Paradiso: Canto 30

1
2
3

Forse semilia miglia di lontano
ci ferve l'ora sesta, e questo mondo
china già l'ombra quasi al letto piano,
4
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6

quando 'l mezzo del cielo, a noi profondo,
comincia a farsi tal, ch'alcuna stella
perde il parere infino a questo fondo;
7
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e come vien la chiarissima ancella
del sol più oltre, così 'l ciel si chiude
di vista in vista infino a la più bella.
10
11
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Non altrimenti il trïunfo che lude
sempre dintorno al punto che mi vinse,
parendo inchiuso da quel ch'elli 'nchiude,
13
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a poco a poco al mio veder si stinse:
per che tornar con li occhi a Bëatrice
nulla vedere e amor mi costrinse.
16
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Se quanto infino a qui di lei si dice
fosse conchiuso tutto in una loda,
poca sarebbe a fornir questa vice.
19
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La bellezza ch'io vidi si trasmoda
non pur di là da noi, ma certo io credo
che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda.
22
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Da questo passo vinto mi concedo
più che già mai da punto di suo tema
soprato fosse comico o tragedo:
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ché, come sole in viso che più trema,
così lo rimembrar del dolce riso
la mente mia da me medesmo scema.
28
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Dal primo giorno ch'i' vidi il suo viso
in questa vita, infino a questa vista,
non m'è il seguire al mio cantar preciso;
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ma or convien che mio seguir desista
più dietro a sua bellezza, poetando,
come a l'ultimo suo ciascuno artista.
34
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Cotal qual io la lascio a maggior bando
che quel de la mia tuba, che deduce
l'ardüa sua matera terminando,
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con atto e voce di spedito duce
ricominciò: “Noi siamo usciti fore
del maggior corpo al ciel ch'è pura luce:
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luce intellettüal, piena d'amore;
amor di vero ben, pien di letizia;
letizia che trascende ogne dolzore.
43
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Qui vederai l'una e l'altra milizia
di paradiso, e l'una in quelli aspetti
che tu vedrai a l'ultima giustizia.”
46
47
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Come sùbito lampo che discetti
li spiriti visivi, sì che priva
da l'atto l'occhio di più forti obietti,
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così mi circunfulse luce viva,
e lasciommi fasciato di tal velo
del suo fulgor, che nulla m'appariva.
52
53
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“Sempre l'amor che queta questo cielo
accoglie in sé con sì fatta salute,
per far disposto a sua fiamma il candelo.”
55
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Non fur più tosto dentro a me venute
queste parole brievi, ch'io compresi
me sormontar di sopr' a mia virtute;
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e di novella vista mi raccesi
tale, che nulla luce è tanto mera,
che li occhi miei non si fosser difesi;
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e vidi lume in forma di rivera
fulvido di fulgore, intra due rive
dipinte di mirabil primavera.
64
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Di tal fiumana uscian faville vive,
e d'ogne parte si mettien ne' fiori,
quasi rubin che oro circunscrive;
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poi, come inebrïate da li odori,
riprofondavan sé nel miro gurge,
e s'una intrava, un'altra n'uscia fori.
70
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“L'alto disio che mo t'infiamma e urge,
d'aver notizia di ciò che tu vei,
tanto mi piace più quanto più turge;
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ma di quest' acqua convien che tu bei
prima che tanta sete in te si sazi”:
così mi disse il sol de li occhi miei.
76
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Anche soggiunse: “Il fiume e li topazi
ch'entrano ed escono e 'l rider de l'erbe
son di lor vero umbriferi prefazi.
79
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Non che da sé sian queste cose acerbe;
ma è difetto da la parte tua,
che non hai viste ancor tanto superbe.”
82
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Non è fantin che sì sùbito rua
col volto verso il latte, se si svegli
molto tardato da l'usanza sua
85
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come fec' io, per far migliori spegli
ancor de li occhi, chinandomi a l'onda
che si deriva perché vi s'immegli;
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e sì come di lei bevve la gronda
de le palpebre mie, così mi parve
di sua lunghezza divenuta tonda.
91
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Poi, come gente stata sotto larve,
che pare altro che prima, se si sveste
la sembianza non süa in che disparve,
94
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così mi si cambiaro in maggior feste
li fiori e le faville, sì ch'io vidi
ambo le corti del ciel manifeste.
97
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O isplendor di Dio, per cu' io vidi
l'alto trïunfo del regno verace,
dammi virtù a dir com'ïo il vidi!
100
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Lume è là sù che visibile face
lo creatore a quella creatura
che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace.
103
104
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E' si distende in circular figura,
in tanto che la sua circunferenza
sarebbe al sol troppo larga cintura.
106
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Fassi di raggio tutta sua parvenza
reflesso al sommo del mobile primo,
che prende quindi vivere e potenza.
109
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E come clivo in acqua di suo imo
si specchia, quasi per vedersi addorno,
quando è nel verde e ne' fioretti opimo,
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sì, soprastando al lume intorno intorno,
vidi specchiarsi in più di mille soglie
quanto di noi là sù fatto ha ritorno.
115
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E se l'infimo grado in sé raccoglie
sì grande lume, quanta è la larghezza
di questa rosa ne l'estreme foglie!
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La vista mia ne l'ampio e ne l'altezza
non si smarriva, ma tutto prendeva
il quanto e 'l quale di quella allegrezza.
121
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Presso e lontano, lì, né pon né leva:
ché dove Dio sanza mezzo governa,
la legge natural nulla rileva.
124
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Nel giallo de la rosa sempiterna,
che si digrada e dilata e redole
odor di lode al sol che sempre verna,
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qual è colui che tace e dicer vole,
mi trasse Bëatrice, e disse: “Mira
quanto è 'l convento de le bianche stole!
130
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Vedi nostra città quant' ella gira;
vedi li nostri scanni sì ripieni,
che poca gente più ci si disira.
133
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E 'n quel gran seggio a che tu li occhi tieni
per la corona che già v'è sù posta,
prima che tu a queste nozze ceni,
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sederà l'alma, che fia giù agosta,
de l'alto Arrigo, ch'a drizzare Italia
verrà in prima ch'ella sia disposta.
139
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La cieca cupidigia che v'ammalia
simili fatti v'ha al fantolino
che muor per fame e caccia via la balia.
142
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E fia prefetto nel foro divino
allora tal, che palese e coverto
non anderà con lui per un cammino.
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Ma poco poi sarà da Dio sofferto
nel santo officio: ch'el sarà detruso
là dove Simon mago è per suo merto,
e farà quel d'Alagna intrar più giuso.”
1
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Perchance six thousand miles remote from us
  Is glowing the sixth hour, and now this world
  Inclines its shadow almost to a level,

4
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When the mid-heaven begins to make itself
  So deep to us, that here and there a star
  Ceases to shine so far down as this depth,

7
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And as advances bright exceedingly
  The handmaid of the sun, the heaven is closed
  Light after light to the most beautiful;

10
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Not otherwise the Triumph, which for ever
  Plays round about the point that vanquished me,
  Seeming enclosed by what itself encloses,

13
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Little by little from my vision faded;
  Whereat to turn mine eyes on Beatrice
  My seeing nothing and my love constrained me.

16
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If what has hitherto been said of her
  Were all concluded in a single praise,
  Scant would it be to serve the present turn.

19
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Not only does the beauty I beheld
  Transcend ourselves, but truly I believe
  Its Maker only may enjoy it all.

22
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Vanquished do I confess me by this passage
  More than by problem of his theme was ever
  O'ercome the comic or the tragic poet;

25
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For as the sun the sight that trembles most,
  Even so the memory of that sweet smile
  My mind depriveth of its very self.

28
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From the first day that I beheld her face
  In this life, to the moment of this look,
  The sequence of my song has ne'er been severed;

31
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But now perforce this sequence must desist
  From following her beauty with my verse,
  As every artist at his uttermost.

34
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Such as I leave her to a greater fame
  Than any of my trumpet, which is bringing
  Its arduous matter to a final close,

37
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With voice and gesture of a perfect leader
  She recommenced: "We from the greatest body
  Have issued to the heaven that is pure light;

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Light intellectual replete with love,
  Love of true good replete with ecstasy,
  Ecstasy that transcendeth every sweetness.

43
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Here shalt thou see the one host and the other
  Of Paradise, and one in the same aspects
  Which at the final judgment thou shalt see."

46
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Even as a sudden lightning that disperses
  The visual spirits, so that it deprives
  The eye of impress from the strongest objects,

49
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Thus round about me flashed a living light,
  And left me swathed around with such a veil
  Of its effulgence, that I nothing saw.

52
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"Ever the Love which quieteth this heaven
  Welcomes into itself with such salute,
  To make the candle ready for its flame."

55
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No sooner had within me these brief words
  An entrance found, than I perceived myself
  To be uplifted over my own power,

58
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And I with vision new rekindled me,
  Such that no light whatever is so pure
  But that mine eyes were fortified against it.

61
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And light I saw in fashion of a river
  Fulvid with its effulgence, 'twixt two banks
  Depicted with an admirable Spring.

64
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Out of this river issued living sparks,
  And on all sides sank down into the flowers,
  Like unto rubies that are set in gold;

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And then, as if inebriate with the odours,
  They plunged again into the wondrous torrent,
  And as one entered issued forth another.

70
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"The high desire, that now inflames and moves thee
  To have intelligence of what thou seest,
  Pleaseth me all the more, the more it swells.

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But of this water it behoves thee drink
  Before so great a thirst in thee be slaked."
  Thus said to me the sunshine of mine eyes;

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And added: "The river and the topazes
  Going in and out, and the laughing of the herbage,
  Are of their truth foreshadowing prefaces;

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Not that these things are difficult in themselves,
  But the deficiency is on thy side,
  For yet thou hast not vision so exalted."

82
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There is no babe that leaps so suddenly
  With face towards the milk, if he awake
  Much later than his usual custom is,

85
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As I did, that I might make better mirrors
  Still of mine eyes, down stooping to the wave
  Which flows that we therein be better made.

88
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And even as the penthouse of mine eyelids
  Drank of it, it forthwith appeared to me
  Out of its length to be transformed to round.

91
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Then as a folk who have been under masks
  Seem other than before, if they divest
  The semblance not their own they disappeared in,

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Thus into greater pomp were changed for me
  The flowerets and the sparks, so that I saw
  Both of the Courts of Heaven made manifest.

97
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O splendour of God! by means of which I saw
  The lofty triumph of the realm veracious,
  Give me the power to say how it I saw!

100
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There is a light above, which visible
  Makes the Creator unto every creature,
  Who only in beholding Him has peace,

103
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And it expands itself in circular form
  To such extent, that its circumference
  Would be too large a girdle for the sun.

106
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The semblance of it is all made of rays
  Reflected from the top of Primal Motion,
  Which takes therefrom vitality and power.

109
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And as a hill in water at its base
  Mirrors itself, as if to see its beauty
  When affluent most in verdure and in flowers,

112
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So, ranged aloft all round about the light,
  Mirrored I saw in more ranks than a thousand
  All who above there have from us returned.

115
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And if the lowest row collect within it
  So great a light, how vast the amplitude
  Is of this Rose in its extremest leaves!

118
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My vision in the vastness and the height
  Lost not itself, but comprehended all
  The quantity and quality of that gladness.

121
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There near and far nor add nor take away;
  For there where God immediately doth govern,
  The natural law in naught is relevant.

124
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Into the yellow of the Rose Eternal
  That spreads, and multiplies, and breathes an odour
  Of praise unto the ever-vernal Sun,

127
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As one who silent is and fain would speak,
  Me Beatrice drew on, and said: "Behold
  Of the white stoles how vast the convent is!

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Behold how vast the circuit of our city!
  Behold our seats so filled to overflowing,
  That here henceforward are few people wanting!

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On that great throne whereon thine eyes are fixed
  For the crown's sake already placed upon it,
  Before thou suppest at this wedding feast

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Shall sit the soul (that is to be Augustus
  On earth) of noble Henry, who shall come
  To redress Italy ere she be ready.

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Blind covetousness, that casts its spell upon you,
  Has made you like unto the little child,
  Who dies of hunger and drives off the nurse.

142
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And in the sacred forum then shall be
  A Prefect such, that openly or covert
  On the same road he will not walk with him.

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But long of God he will not be endured
  In holy office; he shall be thrust down
  Where Simon Magus is for his deserts,
And make him of Alagna lower go!"

Robert Hollander (English, 2000-2007)
1 - 3

Tozer's paraphrase (comm. to verse 1) of this complex tercet runs as follows: “The dawn, instead of being mentioned by name, is here described, by an elaborate periphrasis, as the time when it is about midday 6,000 miles off from us on the earth's surface. This calculation is arrived at in the following manner. Seven hours are approximately the period of time which the sun takes to pass over 6,000 miles of the earth's surface; for, according to the computation of Alfraganus (cap. VIII), which Dante accepted (Conv. III.v.11 – see Toynbee, Dict., p. 522, s.v. ”Terra“), the entire circumference of the earth was 20,400 miles, and consequently the amount of that circumference corresponding to seven hours out of the complete revolution of twenty-four hours was 5,950 miles (20,400 x 7/24 = 5,950), or in round numbers 6,000 miles. Hence, when Dante says that the sixth hour is 6,000 miles distant from us, he means that with us it is seven hours before noon, or an hour before sunrise, the sun being regarded as rising at 6 a.m. The word Forse intimates that the calculation is made in round numbers.” For an analysis of the entire opening passage (vv. 1-15), see Fernando Salsano (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 215-24).

1 - 1

Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 149, points out that this is the only time the much-used adverb (67 occurrences) forse (“perhaps,” but here “about,” as Aversano advises) is employed to begin either a verse or a canto.

2 - 2

Strictly speaking, the “sixth hour” is 11 to noon (see Par. XXVI.141-142), but here it represents noon itself, six hours after dawn (ideally considered 6 a.m., whenever it actually occurs).

3 - 3

The phrase letto piano (level bed) refers to the moment when the sun's midpoint is in the plane of the horizon. Grandgent (comm. to vv. 1-3): “The sun is below our horizon on one side, and the earth's conical shadow, projected into space, is correspondingly above our horizon on the other. As the sun rises, the shadow sinks; and when the middle of the sun shall be on the horizon line, the apex of the shadow will be on the same plane in the opposite quarter.”

4 - 6

For mezzo as “center of the sky,” in the sense of zenith, see Fernando Salsano (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 222-24) and Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], pp. 825-26). For centuries this was the standard gloss. That is, commentators believed that Dante was referring to the midpoint of the Starry Sphere, directly overhead. Porena (comm. to vv. 1-6 [= “Nota finale” to this canto]) sharply objected. How can the sky directly above an observer be the first part of the heavens seen growing lighter at the approach of dawn, when obviously the eastern horizon is? He goes on to cite a text that, he says, explains this verse perfectly, Convivio III.ix.11-12, where Dante discusses the obscuring qualities of the earth's atmosphere itself. Most of the commentators who follow Porena accept his explanation (a few even crediting him). See, for example, Saverio Bellomo (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 8 [1996]: 52-53). At least three aspects of Porena's argument are, however, problematic: (1) Dante does not say that the predawn sky grows lighter first at its zenith, only that it does so, and does so very gradually; (2) his description seems to imply invariable phenomena (i.e., celestial events that happen in the same manner every night at its juncture with dawn), while atmospheric hindrances are variable; (3) the relationship between this and the following terzina is such that the process initiated in this one is completed in that, which would at least imply a continuous movement in these celestial “candles” becoming dimmer and finally being snuffed out. In short, it seems unwise to jettison the old reading for Porena's.

For an extended argument in support of the notion that Dante conceived the Empyrean as a depiction of the “eye of God,” even unto its extramissionary ray of sight, see Richard Kay (“Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of God,” Speculum 78 [2003]: 37-65).

4 - 4

For Dante's cielo... profondo it has been traditional (at least since the time of Lombardi [comm. to vv. 1-6]) to cite Virgil, Georgics IV.222, caelumque profundum.

7 - 8

The traditional understanding, of uninterrupted currency until the last decade of the nineteenth century, is that the “brightest handmaid of the Sun” is Aurora, who announces the arrival of her lord at sunrise. Scartazzini (comm. to verse 7), however (if without changing that interpretation), reminds us that Dante refers to the hours of the day as ancelle [del giorno] (Purg. XII.81, XXII.118). That bit of lore about the personified hours (which hardly dispatches the traditional literary association of Aurora as the handmaid of the Sun indirectly referred to at Purg. IX.2, with its presentation of the brightening predawn sky) remained offstage until Poletto (comm. to vv. 1-15 [of course not mentioning Scartazzini]) casually refers to it as his only comment on this verse. He was joined by Mattalia (comm. to verse 7 [of course not mentioning either Scartazzini or Poletto]), who was the first commentator to insist that the first Hour of the day is the particular brightness referred to. However, several considerations cast serious doubt on this solution: (1) It would be strange for Dante to have referred to the first hour of the day as its brightest, since most would doubtless consider noon to be that; (2) the passage refers to a gradual process (like that of the aurora of the Sun), while the passing of even a single minute when the Sun is rising is marked by a dramatic change indeed; (3) it is difficult once the sun rises to see any stars at all, much less to watch a gradual extinguishing process across the eastern half of the heavens. Perhaps it was such considerations that governed the continuing response among the commentators, all of whom represented in the DDP remain wedded to the traditional gloss, Aurora. However, inexplicably (if tentatively), Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], p. 826) cites and accepts Mattalia's interpretation. For the proposal of a totally new understanding, see Tobias Leuker (“'La chiarissima ancella / del sol,' Par. XXX, 7-8. Dante tra Marziano Capella e Boiardo,” L'Alighieri 24 [2004]: 93-96), who claims that the “handmaid” is Venus as morning star. Leuker (p. 94) misrepresents Chiavacci Leonardi's argument, which he says puts the first hour between 5 and 6 before dawn; he then compounds that error by another, when he wonders why the first hour would be brighter than noon (see the first consideration just above) – especially since he has erroneously put the first hour in the wrong time slot (it being ideally between 6 and 7). He does not find it problematic that Venus will be referred to in verse 9, believing, rather, that both these periphrases refer to her.

8 - 8

See Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 7-9) for a citation of Aeneid I.374, describing evening's arrival on Mt. Olympus. And see Hollander (“Le opere di Virgilio nella Commedia di Dante,” in Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia: Autorità e sfida poetica, ed. A. A. Iannucci [Ravenna: Longo, 1993], p. 334) for Gmelin's attempt to expand the range of possible echoes to other Virgilian loci, Statius, and Lactantius.

9 - 9

The traditional understanding, which has no need of revaluation, is that the brightest and most beautiful light in the predawn sky is Venus as morning star.

10 - 15

The lengthy and elaborate simile now presents its second term: As the light of the stars in the dawn sky yields to the increasing brilliance of the Sun, so the nine angelic orders, whirling around God, extinguish their glow. The result is that their self-effacement encourages him to yield to his desire, which is to look at Beatrice.

11 - 11

See Gianfranco Contini (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 1018) for recognition of the self-citation here. The line contains a fairly obvious revisitation, in the phrase “al punto che mi vinse” (around the point that overcame me), of Francesca's description of the punto in the Lancelot romance that aroused her and Paolo (Inf. V.132): “ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse” (still, it was a single instant overcame us [italics added]). It is perhaps only the oppositional nature of this punto, not a “point” in a text describing sexual arousal, but God, the Point of the universe, that had kept the close resemblance in phrasing apparently unobserved for so many centuries. For other notice, see Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983], pp. 139-40); Peter Dronke (“Symbolism and Structure in Paradiso 30,” Romance Philology 43 [1989]: 32 – both without reference to any precursor); and Domenico De Robertis (“Dante e Beatrice in Paradiso,” Critica letteraria 18 [1990]: 141 - citing Contini). And see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 7-8), acknowledging Contini, if belatedly. See also Karlheinz Stierle (“Canto XXVI,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 407-8), who mentions no precursor. And see the note to Paradiso XXIX.9. There is a glancing discussion of the two passages by Corrado Bologna (“Canto XXX,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 465-66), without reference to any precedent discussion of their relation.

For the slow emergence of the word punto (some fifty occurrences in all) as referring to God only as early as in Paradiso XVII.17, and then its “explosion” with that meaning in Paradiso XXVIII and XXIX (six uses), and then, finally, here, see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 7 [n. 18]).

12 - 12

The circles of angels seem to surround God; in fact He “contains” them (and all else).

16 - 18

The poet, seeing Beatrice at the edge of eternity, as it were, begins his valedictory remarks by insisting that all his preceding praise together would not do to fulfill the need he feels to express her beauty.

17 - 17

The word loda (praise) has a “technical” overtone. As recorded in Vita nuova, Dante began to grow toward comprehending the meaning of Beatrice when he turned from poems about the pain his loving her had caused him to those in praise of her (see VN XVIII.9).

18 - 18

For the Latinism vice (here translated “that which is due”), the commentators are torn among several possibilities. Perhaps the most popular is the usage found in the Latin phrase explere vicem, meaning “to fulfill one's duties,” probably the most likely sense of the word here. But see Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) for the majority opinion (which he does not share) that it means volta with the sense of “time” or “occasion.” Several add “place” to the possibilities, and there are still other options. Singleton (comm. to this verse) cites the other use of vice (at Par. XXVII.17), where it is paired with officio (duty), to argue that it therefore cannot mean that here; but see Scartazzini (comm. to Par. XXVII.17-18) who deals with vice as there being the “duty” of silence incumbent on the rest of the spirits while St. Peter fulfills his duty, which is to hold forth against papal turpitude, the two words sharing a sense approaching that of synonyms.

John Scott (“Paradiso XXX,” in Dante Commentaries, ed. D. Nolan [Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1977], p. 163) comments on the extraordinary incidence of Latinisms in this canto, which he puts at fifty.

19 - 21

Dante will see Beatrice once more, after she resumes her seat in the Rose (from which she arose once, on 24 March 1300 [also Maundy Thursday according to Dante's Idealized Earth Time], in order to draw Virgil forth from Limbo; and then again, around noon the following Wednesday, in order to descend to the earthly paradise for her reunion with Dante). This, however, is his last attempt to describe her beauty, which has been increasing from his second description of it (in the heaven of the Moon, Par. IV.139-142) every time he sees her anew until now. That this “program” has come to its end is clear from the seven tercets (vv. 16-36) devoted to a final description of her increased beauty, which offer a kind of history (esp. vv. 28-33) of that beauty's effect on Dante.

On the point of returning to her undivided attention to God, she is already being retransformed into a more-than-human being, pure soul, as it were, without the hindrance of human concerns that she has taken on for Dante's sake. Thus only God can fully enjoy her beauty.

22 - 27

And thus the human poet who is speaking to us, confined by the two modes (and only two generic possibilities are referred to in the entire text, unlike De vulgari eloquentia, which mentions several others), tragic or comic, that are available to him, must acknowledge his necessary failure. The poem of the triumph of Beatrice needs a new genre, one that Dante has defined at Paradiso XXV.73, and that shares with David's psalms, expressing his love for God, the generic tag of tëodia (god song). For this last, see Teodolinda Barolini (Dante's Poets [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984]), p. 277). Only a new form might seem capable of describing such things. It is probably incorrect to attempt, as some have done, to assign a particular style to each cantica, but if one were forced to and had only Dante's words in the poem as guides, Inferno might be considered essentially tragic in the tales it tells, while Purgatorio would seem to be, on the same basis (lives that end badly or well), comic. As for the Paradiso, it might be describable as a tëodia. In terms of language, however, the Inferno seems the most low-style, and thus comic of the three; the second canticle seems a mixture of the two; and the third seems unclassifiable stylistically, with four elements present, low (comic), middle (explanatory and discursive), high (tragic), and sublime (the vision of God, the tëodia, if we must). It is not clear that the poet meant such distinctions to apply. Whether he did or not, all attempts to provide such handholds have failed to convince many. See, most recently, Francesco Tateo (“Il canone dei poeti comici e la moderazione di Stazio,” L'Alighieri 27 [2006]: 94-95), arguing that the poem rises, stylistically, from the tragic style of Limbo through the comic style of Purgatorio to the joyful style of Paradiso. Morally, Tateo says, the poem rises to the sublimity of the hymn from the depth of tragedy through the middle, or human, stage of comedy. And see Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 150, who believes that the reader should understand Dante's intention to include the middle style, the elegiac. Now Dante does discuss this style in De vulgari (II.iv.5 and II.xii.6), but that does not license applying it to the Commedia, where all reference to elegy is simply lacking. One should add that Aversano is not alone in his attempt to match elegiacs and the Commedia.

See Prudence Shaw (“Paradiso XXX,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante's “Comedy,” ed. K. Foster and P. Boyde [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], p. 196): “There is a chain of inadequacy in Dante because of the visionary nature of the experience he is describing. The mind cannot fully grasp what it experiences, because this transcends the human capacity for understanding; the memory cannot now recall even that which the mind did grasp at the time; and finally, the poet's words cannot do justice even to what he can recall to mind. The poet's words are three stages removed from what he is attempting to represent.”

For discussion of reference here to Virgil and Dante as, respectively, writers of tragedy and of comedy, see Scartazzini (comm. to verse 24) and Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 10 [n. 23]).

25 - 27

Like a mortal with weak eyes, unable even more than most to look directly at the Sun, the poet finds his inner sight blinded by the memory of this last and transformed beauty evident in Beatrice. Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 25-27) was apparently the first commentator (but not the last, though none of the others cites him) to call attention to three passages in the minor works that offer similar images, Vita nuova (XLI.6), and Convivio (III.0.59-60; III.viii.14 [this last the commentary on those verses]). It is amusing to discover that in the first case, it is Beatrice's soul, ascended to Heaven, that is too bright for Dante to behold, while in the two passages in Convivio the blinding is accomplished by the glow of Lady Philosophy. The first is entirely germane to the present context, which has Beatrice about to ascend to exactly where Dante first saw her seated in Heaven in the libello. Dante would have preferred, however, that we forget the second, in praise of the lady who replaced Beatrice in his affections.

27 - 27

Porena (comm. to vv. 26-27) is perhaps the first to discuss the two possible meanings of mente, “mind” (here with the sense of “intellect”) and “memory,” making a good case for the former, as we have translated the word. See also Alfonso Maierù, “mente,” ED III (1971), pp. 899a-905a, who agrees (p. 902b). However, if it is his mind that Dante is separated from, in what specific ways ought we consider the possible meaning(s) of the verse? This is a difficult line to translate.

28 - 29

If we accept the “history” put forward in Vita nuova, the first time that he saw Beatrice was shortly before Dante's ninth birthday (VN II.1-2), thus no later than June of 1274, and probably a little before then. The current date in the poem is perhaps 31 March 1300 (see the note to Inf. I.1). For a speculative presentation of the possibility that the day of Beatrice's death (8 June 1290) coincided with Dante's twenty-fifth birthday, and thus his “coming of age” into wisdom about the irrelevance of earthly affections, see Richard Kay (“Il giorno della nascita di Dante e la dipartita di Beatrice,” in Studi Americani su Dante, ed. G. C. Alessio e R. Hollander [Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989], pp. 243-65).

28 - 28

The word viso may here be rendered with either “eyes” or “face.” We have chosen the latter, even though most of the commentators who actually choose one alternative over the other, beginning with Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 28-30), prefer “eyes.”

