This three-part opening simile is not so much difficult as it is puzzling. The residue of the confusion resulting from what he has seen and heard in the previous canto, it prepares the ground for the protagonist's two-pronged question for Beatrice about human liability. (1) How can a person not be guilty of a sin who wills to live the good life but somehow comes up short of doing so? (2) Where will this kind of saved soul be located in the afterlife? While readers are probably eventually able to make sense of the relationship between the tenor and the vehicle(s) of the simile, not a few nonetheless wonder about Dante's practice here. To deal with the tenor first, the prose sense of what is at stake is simple. The protagonist is so eager to have answers to both his questions (and so afraid of what the answers might be) that he simply cannot decide which one to ask first and, instead of speaking, he is silent (vv. 7-9). As for the vehicles, to some only the first seems necessary, while the second may initially seem otiose, and the third redundant, since it only seems to repeat the substance of the first.

Scartazzini (comm. to verse 6) cites Biagioli's citation of a similar passage in Michel de Montaigne, Essais II.14, “Comme nostre esprit s'empesche soy-mesmes”: “C'est une plaisante imagination de concevoir un esprit balancé justement entre deux pareilles envyes. Car il est indubitable qu'il ne prendra jamais party, d'autant que l'application et le choix porte inequalité de pris; et qui nous logeroit entre la bouteille et le jambon, avec egal appetit de boire et de menger, il n'y auroit sans doute remede que de mourir de soif et de fain” (ed. M. Rat).

Bruno Nardi (Nel mondo di Dante [Rome: Edizioni di “Storia e Letteratura”], 1944, pp. 301-3), has argued that the widespread notion that these lines are a recasting of Buridan's famed paradox (starving donkey between two equally distant piles of straw) should be rejected. As Nardi and others have shown, the more certain source lies in the Summa theologica (I-II, q. 13, a. 6): “If any two things are absolutely equal, a man is not moved to the one more than to the other; just as a starving man, if he has food equally appetizing in different directions and at an equal distance, is not moved to the one more than to the other” (English text as found in Carroll's commentary to vv. 1-9). Further, and as Fallani (in his comm. to these verses) points out, Buridan's ass was posterior to Dante's Paradiso. A rare early commentator who finds a source for this material locates it in Thomas's usual source, Aristotle (De caelo II.xiii.28); see Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 1-12). Beginning with Lombardi (comm. to this tercet) and continuing into the twentieth century, one finds insistence on Thomas as source, neglecting Aristotle (Tommaseo, Andreoli, Scartazzini, Poletto, and Carroll, among others. The first commentators to put the two together, as is in our day fairly commonplace (e.g., Mattalia, Singleton) were apparently Tozer in 1901 and Torraca in 1905, both in response to this tercet. However, if one reads further in Thomas's passage, it is striking, as Sapegno points out (comm. to vv. 1-9), citing Nardi (pp. 297-303), that Thomas has proposed this paradox only to refute its relationship to practical reality – as might any sensible person. Zeno's arrow and Buridan's ass (and Thomas's starving man, as Thomas himself insists) are the sort of logically developed paradoxes that “philosophers” enjoy creating and that poets generally enjoy mocking. Here Thomas, Dante's “philosopher,” rejects philosophical nonsense while Dante, our poet, seems to sponsor it.

The second vehicle of the simile seems, from what one may find in the commentary tradition, not to have a discernible source anywhere. If that is true, what we have here is pure Dantean invention, a post-Scholastic paradox added to Thomas's. Whereas in the first tercet Dante the questioner is likened to a hungry man unable to decide between two equally tempting foods (for so long a time that he will, undirected by external agency, die), in these two lines he becomes the potential victim of his lupine questions, unable to decide which one to run from, since each looks equally fierce. While this part of the extended comparison surely seems askew, given the fact that Dante must choose which question to ask rather than which to avoid, the passage does impart something that will later be brought back into play (at verse 27): these questions are potentially destructive, and thus like (or at least not unlike) ravening wolves. And so, after initial puzzlement, a reader must admit that the apparently otiose comparison does pay its passage in the greater scheme. Giuliana Angiolillo (“Canto IV,” in Lectura Dantis Neapolitana: “Paradiso,” ed. P. Giannantonio [Naples: Loffredo, 2000 {1986}], pp. 59-72) complains about the “incongruity” of this comparison, since it portrays immobility, not indecision; passivity, not aggression. But this is to miss Dante's point: Solutions of his two doubts seem equally attractive and, potentially at least, the concerns that give rise to each of them are equally destructive. For one hypothesis relating to Dante's own broken vow, which may account for the poet's “overkill” in this simile, offering a sense of what makes the questions both attractive and dangerous, see the second paragraph of the note to verses 139-142.

While in the actual world two deer are capable of accomplishing more damage to a single dog than Dante's text allows, it is clear that the third vehicle of the simile displays exactly the same relationship as the first: hungry Dante between two equally tempting viands. Here some commentators do suggest a source (see Bosco/Reggio on this verse: Ovid [Metam. V.164-167], first suggested by Pietro di Dante and then by Daniello, and/or possibly, if Mattalia is correct, Virgil [Georg. III.539-540], as was first suggested by the author of the Codice cassinese). Angiolillo (“Canto IV,” in Lectura Dantis Neapolitana: “Paradiso,” ed. P. Giannantonio [Naples: Loffredo, 2000 {1986}], pp. 59-72) proposes the passage from Ovid, and then adds another from Seneca's drama Thyestes, lines 707-711.

Whatever the source, what seems puzzling is the fact that our usually orderly and rigorous poet (or so we like to conceive him) here seems to have allowed himself an unnecessary repetition. It seems fair to say that, while detractors of the poet's inclusion of the second piece of business (see the note to vv. 4-5) have failed to take the point behind it, the several expressions of discomfort with the third part of the simile have not had sufficient response. However, experience teaches that Dante knows his business far better than we; if we fail to fathom his purposes, that does not necessarily require that he was without them. A possible solution is to suggest that the three-part simile mirrors the process of the protagonist's actual inner thoughts, moving from philosophical eagerness to fearful worry and then back to the first eagerness.

