Paradiso (171 page)

52–54.
   The mood is quiet, preparing us for a transition, moving from the general to the specific.
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55–58.
   Compare the similar scene in
Purgatorio
XXX.43–54, when the protagonist turns back to speak to Virgil, only to find him gone. This scene, clearly reflective of that one, is much briefer and in an altogether different key. That one is three times as long, and in the tragic mode. Here, the disappearance of Beatrice has a quite different tonality. Among the differences is that she disappears from the “floor of the arena” only to reappear in her place in the Rose (see verse 71).
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56–57.
   What were the questions Dante still wanted Beatrice to answer? Are we supposed to wonder? Or is this mere “realistic detail” (i.e., are we merely supposed to reflect, “Of course, anyone would have a lot of
questions during a first visit to Paradise”)? Some commentators, however, try to ascertain what questions Dante wanted to ask. For example, Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 55–57): Dante wants to know the identities of those seated in the Rose; or Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 52–57): Dante wants to know where Mary and Beatrice are seated. Poletto (comm. to vv. 52–57) loses patience with such attempts, urging us not to seek what the poet has chosen not to reveal. Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 43–57) had solved the riddle acceptably, if obviously and unprofitably: Dante had questions about Paradise.… Steiner (comm. to these verses) has the wisest response: These lines refer to the questions that St. Bernard will eventually respond to, reading them in God. In fact, this is a rare occasion on which almost everyone is essentially correct. Bernard does answer Dante’s voiced question (Where is Beatrice? [verse 64]) and one unvoiced one (Where is Mary? [verse 100]). He also in the next canto names a good number of souls seated in the Rose, as Jacopo suggested he might and as Bernard says he will (vv. 97–99).
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58–60.
   In place of Beatrice, he finds, near him on the “floor” of the Rose, an “old man” (it will turn out to be Bernard, but we do not know that yet), looking like the other blessed souls.
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59.
   See Bosco/Reggio (comm. to
Par.
XXXII.40–75), who point out that by portraying Bernard as an old man (
sene
), Dante is violating a commonly understood ground rule of
Paradiso
, that all souls are, in their perfected beings, of the age of Christ in His last year on earth, when he was thirty-three. (This is sometimes given as thirty, thirty-three, thirty-four, or even thirty-five.) Why Dante chose to violate this “rule” is not clear. Bosco/Reggio opt for an artist’s rebellion against a view that would inhibit his artistic virtuosity, an old Bernard being more believable than one in his renewed youth. And see Carroll (comm. to
Par.
XXXII.1–48), discussing the babes seated in the lower half of the Rose: “Further, as we saw in the case of Bernard himself, Dante appears to ignore the doctrine of Aquinas that in the Resurrection the saints will rise at the age of thirty. Bernard, himself an old man, draws his attention to the child faces and voices of the lower ranks (
Par.
XXXII.46–48). Each soul, apparently, wears the form proper to the age it had attained on earth, freed of course from weakness and defect of the flesh. Dante evidently felt that there would have been something incongruous in making babies, who had never exercised true choice, appear full-grown in the flower of life. (Augustine thought otherwise: infants would receive ‘by the marvellous and rapid
operation of God that body which time by a slower process would have given them’ [
De civ. Dei
, XXII.xiv].)”
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63.
   Bernard is Dante’s last “father” in the poem. For a listing, see the note to
Paradiso
XVI.16.
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64.
   See Scartazzini (comm. to this verse), reminding the reader of the Magdalen’s remark to the resurrected Jesus, whom she mistakes for a “gardener,” upon not seeing Jesus where she expects to see Him, in His sepulcher (John 20:15): “Si tu sustulisti
eum
, dicito mihi ubi.…” (If you have carried Him away, tell me where.…” [italics added]).

These are Dante’s first spoken words since
Paradiso
XXVIII.57. See the note to
Paradiso
XIV.88–96 for a considerably longer silence on his part.
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65–69.
   Bernard’s first words answer Dante’s most pressing concern, the whereabouts of Beatrice, who, he points out, is in the third row from the top. For a similar scene, see
Inferno
II.109–112, where Beatrice tells how Lucy came to her exactly where we see her now and got her to leave this seat in order to go into Limbo to enlist Virgil’s aid. Just so has she now enlisted Bernard’s help on Dante’s behalf and then reassumed her place.
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70–72.
   Dante sees Beatrice literally in glory, resplendent with the light of God.
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71.
   For Beatrice’s crown and Aquinas’s discussion of the additional
aureola
accorded especially favored saints, see the note to
Paradiso
XXIII.95 and Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 71–72).
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73–78.
   From the highest point in the earth’s sublunar atmosphere to the deepest seabed was not so far as Dante found himself now from Beatrice; and yet he could see her as though there were no appreciable distance between them. The poet has already explained (
Par.
XXX.121–123) that in the Empyrean, the usual physical laws that we know on earth are suspended.

In a sense, Dante here “disinvents” the as-yet-to-be-discovered technique of perspectival representation that would distinguish Italian painting of the next century.
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77.
   See Scott (Scot.2002.1), p. 485, for this striking word (
effige
), which is used only here and in
Paradiso
XXXIII.131, thus further associating Beatrice and Christ.
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79–90.
   