30 - 30

“This verse is more problematic than it generally seems to be to most commentators: [H]ow can Dante say this when he has displayed such a marked deviation from singing of Beatrice in Convivio? Are we to understand that that work, even if it records her being eclipsed in Dante's affection by the donna gentile, nonetheless is about her? Or are we to imagine that, since Dante has been through the rivers Lethe and Eunoe, he forgets his past wrongdoing and remembers only the good in the history of his affections?” (Hollander [“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 {1988 [1993]}: 11 {n. 26}]).

31 - 36

“The poet is able to represent aspects of divinity but cannot know it directly. Beatrice, at one with God, resists any human poet's capacity, even Dante's. And thus Dante must leave her to a maggior bando, the angelic trumpets' heralding at the [G]eneral Resurrection.... [Beatrice] is better than all mortals because she is immortal, a condition [that] she shares utterly with her fellow saints. In a sense, Dante's inability to sing of her results not from her being unique, but from her being absolutely the same as all the blessed in her love of God” (Hollander [“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 {1988 [1993]}: 11-12]). Naturally, that is true of any other saved soul as well.

33 - 33

See Walter Binni (“Canto XXX,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968]), p. 1070) for a paraphrase of this verse: “il limite estremo delle sue forze espressive” ([at] the outer limit of his powers of expression).

34 - 34

Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981]: 65 and “Miro gurge [Par. XXX, 68]: Virgilian Language and Textual Pattern in the River of Light,” Dante Studies 103 [1985]: 89) points out that the word bando here looks back at Purgatorio XXX.13 in such a way as to make its meaning clear. All the early commentators who make an effort to identify the source of that trumpeting say that it will be a later poet (Benvenuto, comm. to vv. 34-39) specifies 'a poet-theologian,' in which judgment he is followed by John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 34-42); some, their discomfort more or less apparent, go along, perhaps because they do not understand to what else the sonorous reference might refer. That was the muddled condition of appreciation of this passage until Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) cut through centuries of weak responses and magisterially solved (or should have) the riddle once and for all (the text refers to the trump of Judgment Day), even if his reward for doing so was to be ridiculed by Poletto (comm. to vv. 34-37) and to be ignored even by those relative few who agree with him. Mestica (comm. to vv. 34-38), without reference to Scartazzini (do we hear the strains of a familiar tune? [see the note to Purg. XXX.115-117]), also settles on this daring but sensible explanation, as does Del Lungo (comm. to vv. 34-38). Claudio Varese (“Il canto trentesimo del Paradiso,” in his Pascoli politico, Tasso e altri saggi [Milan: Feltrinelli, 1961 {1953}], pp. 23-31) follows this path but cites no predecessor on it. Fernando Salsano (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 226n.) credits Del Lungo alone for this better understanding. Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997]), p. 830) omits mention of any precursor in stating this interpretation. Still more blameworthy than Poletto, Vandelli, revising his master's work, simply substitutes his own version of the ancient view for Scartazzini's radical new interpretation (Scartzzini/Vandelli comm. to Par. I.34-36), attributing the trumpet blast to a “voce poetica più possente della mia” (poetic voice more powerful than mine). In more recent times, Scartazzini's position has found support in Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981]: 65, 72); Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 10-13 [with a review of the status of the debate]); Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], p. 830; and Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], p. 301). However, see Prudence Shaw (“Paradiso XXX,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante's “Comedy,” ed. K. Foster and P. Boyde [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], p. 197) for a return to the old solution, the bando will issue from “a greater poetic talent than his own.”

For a similar problem, what Dante refers to by the phrase “con miglior voci” (with better words) at Paradiso I.35, and the utter unlikelihood that he might be thinking of future poets better than he, see the note to Paradiso I.35-36. Interestingly enough, Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 151, sees the failure of this traditional interpretation, but goes on to offer an unlikely solution here, roughly the same as was presented by Giuseppe Toffanin (Sette interpretazioni dantesche [Naples: Libreria scientifica editrice, 1947], pp. 80-82) in his attempt to solve that crux in the first canto in 1947: Dante is not thinking of other poets but of the saints in Heaven; it is they who will celebrate Beatrice.

37 - 37

That Beatrice is here presented (intrinsically, at least) as a masculine leader reminds Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 151, of the ammiraglio to which she was compared shortly after her appearance in the earthly paradise (at Purg. XXX.58).

We follow Tozer (comm. to vv. 37-39) and Carroll (comm. to vv. 37-45), the second of whom says that he is following Butler, in translating the phrase as they do, in Carroll's explanation, “'a leader freed from his task,' as in Par. XVII.100: the gesture and voice of one who has successfully led him to the final revelation.”

38 - 42

On these verses see Bortolo Martinelli (“La dottrina dell'Empireo nell'Epistola a Cangrande (capp. 24-27),” Studi Danteschi 57 [1985]: 113-14), arguing that the Empyrean is to be considered as having corporeal being. Dante (in Conv. II.iii.8) has been interpreted as saying that this was indeed the case. (Although there are those who do not hold to this opinion, finding that Dante attributes this opinion to “Catholics” without necessarily embracing it himself, this would not mark the first time that Dante changed his mind about an opinion expressed in the Convivio). Here, however, it seems totally clear that Dante is reiterating his thoughts about the triform Creation (see Par. XXIX.22-24), which included pure form unalloyed with matter (i.e., the Empyrean and the angels). As Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 151, points out, if the Primum Mobile is the largest material sphere in the heavens, that requires that the Empyrean not be material, for it contains (i.e., is larger than) all else.

It is quite striking, as Aversano points out, that after Inferno II.21 Dante never uses the word empireo again. It had, in fact, appeared more often in the Convivio (twice: II.iii.8 and II.xiv.19).

39 - 42

These four verses, weaving their three line-beginning/ending nouns luce, amore, letizia into a knot expressing the nature of God's kingdom (intellectual light and love, the latter yielding joy) in a pattern of linkage new to the poem, are perhaps calculated to offer a first sense of the higher spiritual reality of the Empyrean.

43 - 43

The two “militias” found here are, of course, the angels and the saved souls. Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 43-45) says the first fought against the rebel angels, the second, against the vices.

44 - 45

The poet, in his enthusiasm for incarnation, restrains himself only enough not to insist that the angels are seen as though they, too, are embodied. There is no preexisting tradition that allows this daring invention (seeing the blessed as though they were already incarnate) on Dante's part. And yet, once we read his instruction, we accept their phantom flesh as a necessary element of his vision.

This is all the more striking as we have just been assured that we left “corporality” behind when we left the Primum Mobile (vv. 38-39). See discussions in Scott (“Paradiso XXX,” in Dante Commentaries, ed. D. Nolan [Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1977], pp. 164 and 179) and in Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 14): “[T]his resubstantiation occurs exactly at the moment at which we have apparently left corporality behind us.... 'From nature and history to spirituality and eternity' is one way to translate [Beatrice's] phrase.”

Anna Chiavacci Leonardi (“'Le bianche stole': il tema della resurrezione nel Paradiso,” in Dante e la Bibbia, ed. G. Barblan [Florence: Olschki, 1988], pp. 270-71) finds it troublesome that the poet represents himself as having seen the blessed as they will be once they have their flesh again while time has not run its course though human history, that is, while there are still vacant “seats” in the Rose. It is difficult to understand why she finds this problematic: the “miracle” occurs for a single moment in 1300 and involves all those (and only those) who are then in Heaven.

45 - 45

This marks the thirty-fifth and last appearance of nouns for “justice” in the poem (giustizia and [once] iustitia); see Hollander (Dante and Paul's “five words with understanding,” Occasional Papers, No. 1, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts and Studies [Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992], at note 60).

46 - 51

Again Dante is blinded by the light, one last time before he begins seeing the higher reality of God's Heaven as it really is. The simile makes use of a fitting biblical precursor, St. Paul (see the note to verse 49).

For the blending of scientific and biblical elements in this simile, see Simon Gilson (“Medieval Science in Dante's Commedia: Past Approaches and Future Directions,” Reading Medieval Studies 27 [2001]: 56).

49 - 49

Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 49-51) was apparently the first commentator to hear the echo of the passage in the Book of Acts (22:6) that features the fairly rare verb circumfulgere. Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) also did so. Their view was shared by Poletto (comm. to vv. 46-51) and at least nine commentators in the following century, from Torraca to Bosco/Reggio. Disagreeing with such as these, who think that Dante's Latinizing verb form circunfulse (shone all around) reflects the circumfulgere of Acts 22:6 (or either of two other passages in that book), Peter Dronke (“Symbolism and Structure in Paradiso 30,” Romance Philology 43 [1989]: 37-38) insists on the greater relevance of Luke 2:9, the only other biblical passage that contains this verb, describing the shepherds keeping watch on the night of the Nativity: “And the glory of the Lord shone around them” (et claritas Dei circumfulsit eos). Dronke objects to claims for a linkage here between Dante and Saul, “the fanatical persecutor whom the circumfulgent light blinds for three days, stunning him into a change of heart.” However, what works against Dronke's hypothesis is the very context that he tries to turn against those who take the reference as being to Saul/Paul, since he fails to take into account the noticeable fact that Dante, like Paul (and unlike the shepherds) is blinded by the light. For Dante's Pauline identity here, see Kenelm Foster (The Two Dantes and Other Studies [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977], pp. 70-73); Giuseppe Di Scipio (“Dante and St. Paul: The Blinding Light and Water,” Dante Studies 98 [1980]: 151-57); and Prudence Shaw (“Paradiso XXX,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante's “Comedy,” ed. K. Foster and P. Boyde [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], p. 201): “There can be no doubt that Dante expects us at this point to think of Saul on the road to Damascus.” And see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 14-15 [n. 34]). Christopher Kleinhenz (“Paradiso XXX,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], pp. 458-59) is also of this opinion; on p. 468, n. 5, he refers to Dronke's hypothesis with dubiety, as does Saverio Bellomo (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 8 [1996]: 45, n. 19).

52 - 54

Beatrice explains that the blinding brightness of the Empyrean welcomes all newcomers just as Dante is welcomed now (and will be again, we realize), prepared to see God face-to-face and to flame with love for Him.

53 - 53

The word salute (greetings), ever since its teasing presence in the Vita nuova as meaning either “greeting” or “salvation” or an enigmatic union of the two, appears here, also, with ambivalent meaning.

55 - 60

The protagonist is now ready for the final stage of his journey, as is betokened by the fact that he has internalized Beatrice's words. Not all commentators agree that such is the case, claiming that Dante is uncertain as to the source of the words, even that he may have spoken them himself. But see Benvenuto (comm. to these verses) who, with whatever justification, has no doubt – the words are indeed spoken by Beatrice. It certainly seems a part of the protagonist's preparation for being rapt in his vision of God that distinctions between objective and subjective reality should begin to break down. In Paradiso XXXIII.131 he will see himself in the image of Christ.

58 - 58

Saverio Bellomo (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 8 [1996]: 56) objects to Aldo Vallone's view (“Il Canto XXX,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-'81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], p. 788) that the canto is in polemical relation to the “dolce stil novo,” p. 56.

61 - 69

The last accommodative metaphor in the part of the poem that precedes seeing face-to-face presents what Dante observes with imperfect vision in such a way as to reveal the substance hidden in these “shadowy prefaces” (verse 78).

For the river of light, and its possible dependence on a passage in the Anticlaudianus of Alanus ab Insulis (Alain de Lille), see Edward Witke (“The River of Light in the Anticlaudianus and the Divina Commedia,” Classical Review 11 [1959]: 144-56). Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], pp. 196-202) discusses the complex way in which Dante's use of metaphor morphs into absolute reality, which had first been available to his still-strengthening mind as only an approximation of itself.

61 - 61

Notice of the dependence of Dante on Apocalypse 22:1 (“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb”) apparently begins with the author of the commentary in the Codice Cassinese (comm. to this verse). Sapegno (comm. to this verse) cites, as do many others, this biblical text, but adds St. Bonventure's commentary to it: “Flumen aeternae gloriae est flumen Dei, plenum congregatione sanctorum.... Aeterna gloria dicitur fluvius, propter abundantiam; aquae vivae, propter indeficientiam; splendidus, propter munditiam; tamquam cristallum, propter transparentiam” (The river of eternal glory is the river of God, filled by the congregation of the saints.... Eternal glory is said to be flowing water because of its abundance; the water of life because it has no impurities; shining because of its clarity; like crystal because of its transparency). (The second most cited potential biblical source is Daniel 7:10.)

Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Paragone 308 [1975]: 16) reminds us that this is not a river of light, but light in the form of a river. (See Jacopo della Lana [comm. to vv. 61-69] for a similar understanding.) Jacopo says that Dante is speaking metaphorically. The word he uses is transumptive. Interestingly enough, that is the term found describing metaphoric speech in the Epistle to Cangrande (XIII.27). Hollander (Dante's Epistle to Cangrande [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993]), p. 98) gives three examples of Jacopo's using other literary terms drawn from that same passage in the epistle, but unaccountably does not mention this one. See also Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]:), p. 16 [n. 37]) for the notice that nine of the early commentators between Jacopo and John of Serravalle use that word to describe Dante's practice in this passage.

62 - 66

Seeing metaphorically, as it were (thus reversing our usual practice, which is to understand the truth of things and then express that in metaphor), the protagonist sees light in the form of a river, its two banks covered with flowers, with sparks flying up and then settling back down on the blossoms. All these elements will be metamorphosed into their realer selves, a round stadium-rose nearly filled with saved souls, with angels (“bees”) moving quickly back and forth between the souls (“flowers”) and God (the “hive”). There is, as well there should be, general agreement about the identities of these three elements, resolved from metaphor. The identity of the light in the form of a river is frequently passed over in silence. However, Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 61-63) was apparently the first to associate it with grace.

62 - 62

Exactly what adjective Dante set down (and what it means) has been a matter of some dispute, with four possible choices (fulvido, fulgido, fluvido, fluido) doing battle over the centuries. See Scartazzini (comm. to this verse), who rejects the last two, and supports most of the first commentators in choosing the first (or the second, which has, according to him, the same meaning). It means, he says, “resplendent.” Others, for instance Torraca (comm. to vv. 61-63), say that Dante's word derives from Latin fulvus (reddish-yellow).

64 - 66

For Virgil's Elysian Fields as the model for this passage, see Hermann Gmelin (Kommentar: das Paradies [Stuttgart: Klett, 1957], p. 52 - his note to Paradiso XXXI.7). For the view that this passage may, in its own right, be a veiled first presentation of that text, see Hollander (“The Invocations of the Commedia,” Yearbook of Italian Studies 3 [1976]: 240 (repr. in Studies in Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1980], p. 38). In the Aeneid (VI.703-709), the protagonist is looking at the souls of the blessed, those happy inhabitants of the Elysian Fields. (At least they probably seem happy to us when first we see them; but see the note to Par. XXXI.7-12 for Aeneas's eventual view.) In simile, they are compared to bees settling in flowers. To Dante, not one to leave a fine poetic moment only as fine as he found it, the “bees” are the angels, while the blessed are the “flowers.” This becomes clearer in the next canto (see the note to Par. XXXI.7-12), as several commentators testify. Yet it is nonetheless true, once we see the allusion, that we can carry it back with us to this passage. And then we may begin to understand that, for all the apparent discarding of Virgil that sets the last cantica apart from the first two, the Latin poet is rewarded by his greatest medieval admirer with a new life in the conclusion of his poem. See Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983]), p. 140; Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981]: 55-58); Rossi (“The Poetics of Resurrection: Virgil's Bees ([Paradiso XXXI, 1-12],” Romanic Review 80 [1989]: 306-7); and Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]:17-19), making the additional point (p. 18) that the reference thus makes this reference, along with that in verse 49 to Saul, reverse the negative version of the protagonist's typology (Inf. II.32). Where before, at least in the protagonist's own view, he failed to match up to his two precursors, now he is indeed the new Paul and the new Aeneas:


Interea videt Aeneas in valle reductaseclusum nemus et virgulta
sonantia silvae,
Lethaeumque domos placidas qui praenatat amnem.
hunc circum innumerae gentes populique volabant:
ac veluti in pratis ubi apes aestate serena
floribus insidunt variis et candida circum
lilia funduntur, strepit omnis murmure campus.

And now Aeneas sees in the valley's depths
a sheltered grove and rustling wooded brakes
and the Lethe flowing past the homes of peace.
Around it hovered numberless races, nations of souls
like bees in meadowlands on a cloudless summer day
that settle on flowers, riots of color, swarming round
the lilies' lustrous sheen, and the whole field comes alive
with a humming murmur. (Tr. R. Fagles [Viking 2006])

This is a powerful moment in which Virgil's and Dante's mimetic proclivities are shown in their warmest tones; at least in Dante's case we witness the imitation of nature engineered by another kind of imitation altogether. See Martin McLaughlin (Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995], p. 5) for the distinction between mimesis of external reality and imitation of previous literature. And for an earlier brief discussion of the distinction and of how the two techniques may be found joined, see Hollander (“Literary Consciousness and the Consciousness of Literature,” Sewanee Review 83 [1975]: 122).

66 - 66

For the ruby set in gold, it has become commonplace, after Scartazzini (comm. to this verse), to cite Aeneid X.134: “qualis gemma micat, fulvum quae dividit aurum” (glittered like a jewel set in yellow gold [tr. H.R. Fairclough]).

67 - 67

For the inebriation of the angels, Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 46-81) cites the Psalms (35:9-10 [36:8-9]): “They feast on the abundance of your house, / and you give them drink from the river of your delights. / For with you is the fountain of life; / in your light do we see light.”

68 - 68

A discussion of another Virgilian text that may stand behind Dante's Latinate phrase miro gurge (marvelous flood) is found in Albert Rossi (“Miro gurge ([Par. XXX, 68]: Virgilian Language and Textual Pattern in the River of Light,” Dante Studies 103 [1985]: 83-91), examining the parallels between Dante's river and that found in Georgics IV.348-356, the Peneüs, into whose depths Aristaeus will penetrate and see (p. 84) “the place where all the earth's streams converge” (IV.365-366).

70 - 75

Beatrice intervenes again, preparing Dante for his baptismal ingestion of the waters of Life. Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], p. 196) and (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 19) points out that Dante has experienced “baptism” in two previous scenes: Purgatorio I.121-129 and XXXIII.127-129.

76 - 81

His guide now explains what we may have already understood, that what Dante was seeing was not really what he thought it was, that it was only a “shadowy forecast” of its true nature.

For the notion that all of Paradiso up to verse 90 of this canto is best conceived as a series of accommodative metaphors, see discussion in Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], pp. 192-202); (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 19-21).

77 - 77

Resolved from metaphor, the “laughter” of the “meadows” is represented in the “flowers” that cover it, that is, the saints.

78 - 78

For the figural sense of history that stands behind this expression (umbriferi prefazi), see Emilio Pasquini (“Dante and the 'Prefaces of Truth': from 'Figure' to 'Completion,'” Italian Studies 54 [1999]: 18-25). See also Giuseppe Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], pp. 302-3). For more on the figural dimensions of the word umbra, see the note to Paradiso I.22-24.

82 - 90

In nine lines Dante “drinks in” his “baptismal” “milk” and, as a result, has his vision transformed; he will shortly be able to see the realities of Heaven as they truly are. This simile is the opening gesture in staging his identity as newborn “babe,” culminating in Paradiso XXXIII.106-108.

Peter Hainsworth (“Dante's Farewell to Politics,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], p. 163) translates the first tercet: “There is no little child who thrusts so instantly with his face towards the milk, if he awakens after being made late by a habit he has got into....” And see Scartazzini (comm. to verse 82), citing I Peter 2:2: “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation.”

85 - 89

The conclusion of this simile is effortful indeed: Dante “drinks” his “baptism” with his eyelids and thus moves his eyesight to the next level of seeing.

90 - 90

In a single verse the meaning of Dante's changed “eyesight” is manifest: For him time has become eternity; history has become its own fulfillment in revelation. His previous linear sense of things has moved to a new dimension, the circularity of perfection. This new vision, unlike that of some, maintains its relation to the things of the world, which now for the first time may be really understood. See Paradiso XXXIII.88-90.

91 - 96

The first moment of face-to-face seeing is presented with this simile. The protagonist now perceives the “flowers” as the saints they are, the “sparks” as angels. While no one said so for centuries, the only apparent “source” for this image of unmasking was a festive occasion, a masked ball of some kind. Poletto (comm. to vv. 91-96) somewhat uneasily defends the poet's choice of material; however, the noun feste (lit., “festivals,” or “celebrations”) in verse 94 at least seems to help establish a frame of reference. Nonetheless, Fallani (comm. to vv. 91-93) suggested that the reference is to masked actors. A potential literary source for this image has apparently never been suggested. It is probably fair to say that most readers feel puzzled as to the poet's motivation at such an important moment.

For another sort of unmasking, in which the protagonist again has his initial vision yield to a greater reality, see the note to Paradiso XXXIII.28-33.

95 - 99

On identical rhymes, see Tibor Wlassics (Dante narratore [Florence: Olschki, 1975], p. 121). He points out that this repetition of vidi (I saw) underlines the claim for a poetics based in seeing and making seen. As several commentators have observed (apparently the first was Scartazzini [comm. to vv. 97-99]), aside from the four occurrences of the identical rhymes of “Cristo” (see the note to Par. XII.71-75), there are only two other cases of triple identical rhymes in the poem, the bitterly ironic repetition of “per ammenda” in Purgatorio XX.65-69 and the occurrences of “vidi” here.

Responding to the word's presence in verse 61, Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 152, points to the repetitive pattern of the same form, vidi, in John's Apocalypse (four times in Apoc. 5.1-11). Dante uses that form seven times in all in this canto, the most of any canto in the cantica (Par. XVIII is the nearest challenger, with six uses; however, Inferno IV, with its list of forty virtuous pagans whom the protagonist saw in the Limbus, has fully eleven appearances of vidi; and in Purgatorio XXXII, there are eight. There are 167 occurrences of this form of the verb vedere in the poem, all but fourteen of them spoken by the poet; exceptions include Virgil [at Inf. IV.53, VIII.25, and XXIX.25], the protagonist [at Inf. XXIV.129], and several souls to whom Dante listens [Inf. XXVI.103, XXVII.79, XXVIII.71, XXXII.116; Par. XIII.136; XV.115; XVI.88, 91, 109].) Vidi is one of Dante's favorite locutions, reflecting his strategic insistence on the reality of his experience. Cf. Scott (“Canto XXXI,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 481), pointing out that the nominal form occhi is the substantive most frequently found in the poem, occurring 213 times (263 if we include the singular, occhio, nearly twice the total of the second-most-used noun, mondo [143 occurrences]).

95 - 95

The fiori (flowers) are the saved souls, the faville (sparks) are the angels, as is commonly agreed (see the note to vv. 62-66). We see them again in the next canto, verses 7-9, the sparks now transformed, in simile, into bees. Once we see that, we can understand that these first “real substances,” non-contingent and sempiternal, that we see “face-to-face” in the entire poem have models in a scene in the Aeneid (VI.703-708 [see the note to vv. 64-66]).

97 - 99

This is the eighth and penultimate invocation in the poem (see the note to Inf. II.7-9), addressing God's reflected light, possibly his grace (the ninth and final invocation will be addressed to God as luce, the source of light, in Par. XXXIII.67).

100 - 102

The first line of this tercet marks a borderline as sharply etched as that, involving similar stylistic traits, separating lower from upper Hell (Inf. XVIII.1): “Luogo è in inferno detto Malebolge” (There is a place in Hell called Malebolge). Here the light of grace that makes God visible to once mortal souls introduces the final (and visionary) part of the poem. Singleton (comm. to this tercet) argues that the number 100 here (in a canto numbered 30) is not accidentally the locus of “the downstreaming light of God in terms that define it specifically as the light of glory.”

100 - 100

There is a certain amount of indecision in the commentaries as to whether this lume is reflected light rather than its source (which would be luce). Some argue that it is the Holy Spirit, others Jesus as Logos, still others some form of grace. For this last, see Carroll (comm. to vv. 100-123): “It will be noticed that I speak of this central circular sea as lumen gratiae, for it is still the light of grace which once flowed in form of a river; but that light of grace has now reached its perfect form of eternity, the lumen gloriae. The change of the river into the circular sea is Dante's symbolic way of stating that the grace by which a soul is saved and strengthened to persevere to the end of the earthly life, is not something different in kind from the glory to which it leads. According to Aquinas, 'grace is nothing else than a certain beginning of glory in us' [ST II-II, q. 24, a. 3: 'Gratia et gloria ad idem genus referuntur; quia gratia nihil est aliud quam quaedam inchoatio gloriae in nobis'], and the light of glory is simply the perfected form of the grace of earth [ST I-II, q. 111, a. 3]. Aquinas is here laying down the distinction between prevenient and subsequent grace.” Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 25 [n. 63]) claims that, among the first commentators, only Benvenuto (comm. to Par. VII.1-6) discusses the lumen gloriae (even if elsewhere); but see his remarks on this passage (vv. 100-102) and those of his student, John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 100-105). Hollander does go on (correctly) to credit Scartazzini (comm.to vv. 115-117) as being the first of the moderns to do so.

103 - 108

The enormous size of the Rose may come as something of a surprise. Dante never tells us the number of places that are found there, whether it is the precise number (144,000) offered in the Apocalypse (see the note to Par. XXXI.115-117), or the approximate number on the basis of the “replacement value” of the fallen angels (see the note to Par. XXIX.50), or still another figure. There are some questions that we are simply not encouraged to pose.

The disc of the Sun, even populated by souls on thrones with first-class legroom, would hold more saints than are imaginable, millions of millions. See Poletto (comm. to vv. 100-105) for discussion of what Dante knew about such measurements, including that of the diameter of the Sun, 37,750 miles according to Convivio IV.viii.7.

The Rose is made up of a beam of light (the Godhead) reflected upward from the convex surface of the Primum Mobile, which rotates because of its love for that beam and spreads its influence through the celestial spheres beneath it.

This passage may help in understanding the difficult text at Paradiso XXVIII.13-15 (see the note thereto). There the poet, in the Primum Mobile, has his first vision of the Godhead and the surrounding spheres of angels. Exactly where he sees them is a matter in dispute. This passage might help establish that they are here (in the Empyrean) but are seen down there, on the surface of the Crystalline Sphere, whence they, along with the Rose, are also reflected back up here.

For the shape of the Rose as being neither a cylinder nor a cone, but hemispheric, see Richard Kay (“Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of God,” Speculum 78 [2003], pp. 46-48).

109 - 114

In the vehicle of this simile, the stadium in which the saints are seated is “personified” as a hillside that can look down to its foot and see itself, alive with spring (see the primavera of verse 63), reflected back up to its gaze. The tenor presents the seeing hill's counterpart, the protagonist, as looking up (not down), and seeing, not himself, but all the blessed as reflections of the beam, reaching upward a thousandfold. (We are aware that Dante frequently uses this number as a synonym for an uncountable multitude; see at least the next [and last] time he does so, Par. XXXI.131.)

115 - 117

Daniello (comm. to this tercet) wonders, if the circumference of the lowest row in the Rose is greater than the circumference of the sphere that holds the Sun (see the note to vv. 103-108), how great must be the circumference of the highest row, at least one thousand rows higher (and wider by a factor of at least one thousand times a probably constant yet indeterminate measurement).