The simile puts into parallel Beatrice (placating Dante's anxiety) and Daniel (stilling Nebuchadnezzar's wrath). It thus also necessarily puts into parallel Dante and Nebuchadnezzar, a relation that at first seems to make no sense at all. The poet has already visited this text in the Bible (the second book of the prophet Daniel), the king's dream and the prophet's interpretation of it (see Inf. XIV.94-111 for Dante's version of that dream, embodied in the representation of the veglio di Creta). (For a study of the Florentine's use of the Book of Daniel, see Pézard (“Daniel et Dante ou les vengeances de Dieu,” Studi Danteschi 50 [1973]: 1-96). Here he fastens on its perhaps strangest aspect: the new king's desire to kill all the wise men in his kingdom of Babylon who could neither bring his forgotten dream back to mind nor then interpret it – about as unseemly a royal prerogative as anyone has ever sought to enjoy. Thus it seems natural to wonder in what way(s) Dante may possibly be conceived of as resembling the wrathful king of Babylon. The entire commentary tradition observes only a single link: Nebuchadnezzar's displeasure and Dante's puzzlement are both finally relieved by (divinely inspired – see Trucchi [comm. to vv. 13-15]) external intervention on the part of Daniel, in the first case, of Beatrice, in the second. However, saying that is akin to associating Joseph Stalin with Mother Teresa on the grounds that both were among the most famous people of their times. Why should Dante have cast himself as the tyrannical Babylonian ruler? That is a question that has stirred only the shorelines of the ponds of commentaries and has never had an answer. If one looks in the Epistle to Cangrande (77-82), however, one finds a gloss to Paradiso I.4-9 that is germane here. And apparently, in any discussion of this passage, only G.R. Sarolli, in his entry “Nabuccodonosor” (ED IV [1973]), has noted the striking similarity in the two texts, going on to argue that this similarity serves as a further proof of the authenticity of the epistle. In that passage Dante explains that his forgetting of his experience of the Empyrean (because he was lifted beyond normal human experience and could not retain his vision) has some egregious precursors: St. Paul, three of Jesus' disciples, Ezechiel (their visionary capacity certified by the testimony of Richard of St. Victor, St. Bernard, and St. Augustine); and then he turns to his own unworthiness to be included in such company (if not hesitating to insist that he had been the recipient of such exalted vision): “But if on account of the sinfulness of the speaker [Dante himself, we want to remember] they should cry out against his claim to have reached such a height of exaltation, let them read Daniel, where they will find that even Nebuchadnezzar by divine permission beheld certain things as a warning to sinners, and straightway forgot them” (81 – tr. P. Toynbee). Dante, like the Babylonian king, has had a vision that was God-given, only to forget it. And now he is, Nebuchadnezzar-like, distraught; Beatrice, like the Hebrew prophet, restores his calm. Thus the typological equation here is not idle; Dante is the new Nebuchadnezzar in that both he and the wrathful king, far from being holy men (indeed both were sinners), had access to visionary experience of God, only to forget their vision. The king enters this perhaps unusual history, that of forgetting a divine revelation on the part of those who were less than morally worthy, as “the first forgettor”; Dante, as the second (see Hollander,“Paradiso 4.14: Dante as Nebuchadnezzar?” Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America [May 2005]).

We are now reminded that all the fuss (vv. 1-12) over Dante's paralyzed will, rendering him unable to choose which question to ask, was eventually in vain, since Beatrice can read his thoughts in God anyway. The poem, of course, needs to hold our attention and thus make Dante's choices important, even when they are technically unnecessary. His development, as sinner gradually being made worthy of the visionary experience of God and thus of salvation itself, is the major strand of the narrative of the cantica. And thus the poet may at times allow himself a certain latitude with the rules of his own game, making his work the richer for it.

Beatrice addresses the nature of Dante's questions. The first concerns the apparent fact that even a person who never ceases willing the good, and who ceases doing good only by virtue of the force of others, is in some way responsible for that failure. The second, zeroing in on a problem that we frequently encountered throughout the previous canto (see the note to Par. III.29-30), concerns the ultimate abode of the blessed: whether or not they return to dwell forever in the stars that most shaped their personalities. This is the more pernicious of these two dangerous questions and will thus be addressed first, if at lesser length, in vv. 28-63 (Beatrice's answer to the first question will be found at vv. 64-114).

Beatrice makes the need to deal with Dante's first question seem even more pressing by revealing that for him it has a personal interest: It is he who wonders if his own merit might be diminished through no fault of his own.

Beatrice refers to Plato's teaching as it is found in his Timaeus. See the note to vv. 49-54. Torraca, in his comment to this verse, the phrase “secondo la sentenza di Platone,” cites Thomas's Summa contra Gentiles (II.83), “secundum Platonis sententiam.” Bosco/Reggio posit the possibility that, if Dante did not know the text of the Timaeus directly, he might have been acquainted with key portions of it through St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Albertus Magnus, Cicero, or Macrobius. This is the position, assumed tentatively, by most students of the question; some, however, take it that Dante did have direct knowledge of at least this one Platonic text. For Dante's knowledge of Plato in general and the Timaeus in particular, see Edward Moore (Studies in Dante, First Series: Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante [Oxford: Clarendon, 1969 {1896}], pp. 156-64). The great British Dantist makes a sound case for Dante's direct acquaintance with Chalcidius's text of the Timaeus (41 D and E, 42 B, p. 157) in the relevant passages of this canto and Convivio IV.xxi.2 and II.xiii.5, although on one occasion he admits to harboring a reasonable doubt in that respect, offering a near disclaimer in the clause “in whatever form it found its way to Dante” (p. 160). (Moore also [p. 157] refers to a lost commentary on Plato's dialogue with Timaeus by Thomas Aquinas that Ozanam refers to [in Dante et la philosophie Catholique, p. 197], and wonders whether this was one of his sources.) Margherita de Bonfils Templer (“Genesi di un'allegoria,” Dante Studies 105 [1987]: 79-94), building on her previous investigations (see p. 90, n. 5 for these), makes her case for Dante's use of the glosses to the Timaeus of Guillaume de Conches. And see her study of Platonic gnoseology in Convivio (“Il dantesco amoroso uso di Sapienza: sue radici platoniche,” Stanford Italian Review 7 [1987]: 5-27). More recently, see Giuliana Carugati's investigation (“Retorica amorosa e verità in Dante: Il De causis e l'idea della donna nel Convivio,” Dante Studies 112 [1994]: 161-75) of Dante's reliance on Proclus in Convivio II and III. For a view counseling caution in attributing direct knowledge of the Timaeus to Dante, who refers to the work by name only once in Convivio (Conv. III.v.6) and then here, see Marta Cristiani, “Timeo,” ED V (1976), pp. 604-5. See also her entries “Platone,” ED IV (1973), pp. 546-50, and “platonismo,” ED IV (1973), pp. 550-55.

