Paradiso (162 page)

1–3.
   Cornish begins her treatment of this moment with the following observation: “We have no way of knowing whether the planetary configuration that opens [this canto] describes dawn or dusk” (Corn.1990.1), p. 1. In the first three centuries it was a rare commentator (but, for exceptions, see Francesco da Buti [comm. to vv. 1–12] and Vellutello [comm. to vv. 1–9]) who did not assume that Dante presented the Sun as being in Aries, the Moon in Libra. After Vellutello there is a period in which everyone gets this “right”; in fact, among the Italians it is only in the twentieth century with Steiner (comm. to verse 2) that the old error returns (until Bosco/Reggio [comm. to vv. 1–9] restore the better reading; but see Chiavacci Leonardi [Chia.1997.1], p. 797, who reverts to the discredited interpretation). Among Dante’s English-writing commentators, however, only Oelsner (comm. to these verses) understood that Dante leaves it absolutely opaque as to whether it is the Sun or Moon that is in Aries (the Ram) or in Libra (the Scales). The reference to the Sun’s being in Aries at the Creation in the first canto of the poem (
Inf.
I.39–40) has, understandably perhaps, been the controlling factor for such readers.
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1.
   For discussion of Latona’s role in the poem (she is also named at
Purg.
XX.131,
Par.
X.67, and XXII.139), see Aversano (Aver.2000.2), pp. 141–42, suggesting that her maternal role may have seemed to Dante reminiscent of Mary (in particular in her having given birth to Apollo, treated several times as Christ [see the notes to
Par.
I.13–15, 13, 19, 25–27]). He continues by suggesting that Dante also was drawn to the figure of Latona by her exilic condition, particularly as this was presented by Ovid (
Metam.
VI.186–191), and by her eventual stability, shared by the former wandering isle, Delos, in a sort of pagan version of eternal peace and light.
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4–6.
   The Sun and the Moon are described as being momentarily balanced (an instant immeasurably brief because both are always in their orbital motion); their being “out of balance” is recognized after a certain
duration, when both are perceived as having changed position, moving away from (the one above, the other below) the horizon. Strangely, Cornish (Corn.1990.1), p. 7, believes that Porena was of the opinion that this instant also corresponds to that of a total lunar eclipse. Porena, in fact, first in his earlier article (Pore.1930.1) and then in his commentary (to vv. 4–6), “dismisses the eclipse as an accident” (the words are Kleiner’s [Klei.1994.1], p. 166, n. 14). Porena is in polemic against those of Dante’s commentators who take his scientific lore too seriously.
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7–8.
   Some (incorrectly) believe that what is described as being of immeasurably short duration is Beatrice’s smile (see Payton [Payt.1995.1], p. 439): “The longer it is thought about, the smaller the exact instant is.… How long did Beatrice smile? How brief a moment can you conceive?” Payton has not digested Cornish’s explanation (Corn.1990.1, pp. 6–7), not of Beatrice’s smile, but of her
silence
, which is the issue here: “For Aristotle an instant (or the ‘now,’ as he called it) is the temporal equivalent of a point on a line; yet time is no more made up of these ‘nows’ than a line is composed of geometrical points” (p. 7). She points out that Porena before her had correctly characterized the temporal nature of Beatrice’s silence (see his comm. to vv. 4–6) as indeed having measurable duration. Porena suggests that the amount of time for half the rising or setting Sun or Moon to rise completely above or to sink completely below the horizon is a little more than a minute, certainly a measurable time. Cornish might have observed that Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 1–9) had supported Porena’s thesis.
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9.
   For the poet’s contrastive inner reference to Francesca’s words (
Inf.
V.132, “ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse” [still, it was a single instant overcame us]), here and in
Paradiso
XXX.11, see Hollander (Holl.1993.5), pp. 7–8, nn. 18–19, citing Contini (Cont.1976.1), p. 206, as having preceded him in pointing out this parallel. But see also Chiampi (Chia.1981.1), p. 66. And now see Moevs (Moev.2005.1), p. 157.
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10–12.
   By now a most familiar claim of Beatrice’s: She reads Dante’s thoughts in the point (God) where all space (Latin for “where”:
ubi
) and time (Latin for “when”:
quando
) most purely and truly exist.
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13–18.
   We are in the highest part of God’s creation in time, a mixture of form and matter, the heavens. This sphere, we remember, is governed by the Seraphim, the highest order of angels, dedicated to loving God.
Dante has asked a most difficult theological question: If God is self-sufficient, if He has no “needs,” why did He bother to create anything at all? The answer that Beatrice offers is simplicity itself: He created because He loves and wanted the angels to enjoy His love in their being, loving Him in return.

For consideration of Dante’s reflections on the Creation, see Boyde (Boyd.1981.1), pp. 235–47. On the canto as a whole, see Nardi’s
lectura
(Nard.1956.1). For Dante’s recasting in it of the relatively anthropomorphic view of creation found in Genesis for a more abstract and philosophical one, see Boitani (Boit.2002.1). Boitani further maintains (p. 95) that Dante’s rescripting of Genesis goes far beyond what is authorized by the Bible in portraying the creation of the angels, a subject about which Scripture is silent.
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15.
   The Latin verb form
subsistere
is used here, as Bosco/Reggio point out, voluntarily (Dante had used the Italian form of the noun
substantia
[
sussistenza
] at
Paradiso
XIII.59 and easily could have used
sussisto
here, which rhymes perfectly with
visto
and
acquisto
). And so we may conclude that he wanted the Scholastic flavor that the Latin term affords. See verse 12, where the parallelism with the Latin word
ubi
causes the reader to realize that a perfectly usual Italian word
quando
is there a Latin word.
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17.
   The Italian dative pronoun “i” (
gli
in modern Italian) is used some eight times in the poem, but this is the only time it refers to God after Adam informs us that “I” was the first name that human speakers used to address Him, and that Adam was the first to use it. See the note to
Paradiso
XXVI.134.
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19–21.
   Two major issues are touched on here. If our sense of the history of the world begins with Creation (i.e., Genesis 1:1), what was God doing
before
then? (Attributed to St. Augustine is the retort, “preparing a Hell for the inquisitive” [see Carroll, comm. to vv. 19–30].) Dante’s point is that whatever He was doing, He was not lazing about, even if there was, strictly speaking, no time before the Creation.