117 - 117

Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 109-117) says that the rows of the Rose “are like those in the arena di Verona.” He is followed by two modern commentators, Trucchi (comm. to vv. 118-123) and Sapegno (comm. to vv. 112-113). Trucchi, however, prefers the notion of Gioachino Brognoligo that the structure Dante has in mind is the Colosseum at Rome. Both Dante's more recent and more certain visit to the Arena and its greater intimacy as a built space give the edge to Verona.

Peter Dronke (“Symbolism and Structure in Paradiso 30,” Romance Philology 43 [1989]: 41-42) points out that, in the early thirteenth century, one Petrus Capuanus had written a treatise, De rosa, which treats the red rose (martyrs), the white rose (Mary), and the red and white rose (Christ). This last puts forth leaves that include personages of both Testaments. Dronke is not so much claiming influence (although he leaves that possibility open) as similarity, an “indication of the intellectual development of which the imagery of the rose was capable already a century before the Commedia” (p. 42).

118 - 123

For a concise statement of the “resemblant difference” of the Empyrean, its way of not relating and yet totally relating to the literally underlying realms of the created universe, see Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 82): “The Empyrean is out of space-time, untouched by physical law; it is a dimensionless point, in which all is immediately present, a 'space' of consciousness, in which the 'sight' of awareness 'takes' (prendeva) as itself all it sees, all that exists.”

As we will discover, Dante is allowed to see with a new sense of dimension, which abrogates spatial perspective and makes all things equidistant one from another (see Par. XXXI.73-78). This passage prepares for that one, and both offer further evidence of the poet's extraordinarily vivid and inventive scientific imagination.

124 - 129

Ever since Jacopo della Lana, the yellow has been understood as the center of the Rose (the reader should remember that Dante is not talking about cultivated roses but wild ones, with their flatter profile). Beatrice and Dante are standing at the midpoint of the Rose when she directs him to look up and see the citizenry of the City of God.

As has been suggested (see the note to verse 117), Dante may have found a model for the Rose in the Arena di Verona. The reader is in fact urged to visit that place, to find a way to walk, without looking up, into the very center of its floor, and then to experience the sight of the inner tiers of the amphitheater. And it is just possible that he or she then will share the experience that Dante had there some seven hundred years ago. It really looks like the model for the Rose, vast yet intimate.

124 - 124

For the notion that Dante's Rose is a kind of counterimage to the flower plucked at the end of the Roman de la Rose, with its evident reference to the female pudenda, see Prudence Shaw (“Paradiso XXX,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante's “Comedy,” ed. K. Foster and P. Boyde [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], pp. 209-10). Shaw, who accepts Contini's argument for attributing the Fiore, the sonnet sequence based on the Roman, to Dante, consequently argues that this passage is a “case of the mature poet making amends for the aberrations of his youthful self” (p. 210). (For discussion of the status of these questions, Dante's knowledge of the Roman and his authorship of the Fiore, see the note to Par. II.59-60.) Among the surprisingly few commentators to express an opinion on this matter (one that no one considers unimportant), Mestica (comm. to vv. 115-123) raises the possibility that Dante had read it (and that he had written the Fiore). Giacalone (comm. to vv. 124-129) cites Paolo Savj Lopez (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” in Letture dantesche. III. “Paradiso,” ed. G. Getto [Florence: Sansoni, 1964], pp. 625-38), who thinks that Dante would have made allowances for the profane love championed by the Roman and thus seen it as a worthy precursor.

For the thesis that Dante's Rose is modeled on the Charter of the Templars (De laude novae militiae) by St. Bernard, with its 13 rubrics corresponding to the 13 paliers of the Rose (see her p. 3), see Colette de Callata,y-van der Mersch (La Rose de Jérusalem [Peeters: Louvain, 2001]). She believes that this design (with its dependence on the number thirteen) serves as the matrix for Dante's entire poem.

125 - 125

The Latinism redole (exhales fragrance) is traced to Aeneid I.436, first by Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 124-126).

126 - 126

For this “springtime” sense of the verb vernare, see the note to Paradiso XXVIII.118. The verb usually means “to spend the winter” (see Inf. XXXIII.135 and Purg. XXIV.64).

129 - 129

For the phrase bianche stole (white robes), see its previous use at Paradiso XXV.95, where it clearly signifies the bodies to be returned at the general resurrection. Beatrice has promised Dante that this is the way the saved will seem to him, even though they are not yet resurrected, and so the phrase here allows us to understand that this is indeed how they appear, in the flesh.

For an overview of the history and significance of the concept of resurrection of the flesh in the Western Church (with some consideration of Dante), see Caroline Walker Bynum (The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity 200-1336 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1995]). For a close look at the importance of the resurrected body, in several writers preceding Dante and (primarily) in the Commedia, see Manuele Gragnolati (Experiencing the Afterlife [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005]. For Dante's sense of this subject, see also Rachel Jacoff (“Dante and the Legend(s) of St. John,” Dante Studies 117 [1999]: 45-57 and “'Our Bodies, Our Selves': The Body in the Commedia,” in Sparks and Seeds: Medieval Literature and Its Afterlife [Essays in Honor of John Freccero], ed. Dana E. Stewart and Alison Cornish [Turnhout: Brepols, 2000], pp. 119-37).

At least since reading Paradiso XIV.61-66 (the passage shows the first two groups, the twenty-four contemplatives, who have shown themselves to Dante and Beatrice in the heaven of the Sun, all longing for their own resurrected flesh as well for their saved relatives to regain their own), we have been aware that there is something missing in the beatific life. Against more usual views, Dante presents the afterlife of those currently in Paradise as being less than perfect (and less than perfected) because, against the orthodox notion that blessedness itself is the ultimate and eternal reward, there is, according to Dante, one thing that is felt as currently lacking: the resurrection of the flesh. Taught by Jesus (e.g., Luke 14:14) and insisted on by St. Paul, that future event is promised to all the saved. However, the early medieval view (e.g., that of Augustine) was, unsurprisingly, that once with God, the condition of the soul in a blessed and blissful member of the Church Triumphant was already perfected, both in what it knew and what it desired. The general resurrection, promised by St. Paul (most extensively in I Corinthians 15:35-55), of course awaited that soul, but the admixture of corporality was only “decorative,” at least in a sense. Paul tackles that issue with what seems a curiously defensive insistence, against pagan (and Christian?) mockers (see Acts 17:18 and 17:32), that the saved will indeed regain their own flesh in the long passage in I Corinthians.

Only months more than ten years after Dante's death in 1321, his old nemesis, Pope John XXII, preached a series of sermons of which a central point was that, until the soul was reclad in its flesh, it would not see God, setting off a horrified reaction within the Church, the eventual result of which was that the next pope, Benedict XII, restored the earlier disposition of the matter, namely, that the saved soul immediately experiences both the highest bliss in and the fullest knowledge of God of which it is capable.

Dante might have been amused to find that John XXII, whom he despised (see the note to Par. XXVII.136-138), was in disagreement with him on this important and divisive issue as well as on more pressing “political” concerns.

130 - 148

For a global discussion of this final passage, see Peter Hainsworth (“Dante's Farewell to Politics,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], pp. 152-69), arguing that it not only fails to destroy the harmony or unity of this canto (a position shared by many – see p. 154n. for a concise bibliography of the question), but that it is part of its integrity. See the similar opinion of Fernando Salsano (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 232-34) and of Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 31-33).

For an attempt to “save” this passage despite itself, see Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses), who concede that Dante probably should not have turned aside from contemplating things eternal and divine for such a feverish concern with mere contingency, compounding that “fault” by putting this earth-centered speech in the mouth of holy Beatrice, and as her last utterance at that. One can hear awareness of centuries of complaint behind their words. To be just, one must admit that this concern with earthly things seems inconsistent with the usual sort of piety. No one ever said (or should have) that Dante is “usual” in any respect at all.

Those twentieth-century Dantists who thought that Mussolini (or Hitler) was the veltro (Inf. I.101) offer unwitting testimony in this debate. Their political naïveté reveals exactly how much the poem does offer itself as prophetic of great events to come in this world. Beatrice's two related utterances, at the conclusions of Canto XXVII and here, both speak of events to come in the near future of Dante's Italy, and both are intensely political in nature. Perhaps we will one day learn that Dante's political vision is part and parcel of his religious sense. For an appreciation of this dimension of his thought, see Lino Pertile (“Dante Looks Forward and Back: Political Allegory in the Epistles,” Dante Studies 115 [1997]: 1-17 and La puttana e il gigante: Dal Cantico dei Cantici al Paradiso Terrestre di Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1998], passim).

130 - 132

There are only two possible considerations of the significance of the few places left in the Rose: Either there are very few good people alive (or who will be born before the end of time), or the end is coming faster than we think. That we should combine these two responses seems prudent. However, for Dante's possible sense that there are some 1500 years left to run in history, see the note to Paradiso IX.40.

133 - 138

H.T. Silverstein (“The Throne of the Emperor Henry in Dante's Paradise and the Mediaeval Conception of Christian Kingship,” Harvard Theological Review 32 [1939]: 115-29) deals with the surprise that most readers exhibit at the empty throne of the emperor being the first object that the protagonist sees in the Empyrean by reminding us of the far more ample medieval tradition that displayed vacant seats in heaven awaiting “humble friars and simple monks” (pp. 116-17) rather than emperors. He thus sees the salvation of Henry VII not in terms of his imperial mission (failed as it was), but as an “accolade of kingly righteousness” (p. 129), showing that, in passages in the Gospels and one in the Vision of Tundale (see p. 124 and n. 19), Dante had available testimony to the personal justness of those kings who, rather than merely ruling them, truly served their people. (He might have referred to Dante's praise of William the Good; see the note on Par. XX.61-66.) However, it is probably a mistake to accept, as Silverstein does (p. 128), the notion that, with Henry's failure to establish lasting imperial rule in Italy “died all of Dante's hope on earth.” For a view, apparently shaped in part by Silverstein's, that Dante had essentially given up his hopes for an imperial resurgence because of the derelictions of the fourteenth-century papacy, see Edward Peters (“The Failure of Church and Empire: Paradiso 30,” Mediaeval Studies 34 [1972]: 326-35), who goes farther than Silverstein in seeing Dante as having modified his imperial hopes. But see Jacques Goudet (“La 'parte per se stesso' e l'impegno politico di Dante,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 289-316) and Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981], pp. 43-50 - with a rejoinder to Peters on p. 49) for a more convincing sense of Dante's continuing imperial hopes.

For Dante's fifth Epistula (addressed to the princes and peoples of Italy) as rechanneling biblical and liturgical reflections of Christ's majesty onto Henry VII, see Paola Rigo (“Tempo liturgico nell'epistola ai Principi e ai Popoli d'Italia,” in her Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante [Florence: Olschki, 1994], pp. 33-44).

For Henry VII as the seventh divinely selected emperor, see the last paragraph of the note to Paradiso VI.82-91.

134 - 134

Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse) point out that it is difficult to be certain just what Dante means. Is the crown (a) leaning against the throne? (b) a part of the design on its back? (c) suspended over it? This reader confesses that he has always assumed the third option was the right one.

135 - 135

The word nozze (wedding feast) drew Mattalia's attention (comm. to this verse) to Dante's Epistle to the Italian Princes (Epist. V.5): “Rejoice, therefore, O Italy, thou that art now an object of pity even to the Saracens, for soon shalt thou be the envy of the whole world, seeing that thy bridegroom, the comfort of the nations, and the glory of thy people, even the most clement Henry, Elect of God and Augustus and Caesar, is hastening to the wedding (ad nuptias properat)” (tr. P. Toynbee). This attribution is also found in Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981], p. 50).

136 - 136

The adjective agosta (imperial) still honors Henry's “Augustan” mission, which was to unite the Italians into a nation, as Aeneas had set out to do. Augustus had presided over its flowering, bringing the world to peace under Rome's authority.

137 - 137

For Henry's first naming, see Paradiso XVII.82, where his betrayal by Pope Clement is clearly referred to. This second (and final) reference to him by name places his coming as “Augustus” in the future, thus reflecting Dante's willed optimism that the future harbors a “new Henry” even after this one has failed.

138 - 138

See Peter Hainsworth (“Dante's Farewell to Politics,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], p. 160) on the two main and opposing senses of the notion of “disposition” in Dante (the verb disporre in various forms). The word often refers to human choices (sometimes mistaken ones), but also to divine election. Here, Hainsworth argues, that Italy was not “disposed” when she should have been does not mean that she will not welcome her next opportunity to embrace a rightful ruler.

139 - 141

Florence as an ill-willed baby boy, who turns from his nurse's breast even as he feels the pangs of hunger, is reminiscent of the two good young boys who will turn bad quickly enough in Paradiso XXVII.130-135. The political context and the word cupidigia are other common elements in the two passages.

139 - 139

See, for a different tonality but similar formulations, Dante's earlier utterance, issued from exile, addressed to his fellow citizens when they were resisting the efforts of Henry VII to take control of Florence (Epistula VI.22): “Nec advertitis dominantem cupidinem, quia ceci estis, venenoso susurrio blandientem, minis frustatoriis cohibentem, nec non captivantem vos in lege peccati, ac sacratissimis legibus que iustitie naturalis imitantur ymaginem, parere vetantem; observantia quarum, si leta, si libera, non tantum non servitus esse probatur, quin ymo perspicaciter intuenti liquet ut est ipsa summa libertas” (Nor are ye ware in your blindness of the overmastering greed which beguiles you with venomous whispers, and with cheating threats constrains you, yea, and has brought you into captivity to the law of sin, and forbidden you to obey the most sacred laws; those laws made in the likeness of natural justice, the observance whereof, if it be joyous, if it be free, is not only no servitude, but to him who observes with understanding is manifestly in itself the most perfect liberty – tr. P. Toynbee [italics added]). This passage was first adduced by Scartazzini (comm. to verse 139), and then by any number of later commentators, none of whom give him credit for having preceded them (see Hollander [“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 {1988 [1993]}: 32n.]).

142 - 148

This concluding passage, with its rancor against the ecclesiastical enemies of the imperial idea, has disturbed many, who find it entirely inappropriate as Beatrice's last utterance in a theologically determined poem. One must admit that it may seem out of place in a Christian poem, with its necessary message of the unimportance of the things of the world coupled with Jesus' insistence that we forgive our enemies. Such a sensible view, however, disregards the thoroughgoing political concern of the poem and does not deal with Dante's stubborn insistence on the rectitude of his vision of the world order (see Hollander [“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 {1988 [1993]}: 32-33]). See, for an example of a different view, Aldo Vallone (“Il Canto XXX,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-'81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], p. 801), speaking of “un certo pessimissmo storico” in Beatrice's last words.

The thirtieth cantos of the final cantiche are united, as Claudio Varese noted (“Il canto trentesimo del Paradiso,” in his Pascoli politico, Tasso e altri saggi [Milan: Feltrinelli, 1961 {1953}], p. 25), in at least two major respects: They are cantos of departure for both beloved guides; they also are both “cantos of Beatrice,” the first of arrival, the second of return (to the point of her departure, her seat in Heaven, as described in Inferno II.71, 101-102). For more on the links between these two cantos, see Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983], pp. 140-45; (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 30-32); and Saverio Bellomo (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 8 [1996]: 50).

If we can remember our first reading of the poem, we will perhaps recall our eventual and retrospective surprise upon discovering that these were the last words spoken by Beatrice in the Divine Comedy. We, like the protagonist, have gotten used to her guidance. Unlike Virgil's departure, which is prepared for even as he enters the poem (Inf. I.121-126), Beatrice's departure is a total surprise (see the note to Par. XXXI.102).

142 - 144

This tercet undoubtedly is a last nasty glance at Pope Clement V, who made a show of welcoming Henry VII to Italy but then worked assiduously behind the scenes to defeat the emperor's efforts to unite her cities under his rule (see the note to Par. XVII.82-84).

145 - 146

Henry died 24 August 1313; Clement, 20 April 1314, soon enough after Henry for Dante to consider his death God's punishment for his treacherous opposition to the emperor and to his cause - even if Clement had been seriously ill a very long time. See the note to Inferno XIX.79-87.

147 - 147

Simon Magus gave the “naming opportunity” to Dante for the third of the Malebolge (see Inf. XXIX.1), where the simoniac popes and other clerics who traded in the goods and services of the Church are found, and where Dante so memorably is mistaken by Pope Nicholas III for Pope Boniface VIII (Inf. XIX.53).

148 - 148

The phrase “that fellow from Anagni” is Dante's own version of the false and slangy familiarity of the corrupt clergy (see the note to Par. XVIII.130-136). The reference, of course, is to Pope Boniface VIII, seen as forced deeper into his hole (that of the simoniac popes) by the advent of Clement, who now will be the topmost, and thus able to wave his burning soles about in Hell. Dante didn't know it, but Clement's time would exceed that of Boniface, who waved his feet from 1303-1314. In the unwritten continuation of this poem, Clement would have twenty years in the relatively open air of the bolgia, since John XXII did not die until 1334 (surely Dante felt he was destined for eternal damnation, and would have continued to do so, especially had he learned of John's unenlightened views on the resurrection of the flesh [see the note to verse 129]). Should we be so inclined, we might add him to Dante's total of damned popes with something like certainty (see the note to Inf. VII.46-48).

Paradiso: Canto 30

1
2
3

Forse semilia miglia di lontano
ci ferve l'ora sesta, e questo mondo
china già l'ombra quasi al letto piano,
4
5
6

quando 'l mezzo del cielo, a noi profondo,
comincia a farsi tal, ch'alcuna stella
perde il parere infino a questo fondo;
7
8
9

e come vien la chiarissima ancella
del sol più oltre, così 'l ciel si chiude
di vista in vista infino a la più bella.
10
11
12

Non altrimenti il trïunfo che lude
sempre dintorno al punto che mi vinse,
parendo inchiuso da quel ch'elli 'nchiude,
13
14
15

a poco a poco al mio veder si stinse:
per che tornar con li occhi a Bëatrice
nulla vedere e amor mi costrinse.
16
17
18

Se quanto infino a qui di lei si dice
fosse conchiuso tutto in una loda,
poca sarebbe a fornir questa vice.
19
20
21

La bellezza ch'io vidi si trasmoda
non pur di là da noi, ma certo io credo
che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda.
22
23
24

Da questo passo vinto mi concedo
più che già mai da punto di suo tema
soprato fosse comico o tragedo:
25
26
27

ché, come sole in viso che più trema,
così lo rimembrar del dolce riso
la mente mia da me medesmo scema.
28
29
30

Dal primo giorno ch'i' vidi il suo viso
in questa vita, infino a questa vista,
non m'è il seguire al mio cantar preciso;
31
32
33

ma or convien che mio seguir desista
più dietro a sua bellezza, poetando,
come a l'ultimo suo ciascuno artista.
34
35
36

Cotal qual io la lascio a maggior bando
che quel de la mia tuba, che deduce
l'ardüa sua matera terminando,
37
38
39

con atto e voce di spedito duce
ricominciò: “Noi siamo usciti fore
del maggior corpo al ciel ch'è pura luce:
40
41
42

luce intellettüal, piena d'amore;
amor di vero ben, pien di letizia;
letizia che trascende ogne dolzore.
43
44
45

Qui vederai l'una e l'altra milizia
di paradiso, e l'una in quelli aspetti
che tu vedrai a l'ultima giustizia.”
46
47
48

Come sùbito lampo che discetti
li spiriti visivi, sì che priva
da l'atto l'occhio di più forti obietti,
49
50
51

così mi circunfulse luce viva,
e lasciommi fasciato di tal velo
del suo fulgor, che nulla m'appariva.
52
53
54

“Sempre l'amor che queta questo cielo
accoglie in sé con sì fatta salute,
per far disposto a sua fiamma il candelo.”
55
56
57

Non fur più tosto dentro a me venute
queste parole brievi, ch'io compresi
me sormontar di sopr' a mia virtute;
58
59
60

e di novella vista mi raccesi
tale, che nulla luce è tanto mera,
che li occhi miei non si fosser difesi;
61
62
63

e vidi lume in forma di rivera
fulvido di fulgore, intra due rive
dipinte di mirabil primavera.
64
65
66

Di tal fiumana uscian faville vive,
e d'ogne parte si mettien ne' fiori,
quasi rubin che oro circunscrive;
67
68
69

poi, come inebrïate da li odori,
riprofondavan sé nel miro gurge,
e s'una intrava, un'altra n'uscia fori.
70
71
72

“L'alto disio che mo t'infiamma e urge,
d'aver notizia di ciò che tu vei,
tanto mi piace più quanto più turge;
73
74
75

ma di quest' acqua convien che tu bei
prima che tanta sete in te si sazi”:
così mi disse il sol de li occhi miei.
76
77
78

Anche soggiunse: “Il fiume e li topazi
ch'entrano ed escono e 'l rider de l'erbe
son di lor vero umbriferi prefazi.
79
80
81

Non che da sé sian queste cose acerbe;
ma è difetto da la parte tua,
che non hai viste ancor tanto superbe.”
82
83
84

Non è fantin che sì sùbito rua
col volto verso il latte, se si svegli
molto tardato da l'usanza sua
85
86
87

come fec' io, per far migliori spegli
ancor de li occhi, chinandomi a l'onda
che si deriva perché vi s'immegli;
88
89
90

e sì come di lei bevve la gronda
de le palpebre mie, così mi parve
di sua lunghezza divenuta tonda.
91
92
93

Poi, come gente stata sotto larve,
che pare altro che prima, se si sveste
la sembianza non süa in che disparve,
94
95
96

così mi si cambiaro in maggior feste
li fiori e le faville, sì ch'io vidi
ambo le corti del ciel manifeste.
97
98
99

O isplendor di Dio, per cu' io vidi
l'alto trïunfo del regno verace,
dammi virtù a dir com'ïo il vidi!
100
101
102

Lume è là sù che visibile face
lo creatore a quella creatura
che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace.
103
104
105

E' si distende in circular figura,
in tanto che la sua circunferenza
sarebbe al sol troppo larga cintura.
106
107
108

Fassi di raggio tutta sua parvenza
reflesso al sommo del mobile primo,
che prende quindi vivere e potenza.
109
110
111

E come clivo in acqua di suo imo
si specchia, quasi per vedersi addorno,
quando è nel verde e ne' fioretti opimo,
112
113
114

sì, soprastando al lume intorno intorno,
vidi specchiarsi in più di mille soglie
quanto di noi là sù fatto ha ritorno.
115
116
117

E se l'infimo grado in sé raccoglie
sì grande lume, quanta è la larghezza
di questa rosa ne l'estreme foglie!
118
119
120

La vista mia ne l'ampio e ne l'altezza
non si smarriva, ma tutto prendeva
il quanto e 'l quale di quella allegrezza.
121
122
123

Presso e lontano, lì, né pon né leva:
ché dove Dio sanza mezzo governa,
la legge natural nulla rileva.
124
125
126

Nel giallo de la rosa sempiterna,
che si digrada e dilata e redole
odor di lode al sol che sempre verna,
127
128
129

qual è colui che tace e dicer vole,
mi trasse Bëatrice, e disse: “Mira
quanto è 'l convento de le bianche stole!
130
131
132

Vedi nostra città quant' ella gira;
vedi li nostri scanni sì ripieni,
che poca gente più ci si disira.
133
134
135

E 'n quel gran seggio a che tu li occhi tieni
per la corona che già v'è sù posta,
prima che tu a queste nozze ceni,
136
137
138

sederà l'alma, che fia giù agosta,
de l'alto Arrigo, ch'a drizzare Italia
verrà in prima ch'ella sia disposta.
139
140
141

La cieca cupidigia che v'ammalia
simili fatti v'ha al fantolino
che muor per fame e caccia via la balia.
142
143
144

E fia prefetto nel foro divino
allora tal, che palese e coverto
non anderà con lui per un cammino.
145
146
147
148

Ma poco poi sarà da Dio sofferto
nel santo officio: ch'el sarà detruso
là dove Simon mago è per suo merto,
e farà quel d'Alagna intrar più giuso.”
1
2
3

Perchance six thousand miles remote from us
  Is glowing the sixth hour, and now this world
  Inclines its shadow almost to a level,

4
5
6

When the mid-heaven begins to make itself
  So deep to us, that here and there a star
  Ceases to shine so far down as this depth,

7
8
9

And as advances bright exceedingly
  The handmaid of the sun, the heaven is closed
  Light after light to the most beautiful;

10
11
12

Not otherwise the Triumph, which for ever
  Plays round about the point that vanquished me,
  Seeming enclosed by what itself encloses,

13
14
15

Little by little from my vision faded;
  Whereat to turn mine eyes on Beatrice
  My seeing nothing and my love constrained me.

16
17
18

If what has hitherto been said of her
  Were all concluded in a single praise,
  Scant would it be to serve the present turn.

19
20
21

Not only does the beauty I beheld
  Transcend ourselves, but truly I believe
  Its Maker only may enjoy it all.

22
23
24

Vanquished do I confess me by this passage
  More than by problem of his theme was ever
  O'ercome the comic or the tragic poet;

25
26
27

For as the sun the sight that trembles most,
  Even so the memory of that sweet smile
  My mind depriveth of its very self.

28
29
30

From the first day that I beheld her face
  In this life, to the moment of this look,
  The sequence of my song has ne'er been severed;

31
32
33

But now perforce this sequence must desist
  From following her beauty with my verse,
  As every artist at his uttermost.

34
35
36

Such as I leave her to a greater fame
  Than any of my trumpet, which is bringing
  Its arduous matter to a final close,

37
38
39

With voice and gesture of a perfect leader
  She recommenced: "We from the greatest body
  Have issued to the heaven that is pure light;

40
41
42

Light intellectual replete with love,
  Love of true good replete with ecstasy,
  Ecstasy that transcendeth every sweetness.

43
44
45

Here shalt thou see the one host and the other
  Of Paradise, and one in the same aspects
  Which at the final judgment thou shalt see."

46
47
48

Even as a sudden lightning that disperses
  The visual spirits, so that it deprives
  The eye of impress from the strongest objects,

49
50
51

Thus round about me flashed a living light,
  And left me swathed around with such a veil
  Of its effulgence, that I nothing saw.

52
53
54

"Ever the Love which quieteth this heaven
  Welcomes into itself with such salute,
  To make the candle ready for its flame."

55
56
57

No sooner had within me these brief words
  An entrance found, than I perceived myself
  To be uplifted over my own power,

58
59
60

And I with vision new rekindled me,
  Such that no light whatever is so pure
  But that mine eyes were fortified against it.

61
62
63

And light I saw in fashion of a river
  Fulvid with its effulgence, 'twixt two banks
  Depicted with an admirable Spring.

64
65
66

Out of this river issued living sparks,
  And on all sides sank down into the flowers,
  Like unto rubies that are set in gold;

67
68
69

And then, as if inebriate with the odours,
  They plunged again into the wondrous torrent,
  And as one entered issued forth another.

70
71
72

"The high desire, that now inflames and moves thee
  To have intelligence of what thou seest,
  Pleaseth me all the more, the more it swells.