Both of the protagonist's questions reflect a dangerous uncertainty on his part about the nature of the free will, which will be the subject of Beatrice's urgent lecture at the beginning of the next canto. If he believes that compromise in making vows is possible or that our souls' choices are controlled by the stars that govern our natures, he is in heresy. The second doubt, since it would destroy the notion of free will utterly (and not just partially), is the more dangerous, which is why Beatrice chooses to address it first. As Trucchi, discussing this tercet, points out, Plato's notion that souls return to their formative stars (embraced by some early Christians), was finally condemned at the Council of Constantinople in the year 540.

Dante's use of the Latin infinitive as a noun is not without precedent in the work: See Paradiso III.79, esse (to be [as substantive, “being”]); Paradiso XIX.2, frui; and, more interestingly in this context, Paradiso XXXIII.143, where velle (to will [as substantive, “the will”]) itself reappears, once again rhyming with stelle (stars). That only other recurrence of this Latin word may be more programmatic than has been noticed. Plato's apparent doctrine, rejected here, receives a final disapproving glance in the last lines of the poem, in which Dante has his final vision of the universe as it truly is, and not as Plato's Timaeus (and Dante's Convivio [IV.xxi.2]: “Plato and others maintained that they issued from the stars and were more or less noble according to the nobility of their star” – tr. Lansing; and see also Conv. II.xiii.5) might have us believe.

There are some seventy-five Latin words or passages incorporated in this insistently vernacular work, more than half of them in its most “churchly” cantica, Purgatorio, as is not surprising.

Beatrice's refutation is in three main parts:

(1) Scriptural justification for God's showing saved souls in the stars, vv. 28-39.
(1a) Why such ways of presenting divine truth are necessary, vv. 40-48.
(2) Plato's possible error in the Timaeus, vv. 49-54.
(3) Plato's potential agreement with Christian doctrine, vv. 55-63.

The first part refutes not only what Dante has shown himself to believe in the previous canto, namely that the souls in the Moon are there permanently (see the note to Par. III.29-30), but resolves what Piccarda and even Beatrice (depending on how one reads verse 30 of Par. III) had left an open question. Now we are told by Beatrice, definitively, that no soul of Paradise is present in any star, except for the occasion of Dante's visit to the spheres. Thus if, while reading the ending of the previous canto, we may (quite reasonably) have thought that Piccarda and Constance were heading back into the matter of the Moon, we now probably have to understand that they have returned to their home in the Empyrean.

Indicating only the highest rank of angels, the Seraphim, Beatrice reminds Dante that all the nine ranks of angels are in the Empyrean and are the beings closest to God. Here the poet resolves a potential problem, similar to that caused by the appearance of the souls in the spheres, in that readers might eventually assume that the angelic order most associated with a certain heaven actually dwells in that heaven. This verse cancels that potential reading before it can be applied.

Moses, Samuel, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, and Mary are all to be found in that same placeless place known as the Empyrean. When we read Paradiso XXXII, we will find all of these but Samuel represented as having been seen by the protagonist among the eighteen souls actually pointed out there by St. Bernard. Beatrice's little list is “ecumenical,” involving two Hebrews (Moses and Samuel in the role of the first and last “great jurists” of Israel, as it were), one “Hebrew-Christian” (the Baptist), and two Christians (John and Mary). Since all four whom we do eventually see in the Rose are in its highest tier, we may assume that Samuel is at that level also. (Why Dante has chosen Samuel, rather than Abraham, Solomon, David, or still another, is not immediately clear; see the discussion in the note to verse 29.) It would also seem likely that Dante is paralleling elements in his angelic and human populations of the Rose, referring only to the highest rank of each, thus distinguished from all who are at lower levels.

The meaning of Beatrice's remark is not difficult to grasp. The angels (she refers to the highest order, the Seraphim, but from the context we know that she means all nine orders) and all the blessed are found, and found only, in the Empyrean. From Par. XXXII we know that four of the five saints referred to here are in the highest rank of the stadium-rose: Moses (vv. 131-132), John the Baptist (vv. 31-33), John the Evangelist (vv. 127-128), Mary (vv. 88-93). Samuel is not among the eighteen saints referred to in that canto, but since all four who are, like their Seraphic counterparts, have been elevated to the topmost rank, we are probably meant to understand that Samuel has been also; i.e., we are to understand that he is there, even if we do not see him.

But why Dante singles him out here (and why he passes him over in silence in Par. XXXII) are questions rarely formed and perhaps never answered. Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 28-30) was perhaps the first to refer to the fact that Moses and Samuel were only once referred to in the same passage of Scripture, Jeremiah 15:1: “Then said the Lord unto me, though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people: cast them out of my sight, and let them go forth.” G.R. Sarolli, “Samuele,” ED IV (1973), does improve upon the relatively sorry record of the commentators, who just do not seem to realize that this sudden appearance of Samuel in the poem calls for study. Why, for instance, if Dante wants to pick a pair of Old Testament “heroes,” does he not couple Moses with his favorite Hebrew figure, David? Perhaps, since Samuel was the last of the Judges of Israel, in Dante's mind he balances the first Hebrew “law-giver,” Moses (see Inf. IV.57). Sarolli points to Samuel's position among the exegetes as typus Christi as well as a figure of John the Baptist and to his role in transferring the kingly power from Saul to David as clues to Dante's reasons for his lofty placement in the Commedia. (But why, we wonder, was not that lofty placement confirmed, as it was for his four fellow-nominees, in Par. XXXII?) Toynbee had already made the point that the rest of Dante's references to Samuel by name (Mon. II.vii.8; III.vi.1-6; Epist. VII.19) have to do with Samuel's intervention that resulted in the termination of Saul's kingship. (This last passage is a casuistic argument, in which Dante insists that Samuel had the power to depose Saul not because he was God's vicar, which the hierocrats insisted was indeed true [thus buttressing their case for papal intervention in imperial affairs], but because God selected him as an “angelic” messenger, His direct emissary.) Such is dramatically true of Dante's second epistle to Henry VII (Epist. VII.19), in which he compares Henry to Saul, about to be dethroned by Samuel (I Sam. [I Reg.] 15), and in which his accusations put Dante unmistakably in Samuel's place. If the order of composition of these Samuel-Saul passages is Epistle VII (late 1311), Paradiso IV, Monarchia II and III, the last three likely written within only a few months of one another in ca. 1314, we may begin to have an inkling of why Samuel, so long absent from Dante's pages, should suddenly have sprung to life in them. Henry's foundering kingship shows the need for a new Samuel to hector the struggling king, a role that Dante, no stranger to answering an elevated call to action, tries to take on. For Henry's increasing similarity to Saul, see the article referred to by Filippo Bognini (Bogn.2007.1), p. 93 (n. 54). By the time Dante is writing Paradiso XXXII, Henry is dead, and thus well beyond useful hectoring.