The second problem is of a different order. What exactly does “God moved upon these waters” mean? Precisely what “waters” are referred to? The obvious reference is to Genesis 1:2. The first commentator (but hardly the last) to point to the work of Bruno Nardi was Porena (comm. to this tercet). Nardi had shown (see Nard.1944.1), pp. 307–13, that one traditional medieval interpretation of this biblical text was that these
waters are above the rest of the heavens (the Primum Mobile was also referred to as the “acqueous sphere”). As Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet) point out, Dante’s use of the demonstrative adjective “queste” (these) makes that solution even more attractive, since Dante and Beatrice are currently in the Primum Mobile.
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22–36.
   Boitani (Boit.2002.2), p. 446, adduces
Paradiso
VII.64–66, with its sense of God’s creation being motivated by love, as lying behind this passage. For the distinctions between
forma
and
atto
and between
materia
and
potenza
, see Bemrose (Bemr.1983.1) and Baranski’s rejoinder (Bara. 1984.1), pp. 298–99.
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22–24.
   From the fourteenth century onward, commentators (e.g., the author of the notes to the
Commedia
found in the Codice Cassinese [comm. to verse 22]) have entered into the question of what exactly Dante envisioned when he thought of “pure matter.” The author of that early commentary resorts to Plato’s term
ylem
[“hyle”], for primordial matter without form, the “stuff” of the four elements to which God would give shape in creating the physical world. See O’Keeffe (Okee.1924.1), pp. 56–57, for why this is
not
the same as the “prime matter” of Averroës. And, for a recent discussion in English, taking issue with Nardi’s various pronouncements that would make Dante less orthodox than even he probably wanted to be perceived, see Moevs (Moev.2005.1), pp. 40–45. For instance, Moevs believes that Dante’s ideas about
materia puretta
accord with Thomas’s views.

For the three entities “shot” by this “three-stringed bow,” see the note to vv. 31–36.
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25–30.
   Dante insists on the simultaneity of all parts of God’s instantaneous creation, heavenly and sublunar. The three elements of that creation (pure form, mixed form and matter, and pure matter) obviously are in hierarchical relation to one another; but their creation occurred in the same instant.
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26–27.
   According to Mellone (Mell.1974.1), p. 196, n. 1, this is the only time in all his works that Dante refers to the notion in medieval physics that light traveled at infinite velocity.
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31–36.
   The standard gloss is found in Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses), who say that the angels, “pure act” (i.e., pure form or substance, unmodified by accidents), were created in the Empyrean; that “pure matter”
(unformed matter before God created the universe) was the condition of the earth before the event recorded in Genesis 1:1–2; that the nine heavens, between the Empyrean and earth, were created out of a mixture of form and matter (“act” [
atto
] and “potential” [
potenza
]). However, for a nuanced and more complex discussion of Dante’s unique integration of elements from many sources in this passage, orthodox (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) and unorthodox (e.g., Averroës), see Mellone (Mell.1974.1), pp. 198–200.

There is a persistent counterview, one that understands the second aspect of the Creation differently, as humankind. But see Poletto’s stern remonstrance (comm. to vv. 22–24).
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31–32.
   On these lines, see Kay (Kay.2003.1), p. 45: “Order and structure were created together in the substances [= angels].”

Singleton (comm. to vv. 8–9) makes the following observation: “For a reader unfamiliar with the standard procedure of a
summa
of theology, it should perhaps be pointed out that the poem is proceeding thematically in the opposite direction to that of a
summa
: the journey moves ever upwards, toward God, and here comes to a treatise on angels, in these two cantos so near the end, whereas a
summa
begins with God, in its first section of questions, and then passes to the creation or procession of creatures from God (cf.
Summa theol
. I of Thomas Aquinas as it passes from question 43 to question 44), beginning with the highest creatures, which are the angels.”
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37–45.
   As Scripture (e.g., Genesis 1:1, Ecclesiasticus 18:1, Psalm 101:26 [102:25]) and reason (for Dante’s own contribution under this heading, see vv. 43–45) attest, God created the angels, not as St. Jerome asseverated (in his commentary on Paul’s Epistle to Titus 1:2), many, many centuries before He created the heavens and the earth, but simultaneously with them. Dante’s disagreement with Jerome is confrontational and dismissive, all the more so since it issues from the mouth of Beatrice, and we cannot lay the blame on a somewhat intemperate protagonist. (For the text of Thomas’s far more conciliatory packaging of his own dissent [
ST
I, q. 61, a. 3], see Singleton [comm. to vv. 37–39]).
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43–45.
   Beatrice’s point is that, were Jerome to have been correct, the angels would have had nothing to do for all those centuries, since their only task is governing the heavens.
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46–63.
   Mellone (Mell.1974.1), p. 194, locates this part of Beatrice’s discourse in Peter Lombard’s discussion of the angels (
Sententiae
I.ii.2), where
he sets out the problems to be resolved exactly as they are represented here: “Concerning the angelic nature the following must first be considered: when it was created, and where, and how; then what the result was of the defection of certain of them and of the adhesion of certain others.” Cf. Boitani (Boit.2002.2), p. 452, for the same citation.
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