73
74
75

But of this water it behoves thee drink
  Before so great a thirst in thee be slaked."
  Thus said to me the sunshine of mine eyes;

76
77
78

And added: "The river and the topazes
  Going in and out, and the laughing of the herbage,
  Are of their truth foreshadowing prefaces;

79
80
81

Not that these things are difficult in themselves,
  But the deficiency is on thy side,
  For yet thou hast not vision so exalted."

82
83
84

There is no babe that leaps so suddenly
  With face towards the milk, if he awake
  Much later than his usual custom is,

85
86
87

As I did, that I might make better mirrors
  Still of mine eyes, down stooping to the wave
  Which flows that we therein be better made.

88
89
90

And even as the penthouse of mine eyelids
  Drank of it, it forthwith appeared to me
  Out of its length to be transformed to round.

91
92
93

Then as a folk who have been under masks
  Seem other than before, if they divest
  The semblance not their own they disappeared in,

94
95
96

Thus into greater pomp were changed for me
  The flowerets and the sparks, so that I saw
  Both of the Courts of Heaven made manifest.

97
98
99

O splendour of God! by means of which I saw
  The lofty triumph of the realm veracious,
  Give me the power to say how it I saw!

100
101
102

There is a light above, which visible
  Makes the Creator unto every creature,
  Who only in beholding Him has peace,

103
104
105

And it expands itself in circular form
  To such extent, that its circumference
  Would be too large a girdle for the sun.

106
107
108

The semblance of it is all made of rays
  Reflected from the top of Primal Motion,
  Which takes therefrom vitality and power.

109
110
111

And as a hill in water at its base
  Mirrors itself, as if to see its beauty
  When affluent most in verdure and in flowers,

112
113
114

So, ranged aloft all round about the light,
  Mirrored I saw in more ranks than a thousand
  All who above there have from us returned.

115
116
117

And if the lowest row collect within it
  So great a light, how vast the amplitude
  Is of this Rose in its extremest leaves!

118
119
120

My vision in the vastness and the height
  Lost not itself, but comprehended all
  The quantity and quality of that gladness.

121
122
123

There near and far nor add nor take away;
  For there where God immediately doth govern,
  The natural law in naught is relevant.

124
125
126

Into the yellow of the Rose Eternal
  That spreads, and multiplies, and breathes an odour
  Of praise unto the ever-vernal Sun,

127
128
129

As one who silent is and fain would speak,
  Me Beatrice drew on, and said: "Behold
  Of the white stoles how vast the convent is!

130
131
132

Behold how vast the circuit of our city!
  Behold our seats so filled to overflowing,
  That here henceforward are few people wanting!

133
134
135

On that great throne whereon thine eyes are fixed
  For the crown's sake already placed upon it,
  Before thou suppest at this wedding feast

136
137
138

Shall sit the soul (that is to be Augustus
  On earth) of noble Henry, who shall come
  To redress Italy ere she be ready.

139
140
141

Blind covetousness, that casts its spell upon you,
  Has made you like unto the little child,
  Who dies of hunger and drives off the nurse.

142
143
144

And in the sacred forum then shall be
  A Prefect such, that openly or covert
  On the same road he will not walk with him.

145
146
147
148

But long of God he will not be endured
  In holy office; he shall be thrust down
  Where Simon Magus is for his deserts,
And make him of Alagna lower go!"

Robert Hollander (English, 2000-2007)
1 - 3

Tozer's paraphrase (comm. to verse 1) of this complex tercet runs as follows: “The dawn, instead of being mentioned by name, is here described, by an elaborate periphrasis, as the time when it is about midday 6,000 miles off from us on the earth's surface. This calculation is arrived at in the following manner. Seven hours are approximately the period of time which the sun takes to pass over 6,000 miles of the earth's surface; for, according to the computation of Alfraganus (cap. VIII), which Dante accepted (Conv. III.v.11 – see Toynbee, Dict., p. 522, s.v. ”Terra“), the entire circumference of the earth was 20,400 miles, and consequently the amount of that circumference corresponding to seven hours out of the complete revolution of twenty-four hours was 5,950 miles (20,400 x 7/24 = 5,950), or in round numbers 6,000 miles. Hence, when Dante says that the sixth hour is 6,000 miles distant from us, he means that with us it is seven hours before noon, or an hour before sunrise, the sun being regarded as rising at 6 a.m. The word Forse intimates that the calculation is made in round numbers.” For an analysis of the entire opening passage (vv. 1-15), see Fernando Salsano (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 215-24).

1 - 1

Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 149, points out that this is the only time the much-used adverb (67 occurrences) forse (“perhaps,” but here “about,” as Aversano advises) is employed to begin either a verse or a canto.

2 - 2

Strictly speaking, the “sixth hour” is 11 to noon (see Par. XXVI.141-142), but here it represents noon itself, six hours after dawn (ideally considered 6 a.m., whenever it actually occurs).

3 - 3

The phrase letto piano (level bed) refers to the moment when the sun's midpoint is in the plane of the horizon. Grandgent (comm. to vv. 1-3): “The sun is below our horizon on one side, and the earth's conical shadow, projected into space, is correspondingly above our horizon on the other. As the sun rises, the shadow sinks; and when the middle of the sun shall be on the horizon line, the apex of the shadow will be on the same plane in the opposite quarter.”

4 - 6

For mezzo as “center of the sky,” in the sense of zenith, see Fernando Salsano (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 222-24) and Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], pp. 825-26). For centuries this was the standard gloss. That is, commentators believed that Dante was referring to the midpoint of the Starry Sphere, directly overhead. Porena (comm. to vv. 1-6 [= “Nota finale” to this canto]) sharply objected. How can the sky directly above an observer be the first part of the heavens seen growing lighter at the approach of dawn, when obviously the eastern horizon is? He goes on to cite a text that, he says, explains this verse perfectly, Convivio III.ix.11-12, where Dante discusses the obscuring qualities of the earth's atmosphere itself. Most of the commentators who follow Porena accept his explanation (a few even crediting him). See, for example, Saverio Bellomo (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 8 [1996]: 52-53). At least three aspects of Porena's argument are, however, problematic: (1) Dante does not say that the predawn sky grows lighter first at its zenith, only that it does so, and does so very gradually; (2) his description seems to imply invariable phenomena (i.e., celestial events that happen in the same manner every night at its juncture with dawn), while atmospheric hindrances are variable; (3) the relationship between this and the following terzina is such that the process initiated in this one is completed in that, which would at least imply a continuous movement in these celestial “candles” becoming dimmer and finally being snuffed out. In short, it seems unwise to jettison the old reading for Porena's.

For an extended argument in support of the notion that Dante conceived the Empyrean as a depiction of the “eye of God,” even unto its extramissionary ray of sight, see Richard Kay (“Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of God,” Speculum 78 [2003]: 37-65).

4 - 4

For Dante's cielo... profondo it has been traditional (at least since the time of Lombardi [comm. to vv. 1-6]) to cite Virgil, Georgics IV.222, caelumque profundum.

7 - 8

The traditional understanding, of uninterrupted currency until the last decade of the nineteenth century, is that the “brightest handmaid of the Sun” is Aurora, who announces the arrival of her lord at sunrise. Scartazzini (comm. to verse 7), however (if without changing that interpretation), reminds us that Dante refers to the hours of the day as ancelle [del giorno] (Purg. XII.81, XXII.118). That bit of lore about the personified hours (which hardly dispatches the traditional literary association of Aurora as the handmaid of the Sun indirectly referred to at Purg. IX.2, with its presentation of the brightening predawn sky) remained offstage until Poletto (comm. to vv. 1-15 [of course not mentioning Scartazzini]) casually refers to it as his only comment on this verse. He was joined by Mattalia (comm. to verse 7 [of course not mentioning either Scartazzini or Poletto]), who was the first commentator to insist that the first Hour of the day is the particular brightness referred to. However, several considerations cast serious doubt on this solution: (1) It would be strange for Dante to have referred to the first hour of the day as its brightest, since most would doubtless consider noon to be that; (2) the passage refers to a gradual process (like that of the aurora of the Sun), while the passing of even a single minute when the Sun is rising is marked by a dramatic change indeed; (3) it is difficult once the sun rises to see any stars at all, much less to watch a gradual extinguishing process across the eastern half of the heavens. Perhaps it was such considerations that governed the continuing response among the commentators, all of whom represented in the DDP remain wedded to the traditional gloss, Aurora. However, inexplicably (if tentatively), Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], p. 826) cites and accepts Mattalia's interpretation. For the proposal of a totally new understanding, see Tobias Leuker (“'La chiarissima ancella / del sol,' Par. XXX, 7-8. Dante tra Marziano Capella e Boiardo,” L'Alighieri 24 [2004]: 93-96), who claims that the “handmaid” is Venus as morning star. Leuker (p. 94) misrepresents Chiavacci Leonardi's argument, which he says puts the first hour between 5 and 6 before dawn; he then compounds that error by another, when he wonders why the first hour would be brighter than noon (see the first consideration just above) – especially since he has erroneously put the first hour in the wrong time slot (it being ideally between 6 and 7). He does not find it problematic that Venus will be referred to in verse 9, believing, rather, that both these periphrases refer to her.

8 - 8

See Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 7-9) for a citation of Aeneid I.374, describing evening's arrival on Mt. Olympus. And see Hollander (“Le opere di Virgilio nella Commedia di Dante,” in Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia: Autorità e sfida poetica, ed. A. A. Iannucci [Ravenna: Longo, 1993], p. 334) for Gmelin's attempt to expand the range of possible echoes to other Virgilian loci, Statius, and Lactantius.

9 - 9

The traditional understanding, which has no need of revaluation, is that the brightest and most beautiful light in the predawn sky is Venus as morning star.

10 - 15

The lengthy and elaborate simile now presents its second term: As the light of the stars in the dawn sky yields to the increasing brilliance of the Sun, so the nine angelic orders, whirling around God, extinguish their glow. The result is that their self-effacement encourages him to yield to his desire, which is to look at Beatrice.

11 - 11

See Gianfranco Contini (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 1018) for recognition of the self-citation here. The line contains a fairly obvious revisitation, in the phrase “al punto che mi vinse” (around the point that overcame me), of Francesca's description of the punto in the Lancelot romance that aroused her and Paolo (Inf. V.132): “ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse” (still, it was a single instant overcame us [italics added]). It is perhaps only the oppositional nature of this punto, not a “point” in a text describing sexual arousal, but God, the Point of the universe, that had kept the close resemblance in phrasing apparently unobserved for so many centuries. For other notice, see Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983], pp. 139-40); Peter Dronke (“Symbolism and Structure in Paradiso 30,” Romance Philology 43 [1989]: 32 – both without reference to any precursor); and Domenico De Robertis (“Dante e Beatrice in Paradiso,” Critica letteraria 18 [1990]: 141 - citing Contini). And see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 7-8), acknowledging Contini, if belatedly. See also Karlheinz Stierle (“Canto XXVI,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 407-8), who mentions no precursor. And see the note to Paradiso XXIX.9. There is a glancing discussion of the two passages by Corrado Bologna (“Canto XXX,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 465-66), without reference to any precedent discussion of their relation.

For the slow emergence of the word punto (some fifty occurrences in all) as referring to God only as early as in Paradiso XVII.17, and then its “explosion” with that meaning in Paradiso XXVIII and XXIX (six uses), and then, finally, here, see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 7 [n. 18]).

12 - 12

The circles of angels seem to surround God; in fact He “contains” them (and all else).

16 - 18

The poet, seeing Beatrice at the edge of eternity, as it were, begins his valedictory remarks by insisting that all his preceding praise together would not do to fulfill the need he feels to express her beauty.

17 - 17

The word loda (praise) has a “technical” overtone. As recorded in Vita nuova, Dante began to grow toward comprehending the meaning of Beatrice when he turned from poems about the pain his loving her had caused him to those in praise of her (see VN XVIII.9).

18 - 18

For the Latinism vice (here translated “that which is due”), the commentators are torn among several possibilities. Perhaps the most popular is the usage found in the Latin phrase explere vicem, meaning “to fulfill one's duties,” probably the most likely sense of the word here. But see Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) for the majority opinion (which he does not share) that it means volta with the sense of “time” or “occasion.” Several add “place” to the possibilities, and there are still other options. Singleton (comm. to this verse) cites the other use of vice (at Par. XXVII.17), where it is paired with officio (duty), to argue that it therefore cannot mean that here; but see Scartazzini (comm. to Par. XXVII.17-18) who deals with vice as there being the “duty” of silence incumbent on the rest of the spirits while St. Peter fulfills his duty, which is to hold forth against papal turpitude, the two words sharing a sense approaching that of synonyms.

John Scott (“Paradiso XXX,” in Dante Commentaries, ed. D. Nolan [Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1977], p. 163) comments on the extraordinary incidence of Latinisms in this canto, which he puts at fifty.

19 - 21

Dante will see Beatrice once more, after she resumes her seat in the Rose (from which she arose once, on 24 March 1300 [also Maundy Thursday according to Dante's Idealized Earth Time], in order to draw Virgil forth from Limbo; and then again, around noon the following Wednesday, in order to descend to the earthly paradise for her reunion with Dante). This, however, is his last attempt to describe her beauty, which has been increasing from his second description of it (in the heaven of the Moon, Par. IV.139-142) every time he sees her anew until now. That this “program” has come to its end is clear from the seven tercets (vv. 16-36) devoted to a final description of her increased beauty, which offer a kind of history (esp. vv. 28-33) of that beauty's effect on Dante.

On the point of returning to her undivided attention to God, she is already being retransformed into a more-than-human being, pure soul, as it were, without the hindrance of human concerns that she has taken on for Dante's sake. Thus only God can fully enjoy her beauty.

22 - 27

And thus the human poet who is speaking to us, confined by the two modes (and only two generic possibilities are referred to in the entire text, unlike De vulgari eloquentia, which mentions several others), tragic or comic, that are available to him, must acknowledge his necessary failure. The poem of the triumph of Beatrice needs a new genre, one that Dante has defined at Paradiso XXV.73, and that shares with David's psalms, expressing his love for God, the generic tag of tëodia (god song). For this last, see Teodolinda Barolini (Dante's Poets [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984]), p. 277). Only a new form might seem capable of describing such things. It is probably incorrect to attempt, as some have done, to assign a particular style to each cantica, but if one were forced to and had only Dante's words in the poem as guides, Inferno might be considered essentially tragic in the tales it tells, while Purgatorio would seem to be, on the same basis (lives that end badly or well), comic. As for the Paradiso, it might be describable as a tëodia. In terms of language, however, the Inferno seems the most low-style, and thus comic of the three; the second canticle seems a mixture of the two; and the third seems unclassifiable stylistically, with four elements present, low (comic), middle (explanatory and discursive), high (tragic), and sublime (the vision of God, the tëodia, if we must). It is not clear that the poet meant such distinctions to apply. Whether he did or not, all attempts to provide such handholds have failed to convince many. See, most recently, Francesco Tateo (“Il canone dei poeti comici e la moderazione di Stazio,” L'Alighieri 27 [2006]: 94-95), arguing that the poem rises, stylistically, from the tragic style of Limbo through the comic style of Purgatorio to the joyful style of Paradiso. Morally, Tateo says, the poem rises to the sublimity of the hymn from the depth of tragedy through the middle, or human, stage of comedy. And see Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 150, who believes that the reader should understand Dante's intention to include the middle style, the elegiac. Now Dante does discuss this style in De vulgari (II.iv.5 and II.xii.6), but that does not license applying it to the Commedia, where all reference to elegy is simply lacking. One should add that Aversano is not alone in his attempt to match elegiacs and the Commedia.

See Prudence Shaw (“Paradiso XXX,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante's “Comedy,” ed. K. Foster and P. Boyde [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], p. 196): “There is a chain of inadequacy in Dante because of the visionary nature of the experience he is describing. The mind cannot fully grasp what it experiences, because this transcends the human capacity for understanding; the memory cannot now recall even that which the mind did grasp at the time; and finally, the poet's words cannot do justice even to what he can recall to mind. The poet's words are three stages removed from what he is attempting to represent.”

For discussion of reference here to Virgil and Dante as, respectively, writers of tragedy and of comedy, see Scartazzini (comm. to verse 24) and Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 10 [n. 23]).

25 - 27

Like a mortal with weak eyes, unable even more than most to look directly at the Sun, the poet finds his inner sight blinded by the memory of this last and transformed beauty evident in Beatrice. Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 25-27) was apparently the first commentator (but not the last, though none of the others cites him) to call attention to three passages in the minor works that offer similar images, Vita nuova (XLI.6), and Convivio (III.0.59-60; III.viii.14 [this last the commentary on those verses]). It is amusing to discover that in the first case, it is Beatrice's soul, ascended to Heaven, that is too bright for Dante to behold, while in the two passages in Convivio the blinding is accomplished by the glow of Lady Philosophy. The first is entirely germane to the present context, which has Beatrice about to ascend to exactly where Dante first saw her seated in Heaven in the libello. Dante would have preferred, however, that we forget the second, in praise of the lady who replaced Beatrice in his affections.

27 - 27

Porena (comm. to vv. 26-27) is perhaps the first to discuss the two possible meanings of mente, “mind” (here with the sense of “intellect”) and “memory,” making a good case for the former, as we have translated the word. See also Alfonso Maierù, “mente,” ED III (1971), pp. 899a-905a, who agrees (p. 902b). However, if it is his mind that Dante is separated from, in what specific ways ought we consider the possible meaning(s) of the verse? This is a difficult line to translate.

28 - 29

If we accept the “history” put forward in Vita nuova, the first time that he saw Beatrice was shortly before Dante's ninth birthday (VN II.1-2), thus no later than June of 1274, and probably a little before then. The current date in the poem is perhaps 31 March 1300 (see the note to Inf. I.1). For a speculative presentation of the possibility that the day of Beatrice's death (8 June 1290) coincided with Dante's twenty-fifth birthday, and thus his “coming of age” into wisdom about the irrelevance of earthly affections, see Richard Kay (“Il giorno della nascita di Dante e la dipartita di Beatrice,” in Studi Americani su Dante, ed. G. C. Alessio e R. Hollander [Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989], pp. 243-65).

28 - 28

The word viso may here be rendered with either “eyes” or “face.” We have chosen the latter, even though most of the commentators who actually choose one alternative over the other, beginning with Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 28-30), prefer “eyes.”

30 - 30

“This verse is more problematic than it generally seems to be to most commentators: [H]ow can Dante say this when he has displayed such a marked deviation from singing of Beatrice in Convivio? Are we to understand that that work, even if it records her being eclipsed in Dante's affection by the donna gentile, nonetheless is about her? Or are we to imagine that, since Dante has been through the rivers Lethe and Eunoe, he forgets his past wrongdoing and remembers only the good in the history of his affections?” (Hollander [“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 {1988 [1993]}: 11 {n. 26}]).

31 - 36

“The poet is able to represent aspects of divinity but cannot know it directly. Beatrice, at one with God, resists any human poet's capacity, even Dante's. And thus Dante must leave her to a maggior bando, the angelic trumpets' heralding at the [G]eneral Resurrection.... [Beatrice] is better than all mortals because she is immortal, a condition [that] she shares utterly with her fellow saints. In a sense, Dante's inability to sing of her results not from her being unique, but from her being absolutely the same as all the blessed in her love of God” (Hollander [“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 {1988 [1993]}: 11-12]). Naturally, that is true of any other saved soul as well.

33 - 33

See Walter Binni (“Canto XXX,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968]), p. 1070) for a paraphrase of this verse: “il limite estremo delle sue forze espressive” ([at] the outer limit of his powers of expression).

34 - 34

Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981]: 65 and “Miro gurge [Par. XXX, 68]: Virgilian Language and Textual Pattern in the River of Light,” Dante Studies 103 [1985]: 89) points out that the word bando here looks back at Purgatorio XXX.13 in such a way as to make its meaning clear. All the early commentators who make an effort to identify the source of that trumpeting say that it will be a later poet (Benvenuto, comm. to vv. 34-39) specifies 'a poet-theologian,' in which judgment he is followed by John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 34-42); some, their discomfort more or less apparent, go along, perhaps because they do not understand to what else the sonorous reference might refer. That was the muddled condition of appreciation of this passage until Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) cut through centuries of weak responses and magisterially solved (or should have) the riddle once and for all (the text refers to the trump of Judgment Day), even if his reward for doing so was to be ridiculed by Poletto (comm. to vv. 34-37) and to be ignored even by those relative few who agree with him. Mestica (comm. to vv. 34-38), without reference to Scartazzini (do we hear the strains of a familiar tune? [see the note to Purg. XXX.115-117]), also settles on this daring but sensible explanation, as does Del Lungo (comm. to vv. 34-38). Claudio Varese (“Il canto trentesimo del Paradiso,” in his Pascoli politico, Tasso e altri saggi [Milan: Feltrinelli, 1961 {1953}], pp. 23-31) follows this path but cites no predecessor on it. Fernando Salsano (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 226n.) credits Del Lungo alone for this better understanding. Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997]), p. 830) omits mention of any precursor in stating this interpretation. Still more blameworthy than Poletto, Vandelli, revising his master's work, simply substitutes his own version of the ancient view for Scartazzini's radical new interpretation (Scartzzini/Vandelli comm. to Par. I.34-36), attributing the trumpet blast to a “voce poetica più possente della mia” (poetic voice more powerful than mine). In more recent times, Scartazzini's position has found support in Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981]: 65, 72); Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 10-13 [with a review of the status of the debate]); Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], p. 830; and Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], p. 301). However, see Prudence Shaw (“Paradiso XXX,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante's “Comedy,” ed. K. Foster and P. Boyde [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], p. 197) for a return to the old solution, the bando will issue from “a greater poetic talent than his own.”

For a similar problem, what Dante refers to by the phrase “con miglior voci” (with better words) at Paradiso I.35, and the utter unlikelihood that he might be thinking of future poets better than he, see the note to Paradiso I.35-36. Interestingly enough, Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 151, sees the failure of this traditional interpretation, but goes on to offer an unlikely solution here, roughly the same as was presented by Giuseppe Toffanin (Sette interpretazioni dantesche [Naples: Libreria scientifica editrice, 1947], pp. 80-82) in his attempt to solve that crux in the first canto in 1947: Dante is not thinking of other poets but of the saints in Heaven; it is they who will celebrate Beatrice.

37 - 37

That Beatrice is here presented (intrinsically, at least) as a masculine leader reminds Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 151, of the ammiraglio to which she was compared shortly after her appearance in the earthly paradise (at Purg. XXX.58).

We follow Tozer (comm. to vv. 37-39) and Carroll (comm. to vv. 37-45), the second of whom says that he is following Butler, in translating the phrase as they do, in Carroll's explanation, “'a leader freed from his task,' as in Par. XVII.100: the gesture and voice of one who has successfully led him to the final revelation.”

38 - 42

On these verses see Bortolo Martinelli (“La dottrina dell'Empireo nell'Epistola a Cangrande (capp. 24-27),” Studi Danteschi 57 [1985]: 113-14), arguing that the Empyrean is to be considered as having corporeal being. Dante (in Conv. II.iii.8) has been interpreted as saying that this was indeed the case. (Although there are those who do not hold to this opinion, finding that Dante attributes this opinion to “Catholics” without necessarily embracing it himself, this would not mark the first time that Dante changed his mind about an opinion expressed in the Convivio). Here, however, it seems totally clear that Dante is reiterating his thoughts about the triform Creation (see Par. XXIX.22-24), which included pure form unalloyed with matter (i.e., the Empyrean and the angels). As Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 151, points out, if the Primum Mobile is the largest material sphere in the heavens, that requires that the Empyrean not be material, for it contains (i.e., is larger than) all else.

It is quite striking, as Aversano points out, that after Inferno II.21 Dante never uses the word empireo again. It had, in fact, appeared more often in the Convivio (twice: II.iii.8 and II.xiv.19).

39 - 42

These four verses, weaving their three line-beginning/ending nouns luce, amore, letizia into a knot expressing the nature of God's kingdom (intellectual light and love, the latter yielding joy) in a pattern of linkage new to the poem, are perhaps calculated to offer a first sense of the higher spiritual reality of the Empyrean.

43 - 43

The two “militias” found here are, of course, the angels and the saved souls. Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 43-45) says the first fought against the rebel angels, the second, against the vices.

44 - 45

The poet, in his enthusiasm for incarnation, restrains himself only enough not to insist that the angels are seen as though they, too, are embodied. There is no preexisting tradition that allows this daring invention (seeing the blessed as though they were already incarnate) on Dante's part. And yet, once we read his instruction, we accept their phantom flesh as a necessary element of his vision.

This is all the more striking as we have just been assured that we left “corporality” behind when we left the Primum Mobile (vv. 38-39). See discussions in Scott (“Paradiso XXX,” in Dante Commentaries, ed. D. Nolan [Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1977], pp. 164 and 179) and in Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 14): “[T]his resubstantiation occurs exactly at the moment at which we have apparently left corporality behind us.... 'From nature and history to spirituality and eternity' is one way to translate [Beatrice's] phrase.”

Anna Chiavacci Leonardi (“'Le bianche stole': il tema della resurrezione nel Paradiso,” in Dante e la Bibbia, ed. G. Barblan [Florence: Olschki, 1988], pp. 270-71) finds it troublesome that the poet represents himself as having seen the blessed as they will be once they have their flesh again while time has not run its course though human history, that is, while there are still vacant “seats” in the Rose. It is difficult to understand why she finds this problematic: the “miracle” occurs for a single moment in 1300 and involves all those (and only those) who are then in Heaven.

45 - 45

This marks the thirty-fifth and last appearance of nouns for “justice” in the poem (giustizia and [once] iustitia); see Hollander (Dante and Paul's “five words with understanding,” Occasional Papers, No. 1, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts and Studies [Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992], at note 60).

46 - 51

Again Dante is blinded by the light, one last time before he begins seeing the higher reality of God's Heaven as it really is. The simile makes use of a fitting biblical precursor, St. Paul (see the note to verse 49).

For the blending of scientific and biblical elements in this simile, see Simon Gilson (“Medieval Science in Dante's Commedia: Past Approaches and Future Directions,” Reading Medieval Studies 27 [2001]: 56).

49 - 49

Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 49-51) was apparently the first commentator to hear the echo of the passage in the Book of Acts (22:6) that features the fairly rare verb circumfulgere. Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) also did so. Their view was shared by Poletto (comm. to vv. 46-51) and at least nine commentators in the following century, from Torraca to Bosco/Reggio. Disagreeing with such as these, who think that Dante's Latinizing verb form circunfulse (shone all around) reflects the circumfulgere of Acts 22:6 (or either of two other passages in that book), Peter Dronke (“Symbolism and Structure in Paradiso 30,” Romance Philology 43 [1989]: 37-38) insists on the greater relevance of Luke 2:9, the only other biblical passage that contains this verb, describing the shepherds keeping watch on the night of the Nativity: “And the glory of the Lord shone around them” (et claritas Dei circumfulsit eos). Dronke objects to claims for a linkage here between Dante and Saul, “the fanatical persecutor whom the circumfulgent light blinds for three days, stunning him into a change of heart.” However, what works against Dronke's hypothesis is the very context that he tries to turn against those who take the reference as being to Saul/Paul, since he fails to take into account the noticeable fact that Dante, like Paul (and unlike the shepherds) is blinded by the light. For Dante's Pauline identity here, see Kenelm Foster (The Two Dantes and Other Studies [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977], pp. 70-73); Giuseppe Di Scipio (“Dante and St. Paul: The Blinding Light and Water,” Dante Studies 98 [1980]: 151-57); and Prudence Shaw (“Paradiso XXX,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante's “Comedy,” ed. K. Foster and P. Boyde [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], p. 201): “There can be no doubt that Dante expects us at this point to think of Saul on the road to Damascus.” And see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 14-15 [n. 34]). Christopher Kleinhenz (“Paradiso XXX,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], pp. 458-59) is also of this opinion; on p. 468, n. 5, he refers to Dronke's hypothesis with dubiety, as does Saverio Bellomo (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 8 [1996]: 45, n. 19).