Piccarda and Constance, we are told, are in the same space as that occupied by these glorious figures. Thinking of it this way, we can understand why they are not in the least disturbed by their lower rank within the Rose (Par. III.70-87). Exactly where in the celestial Rose they are seated is never revealed to us; we know only that they are fairly low in it (but at least halfway up, above the innocent babes [see Par. XXXII.37-48] and yet beneath the height attained by St. Clare [see Par. III.98-99], whatever that may be).

The souls in Plato's Timaeus are said to remain longer periods in their stars in accord with their greater goodness (for the text, see Campi's commentary to vv. 28-33), a bit of doctrine slapped aside in this single verse. The slap also hits the cheek of Dante himself: see the text of Convivio IV.xxi.2, cited in the note to verse 25, above.

Rhyme apparently forces Dante into a self-contradiction. The Empyrean is not a giro (circle), like the revolving physical heavens, but a point, both infinitely large (Par. XXXIII.85-93) and infinitely small (Par. XXVIII.16-21). Nonetheless, here he says it is a giro.

The phrase dolce vita (sweet life), here used for the first time to indicate the life of the blessed in God's eternal presence (see also Par. XX.48, XXV.93), has a biting resonance in Federico Fellini's Dante-haunted film of 1960, La dolce vita.

The relative beatitude of the blessed is defined as the result of their greater or lesser ability to respond to the breath of the Holy Spirit. Normal human competitiveness makes it hard to imagine human beings, even fairly selfless and generous ones, taking joy in their lesser ability to respond to God's love. On the other hand, our experience of some artists, musicians, and athletes reveals that there are indeed professionals who gladly admire the greater ability of their betters and enjoy participation in the same activity in which these “stars” excel. Unfortunately, there is probably less such admirable conduct than one might hope.

This verse seals Beatrice's presentation of the temporary nature of the souls' presence in the Moon, as she uses a past definite (si mostraro [put themselves on view here]) to indicate that they no longer do so – their time in the Moon is over. See the similar use of the past definite in verse 32, appariro (appeared), which probably also indicates that they are no longer present.

Beatrice's words have given rise to a series of misreadings. What Dante says is that Piccarda and her companions in the Moon occupy a less exalted rank in Heaven; commentators (and translators) tend to say that they occupy the least (i.e., the very lowest) of the heavenly ranks. However, the comparative adverb meno (less) is never used in the Commedia as a superlative. The reason for this attempt to turn Dante's vague placement of them into something far more definite is perhaps found in an assumption that, if these women are here encountered in the lowest heaven, they must then be in the lowest rank of Heaven. The poem does not permit any such certainty. See the note to vv. 31-32. (Of course those who think that these souls are ticketed to spend eternity in the Moon take the verse as merely stating an obvious truth: they are in the lowest heaven now, and will remain there.)

The need to speak to the human intellect in terms reflecting the experience of the senses will be more fully explored in the next two tercets, the corollary, as it were, to what has just been said here. And here Dante presents familiar Thomistic insistence on the priority (and usefulness) of sense data, an Aristotelian position and most certainly a counter-Platonic one.

For a study of the word ingegno in the Commedia (a word introduced at Inf. II.7 and then found some eighteen times, with a last appearance in Par. XXIV.81), taking this passage as his point of departure, see Paul Dumol (The Metaphysics of Reading Underlying Dante's “Commedia”: The “Ingegno” [New York: Peter Lang, 1998], pp. 1-13, 177-95). And for the source of Dante's concept in Aristotle (Ethics VI.1), as commented upon and developed by Aquinas, see Dumol, pp. 95-124. This is the faculty called “racionativum,” the vis cogitativa, i.e., practical or scientific knowledge.

