is the name of God in each. For a similar opinion, see Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 183). And see Paradiso XXIX.17 for the dative pronoun “i” referring to God.

One might also speculate that Dante considered El as the name of God associated with Hebrew “grammaticality,” the written language of the scribes of the Bible; for this reason he must retract his earlier opinion (El) in favor of a truly “vernacular” solution (I). Further, we may reflect that when he considered the context of his remark in De vulgari (I.iv.4), he surely would have noted that there he had characterized Adam's first word as an emotive exclamation, indeed a cry of joy. The word I, which we have just heard Adam use in the preceding verse (“pria ch'i' scendessi”), may sound and feel “vernacular,” while El may sound and feel “grammatical,” that is, like a language learned in school. Adam tells Dante that first God's name was “I,” and only later was He called “El.” The text indicates that his happened sometime after Adam died (i.e., after his span of 930 years), about 1000 years, long enough for the Hebrews to have invented grammar and had their language taught in schools. John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 133-138) says that Heber, of the fourth generation from Noah, was the first to speak Hebrew and call God “El” in it.

God the Father had been stern with sinful Adam for more than five thousand years; then his Son drew him forth from the Limbus up to the Empyrean. We hear nothing of the possibility of purgation for pre-Christian Christians and so must assume that in His triumph (Par. XXIII.20), when he harrowed Hell, He brought them straight “home.” Anything less charitable (i.e., a visit to Purgatory) would seem picky, wouldn't it? And so here is a paradox: some saved Christians, even most (and it seems likely that this restriction applies to all but the saintliest of saints), bound for Heaven must pass through purgation, while the virtuous Hebrews who were harrowed by Christ (if not all the saved pagans - we do see Cato and Statius on the mount of Purgatory) apparently do not have to repay any of their sins on earth. Merely a moment's reflection puts David and Solomon in the dock of our understandable sense of retributive justice.

For El as a name of God, see the note to verse 134. And see Moore (Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the “Divina Commedia” [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1889], pp. 487-92) for the history of this tormented verse in the manuscripts.

The recognition of the Horatian source (Ars poetica 60-63) of these verses begins with Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to vv. 124-129). Here is Horace, as cited, with a translation, by Singleton (comm. to these verses):

ut silvae foliis pronos mutantur in annos,
prima cadunt; ita verborum vetus interit aetas,
et iuvenum ritu florent modo nata vigentque.
debemur morti nos nostraque....
As forests change their leaves with each year's decline,
and the earliest drop off: so with words, the old race dies,
and, like the young of human kind, the new-born bloom and thrive.
We are doomed to death – we and all things ours.

Imbach (Dante, la philosophie et les laïcs [Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1996], p. 212) notes that Dante has cited Horace, Ars poetica 70-71 in Convivio (II.xiii.10 - for earlier notice of this fact, beginning with Steiner [comm. to vv. 136-138], see the DDP.)

The question of the length of time spent by Adam in Eden before the Fall is not uniformly dealt with. On the other hand, and as Thomas Hill (“Adam's Noon: Paradiso XXVI, 139-142,” Dante Studies 100 [1982]: 94) has demonstrated, Dante is not alone in stating that the first man's innocence lasted only between six and seven hours, citing Petrus Comestor and Gulielmus Durandus as preceding him in this opinion.

Dante obviously felt that the detail was of great enough interest to make it the climactic, canto-ending detail.

Kevin Brownlee (“Paradiso XXVI,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995 {1990}], p. 396) points out that this period corresponds more or less exactly to the amount of time Dante himself has recently spent in the garden of Eden (see Purg. XXVII.133 and XXXIII.103-105). He might have added that Dante also spends six hours with Adam and his companions here in the Starry Sphere (starting at Par. XXII.129). See the note to Paradiso XXVII.79-81. And see the similar observation offered by P. Sabbatino, L'Eden della nuova poesia: Saggi sulla “Divina Commedia” (Florence: Olschki, 1991), p. 99, pointing out that Dante enters the earthly paradise on the sixth day of his otherworldly journey at the sixth hour of the day, while Adam, on the sixth day of Creation, fell at the sixth hour and while Christ was crucified to redeem fallen mankind at the sixth hour as well. Sabbatino's observation of these numerical similarities is cited by Filippo Bognini, “Gli occhi di Ooliba: Una proposta per Purg. XXXII 148-60 e XXXIII 44-45,” Rivista di Studi Danteschi 7 (2007): 82 (n. 32).