52 - 54

Beatrice explains that the blinding brightness of the Empyrean welcomes all newcomers just as Dante is welcomed now (and will be again, we realize), prepared to see God face-to-face and to flame with love for Him.

53 - 53

The word salute (greetings), ever since its teasing presence in the Vita nuova as meaning either “greeting” or “salvation” or an enigmatic union of the two, appears here, also, with ambivalent meaning.

55 - 60

The protagonist is now ready for the final stage of his journey, as is betokened by the fact that he has internalized Beatrice's words. Not all commentators agree that such is the case, claiming that Dante is uncertain as to the source of the words, even that he may have spoken them himself. But see Benvenuto (comm. to these verses) who, with whatever justification, has no doubt – the words are indeed spoken by Beatrice. It certainly seems a part of the protagonist's preparation for being rapt in his vision of God that distinctions between objective and subjective reality should begin to break down. In Paradiso XXXIII.131 he will see himself in the image of Christ.

58 - 58

Saverio Bellomo (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 8 [1996]: 56) objects to Aldo Vallone's view (“Il Canto XXX,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-'81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], p. 788) that the canto is in polemical relation to the “dolce stil novo,” p. 56.

61 - 69

The last accommodative metaphor in the part of the poem that precedes seeing face-to-face presents what Dante observes with imperfect vision in such a way as to reveal the substance hidden in these “shadowy prefaces” (verse 78).

For the river of light, and its possible dependence on a passage in the Anticlaudianus of Alanus ab Insulis (Alain de Lille), see Edward Witke (“The River of Light in the Anticlaudianus and the Divina Commedia,” Classical Review 11 [1959]: 144-56). Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], pp. 196-202) discusses the complex way in which Dante's use of metaphor morphs into absolute reality, which had first been available to his still-strengthening mind as only an approximation of itself.

61 - 61

Notice of the dependence of Dante on Apocalypse 22:1 (“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb”) apparently begins with the author of the commentary in the Codice Cassinese (comm. to this verse). Sapegno (comm. to this verse) cites, as do many others, this biblical text, but adds St. Bonventure's commentary to it: “Flumen aeternae gloriae est flumen Dei, plenum congregatione sanctorum.... Aeterna gloria dicitur fluvius, propter abundantiam; aquae vivae, propter indeficientiam; splendidus, propter munditiam; tamquam cristallum, propter transparentiam” (The river of eternal glory is the river of God, filled by the congregation of the saints.... Eternal glory is said to be flowing water because of its abundance; the water of life because it has no impurities; shining because of its clarity; like crystal because of its transparency). (The second most cited potential biblical source is Daniel 7:10.)

Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Paragone 308 [1975]: 16) reminds us that this is not a river of light, but light in the form of a river. (See Jacopo della Lana [comm. to vv. 61-69] for a similar understanding.) Jacopo says that Dante is speaking metaphorically. The word he uses is transumptive. Interestingly enough, that is the term found describing metaphoric speech in the Epistle to Cangrande (XIII.27). Hollander (Dante's Epistle to Cangrande [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993]), p. 98) gives three examples of Jacopo's using other literary terms drawn from that same passage in the epistle, but unaccountably does not mention this one. See also Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]:), p. 16 [n. 37]) for the notice that nine of the early commentators between Jacopo and John of Serravalle use that word to describe Dante's practice in this passage.

62 - 66

Seeing metaphorically, as it were (thus reversing our usual practice, which is to understand the truth of things and then express that in metaphor), the protagonist sees light in the form of a river, its two banks covered with flowers, with sparks flying up and then settling back down on the blossoms. All these elements will be metamorphosed into their realer selves, a round stadium-rose nearly filled with saved souls, with angels (“bees”) moving quickly back and forth between the souls (“flowers”) and God (the “hive”). There is, as well there should be, general agreement about the identities of these three elements, resolved from metaphor. The identity of the light in the form of a river is frequently passed over in silence. However, Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 61-63) was apparently the first to associate it with grace.

62 - 62

Exactly what adjective Dante set down (and what it means) has been a matter of some dispute, with four possible choices (fulvido, fulgido, fluvido, fluido) doing battle over the centuries. See Scartazzini (comm. to this verse), who rejects the last two, and supports most of the first commentators in choosing the first (or the second, which has, according to him, the same meaning). It means, he says, “resplendent.” Others, for instance Torraca (comm. to vv. 61-63), say that Dante's word derives from Latin fulvus (reddish-yellow).

64 - 66

For Virgil's Elysian Fields as the model for this passage, see Hermann Gmelin (Kommentar: das Paradies [Stuttgart: Klett, 1957], p. 52 - his note to Paradiso XXXI.7). For the view that this passage may, in its own right, be a veiled first presentation of that text, see Hollander (“The Invocations of the Commedia,” Yearbook of Italian Studies 3 [1976]: 240 (repr. in Studies in Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1980], p. 38). In the Aeneid (VI.703-709), the protagonist is looking at the souls of the blessed, those happy inhabitants of the Elysian Fields. (At least they probably seem happy to us when first we see them; but see the note to Par. XXXI.7-12 for Aeneas's eventual view.) In simile, they are compared to bees settling in flowers. To Dante, not one to leave a fine poetic moment only as fine as he found it, the “bees” are the angels, while the blessed are the “flowers.” This becomes clearer in the next canto (see the note to Par. XXXI.7-12), as several commentators testify. Yet it is nonetheless true, once we see the allusion, that we can carry it back with us to this passage. And then we may begin to understand that, for all the apparent discarding of Virgil that sets the last cantica apart from the first two, the Latin poet is rewarded by his greatest medieval admirer with a new life in the conclusion of his poem. See Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983]), p. 140; Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981]: 55-58); Rossi (“The Poetics of Resurrection: Virgil's Bees ([Paradiso XXXI, 1-12],” Romanic Review 80 [1989]: 306-7); and Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]:17-19), making the additional point (p. 18) that the reference thus makes this reference, along with that in verse 49 to Saul, reverse the negative version of the protagonist's typology (Inf. II.32). Where before, at least in the protagonist's own view, he failed to match up to his two precursors, now he is indeed the new Paul and the new Aeneas:


Interea videt Aeneas in valle reductaseclusum nemus et virgulta
sonantia silvae,
Lethaeumque domos placidas qui praenatat amnem.
hunc circum innumerae gentes populique volabant:
ac veluti in pratis ubi apes aestate serena
floribus insidunt variis et candida circum
lilia funduntur, strepit omnis murmure campus.

And now Aeneas sees in the valley's depths
a sheltered grove and rustling wooded brakes
and the Lethe flowing past the homes of peace.
Around it hovered numberless races, nations of souls
like bees in meadowlands on a cloudless summer day
that settle on flowers, riots of color, swarming round
the lilies' lustrous sheen, and the whole field comes alive
with a humming murmur. (Tr. R. Fagles [Viking 2006])

This is a powerful moment in which Virgil's and Dante's mimetic proclivities are shown in their warmest tones; at least in Dante's case we witness the imitation of nature engineered by another kind of imitation altogether. See Martin McLaughlin (Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995], p. 5) for the distinction between mimesis of external reality and imitation of previous literature. And for an earlier brief discussion of the distinction and of how the two techniques may be found joined, see Hollander (“Literary Consciousness and the Consciousness of Literature,” Sewanee Review 83 [1975]: 122).

66 - 66

For the ruby set in gold, it has become commonplace, after Scartazzini (comm. to this verse), to cite Aeneid X.134: “qualis gemma micat, fulvum quae dividit aurum” (glittered like a jewel set in yellow gold [tr. H.R. Fairclough]).

67 - 67

For the inebriation of the angels, Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 46-81) cites the Psalms (35:9-10 [36:8-9]): “They feast on the abundance of your house, / and you give them drink from the river of your delights. / For with you is the fountain of life; / in your light do we see light.”

68 - 68

A discussion of another Virgilian text that may stand behind Dante's Latinate phrase miro gurge (marvelous flood) is found in Albert Rossi (“Miro gurge ([Par. XXX, 68]: Virgilian Language and Textual Pattern in the River of Light,” Dante Studies 103 [1985]: 83-91), examining the parallels between Dante's river and that found in Georgics IV.348-356, the Peneüs, into whose depths Aristaeus will penetrate and see (p. 84) “the place where all the earth's streams converge” (IV.365-366).

70 - 75

Beatrice intervenes again, preparing Dante for his baptismal ingestion of the waters of Life. Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], p. 196) and (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 19) points out that Dante has experienced “baptism” in two previous scenes: Purgatorio I.121-129 and XXXIII.127-129.

76 - 81

His guide now explains what we may have already understood, that what Dante was seeing was not really what he thought it was, that it was only a “shadowy forecast” of its true nature.

For the notion that all of Paradiso up to verse 90 of this canto is best conceived as a series of accommodative metaphors, see discussion in Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], pp. 192-202); (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 19-21).

77 - 77

Resolved from metaphor, the “laughter” of the “meadows” is represented in the “flowers” that cover it, that is, the saints.

78 - 78

For the figural sense of history that stands behind this expression (umbriferi prefazi), see Emilio Pasquini (“Dante and the 'Prefaces of Truth': from 'Figure' to 'Completion,'” Italian Studies 54 [1999]: 18-25). See also Giuseppe Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], pp. 302-3). For more on the figural dimensions of the word umbra, see the note to Paradiso I.22-24.

82 - 90

In nine lines Dante “drinks in” his “baptismal” “milk” and, as a result, has his vision transformed; he will shortly be able to see the realities of Heaven as they truly are. This simile is the opening gesture in staging his identity as newborn “babe,” culminating in Paradiso XXXIII.106-108.

Peter Hainsworth (“Dante's Farewell to Politics,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], p. 163) translates the first tercet: “There is no little child who thrusts so instantly with his face towards the milk, if he awakens after being made late by a habit he has got into....” And see Scartazzini (comm. to verse 82), citing I Peter 2:2: “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation.”

85 - 89

The conclusion of this simile is effortful indeed: Dante “drinks” his “baptism” with his eyelids and thus moves his eyesight to the next level of seeing.

90 - 90

In a single verse the meaning of Dante's changed “eyesight” is manifest: For him time has become eternity; history has become its own fulfillment in revelation. His previous linear sense of things has moved to a new dimension, the circularity of perfection. This new vision, unlike that of some, maintains its relation to the things of the world, which now for the first time may be really understood. See Paradiso XXXIII.88-90.

91 - 96

The first moment of face-to-face seeing is presented with this simile. The protagonist now perceives the “flowers” as the saints they are, the “sparks” as angels. While no one said so for centuries, the only apparent “source” for this image of unmasking was a festive occasion, a masked ball of some kind. Poletto (comm. to vv. 91-96) somewhat uneasily defends the poet's choice of material; however, the noun feste (lit., “festivals,” or “celebrations”) in verse 94 at least seems to help establish a frame of reference. Nonetheless, Fallani (comm. to vv. 91-93) suggested that the reference is to masked actors. A potential literary source for this image has apparently never been suggested. It is probably fair to say that most readers feel puzzled as to the poet's motivation at such an important moment.

For another sort of unmasking, in which the protagonist again has his initial vision yield to a greater reality, see the note to Paradiso XXXIII.28-33.

95 - 99

On identical rhymes, see Tibor Wlassics (Dante narratore [Florence: Olschki, 1975], p. 121). He points out that this repetition of vidi (I saw) underlines the claim for a poetics based in seeing and making seen. As several commentators have observed (apparently the first was Scartazzini [comm. to vv. 97-99]), aside from the four occurrences of the identical rhymes of “Cristo” (see the note to Par. XII.71-75), there are only two other cases of triple identical rhymes in the poem, the bitterly ironic repetition of “per ammenda” in Purgatorio XX.65-69 and the occurrences of “vidi” here.

Responding to the word's presence in verse 61, Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 152, points to the repetitive pattern of the same form, vidi, in John's Apocalypse (four times in Apoc. 5.1-11). Dante uses that form seven times in all in this canto, the most of any canto in the cantica (Par. XVIII is the nearest challenger, with six uses; however, Inferno IV, with its list of forty virtuous pagans whom the protagonist saw in the Limbus, has fully eleven appearances of vidi; and in Purgatorio XXXII, there are eight. There are 167 occurrences of this form of the verb vedere in the poem, all but fourteen of them spoken by the poet; exceptions include Virgil [at Inf. IV.53, VIII.25, and XXIX.25], the protagonist [at Inf. XXIV.129], and several souls to whom Dante listens [Inf. XXVI.103, XXVII.79, XXVIII.71, XXXII.116; Par. XIII.136; XV.115; XVI.88, 91, 109].) Vidi is one of Dante's favorite locutions, reflecting his strategic insistence on the reality of his experience. Cf. Scott (“Canto XXXI,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 481), pointing out that the nominal form occhi is the substantive most frequently found in the poem, occurring 213 times (263 if we include the singular, occhio, nearly twice the total of the second-most-used noun, mondo [143 occurrences]).

95 - 95

The fiori (flowers) are the saved souls, the faville (sparks) are the angels, as is commonly agreed (see the note to vv. 62-66). We see them again in the next canto, verses 7-9, the sparks now transformed, in simile, into bees. Once we see that, we can understand that these first “real substances,” non-contingent and sempiternal, that we see “face-to-face” in the entire poem have models in a scene in the Aeneid (VI.703-708 [see the note to vv. 64-66]).

97 - 99

This is the eighth and penultimate invocation in the poem (see the note to Inf. II.7-9), addressing God's reflected light, possibly his grace (the ninth and final invocation will be addressed to God as luce, the source of light, in Par. XXXIII.67).

100 - 102

The first line of this tercet marks a borderline as sharply etched as that, involving similar stylistic traits, separating lower from upper Hell (Inf. XVIII.1): “Luogo è in inferno detto Malebolge” (There is a place in Hell called Malebolge). Here the light of grace that makes God visible to once mortal souls introduces the final (and visionary) part of the poem. Singleton (comm. to this tercet) argues that the number 100 here (in a canto numbered 30) is not accidentally the locus of “the downstreaming light of God in terms that define it specifically as the light of glory.”

100 - 100

There is a certain amount of indecision in the commentaries as to whether this lume is reflected light rather than its source (which would be luce). Some argue that it is the Holy Spirit, others Jesus as Logos, still others some form of grace. For this last, see Carroll (comm. to vv. 100-123): “It will be noticed that I speak of this central circular sea as lumen gratiae, for it is still the light of grace which once flowed in form of a river; but that light of grace has now reached its perfect form of eternity, the lumen gloriae. The change of the river into the circular sea is Dante's symbolic way of stating that the grace by which a soul is saved and strengthened to persevere to the end of the earthly life, is not something different in kind from the glory to which it leads. According to Aquinas, 'grace is nothing else than a certain beginning of glory in us' [ST II-II, q. 24, a. 3: 'Gratia et gloria ad idem genus referuntur; quia gratia nihil est aliud quam quaedam inchoatio gloriae in nobis'], and the light of glory is simply the perfected form of the grace of earth [ST I-II, q. 111, a. 3]. Aquinas is here laying down the distinction between prevenient and subsequent grace.” Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 25 [n. 63]) claims that, among the first commentators, only Benvenuto (comm. to Par. VII.1-6) discusses the lumen gloriae (even if elsewhere); but see his remarks on this passage (vv. 100-102) and those of his student, John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 100-105). Hollander does go on (correctly) to credit Scartazzini (comm.to vv. 115-117) as being the first of the moderns to do so.

103 - 108

The enormous size of the Rose may come as something of a surprise. Dante never tells us the number of places that are found there, whether it is the precise number (144,000) offered in the Apocalypse (see the note to Par. XXXI.115-117), or the approximate number on the basis of the “replacement value” of the fallen angels (see the note to Par. XXIX.50), or still another figure. There are some questions that we are simply not encouraged to pose.

The disc of the Sun, even populated by souls on thrones with first-class legroom, would hold more saints than are imaginable, millions of millions. See Poletto (comm. to vv. 100-105) for discussion of what Dante knew about such measurements, including that of the diameter of the Sun, 37,750 miles according to Convivio IV.viii.7.

The Rose is made up of a beam of light (the Godhead) reflected upward from the convex surface of the Primum Mobile, which rotates because of its love for that beam and spreads its influence through the celestial spheres beneath it.

This passage may help in understanding the difficult text at Paradiso XXVIII.13-15 (see the note thereto). There the poet, in the Primum Mobile, has his first vision of the Godhead and the surrounding spheres of angels. Exactly where he sees them is a matter in dispute. This passage might help establish that they are here (in the Empyrean) but are seen down there, on the surface of the Crystalline Sphere, whence they, along with the Rose, are also reflected back up here.

For the shape of the Rose as being neither a cylinder nor a cone, but hemispheric, see Richard Kay (“Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of God,” Speculum 78 [2003], pp. 46-48).

109 - 114

In the vehicle of this simile, the stadium in which the saints are seated is “personified” as a hillside that can look down to its foot and see itself, alive with spring (see the primavera of verse 63), reflected back up to its gaze. The tenor presents the seeing hill's counterpart, the protagonist, as looking up (not down), and seeing, not himself, but all the blessed as reflections of the beam, reaching upward a thousandfold. (We are aware that Dante frequently uses this number as a synonym for an uncountable multitude; see at least the next [and last] time he does so, Par. XXXI.131.)

115 - 117

Daniello (comm. to this tercet) wonders, if the circumference of the lowest row in the Rose is greater than the circumference of the sphere that holds the Sun (see the note to vv. 103-108), how great must be the circumference of the highest row, at least one thousand rows higher (and wider by a factor of at least one thousand times a probably constant yet indeterminate measurement).

117 - 117

Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 109-117) says that the rows of the Rose “are like those in the arena di Verona.” He is followed by two modern commentators, Trucchi (comm. to vv. 118-123) and Sapegno (comm. to vv. 112-113). Trucchi, however, prefers the notion of Gioachino Brognoligo that the structure Dante has in mind is the Colosseum at Rome. Both Dante's more recent and more certain visit to the Arena and its greater intimacy as a built space give the edge to Verona.

Peter Dronke (“Symbolism and Structure in Paradiso 30,” Romance Philology 43 [1989]: 41-42) points out that, in the early thirteenth century, one Petrus Capuanus had written a treatise, De rosa, which treats the red rose (martyrs), the white rose (Mary), and the red and white rose (Christ). This last puts forth leaves that include personages of both Testaments. Dronke is not so much claiming influence (although he leaves that possibility open) as similarity, an “indication of the intellectual development of which the imagery of the rose was capable already a century before the Commedia” (p. 42).

118 - 123

For a concise statement of the “resemblant difference” of the Empyrean, its way of not relating and yet totally relating to the literally underlying realms of the created universe, see Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 82): “The Empyrean is out of space-time, untouched by physical law; it is a dimensionless point, in which all is immediately present, a 'space' of consciousness, in which the 'sight' of awareness 'takes' (prendeva) as itself all it sees, all that exists.”

As we will discover, Dante is allowed to see with a new sense of dimension, which abrogates spatial perspective and makes all things equidistant one from another (see Par. XXXI.73-78). This passage prepares for that one, and both offer further evidence of the poet's extraordinarily vivid and inventive scientific imagination.

124 - 129

Ever since Jacopo della Lana, the yellow has been understood as the center of the Rose (the reader should remember that Dante is not talking about cultivated roses but wild ones, with their flatter profile). Beatrice and Dante are standing at the midpoint of the Rose when she directs him to look up and see the citizenry of the City of God.

As has been suggested (see the note to verse 117), Dante may have found a model for the Rose in the Arena di Verona. The reader is in fact urged to visit that place, to find a way to walk, without looking up, into the very center of its floor, and then to experience the sight of the inner tiers of the amphitheater. And it is just possible that he or she then will share the experience that Dante had there some seven hundred years ago. It really looks like the model for the Rose, vast yet intimate.

124 - 124

For the notion that Dante's Rose is a kind of counterimage to the flower plucked at the end of the Roman de la Rose, with its evident reference to the female pudenda, see Prudence Shaw (“Paradiso XXX,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante's “Comedy,” ed. K. Foster and P. Boyde [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], pp. 209-10). Shaw, who accepts Contini's argument for attributing the Fiore, the sonnet sequence based on the Roman, to Dante, consequently argues that this passage is a “case of the mature poet making amends for the aberrations of his youthful self” (p. 210). (For discussion of the status of these questions, Dante's knowledge of the Roman and his authorship of the Fiore, see the note to Par. II.59-60.) Among the surprisingly few commentators to express an opinion on this matter (one that no one considers unimportant), Mestica (comm. to vv. 115-123) raises the possibility that Dante had read it (and that he had written the Fiore). Giacalone (comm. to vv. 124-129) cites Paolo Savj Lopez (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” in Letture dantesche. III. “Paradiso,” ed. G. Getto [Florence: Sansoni, 1964], pp. 625-38), who thinks that Dante would have made allowances for the profane love championed by the Roman and thus seen it as a worthy precursor.

For the thesis that Dante's Rose is modeled on the Charter of the Templars (De laude novae militiae) by St. Bernard, with its 13 rubrics corresponding to the 13 paliers of the Rose (see her p. 3), see Colette de Callata,y-van der Mersch (La Rose de Jérusalem [Peeters: Louvain, 2001]). She believes that this design (with its dependence on the number thirteen) serves as the matrix for Dante's entire poem.

125 - 125

The Latinism redole (exhales fragrance) is traced to Aeneid I.436, first by Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 124-126).

126 - 126

For this “springtime” sense of the verb vernare, see the note to Paradiso XXVIII.118. The verb usually means “to spend the winter” (see Inf. XXXIII.135 and Purg. XXIV.64).

129 - 129

For the phrase bianche stole (white robes), see its previous use at Paradiso XXV.95, where it clearly signifies the bodies to be returned at the general resurrection. Beatrice has promised Dante that this is the way the saved will seem to him, even though they are not yet resurrected, and so the phrase here allows us to understand that this is indeed how they appear, in the flesh.

For an overview of the history and significance of the concept of resurrection of the flesh in the Western Church (with some consideration of Dante), see Caroline Walker Bynum (The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity 200-1336 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1995]). For a close look at the importance of the resurrected body, in several writers preceding Dante and (primarily) in the Commedia, see Manuele Gragnolati (Experiencing the Afterlife [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005]. For Dante's sense of this subject, see also Rachel Jacoff (“Dante and the Legend(s) of St. John,” Dante Studies 117 [1999]: 45-57 and “'Our Bodies, Our Selves': The Body in the Commedia,” in Sparks and Seeds: Medieval Literature and Its Afterlife [Essays in Honor of John Freccero], ed. Dana E. Stewart and Alison Cornish [Turnhout: Brepols, 2000], pp. 119-37).

At least since reading Paradiso XIV.61-66 (the passage shows the first two groups, the twenty-four contemplatives, who have shown themselves to Dante and Beatrice in the heaven of the Sun, all longing for their own resurrected flesh as well for their saved relatives to regain their own), we have been aware that there is something missing in the beatific life. Against more usual views, Dante presents the afterlife of those currently in Paradise as being less than perfect (and less than perfected) because, against the orthodox notion that blessedness itself is the ultimate and eternal reward, there is, according to Dante, one thing that is felt as currently lacking: the resurrection of the flesh. Taught by Jesus (e.g., Luke 14:14) and insisted on by St. Paul, that future event is promised to all the saved. However, the early medieval view (e.g., that of Augustine) was, unsurprisingly, that once with God, the condition of the soul in a blessed and blissful member of the Church Triumphant was already perfected, both in what it knew and what it desired. The general resurrection, promised by St. Paul (most extensively in I Corinthians 15:35-55), of course awaited that soul, but the admixture of corporality was only “decorative,” at least in a sense. Paul tackles that issue with what seems a curiously defensive insistence, against pagan (and Christian?) mockers (see Acts 17:18 and 17:32), that the saved will indeed regain their own flesh in the long passage in I Corinthians.

Only months more than ten years after Dante's death in 1321, his old nemesis, Pope John XXII, preached a series of sermons of which a central point was that, until the soul was reclad in its flesh, it would not see God, setting off a horrified reaction within the Church, the eventual result of which was that the next pope, Benedict XII, restored the earlier disposition of the matter, namely, that the saved soul immediately experiences both the highest bliss in and the fullest knowledge of God of which it is capable.

Dante might have been amused to find that John XXII, whom he despised (see the note to Par. XXVII.136-138), was in disagreement with him on this important and divisive issue as well as on more pressing “political” concerns.

130 - 148

For a global discussion of this final passage, see Peter Hainsworth (“Dante's Farewell to Politics,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], pp. 152-69), arguing that it not only fails to destroy the harmony or unity of this canto (a position shared by many – see p. 154n. for a concise bibliography of the question), but that it is part of its integrity. See the similar opinion of Fernando Salsano (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 232-34) and of Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 31-33).

For an attempt to “save” this passage despite itself, see Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses), who concede that Dante probably should not have turned aside from contemplating things eternal and divine for such a feverish concern with mere contingency, compounding that “fault” by putting this earth-centered speech in the mouth of holy Beatrice, and as her last utterance at that. One can hear awareness of centuries of complaint behind their words. To be just, one must admit that this concern with earthly things seems inconsistent with the usual sort of piety. No one ever said (or should have) that Dante is “usual” in any respect at all.

Those twentieth-century Dantists who thought that Mussolini (or Hitler) was the veltro (Inf. I.101) offer unwitting testimony in this debate. Their political naïveté reveals exactly how much the poem does offer itself as prophetic of great events to come in this world. Beatrice's two related utterances, at the conclusions of Canto XXVII and here, both speak of events to come in the near future of Dante's Italy, and both are intensely political in nature. Perhaps we will one day learn that Dante's political vision is part and parcel of his religious sense. For an appreciation of this dimension of his thought, see Lino Pertile (“Dante Looks Forward and Back: Political Allegory in the Epistles,” Dante Studies 115 [1997]: 1-17 and La puttana e il gigante: Dal Cantico dei Cantici al Paradiso Terrestre di Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1998], passim).

130 - 132

There are only two possible considerations of the significance of the few places left in the Rose: Either there are very few good people alive (or who will be born before the end of time), or the end is coming faster than we think. That we should combine these two responses seems prudent. However, for Dante's possible sense that there are some 1500 years left to run in history, see the note to Paradiso IX.40.