The phenomenon referred to by Beatrice, of ancient Christian lineage, is known as “accommodative metaphor.” Put simply (and Dante's text does this admirably), it is the metaphoric presentation of higher things and higher beings that ordinary mortals simply have not the experiential background to understand. (For the closeness of Dante's presentation of it here to the exposition made by St. Thomas, see Hollander [Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969}, p. 192] and Dumol [The Metaphysics of Reading Underlying Dante's “Commedia”: The “Ingegno” {New York: Peter Lang, 1998}, pp. 5-6].) E.g., angels are pure being (or, as Dante would say, “pure act” [see Par. XXIX.33]) and have no visible aspect. So that we may better conceive them, we are allowed to think of them as having wings, faces, voices, etc. Similarly, God Himself is beyond any anthropomorphic human imagining, but Scripture allows us to think of Him as having hands and feet, etc. St. Thomas, in fact, has discussed the passage that thus became perhaps the locus classicus for discussions of the phenomenon, Isaiah 51:9. Interestingly enough, these remarks are imbedded in his discussion of fourfold allegory that is so densely reflected in the Epistle to Cangrande. Here is what Thomas has to say about accommodative metaphor (Summa I.i.10): “Per voces significatur aliquid proprie, et aliquid figurative. Nec est litteralis sensus ipsa figura, sed id quod est figuratum. Non enim cum Scriptura nominat Dei brachium, est litteralis sensus quod in Deo sit membrum hujusmodi corporale: sed id quod per hoc membrum significatur, scilicet virtus operativa” (The parabolic sense is contained in the literal, for by words things are signified properly or figuratively. Nor is the figure itself, but that which is figured, the literal sense. When Scripture speaks of God's arm, its literal sense is not that God has such a member, but only what is signified by this member, namely, operative power). Metaphor, in Thomas's discussion, is associated with the parabolic sense, a sub-category of the literal sense, in which things that are literally untrue nevertheless may have a significance other than that which they seem to possess. Thomas is quite clear that one must not confuse a metaphoric literal sense with a historical/literal sense that does have further (historical) meaning. It would not be overbold to suggest that the central distinction between the “allegory of the poets” and the “allegory of the theologians” first referred to by Dante in Convivio (II.i.4) is based on this distinction. And for a similar Dantean concern for scriptural language and its potential relation to the Comedy, see also Monarchia III.iv.7: “Augustine says in the De civitate Dei: 'It must not be thought that every reported event has a further meaning; but those which have no further meaning are also included for the sake of those which do have such a meaning. Only the ploughshare breaks up the soil, but for this to happen the other parts of the plough are necessary as well'” (tr. P. Shaw). Dante's own concern with the problem of metaphor, expressed in the Epistle to Cangrande, is also directly related to his thoughts about Plato's possible use of this trope, a subject confronted in this canto (see discussion in the note to vv. 55-63). See Epistle XIII.84: “For we perceive many things by the intellect for which language has no terms – a fact which Plato indicates plainly enough in his books by his employment of metaphors; for he perceived many things by the light of the intellect which his everyday language was inadequate to express”(tr. P. Toynbee).

In an important sense, almost all of Dante's experience of the afterworld in the first thirty cantos of this canticle is metaphoric, i.e., what he sees in the stars is there only temporarily and for illustrative purposes. For similar understandings, see Freccero, “Paradiso X: The Dance of the Stars” (in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986 {1968}], pp. 221-26); Hollander (Allegory [1969], pp. 192-201); Chiarenza (“The Imageless Vision and Dante's Paradiso,” Dante Studies 90 [1972]: 77-91); Mazzotta (Dante, Poet of the Desert [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979], pp. 246-47); Barolini (The Undivine “Comedy”: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992], pp. 143-65); Moevs (“God's Feet and Hands [Paradiso 4.40-48]: Non-duality and Non-false Errors,” Modern Language Notes 114 [1999]: 1-13. And see the appreciation of a Harvard freshman, Chris Hampson, in a seminar in the autumn of 2005: “The whole point is that this is not what it's really like.”

As examples of ways in which we may have a graphic sense of exactly what the phrase “accommodative metaphor” signifies, church windows to this day represent angels with human features, while even seven hundred years ago Dante knew that angels were disembodied, were “pure act” (Par. XXIX.33). Humans are allowed to conceive of such higher realities in more concrete and familiar terms. Unnamed, Raphael joins periphrastically his two fellow archangels, the ones most frequently referred to in literature and life. Indeed, only Gabriel and Michael enjoy a presence in the standard Bible, while Raphael's is limited to the Book of Tobit (see the note to verse 48).

Raphael is generally accounted one of the seven angels “who stand before the Lord” (Apoc. 8:2). The apocryphal Book of Enoch (ch. 21) furnishes the names of the four others, of whom only Uriel is much known today (and then mainly through his presence in Milton's Paradise Lost). The story of how this archangel allowed Tobias to cure the blindness of his father, Tobit, is told in the now apocryphal Book of Tobias (11:2-15). That Dante elected to use this particular circumlocutory detail to identify Raphael may seem puzzling. However, it was one of the few concrete details associated with this archangel known to him. And consult Paradiso XXVI.12 for another brief reference to a miraculous cure for blindness, that conferred by the laying on of hands by Ananias. For a substantial recounting, one nearly as controlled and entertaining as a novella by Boccaccio, of the startling biblical narrative concerning Tobias and Raphael, see the commentary of Jacopo della Lana to vv. 40-48.

The Timaeus argues that the souls of the dead return to the stars which gave them birth. This is heresy, tout court, if it is meant literally. Beatrice's correction of Dante's error, concocted in the previous canto as a recapitulation of the error he had in fact first made in the Convivio, should end our own confusion as to the presence of the souls in the spheres. They appear in a sort of cosmic accommodative metaphor, thus suggesting that all the last canticle up to its thirtieth canto (with a brief hiatus in the twenty-third – see the note to Par. XXIII.61-63) is a vast metaphoric preparation for the seeing face-to-face that will occur in the Empyrean. Further, such an understanding reminds us how “historical,” how “real,” everything described and seen in the first two canticles has seemed in comparison.

The verb par[e] (seems) begins to open the door to Dante's attempt to hedge his attack on certain of Plato's views in vv. 55-60.

The reference to “form” here indicates, in language reflective of Scholastic terminology, an individuated human soul that inhabits a specific body.

Dante opens the question of the potential truth to be found in Plato's literally untrue teachings. Here again (see the note to vv. 13-15) the reader will want to turn to the Epistola a Cangrande, again near its conclusion (84): “For we perceive many things by the intellect for which language has no terms – a fact which Plato indicates plainly enough in his books by his employment of metaphors; for he perceived many things by the light of the intellect which his everyday language was inadequate to express” (tr. P. Toynbee).

Dante's view of Plato would seem to indicate great respect (if not as much as for Aristotle, given greater praise than his teacher in Inferno IV), a sense that some of his teaching was potentially or actually heretical, and a further sense of admiration, perhaps based principally on what in Plato he found most poet-like, his use of metaphor to express truth slantwise. In both major moments in which Dante discusses Plato, here and in the epistle, the salient subject is, indeed, Plato's use of metaphor. It is possible that Dante is fervently opposed to those who read Plato as a teller of literal truth (in which reading he is nothing short of a heretic avant-la-lettre, as are, on historical grounds, the neo-platonists, in Dante's view). It seems possible, however, that Dante is willing to allow the philosopher himself a potential escape route; he may have seemed to him, in the end, more like a poet than a philosopher. Dante's teacher, Thomas Aquinas, is cited by Oelsner (comm.to Par. IV.51) as allowing for the possibility, just as we have seen Dante do here, of a possible metaphoric truth in some of Plato's dicta that are literally untrue.