133 - 138

H.T. Silverstein (“The Throne of the Emperor Henry in Dante's Paradise and the Mediaeval Conception of Christian Kingship,” Harvard Theological Review 32 [1939]: 115-29) deals with the surprise that most readers exhibit at the empty throne of the emperor being the first object that the protagonist sees in the Empyrean by reminding us of the far more ample medieval tradition that displayed vacant seats in heaven awaiting “humble friars and simple monks” (pp. 116-17) rather than emperors. He thus sees the salvation of Henry VII not in terms of his imperial mission (failed as it was), but as an “accolade of kingly righteousness” (p. 129), showing that, in passages in the Gospels and one in the Vision of Tundale (see p. 124 and n. 19), Dante had available testimony to the personal justness of those kings who, rather than merely ruling them, truly served their people. (He might have referred to Dante's praise of William the Good; see the note on Par. XX.61-66.) However, it is probably a mistake to accept, as Silverstein does (p. 128), the notion that, with Henry's failure to establish lasting imperial rule in Italy “died all of Dante's hope on earth.” For a view, apparently shaped in part by Silverstein's, that Dante had essentially given up his hopes for an imperial resurgence because of the derelictions of the fourteenth-century papacy, see Edward Peters (“The Failure of Church and Empire: Paradiso 30,” Mediaeval Studies 34 [1972]: 326-35), who goes farther than Silverstein in seeing Dante as having modified his imperial hopes. But see Jacques Goudet (“La 'parte per se stesso' e l'impegno politico di Dante,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 289-316) and Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981], pp. 43-50 - with a rejoinder to Peters on p. 49) for a more convincing sense of Dante's continuing imperial hopes.

For Dante's fifth Epistula (addressed to the princes and peoples of Italy) as rechanneling biblical and liturgical reflections of Christ's majesty onto Henry VII, see Paola Rigo (“Tempo liturgico nell'epistola ai Principi e ai Popoli d'Italia,” in her Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante [Florence: Olschki, 1994], pp. 33-44).

For Henry VII as the seventh divinely selected emperor, see the last paragraph of the note to Paradiso VI.82-91.

134 - 134

Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse) point out that it is difficult to be certain just what Dante means. Is the crown (a) leaning against the throne? (b) a part of the design on its back? (c) suspended over it? This reader confesses that he has always assumed the third option was the right one.

135 - 135

The word nozze (wedding feast) drew Mattalia's attention (comm. to this verse) to Dante's Epistle to the Italian Princes (Epist. V.5): “Rejoice, therefore, O Italy, thou that art now an object of pity even to the Saracens, for soon shalt thou be the envy of the whole world, seeing that thy bridegroom, the comfort of the nations, and the glory of thy people, even the most clement Henry, Elect of God and Augustus and Caesar, is hastening to the wedding (ad nuptias properat)” (tr. P. Toynbee). This attribution is also found in Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981], p. 50).

136 - 136

The adjective agosta (imperial) still honors Henry's “Augustan” mission, which was to unite the Italians into a nation, as Aeneas had set out to do. Augustus had presided over its flowering, bringing the world to peace under Rome's authority.

137 - 137

For Henry's first naming, see Paradiso XVII.82, where his betrayal by Pope Clement is clearly referred to. This second (and final) reference to him by name places his coming as “Augustus” in the future, thus reflecting Dante's willed optimism that the future harbors a “new Henry” even after this one has failed.

138 - 138

See Peter Hainsworth (“Dante's Farewell to Politics,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], p. 160) on the two main and opposing senses of the notion of “disposition” in Dante (the verb disporre in various forms). The word often refers to human choices (sometimes mistaken ones), but also to divine election. Here, Hainsworth argues, that Italy was not “disposed” when she should have been does not mean that she will not welcome her next opportunity to embrace a rightful ruler.

139 - 141

Florence as an ill-willed baby boy, who turns from his nurse's breast even as he feels the pangs of hunger, is reminiscent of the two good young boys who will turn bad quickly enough in Paradiso XXVII.130-135. The political context and the word cupidigia are other common elements in the two passages.

139 - 139

See, for a different tonality but similar formulations, Dante's earlier utterance, issued from exile, addressed to his fellow citizens when they were resisting the efforts of Henry VII to take control of Florence (Epistula VI.22): “Nec advertitis dominantem cupidinem, quia ceci estis, venenoso susurrio blandientem, minis frustatoriis cohibentem, nec non captivantem vos in lege peccati, ac sacratissimis legibus que iustitie naturalis imitantur ymaginem, parere vetantem; observantia quarum, si leta, si libera, non tantum non servitus esse probatur, quin ymo perspicaciter intuenti liquet ut est ipsa summa libertas” (Nor are ye ware in your blindness of the overmastering greed which beguiles you with venomous whispers, and with cheating threats constrains you, yea, and has brought you into captivity to the law of sin, and forbidden you to obey the most sacred laws; those laws made in the likeness of natural justice, the observance whereof, if it be joyous, if it be free, is not only no servitude, but to him who observes with understanding is manifestly in itself the most perfect liberty – tr. P. Toynbee [italics added]). This passage was first adduced by Scartazzini (comm. to verse 139), and then by any number of later commentators, none of whom give him credit for having preceded them (see Hollander [“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 {1988 [1993]}: 32n.]).

142 - 148

This concluding passage, with its rancor against the ecclesiastical enemies of the imperial idea, has disturbed many, who find it entirely inappropriate as Beatrice's last utterance in a theologically determined poem. One must admit that it may seem out of place in a Christian poem, with its necessary message of the unimportance of the things of the world coupled with Jesus' insistence that we forgive our enemies. Such a sensible view, however, disregards the thoroughgoing political concern of the poem and does not deal with Dante's stubborn insistence on the rectitude of his vision of the world order (see Hollander [“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 {1988 [1993]}: 32-33]). See, for an example of a different view, Aldo Vallone (“Il Canto XXX,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-'81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], p. 801), speaking of “un certo pessimissmo storico” in Beatrice's last words.

The thirtieth cantos of the final cantiche are united, as Claudio Varese noted (“Il canto trentesimo del Paradiso,” in his Pascoli politico, Tasso e altri saggi [Milan: Feltrinelli, 1961 {1953}], p. 25), in at least two major respects: They are cantos of departure for both beloved guides; they also are both “cantos of Beatrice,” the first of arrival, the second of return (to the point of her departure, her seat in Heaven, as described in Inferno II.71, 101-102). For more on the links between these two cantos, see Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983], pp. 140-45; (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 30-32); and Saverio Bellomo (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 8 [1996]: 50).

If we can remember our first reading of the poem, we will perhaps recall our eventual and retrospective surprise upon discovering that these were the last words spoken by Beatrice in the Divine Comedy. We, like the protagonist, have gotten used to her guidance. Unlike Virgil's departure, which is prepared for even as he enters the poem (Inf. I.121-126), Beatrice's departure is a total surprise (see the note to Par. XXXI.102).

142 - 144

This tercet undoubtedly is a last nasty glance at Pope Clement V, who made a show of welcoming Henry VII to Italy but then worked assiduously behind the scenes to defeat the emperor's efforts to unite her cities under his rule (see the note to Par. XVII.82-84).

145 - 146

Henry died 24 August 1313; Clement, 20 April 1314, soon enough after Henry for Dante to consider his death God's punishment for his treacherous opposition to the emperor and to his cause - even if Clement had been seriously ill a very long time. See the note to Inferno XIX.79-87.

147 - 147

Simon Magus gave the “naming opportunity” to Dante for the third of the Malebolge (see Inf. XXIX.1), where the simoniac popes and other clerics who traded in the goods and services of the Church are found, and where Dante so memorably is mistaken by Pope Nicholas III for Pope Boniface VIII (Inf. XIX.53).

148 - 148

The phrase “that fellow from Anagni” is Dante's own version of the false and slangy familiarity of the corrupt clergy (see the note to Par. XVIII.130-136). The reference, of course, is to Pope Boniface VIII, seen as forced deeper into his hole (that of the simoniac popes) by the advent of Clement, who now will be the topmost, and thus able to wave his burning soles about in Hell. Dante didn't know it, but Clement's time would exceed that of Boniface, who waved his feet from 1303-1314. In the unwritten continuation of this poem, Clement would have twenty years in the relatively open air of the bolgia, since John XXII did not die until 1334 (surely Dante felt he was destined for eternal damnation, and would have continued to do so, especially had he learned of John's unenlightened views on the resurrection of the flesh [see the note to verse 129]). Should we be so inclined, we might add him to Dante's total of damned popes with something like certainty (see the note to Inf. VII.46-48).

Paradiso: Canto 30

1
2
3

Forse semilia miglia di lontano
ci ferve l'ora sesta, e questo mondo
china già l'ombra quasi al letto piano,
4
5
6

quando 'l mezzo del cielo, a noi profondo,
comincia a farsi tal, ch'alcuna stella
perde il parere infino a questo fondo;
7
8
9

e come vien la chiarissima ancella
del sol più oltre, così 'l ciel si chiude
di vista in vista infino a la più bella.
10
11
12

Non altrimenti il trïunfo che lude
sempre dintorno al punto che mi vinse,
parendo inchiuso da quel ch'elli 'nchiude,
13
14
15

a poco a poco al mio veder si stinse:
per che tornar con li occhi a Bëatrice
nulla vedere e amor mi costrinse.
16
17
18

Se quanto infino a qui di lei si dice
fosse conchiuso tutto in una loda,
poca sarebbe a fornir questa vice.
19
20
21

La bellezza ch'io vidi si trasmoda
non pur di là da noi, ma certo io credo
che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda.
22
23
24

Da questo passo vinto mi concedo
più che già mai da punto di suo tema
soprato fosse comico o tragedo:
25
26
27

ché, come sole in viso che più trema,
così lo rimembrar del dolce riso
la mente mia da me medesmo scema.
28
29
30

Dal primo giorno ch'i' vidi il suo viso
in questa vita, infino a questa vista,
non m'è il seguire al mio cantar preciso;
31
32
33

ma or convien che mio seguir desista
più dietro a sua bellezza, poetando,
come a l'ultimo suo ciascuno artista.
34
35
36

Cotal qual io la lascio a maggior bando
che quel de la mia tuba, che deduce
l'ardüa sua matera terminando,
37
38
39

con atto e voce di spedito duce
ricominciò: “Noi siamo usciti fore
del maggior corpo al ciel ch'è pura luce:
40
41
42

luce intellettüal, piena d'amore;
amor di vero ben, pien di letizia;
letizia che trascende ogne dolzore.
43
44
45

Qui vederai l'una e l'altra milizia
di paradiso, e l'una in quelli aspetti
che tu vedrai a l'ultima giustizia.”
46
47
48

Come sùbito lampo che discetti
li spiriti visivi, sì che priva
da l'atto l'occhio di più forti obietti,
49
50
51

così mi circunfulse luce viva,
e lasciommi fasciato di tal velo
del suo fulgor, che nulla m'appariva.
52
53
54

“Sempre l'amor che queta questo cielo
accoglie in sé con sì fatta salute,
per far disposto a sua fiamma il candelo.”
55
56
57

Non fur più tosto dentro a me venute
queste parole brievi, ch'io compresi
me sormontar di sopr' a mia virtute;
58
59
60

e di novella vista mi raccesi
tale, che nulla luce è tanto mera,
che li occhi miei non si fosser difesi;
61
62
63

e vidi lume in forma di rivera
fulvido di fulgore, intra due rive
dipinte di mirabil primavera.
64
65
66

Di tal fiumana uscian faville vive,
e d'ogne parte si mettien ne' fiori,
quasi rubin che oro circunscrive;
67
68
69

poi, come inebrïate da li odori,
riprofondavan sé nel miro gurge,
e s'una intrava, un'altra n'uscia fori.
70
71
72

“L'alto disio che mo t'infiamma e urge,
d'aver notizia di ciò che tu vei,
tanto mi piace più quanto più turge;
73
74
75

ma di quest' acqua convien che tu bei
prima che tanta sete in te si sazi”:
così mi disse il sol de li occhi miei.
76
77
78

Anche soggiunse: “Il fiume e li topazi
ch'entrano ed escono e 'l rider de l'erbe
son di lor vero umbriferi prefazi.
79
80
81

Non che da sé sian queste cose acerbe;
ma è difetto da la parte tua,
che non hai viste ancor tanto superbe.”
82
83
84

Non è fantin che sì sùbito rua
col volto verso il latte, se si svegli
molto tardato da l'usanza sua
85
86
87

come fec' io, per far migliori spegli
ancor de li occhi, chinandomi a l'onda
che si deriva perché vi s'immegli;
88
89
90

e sì come di lei bevve la gronda
de le palpebre mie, così mi parve
di sua lunghezza divenuta tonda.
91
92
93

Poi, come gente stata sotto larve,
che pare altro che prima, se si sveste
la sembianza non süa in che disparve,
94
95
96

così mi si cambiaro in maggior feste
li fiori e le faville, sì ch'io vidi
ambo le corti del ciel manifeste.
97
98
99

O isplendor di Dio, per cu' io vidi
l'alto trïunfo del regno verace,
dammi virtù a dir com'ïo il vidi!
100
101
102

Lume è là sù che visibile face
lo creatore a quella creatura
che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace.
103
104
105

E' si distende in circular figura,
in tanto che la sua circunferenza
sarebbe al sol troppo larga cintura.
106
107
108

Fassi di raggio tutta sua parvenza
reflesso al sommo del mobile primo,
che prende quindi vivere e potenza.
109
110
111

E come clivo in acqua di suo imo
si specchia, quasi per vedersi addorno,
quando è nel verde e ne' fioretti opimo,
112
113
114

sì, soprastando al lume intorno intorno,
vidi specchiarsi in più di mille soglie
quanto di noi là sù fatto ha ritorno.
115
116
117

E se l'infimo grado in sé raccoglie
sì grande lume, quanta è la larghezza
di questa rosa ne l'estreme foglie!
118
119
120

La vista mia ne l'ampio e ne l'altezza
non si smarriva, ma tutto prendeva
il quanto e 'l quale di quella allegrezza.
121
122
123

Presso e lontano, lì, né pon né leva:
ché dove Dio sanza mezzo governa,
la legge natural nulla rileva.
124
125
126

Nel giallo de la rosa sempiterna,
che si digrada e dilata e redole
odor di lode al sol che sempre verna,
127
128
129

qual è colui che tace e dicer vole,
mi trasse Bëatrice, e disse: “Mira
quanto è 'l convento de le bianche stole!
130
131
132

Vedi nostra città quant' ella gira;
vedi li nostri scanni sì ripieni,
che poca gente più ci si disira.
133
134
135

E 'n quel gran seggio a che tu li occhi tieni
per la corona che già v'è sù posta,
prima che tu a queste nozze ceni,
136
137
138

sederà l'alma, che fia giù agosta,
de l'alto Arrigo, ch'a drizzare Italia
verrà in prima ch'ella sia disposta.
139
140
141

La cieca cupidigia che v'ammalia
simili fatti v'ha al fantolino
che muor per fame e caccia via la balia.
142
143
144

E fia prefetto nel foro divino
allora tal, che palese e coverto
non anderà con lui per un cammino.
145
146
147
148

Ma poco poi sarà da Dio sofferto
nel santo officio: ch'el sarà detruso
là dove Simon mago è per suo merto,
e farà quel d'Alagna intrar più giuso.”
1
2
3

Perchance six thousand miles remote from us
  Is glowing the sixth hour, and now this world
  Inclines its shadow almost to a level,

4
5
6

When the mid-heaven begins to make itself
  So deep to us, that here and there a star
  Ceases to shine so far down as this depth,

7
8
9

And as advances bright exceedingly
  The handmaid of the sun, the heaven is closed
  Light after light to the most beautiful;

10
11
12

Not otherwise the Triumph, which for ever
  Plays round about the point that vanquished me,
  Seeming enclosed by what itself encloses,

13
14
15

Little by little from my vision faded;
  Whereat to turn mine eyes on Beatrice
  My seeing nothing and my love constrained me.

16
17
18

If what has hitherto been said of her
  Were all concluded in a single praise,
  Scant would it be to serve the present turn.

19
20
21

Not only does the beauty I beheld
  Transcend ourselves, but truly I believe
  Its Maker only may enjoy it all.

22
23
24

Vanquished do I confess me by this passage
  More than by problem of his theme was ever
  O'ercome the comic or the tragic poet;

25
26
27

For as the sun the sight that trembles most,
  Even so the memory of that sweet smile
  My mind depriveth of its very self.

28
29
30

From the first day that I beheld her face
  In this life, to the moment of this look,
  The sequence of my song has ne'er been severed;

31
32
33

But now perforce this sequence must desist
  From following her beauty with my verse,
  As every artist at his uttermost.

34
35
36

Such as I leave her to a greater fame
  Than any of my trumpet, which is bringing
  Its arduous matter to a final close,

37
38
39

With voice and gesture of a perfect leader
  She recommenced: "We from the greatest body
  Have issued to the heaven that is pure light;

40
41
42

Light intellectual replete with love,
  Love of true good replete with ecstasy,
  Ecstasy that transcendeth every sweetness.

43
44
45

Here shalt thou see the one host and the other
  Of Paradise, and one in the same aspects
  Which at the final judgment thou shalt see."

46
47
48

Even as a sudden lightning that disperses
  The visual spirits, so that it deprives
  The eye of impress from the strongest objects,

49
50
51

Thus round about me flashed a living light,
  And left me swathed around with such a veil
  Of its effulgence, that I nothing saw.

52
53
54

"Ever the Love which quieteth this heaven
  Welcomes into itself with such salute,
  To make the candle ready for its flame."

55
56
57

No sooner had within me these brief words
  An entrance found, than I perceived myself
  To be uplifted over my own power,

58
59
60

And I with vision new rekindled me,
  Such that no light whatever is so pure
  But that mine eyes were fortified against it.

61
62
63

And light I saw in fashion of a river
  Fulvid with its effulgence, 'twixt two banks
  Depicted with an admirable Spring.

64
65
66

Out of this river issued living sparks,
  And on all sides sank down into the flowers,
  Like unto rubies that are set in gold;

67
68
69

And then, as if inebriate with the odours,
  They plunged again into the wondrous torrent,
  And as one entered issued forth another.

70
71
72

"The high desire, that now inflames and moves thee
  To have intelligence of what thou seest,
  Pleaseth me all the more, the more it swells.

73
74
75

But of this water it behoves thee drink
  Before so great a thirst in thee be slaked."
  Thus said to me the sunshine of mine eyes;

76
77
78

And added: "The river and the topazes
  Going in and out, and the laughing of the herbage,
  Are of their truth foreshadowing prefaces;

79
80
81

Not that these things are difficult in themselves,
  But the deficiency is on thy side,
  For yet thou hast not vision so exalted."

82
83
84

There is no babe that leaps so suddenly
  With face towards the milk, if he awake
  Much later than his usual custom is,

85
86
87

As I did, that I might make better mirrors
  Still of mine eyes, down stooping to the wave
  Which flows that we therein be better made.

88
89
90

And even as the penthouse of mine eyelids
  Drank of it, it forthwith appeared to me
  Out of its length to be transformed to round.

91
92
93

Then as a folk who have been under masks
  Seem other than before, if they divest
  The semblance not their own they disappeared in,

94
95
96

Thus into greater pomp were changed for me
  The flowerets and the sparks, so that I saw
  Both of the Courts of Heaven made manifest.

97
98
99

O splendour of God! by means of which I saw
  The lofty triumph of the realm veracious,
  Give me the power to say how it I saw!

100
101
102

There is a light above, which visible
  Makes the Creator unto every creature,
  Who only in beholding Him has peace,

103
104
105

And it expands itself in circular form
  To such extent, that its circumference
  Would be too large a girdle for the sun.

106
107
108

The semblance of it is all made of rays
  Reflected from the top of Primal Motion,
  Which takes therefrom vitality and power.

109
110
111

And as a hill in water at its base
  Mirrors itself, as if to see its beauty
  When affluent most in verdure and in flowers,

112
113
114

So, ranged aloft all round about the light,
  Mirrored I saw in more ranks than a thousand
  All who above there have from us returned.

115
116
117

And if the lowest row collect within it
  So great a light, how vast the amplitude
  Is of this Rose in its extremest leaves!

118
119
120

My vision in the vastness and the height
  Lost not itself, but comprehended all
  The quantity and quality of that gladness.

121
122
123

There near and far nor add nor take away;
  For there where God immediately doth govern,
  The natural law in naught is relevant.

124
125
126

Into the yellow of the Rose Eternal
  That spreads, and multiplies, and breathes an odour
  Of praise unto the ever-vernal Sun,

127
128
129

As one who silent is and fain would speak,
  Me Beatrice drew on, and said: "Behold
  Of the white stoles how vast the convent is!

130
131
132

Behold how vast the circuit of our city!
  Behold our seats so filled to overflowing,
  That here henceforward are few people wanting!

133
134
135

On that great throne whereon thine eyes are fixed
  For the crown's sake already placed upon it,
  Before thou suppest at this wedding feast

136
137
138

Shall sit the soul (that is to be Augustus
  On earth) of noble Henry, who shall come
  To redress Italy ere she be ready.

139
140
141

Blind covetousness, that casts its spell upon you,
  Has made you like unto the little child,
  Who dies of hunger and drives off the nurse.

142
143
144

And in the sacred forum then shall be
  A Prefect such, that openly or covert
  On the same road he will not walk with him.

145
146
147
148

But long of God he will not be endured
  In holy office; he shall be thrust down
  Where Simon Magus is for his deserts,
And make him of Alagna lower go!"

Robert Hollander (English, 2000-2007)
1 - 3

Tozer's paraphrase (comm. to verse 1) of this complex tercet runs as follows: “The dawn, instead of being mentioned by name, is here described, by an elaborate periphrasis, as the time when it is about midday 6,000 miles off from us on the earth's surface. This calculation is arrived at in the following manner. Seven hours are approximately the period of time which the sun takes to pass over 6,000 miles of the earth's surface; for, according to the computation of Alfraganus (cap. VIII), which Dante accepted (Conv. III.v.11 – see Toynbee, Dict., p. 522, s.v. ”Terra“), the entire circumference of the earth was 20,400 miles, and consequently the amount of that circumference corresponding to seven hours out of the complete revolution of twenty-four hours was 5,950 miles (20,400 x 7/24 = 5,950), or in round numbers 6,000 miles. Hence, when Dante says that the sixth hour is 6,000 miles distant from us, he means that with us it is seven hours before noon, or an hour before sunrise, the sun being regarded as rising at 6 a.m. The word Forse intimates that the calculation is made in round numbers.” For an analysis of the entire opening passage (vv. 1-15), see Fernando Salsano (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 215-24).

1 - 1

Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 149, points out that this is the only time the much-used adverb (67 occurrences) forse (“perhaps,” but here “about,” as Aversano advises) is employed to begin either a verse or a canto.

2 - 2

Strictly speaking, the “sixth hour” is 11 to noon (see Par. XXVI.141-142), but here it represents noon itself, six hours after dawn (ideally considered 6 a.m., whenever it actually occurs).

3 - 3

The phrase letto piano (level bed) refers to the moment when the sun's midpoint is in the plane of the horizon. Grandgent (comm. to vv. 1-3): “The sun is below our horizon on one side, and the earth's conical shadow, projected into space, is correspondingly above our horizon on the other. As the sun rises, the shadow sinks; and when the middle of the sun shall be on the horizon line, the apex of the shadow will be on the same plane in the opposite quarter.”

4 - 6

For mezzo as “center of the sky,” in the sense of zenith, see Fernando Salsano (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 222-24) and Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], pp. 825-26). For centuries this was the standard gloss. That is, commentators believed that Dante was referring to the midpoint of the Starry Sphere, directly overhead. Porena (comm. to vv. 1-6 [= “Nota finale” to this canto]) sharply objected. How can the sky directly above an observer be the first part of the heavens seen growing lighter at the approach of dawn, when obviously the eastern horizon is? He goes on to cite a text that, he says, explains this verse perfectly, Convivio III.ix.11-12, where Dante discusses the obscuring qualities of the earth's atmosphere itself. Most of the commentators who follow Porena accept his explanation (a few even crediting him). See, for example, Saverio Bellomo (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 8 [1996]: 52-53). At least three aspects of Porena's argument are, however, problematic: (1) Dante does not say that the predawn sky grows lighter first at its zenith, only that it does so, and does so very gradually; (2) his description seems to imply invariable phenomena (i.e., celestial events that happen in the same manner every night at its juncture with dawn), while atmospheric hindrances are variable; (3) the relationship between this and the following terzina is such that the process initiated in this one is completed in that, which would at least imply a continuous movement in these celestial “candles” becoming dimmer and finally being snuffed out. In short, it seems unwise to jettison the old reading for Porena's.

For an extended argument in support of the notion that Dante conceived the Empyrean as a depiction of the “eye of God,” even unto its extramissionary ray of sight, see Richard Kay (“Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of God,” Speculum 78 [2003]: 37-65).

4 - 4

For Dante's cielo... profondo it has been traditional (at least since the time of Lombardi [comm. to vv. 1-6]) to cite Virgil, Georgics IV.222, caelumque profundum.

7 - 8

The traditional understanding, of uninterrupted currency until the last decade of the nineteenth century, is that the “brightest handmaid of the Sun” is Aurora, who announces the arrival of her lord at sunrise. Scartazzini (comm. to verse 7), however (if without changing that interpretation), reminds us that Dante refers to the hours of the day as ancelle [del giorno] (Purg. XII.81, XXII.118). That bit of lore about the personified hours (which hardly dispatches the traditional literary association of Aurora as the handmaid of the Sun indirectly referred to at Purg. IX.2, with its presentation of the brightening predawn sky) remained offstage until Poletto (comm. to vv. 1-15 [of course not mentioning Scartazzini]) casually refers to it as his only comment on this verse. He was joined by Mattalia (comm. to verse 7 [of course not mentioning either Scartazzini or Poletto]), who was the first commentator to insist that the first Hour of the day is the particular brightness referred to. However, several considerations cast serious doubt on this solution: (1) It would be strange for Dante to have referred to the first hour of the day as its brightest, since most would doubtless consider noon to be that; (2) the passage refers to a gradual process (like that of the aurora of the Sun), while the passing of even a single minute when the Sun is rising is marked by a dramatic change indeed; (3) it is difficult once the sun rises to see any stars at all, much less to watch a gradual extinguishing process across the eastern half of the heavens. Perhaps it was such considerations that governed the continuing response among the commentators, all of whom represented in the DDP remain wedded to the traditional gloss, Aurora. However, inexplicably (if tentatively), Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], p. 826) cites and accepts Mattalia's interpretation. For the proposal of a totally new understanding, see Tobias Leuker (“'La chiarissima ancella / del sol,' Par. XXX, 7-8. Dante tra Marziano Capella e Boiardo,” L'Alighieri 24 [2004]: 93-96), who claims that the “handmaid” is Venus as morning star. Leuker (p. 94) misrepresents Chiavacci Leonardi's argument, which he says puts the first hour between 5 and 6 before dawn; he then compounds that error by another, when he wonders why the first hour would be brighter than noon (see the first consideration just above) – especially since he has erroneously put the first hour in the wrong time slot (it being ideally between 6 and 7). He does not find it problematic that Venus will be referred to in verse 9, believing, rather, that both these periphrases refer to her.

8 - 8

See Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 7-9) for a citation of Aeneid I.374, describing evening's arrival on Mt. Olympus. And see Hollander (“Le opere di Virgilio nella Commedia di Dante,” in Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia: Autorità e sfida poetica, ed. A. A. Iannucci [Ravenna: Longo, 1993], p. 334) for Gmelin's attempt to expand the range of possible echoes to other Virgilian loci, Statius, and Lactantius.