Bosco/Reggio, in their comment on this passage, point out that its source may lie in Albertus Magnus, De natura et origine animae (II.7), since that is a sure source for the embryology of Purgatorio XXV, as was established by Bruno Nardi (“L'origine dell'anima umana secondo Dante” [1931-1932], repr. in his Studi di filosofia medievale [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 1960]). Should that be true (and, as they argue, it seems likely that it is, since there is little to suggest Dante really knew any Plato directly, even in Latin translation), it would deeply undercut the notion that Dante's acquaintance with the Timaeus was firsthand. And this would also reveal that Dante had a noted precursor in trying at least to open the question of Plato's possible acceptability to Christian thinkers, as one tradition has even no less a rigorist than Thomas Aquinas doing (see the last sentence of the note to vv. 55-63).

For the view that the meaning of sentenza here must be “intention,” see Federico Sanguineti (“Per Paradiso 4:55,” Dante Studies 117 [1999]: 195-97). But Dante's usual practice and the likely significance of this tercet point rather in the direction of “meaning,” as any number of commentators believe. And see, for a previous use of the word in this canto, verse 24, “secondo la sentenza di Platone” (in accord with Plato's teaching).

The nature of Dante's own “modified astrology” has already been made clear in Marco Lombardo's discussion of free will and its relationship to astral influence, particularly in Purgatorio XVI.67-84. While any astrology at all seems mere foolishness to most modern readers, Dante's position, which mirrors that of St. Augustine, is that whatever influence the stars have on us, it in no way reduces our ability to choose the good. Our birth stars may incline us in one direction or another (see Par. VIII.122-135), but we remain totally responsible for our choices, our actions.

Jesús Mu@noz (“Es Dante antiplatonico en Filosofia? Relacion Aritoteles-Platon, en Dante filosofo,” in Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi danteschi, vol. II [Florence: Sansoni, 1966], p. 495), points out, as part of his wider argument (Dante is not “anti-platonic”), that Plato is referred to by name three times in the poem (Inf. IV.134; Purg. III.43; Par. IV.24), while Aristotle is named (Purg. III.43) or clearly referred to (Inf. IV.131) but twice. This is hardly convincing evidence.

The “unenlightened” theory of astral influence sponsored by the ancients (and possibly by Plato) resulted in the naming of the planets for the powers (and limitations) they conferred on human beings. Dante's version supersedes that theory and restores free will to human conduct.

The exceptions among the ancients were, naturally, the monotheistic Hebrews.

Dante's first question, dealt with second because it has less “venom” in it (verse 27), finally has its day in court. That it is less potentially dangerous to the health of the soul does not mean that it is not worrisome, as the amount of space it receives now (over fifty lines) attests. It, too, centrally involves the freedom of the will.

Beatrice suggests that the protagonist's failure to understand the precise rules that govern the keeping of vows, unlike the larger issue of the freedom of the will, is less likely to interfere with his love for her, his guide to the truth found in God. His potential problem with his second “doubt” is a total one, while this one is only partial.

Beatrice offers up another paradox (see her argument in Purg. XXXIII.94-99 that Dante's inability to remember his sins is the very proof that he committed them): For mortals not to understand divine justice is evidence (the probable meaning of argomento here, though there is debate on the point) that it exists.

Because the nature of this question concerning vows is not so lofty that a closer-to-divine intelligence is required for its solution, Beatrice will be able to explain it fully to mortal Dante.

Beatrice is brutally clear: Since the will by its very nature always seeks the good, any capitulation to external force is a violation of God's love. A modern reader may sense a certain outrage at this line of thought. It would seem to call for martyrdom as the only adequate response if another would divert us from our true path by use of force or the threat of force. As the following examples will make plain (vv. 82-87), that is exactly what is called for. If we fail to keep our absolute will intact (the term is employed at verse 109; see the note to that passage, vv. 109-114), allowing it to be swayed by fear, we are guilty of the sin that afflicted both Piccarda and Constance, who should have found some way to return to the cloister, no matter what harm they thought they might have faced in so doing. Dante's doctrine is as simple and as terrifying as that. For discussion of these questions, see Singleton's commentary to vv. 73-74; 76-78.

The image of the flame that, temporarily twisted by external force from its natural upright position, will always by its very nature raise itself back up underlines the natural propensity of the will to the good, despite the force that may be used against it.

As he did so often in Purgatorio, Dante combines a Christian and a pagan exemplary figure to make his point: “St. Lawrence, a deacon of the Church of Rome, said to have been a native of Huesca in Spain who suffered martyrdom under the Emperor Valerian, Aug. 10, 258. The tradition is that, being commanded by the prefect of Rome to deliver up the treasures of the Church which had been entrusted to his charge by Pope Sixtus II, he replied that in three days he would produce them. On the expiration of the appointed time he presented to the prefect all the sick and poor to whom he had given alms, with the words 'Behold the treasures of Christ's Church'. The prefect thereupon directed St. Lawrence to be tortured, in order to make him reveal where the treasures were hidden. But, torture proving ineffectual, he was stretched on an iron frame with bars, like a gridiron, beneath which a fire was kindled so that his body was gradually consumed. In the midst of his agony he is said to have remained steadfast, and to have mocked his executioners, bidding them to turn his body that it might be equally roasted on both sides (cf. Prudentius, Peristephanon liber 401-9)” (Toynbee, “Lorenzo” [Concise Dante Dictionary]). “Gaius Mucius Scaevola, Roman citizen who, when Lars Porsena of Clusium was besieging Rome, made his way into the enemy's camp with the intention of killing Porsena; by mistake, however, he stabbed the king's secretary instead of the king himself. Being seized, Mucius was ordered by the king to be burned alive, whereupon he thrust his right hand into a fire, which was already lighted for a sacrifice, and held it in the flames without flinching. Porsena, struck with admiration at his fortitude, ordered him to be set free; in return Mucius informed him that there were 300 noble youths in Rome who had sworn to take the king's life, that the lot had fallen upon him to make the first attempt, and that his example would be followed by the others, each as his turn came. Porsena, impressed with this account of the determination of the Romans, made proposals of peace and withdrew from the siege. From the circumstance of the loss of his right hand, Mucius was thenceforward known as Scaevola ('left-handed'). Dante [also] mentions Mucius in connexion with this incident [in] Conv. IV.v.13; and, with a reference to Livy (Ab urbe II.12) as his authority in Mon. II.v.14” (Toynbee, “Muzio” [Concise Dante Dictionary]). Will so firm as that, however, is rarely found. Nonetheless, willingness to accept even martyrdom remains the only eventual solution for this problem. And the example of Scaevola makes the message even more painful: one must be prepared to do violence even against oneself in the service of liberty.

For Beatrice's paraphrase of Dante's unthinking analysis of the problem addressed here, see vv. 19-21. It has now been “canceled” and should trouble him no more.

Beatrice now offers a sort of corollary to the message she has just delivered, anticipating Dante's further question: How can Piccarda be telling the truth when she says that neither she nor Constance ever ceased wanting to be back in their convents (Par. III.112-117), if what Beatrice has just said is true?

This passage makes crystal clear what has surely been evident earlier (most recently at Par. III.31-33, but as early as the second canto of Inferno, when we see Beatrice through Virgil's eyes, in his description of her and her “vere parole” [Inf. II.135]): The souls of those in bliss never tell less than the absolute truth.

Starting with a general remark, Beatrice attempts to clarify her position. Humans frequently do things they know they should not do, both against their own will and to escape from harm. The example she adduces, that of Alcmaeon, does not, however, seem to fulfill the second part of her precise criteria. Further, Dante seems to have muddled his version of the story of Alcmaeon, nearly certainly derived from Statius (Thebaid II.265-305). (And see also Ovid, Metamorphoses IX.406-415.) In Statius, Alcmaeon is the son of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle; he avenged his father's death by killing his mother, who, bought off by the gift of a necklace, revealed Amphiaraus's hiding place to those who wanted to take him into battle with them and, because of her intervention, succeeded in doing so (see Purg. XII.49-51 [and note]). Dante's claim that Amphiaraus, the first of the heroes to die in the war over Thebes (see Inf . XX.31-36), asked his son to avenge him is not correct. As Bosco/Reggio are apparently alone in pointing out, Amphiaraus does hope for such revenge as he lies dying on the field of battle (Theb. VII.787-788), but Alcmaeon, not knowing this, commits the horrible deed urged on only by his own sense of justice. Beatrice's condition concerning the commission of an act against one's own will is perhaps, if only with a fairly broad sense of congruence, met by this example; but it is surely difficult to understand how the young man acted out of fear of harm to himself. Is it possible that Dante knew some other version of this material? It seems possible that two lines of Ovid may have caught his eye, as several commentators have urged; indeed, the brief recapitulation of these details in Metamorphoses IX.407-408 may allow for such a reading, even if it does not mean to: “ultusque parente parentem / natus erit facto pius et sceleratus eodem” (and his son [Alcmaeon] shall avenge parent [Amphiaraus] on parent [Eriphyle], filial and accursed in the selfsame act – tr. F. J. Miller). It seems possible that Dante's “pietà... spietato” of verse 105 reflects Ovid's “pius et sceleratus.” But how could Dante have forgotten the clear indication in Statius (in no way contradicted by Ovid's earlier version of this material, by the way) that Alcmaeon killed his mother on his own initiative, no matter how pius he may have considered himself? (For similar concerns about families and wrongful death, see Paradiso V.64-72 and the accompanying note.)

Beatrice's description, in any case, does fit Piccarda's tale perfectly. She did something she did not want to do (leaving her convent) and did not return from fear of what might be done to her if she tried to – at least that is what Dante would seem to want us to believe.

For a consideration of the possible implications of the repetition here (at vv. 104, 106, 108) of the rhyme words (spense, pense, offense) found earlier at Inferno V.107-111 and Purgatorio XXXI.8-12, see Maria Laura Palermi (“'A questo punto voglio che tu pense.' Nota di lettura intorno ad una serie rimica della Commedia,” Critica del testo 5 [2002]: 569-93).

Beatrice's distinction is between the absolute will (the Latin term, absoluta voluntas, reflects its root in the verb absolvere, to release from obligation) and another will, unnamed, that theologians refer to as the “conditioned” (or “conditional”) will, that is, a will conditioned by circumstance. “Assoluta here means 'absolute' as contrasted with 'relative.' Independently of the circumstances (i.e., of the pressure of fear) the will does not consent to the wrong forced upon it; but when affected by fear of worse suffering in case of withdrawing itself from the pressure of that force, so far it does consent. So Piccarda, when she speaks of Constance's life, does not take into account her yielding to fear, while Beatrice does take it into account, and therefore regards her as defective in the observance of her vows. Thus both their statements are true” (Tozer to vv. 109-114). For example, one wants desperately to stop smoking but, like Svevo's Zeno, continually yields to the abysmal need to smoke one last cigarette. Piccarda's absolute will was always to desire the life of her convent; her conditioned will was to accept the marriage to which she was forced. And thus there is no contradiction between what she says of herself and what Beatrice describes as a blameworthy failure in her vows. They are speaking of two differing aspects of willing.

In a poem controlled by large metaphoric constructs (e.g., light, road, forest, mountain, sea, ship, wings, city, tree, plant, beast, etc.), the third cantica nonetheless stands out for its metaphoric exertions. The last developed metaphor in a canto that began by studying the justification for metaphor, this passage (and many another after it) shows Dante's determination to up the “poetic ante” for his reader, asked to follow a difficult mind, setting about its work giving expression to theological/philosophical concepts in emotionally charged lyric language. On the subject of metaphor in Dante (far less visited than the related topic of simile), see at least Ezio Raimondi (“Ontologia della metafora dantesca,” Letture classensi 15 [1986]: 99-109) and Emilio Pasquini (“Le icone parentali nella Commedia,” Letture classensi 25 [1996]: 39-50 and Dante e le figure del vero: La fabbrica della “Commedia” [Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2001], pp. 179-217).