9 - 9

The traditional understanding, which has no need of revaluation, is that the brightest and most beautiful light in the predawn sky is Venus as morning star.

10 - 15

The lengthy and elaborate simile now presents its second term: As the light of the stars in the dawn sky yields to the increasing brilliance of the Sun, so the nine angelic orders, whirling around God, extinguish their glow. The result is that their self-effacement encourages him to yield to his desire, which is to look at Beatrice.

11 - 11

See Gianfranco Contini (“Canto XXVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968], p. 1018) for recognition of the self-citation here. The line contains a fairly obvious revisitation, in the phrase “al punto che mi vinse” (around the point that overcame me), of Francesca's description of the punto in the Lancelot romance that aroused her and Paolo (Inf. V.132): “ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse” (still, it was a single instant overcame us [italics added]). It is perhaps only the oppositional nature of this punto, not a “point” in a text describing sexual arousal, but God, the Point of the universe, that had kept the close resemblance in phrasing apparently unobserved for so many centuries. For other notice, see Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983], pp. 139-40); Peter Dronke (“Symbolism and Structure in Paradiso 30,” Romance Philology 43 [1989]: 32 – both without reference to any precursor); and Domenico De Robertis (“Dante e Beatrice in Paradiso,” Critica letteraria 18 [1990]: 141 - citing Contini). And see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 7-8), acknowledging Contini, if belatedly. See also Karlheinz Stierle (“Canto XXVI,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 407-8), who mentions no precursor. And see the note to Paradiso XXIX.9. There is a glancing discussion of the two passages by Corrado Bologna (“Canto XXX,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], pp. 465-66), without reference to any precedent discussion of their relation.

For the slow emergence of the word punto (some fifty occurrences in all) as referring to God only as early as in Paradiso XVII.17, and then its “explosion” with that meaning in Paradiso XXVIII and XXIX (six uses), and then, finally, here, see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 7 [n. 18]).

12 - 12

The circles of angels seem to surround God; in fact He “contains” them (and all else).

16 - 18

The poet, seeing Beatrice at the edge of eternity, as it were, begins his valedictory remarks by insisting that all his preceding praise together would not do to fulfill the need he feels to express her beauty.

17 - 17

The word loda (praise) has a “technical” overtone. As recorded in Vita nuova, Dante began to grow toward comprehending the meaning of Beatrice when he turned from poems about the pain his loving her had caused him to those in praise of her (see VN XVIII.9).

18 - 18

For the Latinism vice (here translated “that which is due”), the commentators are torn among several possibilities. Perhaps the most popular is the usage found in the Latin phrase explere vicem, meaning “to fulfill one's duties,” probably the most likely sense of the word here. But see Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) for the majority opinion (which he does not share) that it means volta with the sense of “time” or “occasion.” Several add “place” to the possibilities, and there are still other options. Singleton (comm. to this verse) cites the other use of vice (at Par. XXVII.17), where it is paired with officio (duty), to argue that it therefore cannot mean that here; but see Scartazzini (comm. to Par. XXVII.17-18) who deals with vice as there being the “duty” of silence incumbent on the rest of the spirits while St. Peter fulfills his duty, which is to hold forth against papal turpitude, the two words sharing a sense approaching that of synonyms.

John Scott (“Paradiso XXX,” in Dante Commentaries, ed. D. Nolan [Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1977], p. 163) comments on the extraordinary incidence of Latinisms in this canto, which he puts at fifty.

19 - 21

Dante will see Beatrice once more, after she resumes her seat in the Rose (from which she arose once, on 24 March 1300 [also Maundy Thursday according to Dante's Idealized Earth Time], in order to draw Virgil forth from Limbo; and then again, around noon the following Wednesday, in order to descend to the earthly paradise for her reunion with Dante). This, however, is his last attempt to describe her beauty, which has been increasing from his second description of it (in the heaven of the Moon, Par. IV.139-142) every time he sees her anew until now. That this “program” has come to its end is clear from the seven tercets (vv. 16-36) devoted to a final description of her increased beauty, which offer a kind of history (esp. vv. 28-33) of that beauty's effect on Dante.

On the point of returning to her undivided attention to God, she is already being retransformed into a more-than-human being, pure soul, as it were, without the hindrance of human concerns that she has taken on for Dante's sake. Thus only God can fully enjoy her beauty.

22 - 27

And thus the human poet who is speaking to us, confined by the two modes (and only two generic possibilities are referred to in the entire text, unlike De vulgari eloquentia, which mentions several others), tragic or comic, that are available to him, must acknowledge his necessary failure. The poem of the triumph of Beatrice needs a new genre, one that Dante has defined at Paradiso XXV.73, and that shares with David's psalms, expressing his love for God, the generic tag of tëodia (god song). For this last, see Teodolinda Barolini (Dante's Poets [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984]), p. 277). Only a new form might seem capable of describing such things. It is probably incorrect to attempt, as some have done, to assign a particular style to each cantica, but if one were forced to and had only Dante's words in the poem as guides, Inferno might be considered essentially tragic in the tales it tells, while Purgatorio would seem to be, on the same basis (lives that end badly or well), comic. As for the Paradiso, it might be describable as a tëodia. In terms of language, however, the Inferno seems the most low-style, and thus comic of the three; the second canticle seems a mixture of the two; and the third seems unclassifiable stylistically, with four elements present, low (comic), middle (explanatory and discursive), high (tragic), and sublime (the vision of God, the tëodia, if we must). It is not clear that the poet meant such distinctions to apply. Whether he did or not, all attempts to provide such handholds have failed to convince many. See, most recently, Francesco Tateo (“Il canone dei poeti comici e la moderazione di Stazio,” L'Alighieri 27 [2006]: 94-95), arguing that the poem rises, stylistically, from the tragic style of Limbo through the comic style of Purgatorio to the joyful style of Paradiso. Morally, Tateo says, the poem rises to the sublimity of the hymn from the depth of tragedy through the middle, or human, stage of comedy. And see Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 150, who believes that the reader should understand Dante's intention to include the middle style, the elegiac. Now Dante does discuss this style in De vulgari (II.iv.5 and II.xii.6), but that does not license applying it to the Commedia, where all reference to elegy is simply lacking. One should add that Aversano is not alone in his attempt to match elegiacs and the Commedia.

See Prudence Shaw (“Paradiso XXX,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante's “Comedy,” ed. K. Foster and P. Boyde [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], p. 196): “There is a chain of inadequacy in Dante because of the visionary nature of the experience he is describing. The mind cannot fully grasp what it experiences, because this transcends the human capacity for understanding; the memory cannot now recall even that which the mind did grasp at the time; and finally, the poet's words cannot do justice even to what he can recall to mind. The poet's words are three stages removed from what he is attempting to represent.”

For discussion of reference here to Virgil and Dante as, respectively, writers of tragedy and of comedy, see Scartazzini (comm. to verse 24) and Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 10 [n. 23]).

25 - 27

Like a mortal with weak eyes, unable even more than most to look directly at the Sun, the poet finds his inner sight blinded by the memory of this last and transformed beauty evident in Beatrice. Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 25-27) was apparently the first commentator (but not the last, though none of the others cites him) to call attention to three passages in the minor works that offer similar images, Vita nuova (XLI.6), and Convivio (III.0.59-60; III.viii.14 [this last the commentary on those verses]). It is amusing to discover that in the first case, it is Beatrice's soul, ascended to Heaven, that is too bright for Dante to behold, while in the two passages in Convivio the blinding is accomplished by the glow of Lady Philosophy. The first is entirely germane to the present context, which has Beatrice about to ascend to exactly where Dante first saw her seated in Heaven in the libello. Dante would have preferred, however, that we forget the second, in praise of the lady who replaced Beatrice in his affections.

27 - 27

Porena (comm. to vv. 26-27) is perhaps the first to discuss the two possible meanings of mente, “mind” (here with the sense of “intellect”) and “memory,” making a good case for the former, as we have translated the word. See also Alfonso Maierù, “mente,” ED III (1971), pp. 899a-905a, who agrees (p. 902b). However, if it is his mind that Dante is separated from, in what specific ways ought we consider the possible meaning(s) of the verse? This is a difficult line to translate.

28 - 29

If we accept the “history” put forward in Vita nuova, the first time that he saw Beatrice was shortly before Dante's ninth birthday (VN II.1-2), thus no later than June of 1274, and probably a little before then. The current date in the poem is perhaps 31 March 1300 (see the note to Inf. I.1). For a speculative presentation of the possibility that the day of Beatrice's death (8 June 1290) coincided with Dante's twenty-fifth birthday, and thus his “coming of age” into wisdom about the irrelevance of earthly affections, see Richard Kay (“Il giorno della nascita di Dante e la dipartita di Beatrice,” in Studi Americani su Dante, ed. G. C. Alessio e R. Hollander [Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989], pp. 243-65).

28 - 28

The word viso may here be rendered with either “eyes” or “face.” We have chosen the latter, even though most of the commentators who actually choose one alternative over the other, beginning with Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 28-30), prefer “eyes.”

30 - 30

“This verse is more problematic than it generally seems to be to most commentators: [H]ow can Dante say this when he has displayed such a marked deviation from singing of Beatrice in Convivio? Are we to understand that that work, even if it records her being eclipsed in Dante's affection by the donna gentile, nonetheless is about her? Or are we to imagine that, since Dante has been through the rivers Lethe and Eunoe, he forgets his past wrongdoing and remembers only the good in the history of his affections?” (Hollander [“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 {1988 [1993]}: 11 {n. 26}]).

31 - 36

“The poet is able to represent aspects of divinity but cannot know it directly. Beatrice, at one with God, resists any human poet's capacity, even Dante's. And thus Dante must leave her to a maggior bando, the angelic trumpets' heralding at the [G]eneral Resurrection.... [Beatrice] is better than all mortals because she is immortal, a condition [that] she shares utterly with her fellow saints. In a sense, Dante's inability to sing of her results not from her being unique, but from her being absolutely the same as all the blessed in her love of God” (Hollander [“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 {1988 [1993]}: 11-12]). Naturally, that is true of any other saved soul as well.

33 - 33

See Walter Binni (“Canto XXX,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera: “Paradiso”, dir. M. Marcazzan [Florence: Le Monnier, 1968]), p. 1070) for a paraphrase of this verse: “il limite estremo delle sue forze espressive” ([at] the outer limit of his powers of expression).

34 - 34

Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981]: 65 and “Miro gurge [Par. XXX, 68]: Virgilian Language and Textual Pattern in the River of Light,” Dante Studies 103 [1985]: 89) points out that the word bando here looks back at Purgatorio XXX.13 in such a way as to make its meaning clear. All the early commentators who make an effort to identify the source of that trumpeting say that it will be a later poet (Benvenuto, comm. to vv. 34-39) specifies 'a poet-theologian,' in which judgment he is followed by John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 34-42); some, their discomfort more or less apparent, go along, perhaps because they do not understand to what else the sonorous reference might refer. That was the muddled condition of appreciation of this passage until Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) cut through centuries of weak responses and magisterially solved (or should have) the riddle once and for all (the text refers to the trump of Judgment Day), even if his reward for doing so was to be ridiculed by Poletto (comm. to vv. 34-37) and to be ignored even by those relative few who agree with him. Mestica (comm. to vv. 34-38), without reference to Scartazzini (do we hear the strains of a familiar tune? [see the note to Purg. XXX.115-117]), also settles on this daring but sensible explanation, as does Del Lungo (comm. to vv. 34-38). Claudio Varese (“Il canto trentesimo del Paradiso,” in his Pascoli politico, Tasso e altri saggi [Milan: Feltrinelli, 1961 {1953}], pp. 23-31) follows this path but cites no predecessor on it. Fernando Salsano (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], p. 226n.) credits Del Lungo alone for this better understanding. Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997]), p. 830) omits mention of any precursor in stating this interpretation. Still more blameworthy than Poletto, Vandelli, revising his master's work, simply substitutes his own version of the ancient view for Scartazzini's radical new interpretation (Scartzzini/Vandelli comm. to Par. I.34-36), attributing the trumpet blast to a “voce poetica più possente della mia” (poetic voice more powerful than mine). In more recent times, Scartazzini's position has found support in Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981]: 65, 72); Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 10-13 [with a review of the status of the debate]); Chiavacci Leonardi (Paradiso, con il commento di A. M. C. L. [Milan: Mondadori, 1997], p. 830; and Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], p. 301). However, see Prudence Shaw (“Paradiso XXX,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante's “Comedy,” ed. K. Foster and P. Boyde [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], p. 197) for a return to the old solution, the bando will issue from “a greater poetic talent than his own.”

For a similar problem, what Dante refers to by the phrase “con miglior voci” (with better words) at Paradiso I.35, and the utter unlikelihood that he might be thinking of future poets better than he, see the note to Paradiso I.35-36. Interestingly enough, Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 151, sees the failure of this traditional interpretation, but goes on to offer an unlikely solution here, roughly the same as was presented by Giuseppe Toffanin (Sette interpretazioni dantesche [Naples: Libreria scientifica editrice, 1947], pp. 80-82) in his attempt to solve that crux in the first canto in 1947: Dante is not thinking of other poets but of the saints in Heaven; it is they who will celebrate Beatrice.

37 - 37

That Beatrice is here presented (intrinsically, at least) as a masculine leader reminds Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 151, of the ammiraglio to which she was compared shortly after her appearance in the earthly paradise (at Purg. XXX.58).

We follow Tozer (comm. to vv. 37-39) and Carroll (comm. to vv. 37-45), the second of whom says that he is following Butler, in translating the phrase as they do, in Carroll's explanation, “'a leader freed from his task,' as in Par. XVII.100: the gesture and voice of one who has successfully led him to the final revelation.”

38 - 42

On these verses see Bortolo Martinelli (“La dottrina dell'Empireo nell'Epistola a Cangrande (capp. 24-27),” Studi Danteschi 57 [1985]: 113-14), arguing that the Empyrean is to be considered as having corporeal being. Dante (in Conv. II.iii.8) has been interpreted as saying that this was indeed the case. (Although there are those who do not hold to this opinion, finding that Dante attributes this opinion to “Catholics” without necessarily embracing it himself, this would not mark the first time that Dante changed his mind about an opinion expressed in the Convivio). Here, however, it seems totally clear that Dante is reiterating his thoughts about the triform Creation (see Par. XXIX.22-24), which included pure form unalloyed with matter (i.e., the Empyrean and the angels). As Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 151, points out, if the Primum Mobile is the largest material sphere in the heavens, that requires that the Empyrean not be material, for it contains (i.e., is larger than) all else.

It is quite striking, as Aversano points out, that after Inferno II.21 Dante never uses the word empireo again. It had, in fact, appeared more often in the Convivio (twice: II.iii.8 and II.xiv.19).

39 - 42

These four verses, weaving their three line-beginning/ending nouns luce, amore, letizia into a knot expressing the nature of God's kingdom (intellectual light and love, the latter yielding joy) in a pattern of linkage new to the poem, are perhaps calculated to offer a first sense of the higher spiritual reality of the Empyrean.

43 - 43

The two “militias” found here are, of course, the angels and the saved souls. Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 43-45) says the first fought against the rebel angels, the second, against the vices.

44 - 45

The poet, in his enthusiasm for incarnation, restrains himself only enough not to insist that the angels are seen as though they, too, are embodied. There is no preexisting tradition that allows this daring invention (seeing the blessed as though they were already incarnate) on Dante's part. And yet, once we read his instruction, we accept their phantom flesh as a necessary element of his vision.

This is all the more striking as we have just been assured that we left “corporality” behind when we left the Primum Mobile (vv. 38-39). See discussions in Scott (“Paradiso XXX,” in Dante Commentaries, ed. D. Nolan [Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1977], pp. 164 and 179) and in Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 14): “[T]his resubstantiation occurs exactly at the moment at which we have apparently left corporality behind us.... 'From nature and history to spirituality and eternity' is one way to translate [Beatrice's] phrase.”

Anna Chiavacci Leonardi (“'Le bianche stole': il tema della resurrezione nel Paradiso,” in Dante e la Bibbia, ed. G. Barblan [Florence: Olschki, 1988], pp. 270-71) finds it troublesome that the poet represents himself as having seen the blessed as they will be once they have their flesh again while time has not run its course though human history, that is, while there are still vacant “seats” in the Rose. It is difficult to understand why she finds this problematic: the “miracle” occurs for a single moment in 1300 and involves all those (and only those) who are then in Heaven.

45 - 45

This marks the thirty-fifth and last appearance of nouns for “justice” in the poem (giustizia and [once] iustitia); see Hollander (Dante and Paul's “five words with understanding,” Occasional Papers, No. 1, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts and Studies [Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992], at note 60).

46 - 51

Again Dante is blinded by the light, one last time before he begins seeing the higher reality of God's Heaven as it really is. The simile makes use of a fitting biblical precursor, St. Paul (see the note to verse 49).

For the blending of scientific and biblical elements in this simile, see Simon Gilson (“Medieval Science in Dante's Commedia: Past Approaches and Future Directions,” Reading Medieval Studies 27 [2001]: 56).

49 - 49

Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 49-51) was apparently the first commentator to hear the echo of the passage in the Book of Acts (22:6) that features the fairly rare verb circumfulgere. Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) also did so. Their view was shared by Poletto (comm. to vv. 46-51) and at least nine commentators in the following century, from Torraca to Bosco/Reggio. Disagreeing with such as these, who think that Dante's Latinizing verb form circunfulse (shone all around) reflects the circumfulgere of Acts 22:6 (or either of two other passages in that book), Peter Dronke (“Symbolism and Structure in Paradiso 30,” Romance Philology 43 [1989]: 37-38) insists on the greater relevance of Luke 2:9, the only other biblical passage that contains this verb, describing the shepherds keeping watch on the night of the Nativity: “And the glory of the Lord shone around them” (et claritas Dei circumfulsit eos). Dronke objects to claims for a linkage here between Dante and Saul, “the fanatical persecutor whom the circumfulgent light blinds for three days, stunning him into a change of heart.” However, what works against Dronke's hypothesis is the very context that he tries to turn against those who take the reference as being to Saul/Paul, since he fails to take into account the noticeable fact that Dante, like Paul (and unlike the shepherds) is blinded by the light. For Dante's Pauline identity here, see Kenelm Foster (The Two Dantes and Other Studies [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977], pp. 70-73); Giuseppe Di Scipio (“Dante and St. Paul: The Blinding Light and Water,” Dante Studies 98 [1980]: 151-57); and Prudence Shaw (“Paradiso XXX,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante's “Comedy,” ed. K. Foster and P. Boyde [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], p. 201): “There can be no doubt that Dante expects us at this point to think of Saul on the road to Damascus.” And see Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 14-15 [n. 34]). Christopher Kleinhenz (“Paradiso XXX,” in Dante's “Divine Comedy,” Introductory Readings III: “Paradiso,” ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis {virginiana}, 16-17, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995], pp. 458-59) is also of this opinion; on p. 468, n. 5, he refers to Dronke's hypothesis with dubiety, as does Saverio Bellomo (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 8 [1996]: 45, n. 19).

52 - 54

Beatrice explains that the blinding brightness of the Empyrean welcomes all newcomers just as Dante is welcomed now (and will be again, we realize), prepared to see God face-to-face and to flame with love for Him.

53 - 53

The word salute (greetings), ever since its teasing presence in the Vita nuova as meaning either “greeting” or “salvation” or an enigmatic union of the two, appears here, also, with ambivalent meaning.

55 - 60

The protagonist is now ready for the final stage of his journey, as is betokened by the fact that he has internalized Beatrice's words. Not all commentators agree that such is the case, claiming that Dante is uncertain as to the source of the words, even that he may have spoken them himself. But see Benvenuto (comm. to these verses) who, with whatever justification, has no doubt – the words are indeed spoken by Beatrice. It certainly seems a part of the protagonist's preparation for being rapt in his vision of God that distinctions between objective and subjective reality should begin to break down. In Paradiso XXXIII.131 he will see himself in the image of Christ.

58 - 58

Saverio Bellomo (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 8 [1996]: 56) objects to Aldo Vallone's view (“Il Canto XXX,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-'81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], p. 788) that the canto is in polemical relation to the “dolce stil novo,” p. 56.

61 - 69

The last accommodative metaphor in the part of the poem that precedes seeing face-to-face presents what Dante observes with imperfect vision in such a way as to reveal the substance hidden in these “shadowy prefaces” (verse 78).

For the river of light, and its possible dependence on a passage in the Anticlaudianus of Alanus ab Insulis (Alain de Lille), see Edward Witke (“The River of Light in the Anticlaudianus and the Divina Commedia,” Classical Review 11 [1959]: 144-56). Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], pp. 196-202) discusses the complex way in which Dante's use of metaphor morphs into absolute reality, which had first been available to his still-strengthening mind as only an approximation of itself.

61 - 61

Notice of the dependence of Dante on Apocalypse 22:1 (“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb”) apparently begins with the author of the commentary in the Codice Cassinese (comm. to this verse). Sapegno (comm. to this verse) cites, as do many others, this biblical text, but adds St. Bonventure's commentary to it: “Flumen aeternae gloriae est flumen Dei, plenum congregatione sanctorum.... Aeterna gloria dicitur fluvius, propter abundantiam; aquae vivae, propter indeficientiam; splendidus, propter munditiam; tamquam cristallum, propter transparentiam” (The river of eternal glory is the river of God, filled by the congregation of the saints.... Eternal glory is said to be flowing water because of its abundance; the water of life because it has no impurities; shining because of its clarity; like crystal because of its transparency). (The second most cited potential biblical source is Daniel 7:10.)

Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Paragone 308 [1975]: 16) reminds us that this is not a river of light, but light in the form of a river. (See Jacopo della Lana [comm. to vv. 61-69] for a similar understanding.) Jacopo says that Dante is speaking metaphorically. The word he uses is transumptive. Interestingly enough, that is the term found describing metaphoric speech in the Epistle to Cangrande (XIII.27). Hollander (Dante's Epistle to Cangrande [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993]), p. 98) gives three examples of Jacopo's using other literary terms drawn from that same passage in the epistle, but unaccountably does not mention this one. See also Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]:), p. 16 [n. 37]) for the notice that nine of the early commentators between Jacopo and John of Serravalle use that word to describe Dante's practice in this passage.

62 - 66

Seeing metaphorically, as it were (thus reversing our usual practice, which is to understand the truth of things and then express that in metaphor), the protagonist sees light in the form of a river, its two banks covered with flowers, with sparks flying up and then settling back down on the blossoms. All these elements will be metamorphosed into their realer selves, a round stadium-rose nearly filled with saved souls, with angels (“bees”) moving quickly back and forth between the souls (“flowers”) and God (the “hive”). There is, as well there should be, general agreement about the identities of these three elements, resolved from metaphor. The identity of the light in the form of a river is frequently passed over in silence. However, Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 61-63) was apparently the first to associate it with grace.

62 - 62

Exactly what adjective Dante set down (and what it means) has been a matter of some dispute, with four possible choices (fulvido, fulgido, fluvido, fluido) doing battle over the centuries. See Scartazzini (comm. to this verse), who rejects the last two, and supports most of the first commentators in choosing the first (or the second, which has, according to him, the same meaning). It means, he says, “resplendent.” Others, for instance Torraca (comm. to vv. 61-63), say that Dante's word derives from Latin fulvus (reddish-yellow).

64 - 66

For Virgil's Elysian Fields as the model for this passage, see Hermann Gmelin (Kommentar: das Paradies [Stuttgart: Klett, 1957], p. 52 - his note to Paradiso XXXI.7). For the view that this passage may, in its own right, be a veiled first presentation of that text, see Hollander (“The Invocations of the Commedia,” Yearbook of Italian Studies 3 [1976]: 240 (repr. in Studies in Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1980], p. 38). In the Aeneid (VI.703-709), the protagonist is looking at the souls of the blessed, those happy inhabitants of the Elysian Fields. (At least they probably seem happy to us when first we see them; but see the note to Par. XXXI.7-12 for Aeneas's eventual view.) In simile, they are compared to bees settling in flowers. To Dante, not one to leave a fine poetic moment only as fine as he found it, the “bees” are the angels, while the blessed are the “flowers.” This becomes clearer in the next canto (see the note to Par. XXXI.7-12), as several commentators testify. Yet it is nonetheless true, once we see the allusion, that we can carry it back with us to this passage. And then we may begin to understand that, for all the apparent discarding of Virgil that sets the last cantica apart from the first two, the Latin poet is rewarded by his greatest medieval admirer with a new life in the conclusion of his poem. See Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983]), p. 140; Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981]: 55-58); Rossi (“The Poetics of Resurrection: Virgil's Bees ([Paradiso XXXI, 1-12],” Romanic Review 80 [1989]: 306-7); and Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]:17-19), making the additional point (p. 18) that the reference thus makes this reference, along with that in verse 49 to Saul, reverse the negative version of the protagonist's typology (Inf. II.32). Where before, at least in the protagonist's own view, he failed to match up to his two precursors, now he is indeed the new Paul and the new Aeneas:


Interea videt Aeneas in valle reductaseclusum nemus et virgulta
sonantia silvae,
Lethaeumque domos placidas qui praenatat amnem.
hunc circum innumerae gentes populique volabant:
ac veluti in pratis ubi apes aestate serena
floribus insidunt variis et candida circum
lilia funduntur, strepit omnis murmure campus.

And now Aeneas sees in the valley's depths
a sheltered grove and rustling wooded brakes
and the Lethe flowing past the homes of peace.
Around it hovered numberless races, nations of souls
like bees in meadowlands on a cloudless summer day
that settle on flowers, riots of color, swarming round
the lilies' lustrous sheen, and the whole field comes alive
with a humming murmur. (Tr. R. Fagles [Viking 2006])

This is a powerful moment in which Virgil's and Dante's mimetic proclivities are shown in their warmest tones; at least in Dante's case we witness the imitation of nature engineered by another kind of imitation altogether. See Martin McLaughlin (Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995], p. 5) for the distinction between mimesis of external reality and imitation of previous literature. And for an earlier brief discussion of the distinction and of how the two techniques may be found joined, see Hollander (“Literary Consciousness and the Consciousness of Literature,” Sewanee Review 83 [1975]: 122).

66 - 66

For the ruby set in gold, it has become commonplace, after Scartazzini (comm. to this verse), to cite Aeneid X.134: “qualis gemma micat, fulvum quae dividit aurum” (glittered like a jewel set in yellow gold [tr. H.R. Fairclough]).

67 - 67

For the inebriation of the angels, Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 46-81) cites the Psalms (35:9-10 [36:8-9]): “They feast on the abundance of your house, / and you give them drink from the river of your delights. / For with you is the fountain of life; / in your light do we see light.”

68 - 68

A discussion of another Virgilian text that may stand behind Dante's Latinate phrase miro gurge (marvelous flood) is found in Albert Rossi (“Miro gurge ([Par. XXX, 68]: Virgilian Language and Textual Pattern in the River of Light,” Dante Studies 103 [1985]: 83-91), examining the parallels between Dante's river and that found in Georgics IV.348-356, the Peneüs, into whose depths Aristaeus will penetrate and see (p. 84) “the place where all the earth's streams converge” (IV.365-366).

70 - 75

Beatrice intervenes again, preparing Dante for his baptismal ingestion of the waters of Life. Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], p. 196) and (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 19) points out that Dante has experienced “baptism” in two previous scenes: Purgatorio I.121-129 and XXXIII.127-129.

76 - 81

His guide now explains what we may have already understood, that what Dante was seeing was not really what he thought it was, that it was only a “shadowy forecast” of its true nature.

For the notion that all of Paradiso up to verse 90 of this canto is best conceived as a series of accommodative metaphors, see discussion in Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], pp. 192-202); (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 19-21).

77 - 77

Resolved from metaphor, the “laughter” of the “meadows” is represented in the “flowers” that cover it, that is, the saints.

78 - 78

For the figural sense of history that stands behind this expression (umbriferi prefazi), see Emilio Pasquini (“Dante and the 'Prefaces of Truth': from 'Figure' to 'Completion,'” Italian Studies 54 [1999]: 18-25). See also Giuseppe Ledda (La guerra della lingua [Ravenna: Longo, 2002], pp. 302-3). For more on the figural dimensions of the word umbra, see the note to Paradiso I.22-24.

82 - 90

In nine lines Dante “drinks in” his “baptismal” “milk” and, as a result, has his vision transformed; he will shortly be able to see the realities of Heaven as they truly are. This simile is the opening gesture in staging his identity as newborn “babe,” culminating in Paradiso XXXIII.106-108.

Peter Hainsworth (“Dante's Farewell to Politics,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], p. 163) translates the first tercet: “There is no little child who thrusts so instantly with his face towards the milk, if he awakens after being made late by a habit he has got into....” And see Scartazzini (comm. to verse 82), citing I Peter 2:2: “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation.”

85 - 89

The conclusion of this simile is effortful indeed: Dante “drinks” his “baptism” with his eyelids and thus moves his eyesight to the next level of seeing.

90 - 90

In a single verse the meaning of Dante's changed “eyesight” is manifest: For him time has become eternity; history has become its own fulfillment in revelation. His previous linear sense of things has moved to a new dimension, the circularity of perfection. This new vision, unlike that of some, maintains its relation to the things of the world, which now for the first time may be really understood. See Paradiso XXXIII.88-90.

91 - 96

The first moment of face-to-face seeing is presented with this simile. The protagonist now perceives the “flowers” as the saints they are, the “sparks” as angels. While no one said so for centuries, the only apparent “source” for this image of unmasking was a festive occasion, a masked ball of some kind. Poletto (comm. to vv. 91-96) somewhat uneasily defends the poet's choice of material; however, the noun feste (lit., “festivals,” or “celebrations”) in verse 94 at least seems to help establish a frame of reference. Nonetheless, Fallani (comm. to vv. 91-93) suggested that the reference is to masked actors. A potential literary source for this image has apparently never been suggested. It is probably fair to say that most readers feel puzzled as to the poet's motivation at such an important moment.

For another sort of unmasking, in which the protagonist again has his initial vision yield to a greater reality, see the note to Paradiso XXXIII.28-33.

95 - 99

On identical rhymes, see Tibor Wlassics (Dante narratore [Florence: Olschki, 1975], p. 121). He points out that this repetition of vidi (I saw) underlines the claim for a poetics based in seeing and making seen. As several commentators have observed (apparently the first was Scartazzini [comm. to vv. 97-99]), aside from the four occurrences of the identical rhymes of “Cristo” (see the note to Par. XII.71-75), there are only two other cases of triple identical rhymes in the poem, the bitterly ironic repetition of “per ammenda” in Purgatorio XX.65-69 and the occurrences of “vidi” here.

Responding to the word's presence in verse 61, Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001), p. 152, points to the repetitive pattern of the same form, vidi, in John's Apocalypse (four times in Apoc. 5.1-11). Dante uses that form seven times in all in this canto, the most of any canto in the cantica (Par. XVIII is the nearest challenger, with six uses; however, Inferno IV, with its list of forty virtuous pagans whom the protagonist saw in the Limbus, has fully eleven appearances of vidi; and in Purgatorio XXXII, there are eight. There are 167 occurrences of this form of the verb vedere in the poem, all but fourteen of them spoken by the poet; exceptions include Virgil [at Inf. IV.53, VIII.25, and XXIX.25], the protagonist [at Inf. XXIV.129], and several souls to whom Dante listens [Inf. XXVI.103, XXVII.79, XXVIII.71, XXXII.116; Par. XIII.136; XV.115; XVI.88, 91, 109].) Vidi is one of Dante's favorite locutions, reflecting his strategic insistence on the reality of his experience. Cf. Scott (“Canto XXXI,” in Lectura Dantis Turicensis: Paradiso, ed. Georges Güntert and Michelangelo Picone [Florence: Cesati, 2002], p. 481), pointing out that the nominal form occhi is the substantive most frequently found in the poem, occurring 213 times (263 if we include the singular, occhio, nearly twice the total of the second-most-used noun, mondo [143 occurrences]).

95 - 95

The fiori (flowers) are the saved souls, the faville (sparks) are the angels, as is commonly agreed (see the note to vv. 62-66). We see them again in the next canto, verses 7-9, the sparks now transformed, in simile, into bees. Once we see that, we can understand that these first “real substances,” non-contingent and sempiternal, that we see “face-to-face” in the entire poem have models in a scene in the Aeneid (VI.703-708 [see the note to vv. 64-66]).

97 - 99

This is the eighth and penultimate invocation in the poem (see the note to Inf. II.7-9), addressing God's reflected light, possibly his grace (the ninth and final invocation will be addressed to God as luce, the source of light, in Par. XXXIII.67).

100 - 102

The first line of this tercet marks a borderline as sharply etched as that, involving similar stylistic traits, separating lower from upper Hell (Inf. XVIII.1): “Luogo è in inferno detto Malebolge” (There is a place in Hell called Malebolge). Here the light of grace that makes God visible to once mortal souls introduces the final (and visionary) part of the poem. Singleton (comm. to this tercet) argues that the number 100 here (in a canto numbered 30) is not accidentally the locus of “the downstreaming light of God in terms that define it specifically as the light of glory.”

100 - 100

There is a certain amount of indecision in the commentaries as to whether this lume is reflected light rather than its source (which would be luce). Some argue that it is the Holy Spirit, others Jesus as Logos, still others some form of grace. For this last, see Carroll (comm. to vv. 100-123): “It will be noticed that I speak of this central circular sea as lumen gratiae, for it is still the light of grace which once flowed in form of a river; but that light of grace has now reached its perfect form of eternity, the lumen gloriae. The change of the river into the circular sea is Dante's symbolic way of stating that the grace by which a soul is saved and strengthened to persevere to the end of the earthly life, is not something different in kind from the glory to which it leads. According to Aquinas, 'grace is nothing else than a certain beginning of glory in us' [ST II-II, q. 24, a. 3: 'Gratia et gloria ad idem genus referuntur; quia gratia nihil est aliud quam quaedam inchoatio gloriae in nobis'], and the light of glory is simply the perfected form of the grace of earth [ST I-II, q. 111, a. 3]. Aquinas is here laying down the distinction between prevenient and subsequent grace.” Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 25 [n. 63]) claims that, among the first commentators, only Benvenuto (comm. to Par. VII.1-6) discusses the lumen gloriae (even if elsewhere); but see his remarks on this passage (vv. 100-102) and those of his student, John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 100-105). Hollander does go on (correctly) to credit Scartazzini (comm.to vv. 115-117) as being the first of the moderns to do so.

103 - 108

The enormous size of the Rose may come as something of a surprise. Dante never tells us the number of places that are found there, whether it is the precise number (144,000) offered in the Apocalypse (see the note to Par. XXXI.115-117), or the approximate number on the basis of the “replacement value” of the fallen angels (see the note to Par. XXIX.50), or still another figure. There are some questions that we are simply not encouraged to pose.

The disc of the Sun, even populated by souls on thrones with first-class legroom, would hold more saints than are imaginable, millions of millions. See Poletto (comm. to vv. 100-105) for discussion of what Dante knew about such measurements, including that of the diameter of the Sun, 37,750 miles according to Convivio IV.viii.7.

The Rose is made up of a beam of light (the Godhead) reflected upward from the convex surface of the Primum Mobile, which rotates because of its love for that beam and spreads its influence through the celestial spheres beneath it.

This passage may help in understanding the difficult text at Paradiso XXVIII.13-15 (see the note thereto). There the poet, in the Primum Mobile, has his first vision of the Godhead and the surrounding spheres of angels. Exactly where he sees them is a matter in dispute. This passage might help establish that they are here (in the Empyrean) but are seen down there, on the surface of the Crystalline Sphere, whence they, along with the Rose, are also reflected back up here.

For the shape of the Rose as being neither a cylinder nor a cone, but hemispheric, see Richard Kay (“Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of God,” Speculum 78 [2003], pp. 46-48).

109 - 114

In the vehicle of this simile, the stadium in which the saints are seated is “personified” as a hillside that can look down to its foot and see itself, alive with spring (see the primavera of verse 63), reflected back up to its gaze. The tenor presents the seeing hill's counterpart, the protagonist, as looking up (not down), and seeing, not himself, but all the blessed as reflections of the beam, reaching upward a thousandfold. (We are aware that Dante frequently uses this number as a synonym for an uncountable multitude; see at least the next [and last] time he does so, Par. XXXI.131.)

115 - 117

Daniello (comm. to this tercet) wonders, if the circumference of the lowest row in the Rose is greater than the circumference of the sphere that holds the Sun (see the note to vv. 103-108), how great must be the circumference of the highest row, at least one thousand rows higher (and wider by a factor of at least one thousand times a probably constant yet indeterminate measurement).

117 - 117

Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 109-117) says that the rows of the Rose “are like those in the arena di Verona.” He is followed by two modern commentators, Trucchi (comm. to vv. 118-123) and Sapegno (comm. to vv. 112-113). Trucchi, however, prefers the notion of Gioachino Brognoligo that the structure Dante has in mind is the Colosseum at Rome. Both Dante's more recent and more certain visit to the Arena and its greater intimacy as a built space give the edge to Verona.

Peter Dronke (“Symbolism and Structure in Paradiso 30,” Romance Philology 43 [1989]: 41-42) points out that, in the early thirteenth century, one Petrus Capuanus had written a treatise, De rosa, which treats the red rose (martyrs), the white rose (Mary), and the red and white rose (Christ). This last puts forth leaves that include personages of both Testaments. Dronke is not so much claiming influence (although he leaves that possibility open) as similarity, an “indication of the intellectual development of which the imagery of the rose was capable already a century before the Commedia” (p. 42).

118 - 123

For a concise statement of the “resemblant difference” of the Empyrean, its way of not relating and yet totally relating to the literally underlying realms of the created universe, see Christian Moevs (The Metaphysics of Dante's “Comedy” [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 82): “The Empyrean is out of space-time, untouched by physical law; it is a dimensionless point, in which all is immediately present, a 'space' of consciousness, in which the 'sight' of awareness 'takes' (prendeva) as itself all it sees, all that exists.”

As we will discover, Dante is allowed to see with a new sense of dimension, which abrogates spatial perspective and makes all things equidistant one from another (see Par. XXXI.73-78). This passage prepares for that one, and both offer further evidence of the poet's extraordinarily vivid and inventive scientific imagination.

124 - 129

Ever since Jacopo della Lana, the yellow has been understood as the center of the Rose (the reader should remember that Dante is not talking about cultivated roses but wild ones, with their flatter profile). Beatrice and Dante are standing at the midpoint of the Rose when she directs him to look up and see the citizenry of the City of God.

As has been suggested (see the note to verse 117), Dante may have found a model for the Rose in the Arena di Verona. The reader is in fact urged to visit that place, to find a way to walk, without looking up, into the very center of its floor, and then to experience the sight of the inner tiers of the amphitheater. And it is just possible that he or she then will share the experience that Dante had there some seven hundred years ago. It really looks like the model for the Rose, vast yet intimate.

124 - 124

For the notion that Dante's Rose is a kind of counterimage to the flower plucked at the end of the Roman de la Rose, with its evident reference to the female pudenda, see Prudence Shaw (“Paradiso XXX,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante's “Comedy,” ed. K. Foster and P. Boyde [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], pp. 209-10). Shaw, who accepts Contini's argument for attributing the Fiore, the sonnet sequence based on the Roman, to Dante, consequently argues that this passage is a “case of the mature poet making amends for the aberrations of his youthful self” (p. 210). (For discussion of the status of these questions, Dante's knowledge of the Roman and his authorship of the Fiore, see the note to Par. II.59-60.) Among the surprisingly few commentators to express an opinion on this matter (one that no one considers unimportant), Mestica (comm. to vv. 115-123) raises the possibility that Dante had read it (and that he had written the Fiore). Giacalone (comm. to vv. 124-129) cites Paolo Savj Lopez (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” in Letture dantesche. III. “Paradiso,” ed. G. Getto [Florence: Sansoni, 1964], pp. 625-38), who thinks that Dante would have made allowances for the profane love championed by the Roman and thus seen it as a worthy precursor.

For the thesis that Dante's Rose is modeled on the Charter of the Templars (De laude novae militiae) by St. Bernard, with its 13 rubrics corresponding to the 13 paliers of the Rose (see her p. 3), see Colette de Callata,y-van der Mersch (La Rose de Jérusalem [Peeters: Louvain, 2001]). She believes that this design (with its dependence on the number thirteen) serves as the matrix for Dante's entire poem.

125 - 125

The Latinism redole (exhales fragrance) is traced to Aeneid I.436, first by Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 124-126).

126 - 126

For this “springtime” sense of the verb vernare, see the note to Paradiso XXVIII.118. The verb usually means “to spend the winter” (see Inf. XXXIII.135 and Purg. XXIV.64).

129 - 129

For the phrase bianche stole (white robes), see its previous use at Paradiso XXV.95, where it clearly signifies the bodies to be returned at the general resurrection. Beatrice has promised Dante that this is the way the saved will seem to him, even though they are not yet resurrected, and so the phrase here allows us to understand that this is indeed how they appear, in the flesh.

For an overview of the history and significance of the concept of resurrection of the flesh in the Western Church (with some consideration of Dante), see Caroline Walker Bynum (The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity 200-1336 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1995]). For a close look at the importance of the resurrected body, in several writers preceding Dante and (primarily) in the Commedia, see Manuele Gragnolati (Experiencing the Afterlife [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005]. For Dante's sense of this subject, see also Rachel Jacoff (“Dante and the Legend(s) of St. John,” Dante Studies 117 [1999]: 45-57 and “'Our Bodies, Our Selves': The Body in the Commedia,” in Sparks and Seeds: Medieval Literature and Its Afterlife [Essays in Honor of John Freccero], ed. Dana E. Stewart and Alison Cornish [Turnhout: Brepols, 2000], pp. 119-37).

At least since reading Paradiso XIV.61-66 (the passage shows the first two groups, the twenty-four contemplatives, who have shown themselves to Dante and Beatrice in the heaven of the Sun, all longing for their own resurrected flesh as well for their saved relatives to regain their own), we have been aware that there is something missing in the beatific life. Against more usual views, Dante presents the afterlife of those currently in Paradise as being less than perfect (and less than perfected) because, against the orthodox notion that blessedness itself is the ultimate and eternal reward, there is, according to Dante, one thing that is felt as currently lacking: the resurrection of the flesh. Taught by Jesus (e.g., Luke 14:14) and insisted on by St. Paul, that future event is promised to all the saved. However, the early medieval view (e.g., that of Augustine) was, unsurprisingly, that once with God, the condition of the soul in a blessed and blissful member of the Church Triumphant was already perfected, both in what it knew and what it desired. The general resurrection, promised by St. Paul (most extensively in I Corinthians 15:35-55), of course awaited that soul, but the admixture of corporality was only “decorative,” at least in a sense. Paul tackles that issue with what seems a curiously defensive insistence, against pagan (and Christian?) mockers (see Acts 17:18 and 17:32), that the saved will indeed regain their own flesh in the long passage in I Corinthians.

Only months more than ten years after Dante's death in 1321, his old nemesis, Pope John XXII, preached a series of sermons of which a central point was that, until the soul was reclad in its flesh, it would not see God, setting off a horrified reaction within the Church, the eventual result of which was that the next pope, Benedict XII, restored the earlier disposition of the matter, namely, that the saved soul immediately experiences both the highest bliss in and the fullest knowledge of God of which it is capable.

Dante might have been amused to find that John XXII, whom he despised (see the note to Par. XXVII.136-138), was in disagreement with him on this important and divisive issue as well as on more pressing “political” concerns.

130 - 148

For a global discussion of this final passage, see Peter Hainsworth (“Dante's Farewell to Politics,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], pp. 152-69), arguing that it not only fails to destroy the harmony or unity of this canto (a position shared by many – see p. 154n. for a concise bibliography of the question), but that it is part of its integrity. See the similar opinion of Fernando Salsano (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 232-34) and of Hollander (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 31-33).

For an attempt to “save” this passage despite itself, see Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses), who concede that Dante probably should not have turned aside from contemplating things eternal and divine for such a feverish concern with mere contingency, compounding that “fault” by putting this earth-centered speech in the mouth of holy Beatrice, and as her last utterance at that. One can hear awareness of centuries of complaint behind their words. To be just, one must admit that this concern with earthly things seems inconsistent with the usual sort of piety. No one ever said (or should have) that Dante is “usual” in any respect at all.

Those twentieth-century Dantists who thought that Mussolini (or Hitler) was the veltro (Inf. I.101) offer unwitting testimony in this debate. Their political naïveté reveals exactly how much the poem does offer itself as prophetic of great events to come in this world. Beatrice's two related utterances, at the conclusions of Canto XXVII and here, both speak of events to come in the near future of Dante's Italy, and both are intensely political in nature. Perhaps we will one day learn that Dante's political vision is part and parcel of his religious sense. For an appreciation of this dimension of his thought, see Lino Pertile (“Dante Looks Forward and Back: Political Allegory in the Epistles,” Dante Studies 115 [1997]: 1-17 and La puttana e il gigante: Dal Cantico dei Cantici al Paradiso Terrestre di Dante [Ravenna: Longo, 1998], passim).

130 - 132

There are only two possible considerations of the significance of the few places left in the Rose: Either there are very few good people alive (or who will be born before the end of time), or the end is coming faster than we think. That we should combine these two responses seems prudent. However, for Dante's possible sense that there are some 1500 years left to run in history, see the note to Paradiso IX.40.

133 - 138

H.T. Silverstein (“The Throne of the Emperor Henry in Dante's Paradise and the Mediaeval Conception of Christian Kingship,” Harvard Theological Review 32 [1939]: 115-29) deals with the surprise that most readers exhibit at the empty throne of the emperor being the first object that the protagonist sees in the Empyrean by reminding us of the far more ample medieval tradition that displayed vacant seats in heaven awaiting “humble friars and simple monks” (pp. 116-17) rather than emperors. He thus sees the salvation of Henry VII not in terms of his imperial mission (failed as it was), but as an “accolade of kingly righteousness” (p. 129), showing that, in passages in the Gospels and one in the Vision of Tundale (see p. 124 and n. 19), Dante had available testimony to the personal justness of those kings who, rather than merely ruling them, truly served their people. (He might have referred to Dante's praise of William the Good; see the note on Par. XX.61-66.) However, it is probably a mistake to accept, as Silverstein does (p. 128), the notion that, with Henry's failure to establish lasting imperial rule in Italy “died all of Dante's hope on earth.” For a view, apparently shaped in part by Silverstein's, that Dante had essentially given up his hopes for an imperial resurgence because of the derelictions of the fourteenth-century papacy, see Edward Peters (“The Failure of Church and Empire: Paradiso 30,” Mediaeval Studies 34 [1972]: 326-35), who goes farther than Silverstein in seeing Dante as having modified his imperial hopes. But see Jacques Goudet (“La 'parte per se stesso' e l'impegno politico di Dante,” Nuove letture dantesche, vol. VII [Florence: Le Monnier, 1974], pp. 289-316) and Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981], pp. 43-50 - with a rejoinder to Peters on p. 49) for a more convincing sense of Dante's continuing imperial hopes.

For Dante's fifth Epistula (addressed to the princes and peoples of Italy) as rechanneling biblical and liturgical reflections of Christ's majesty onto Henry VII, see Paola Rigo (“Tempo liturgico nell'epistola ai Principi e ai Popoli d'Italia,” in her Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante [Florence: Olschki, 1994], pp. 33-44).

For Henry VII as the seventh divinely selected emperor, see the last paragraph of the note to Paradiso VI.82-91.

134 - 134

Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse) point out that it is difficult to be certain just what Dante means. Is the crown (a) leaning against the throne? (b) a part of the design on its back? (c) suspended over it? This reader confesses that he has always assumed the third option was the right one.

135 - 135

The word nozze (wedding feast) drew Mattalia's attention (comm. to this verse) to Dante's Epistle to the Italian Princes (Epist. V.5): “Rejoice, therefore, O Italy, thou that art now an object of pity even to the Saracens, for soon shalt thou be the envy of the whole world, seeing that thy bridegroom, the comfort of the nations, and the glory of thy people, even the most clement Henry, Elect of God and Augustus and Caesar, is hastening to the wedding (ad nuptias properat)” (tr. P. Toynbee). This attribution is also found in Albert Rossi (“A l'ultimo suo: Paradiso XXX and Its Virgilian Context,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History [University of British Columbia] 4 [1981], p. 50).

136 - 136

The adjective agosta (imperial) still honors Henry's “Augustan” mission, which was to unite the Italians into a nation, as Aeneas had set out to do. Augustus had presided over its flowering, bringing the world to peace under Rome's authority.

137 - 137

For Henry's first naming, see Paradiso XVII.82, where his betrayal by Pope Clement is clearly referred to. This second (and final) reference to him by name places his coming as “Augustus” in the future, thus reflecting Dante's willed optimism that the future harbors a “new Henry” even after this one has failed.

138 - 138

See Peter Hainsworth (“Dante's Farewell to Politics,” in Dante and Governance, ed. John Woodhouse [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], p. 160) on the two main and opposing senses of the notion of “disposition” in Dante (the verb disporre in various forms). The word often refers to human choices (sometimes mistaken ones), but also to divine election. Here, Hainsworth argues, that Italy was not “disposed” when she should have been does not mean that she will not welcome her next opportunity to embrace a rightful ruler.

139 - 141

Florence as an ill-willed baby boy, who turns from his nurse's breast even as he feels the pangs of hunger, is reminiscent of the two good young boys who will turn bad quickly enough in Paradiso XXVII.130-135. The political context and the word cupidigia are other common elements in the two passages.

139 - 139

See, for a different tonality but similar formulations, Dante's earlier utterance, issued from exile, addressed to his fellow citizens when they were resisting the efforts of Henry VII to take control of Florence (Epistula VI.22): “Nec advertitis dominantem cupidinem, quia ceci estis, venenoso susurrio blandientem, minis frustatoriis cohibentem, nec non captivantem vos in lege peccati, ac sacratissimis legibus que iustitie naturalis imitantur ymaginem, parere vetantem; observantia quarum, si leta, si libera, non tantum non servitus esse probatur, quin ymo perspicaciter intuenti liquet ut est ipsa summa libertas” (Nor are ye ware in your blindness of the overmastering greed which beguiles you with venomous whispers, and with cheating threats constrains you, yea, and has brought you into captivity to the law of sin, and forbidden you to obey the most sacred laws; those laws made in the likeness of natural justice, the observance whereof, if it be joyous, if it be free, is not only no servitude, but to him who observes with understanding is manifestly in itself the most perfect liberty – tr. P. Toynbee [italics added]). This passage was first adduced by Scartazzini (comm. to verse 139), and then by any number of later commentators, none of whom give him credit for having preceded them (see Hollander [“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 {1988 [1993]}: 32n.]).

142 - 148

This concluding passage, with its rancor against the ecclesiastical enemies of the imperial idea, has disturbed many, who find it entirely inappropriate as Beatrice's last utterance in a theologically determined poem. One must admit that it may seem out of place in a Christian poem, with its necessary message of the unimportance of the things of the world coupled with Jesus' insistence that we forgive our enemies. Such a sensible view, however, disregards the thoroughgoing political concern of the poem and does not deal with Dante's stubborn insistence on the rectitude of his vision of the world order (see Hollander [“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 {1988 [1993]}: 32-33]). See, for an example of a different view, Aldo Vallone (“Il Canto XXX,” in “Paradiso”: Letture degli anni 1979-'81, ed. S. Zennaro [Rome: Bonacci, 1989], p. 801), speaking of “un certo pessimissmo storico” in Beatrice's last words.

The thirtieth cantos of the final cantiche are united, as Claudio Varese noted (“Il canto trentesimo del Paradiso,” in his Pascoli politico, Tasso e altri saggi [Milan: Feltrinelli, 1961 {1953}], p. 25), in at least two major respects: They are cantos of departure for both beloved guides; they also are both “cantos of Beatrice,” the first of arrival, the second of return (to the point of her departure, her seat in Heaven, as described in Inferno II.71, 101-102). For more on the links between these two cantos, see Hollander (Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella “Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1983], pp. 140-45; (“Paradiso XXX,” Studi Danteschi 60 [1988 {1993}]: 30-32); and Saverio Bellomo (“Il canto XXX del Paradiso,” L'Alighieri 8 [1996]: 50).

If we can remember our first reading of the poem, we will perhaps recall our eventual and retrospective surprise upon discovering that these were the last words spoken by Beatrice in the Divine Comedy. We, like the protagonist, have gotten used to her guidance. Unlike Virgil's departure, which is prepared for even as he enters the poem (Inf. I.121-126), Beatrice's departure is a total surprise (see the note to Par. XXXI.102).

142 - 144

This tercet undoubtedly is a last nasty glance at Pope Clement V, who made a show of welcoming Henry VII to Italy but then worked assiduously behind the scenes to defeat the emperor's efforts to unite her cities under his rule (see the note to Par. XVII.82-84).

145 - 146

Henry died 24 August 1313; Clement, 20 April 1314, soon enough after Henry for Dante to consider his death God's punishment for his treacherous opposition to the emperor and to his cause - even if Clement had been seriously ill a very long time. See the note to Inferno XIX.79-87.

147 - 147

Simon Magus gave the “naming opportunity” to Dante for the third of the Malebolge (see Inf. XXIX.1), where the simoniac popes and other clerics who traded in the goods and services of the Church are found, and where Dante so memorably is mistaken by Pope Nicholas III for Pope Boniface VIII (Inf. XIX.53).

148 - 148

The phrase “that fellow from Anagni” is Dante's own version of the false and slangy familiarity of the corrupt clergy (see the note to Par. XVIII.130-136). The reference, of course, is to Pope Boniface VIII, seen as forced deeper into his hole (that of the simoniac popes) by the advent of Clement, who now will be the topmost, and thus able to wave his burning soles about in Hell. Dante didn't know it, but Clement's time would exceed that of Boniface, who waved his feet from 1303-1314. In the unwritten continuation of this poem, Clement would have twenty years in the relatively open air of the bolgia, since John XXII did not die until 1334 (surely Dante felt he was destined for eternal damnation, and would have continued to do so, especially had he learned of John's unenlightened views on the resurrection of the flesh [see the note to verse 129]). Should we be so inclined, we might add him to Dante's total of damned popes with something like certainty (see the note to Inf. VII.46-48).