This particular metaphor has furnished the opening of Purgatorio XXI with its biblical material, the water of life that Jesus offers the Samaritan woman. And here it is Beatrice who is equated with Jesus, bringing the source of that water to humankind.

Dante's lengthy and flowery expression of his gratitude to Beatrice for her explanation and of his humility before God's mysteries serves as captatio benevolentiae in disposing Beatrice to answer still one more question - not that she requires any such suasion. Once again, the needs of the poem come first. Dante could have written much less, along the lines of the following: “Of course there was no need for me to tell / how much I owed to her for saying that / and how much I owed for 'scaping Hell.” But the poem would have suffered considerable diminution thereby.

Dante addresses Beatrice with the respectful voi, as he will also do at verse 134; but see the note to vv. 136-138.

Tozer (comm. to this tercet) explains this difficult text as follows: “'owing to this desire of knowing the Divine Verity, doubt arises at the foot of truth as saplings rise from the foot of a tree.' Appiè del vero: this is another way of saying that it springs from the root of truth, that idea being suggested by the metaphor: the doubt is a germ of truth. è natura, &c.: 'it is a natural process, which impels us from height to height unto the summit.' By the questions which arise from learning a truth, we are led on to the apprehension of a higher truth, and so onwards till the highest is reached.”

Dante's third question will be the subject of the first eighty-four verses of the following canto. Thus all of the present canto and over half of the next is devoted to three questions concerning the freedom of the will, the most important issue confronting a moralizing Christian writer. It is probably not accidental that Dante chose to put this discussion here, in the first sphere, that of the Moon, reflecting the fact that the first three realms of the heavens present saved souls whose virtues were unmistakably marred by significant defect (see the note to Par. III.47-49). Most of Paradiso is concerned with the correction and perfection of Dante's intellect. Its beginning offers a chance to re-engage with the world of moral choice, so inviting to a writer who never gave up his engagement with the affairs of humankind in this life.

The two uses of plural second-person pronouns or adjectives (sodisfarvi, vostra) should probably not be construed as honorific but as genuine plurals, Dante holding in mind the companions in blessedness of Piccarda, as Bosco/Reggio suggest (comm. to verse 138). Our translation follows this understanding, which is dominant in the commentary tradition. Nonetheless, it also seems reasonable to believe that the protagonist, covering over what is really most on his mind (see the note to Par. IV.139-142), wants to preserve the ambiguity that the immediately preceding uses of the honorific voi for Beatrice establish, an ambiguity underlined by the proximity and formal similarity (they are rhyme words, both composed of infinitives plus an enclitic pronoun) of the two pivotal uses, dimandarvi and sodisfarvi at vv. 134 and 136. Further, the somewhat stilted diction of the tercet may portray a certain understandable anxiety (e.g., “io vo' saper se l'uom può sodisfarvi” [I would like to know if one can satisfy your court]). And thus vi and vostra are not honorific, but remind us, because of their proximity to those preceding and undoubted honorifics, that they might as well be.

This passage offers a variant on the theme of blindness already present in this canto in the reference to Tobias in verse 48 (and see the note to that verse) and reworked in Canto XXVI.12, with its reference to Ananias's restoration of Saul's sight. There Beatrice's increasingly evident power completely (if only temporarily) destroys his power of sight; here Dante is weakened by Beatrice's overpowering glance, his eyes so overcome that they, in a trope developed from military behavior, are temporarily routed by the Beatricean ocular “army.” Most unmilitary, Dante nearly faints, as he did, for very different reasons, at the conclusions of Inferno III and V. One of the few commentators to respond to the various provocations of this passage with some alertness is Aversano (Dante daccapo [glosses to the Paradiso], copia d'eccezione, sent by the author on 11 September 2001, p. 21), who notes that this is the first time in Paradiso that Dante must lower his eyes and suggests that this response represents “un ultimo cenno a tendenze ereticali” (a final gesture toward his heretical tendencies), going on to relate these to Gregory the Great's excursus on Proverbs 30:13 (in PL LXXV.511).

A possible reason for the poet's desire to underline the protagonist's guilty feelings about Beatrice comes from the context we have just now entered, his first enunciation (see Par. IV.136-138) of his question (see Beatrice's rephrasing of it in the following canto (Par. V.13-15) about the possibility of redemption for broken vows. We do know that Dante had made at least one vow that, until he wrote the Commedia, he had spectacularly failed to fulfill. At the conclusion of the Vita nuova (XLII.2) he had made a solemn promise: “Sì che, se piacere sarà di colui a cui tutte le cose vivono, che la mia vita duri per alquanti anni, io spero di dicer di lei quello che mai non fue detto d'alcuna” (Accordingly, if it be the pleasure of Him through whom all things live that my life continue for a few more years, I hope to write of her that which has never been written of any other woman [tr. M. Musa]).

And so, while Bosco/Reggio (comm. verse 138) are probably correct that Dante's question is meant to be understood as being addressed formally to all in bliss with Piccarda (and see Tommaseo [comm. vv. 136-138], citing verse 67, where Beatrice mentions “la nostra giustizia” [our justice] in much the same context), the earlier addresses to Beatrice (vv. 122, 134) stay in our ears and cause a certain ambiguity. Is Dante still addressing his guida or is he pondering the opinion of the saints? This is perhaps a case of Dante trying to hide behind the mask of a more general appeal: “Do you all up here know if mortals are allowed to make broken vows good by substituting other things for them?” That is preferable to asking Beatrice if God can ever forgive his not making good the vow he made to honor her at the end of the Vita nuova, only to write Convivio instead, a work in which she is abandoned for the Lady Philosophy. Dante, hidden behind that impersonal formulation (delivered by that noun used as a pronoun, l'uom [one]), wonders whether or not he might still make amends for his broken promise with this poem in Beatrice's honor. Such a decision is not in the lap of these “gods,” in fact, but belongs to the Father. He has obviously decided in favor of the claimant, otherwise the voyage would not have been granted him.

In Cantos III and IV Dante offers up a kind of apology for his earlier Convivio, having in it offended Christian truth both with regard to his Platonic view of the function of the stars in their influence on human souls and with regard to his broken vow to Beatrice at the end of Vita nuova, the result of his raising the donna gentile higher in his praises.