Apparently, the first commentator to pay any conscious attention to the protagonist’s switch from the honorific
voi
, in addressing Beatrice, to the affectionate
tu
, was Grabher (comm. to vv. 70–93), if he does not make much out of it. Porena (comm. to vv. 79–90) also notices the change, but has quite a strong sense of what it signifies, only appearing to be a closing of the distance between them, but being in fact a distancing, because it is the
tu
addressed to a saint, or that is proffered both to God and to Mary. Indeed, both God and Mary, in Christian theology, have the unique gift of being divine and human simultaneously—as does Beatrice. Nonetheless, Chimenz (comm. to vv. 79–84) admires Porena’s formulation. Giacalone (comm. to vv. 79–84) is also in their camp. A different view is advanced by Singleton (comm. to verse 80), one that proposes that the guide has become the individual soul of Beatrice (Singleton retains his sense that the guide is “allegorical,” while the individual is not, a judgment that some would dispute in its first instance, others in the second). Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 82–84) also support Porena’s thesis.

For a different view, see Hollander (Holl.2001.1), pp. 126–27, pointing out that, as in the
Vita nuova
, Beatrice in Heaven may indeed be addressed with
tu
, “only when she is at one with God, where and when there are no human hierarchies.” The fact would seem to be that these eleven second-person-singular pronouns and verb endings (in only twelve verses) do indicate a more personal sense of affection, in a sort of uncontrolled outburst of personal enthusiasm, allowable now that they are on an equal footing as lovers of one another in God. We cannot imagine Jesus addressing Mary as
Voi
.
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79–81.
   For the figural equation, Beatrice as Dante’s “Christ,” see Hollander (Holl. 1969.1), p. 261. After calling attention to the poet’s last words to Virgil in the poem (
Purg.
XXX.51), “Virgilio a cui per mia salute die’mi” (Virgil, to whom I gave myself for my salvation), he then continues as follows, discussing this tercet: “At Dante’s beginnings we do well to have in mind his endings, and vice versa. It is Beatrice, the figure of Christ, who brings Dante to salvation; it is Virgil who brings Dante to Beatrice. Dante does not (and did not in the
Vita nuova
) use the word
salute
lightly. His last words to Virgil give him the highest function anyone less than Christ can perform, and that is to bring another to Christ.” In this vein, see Scott (Scot.1973.1), p. 570. See also Iannucci (Iann.1995.2), p. 483 (citing his earlier article [Iann.1979.1]), who also notes Beatrice’s Christlike attributes in this passage (as, once again, does Scott [Scot.2002.1], p. 486). This has become more or less the standard interpretation of those considered by
some in Italy to be part of a so-called
scuola americana
, “the American school (of Dante studies).” And see Pasquini (Pasq.2001.1), p. 254, remarking on the “near-heterodoxy” of these verses.

To be honest, this reading seems so obvious that one feels apologetic for harping on it. However, to understand what blinders Dantists accustomed themselves to wearing whenever they came near the border of so “blasphemous” a theologized poetic for the poem, see the allegorizing glosses of such as Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to this tercet). In his reading (and he is far from being alone in it), Beatrice becomes “theology” who comes down to this “hell on earth” (our world, not Limbo) in order to bring her message to all mortals (including, we assume, Dante Alighieri). This is so flagrantly wrongheaded that one has to admire Benvenuto at least for his stubbornness in not yielding to a Christological interpretation of Beatrice nor to a personal one of Dante, who, in his treatment, is only a stand-in for all humankind. This, one of the most personal moments of the
Commedia
, is thus turned into a kind of simpleminded version of an uplifting moral tale, one only implausibly attributed to the genius of Dante. Reviewing responses to this passage in the DDP, one finds the word “Christ” only in Singleton’s commentary (to verse 91) of 1975. How did (or does) anyone read this passage and
not
think of Christ’s descent into Hell and His subsequent Harrowing of the Hebrew saints?
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85.
   The typological equations (Beatrice = Moses; Dante = the Hebrews) once again align Beatrice with Christ. See the note to verses 79–81. Here, as there, the commentators seem to want to avoid such “blasphemous” associations. For the Exodus as the poem’s controlling trope, see Singleton (Sing.1960.1).
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88–90.
   As one who had sinned against Beatrice once before, Dante knows whereof he speaks. He thus prays that she will help him remain pure of soul for the rest of his time on earth when he is again without her. When he wrote these lines, he probably did not realize how brief that time would be.
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91–93.
   This is the final tercet devoted to the interaction of the two lovers in the poem. Her final smile yields to her returning her attention to the source of all being.
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94–99.
   Bernard summarizes the tasks that lie ahead for Dante: He must contemplate this resplendent gathering (
splendore
) to prepare himself to
see, up through the ray (
raggio
), the source of the irradiating light (
luce
). See the note on Dante’s light physics,
Paradiso
XXIII.82–84.
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94.
   Dante uses the Latinism
sene
(from
senex
) again. See the note to verse 59. And see
Purg.
XXX.17 for its Latin form.
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96.
   A disputed verse. Some believe the prayer is Beatrice’s, the love Bernard’s; others think that both are Beatrice’s. See Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) for a summary of the two positions and a strong vote for the first solution, but eventual openness to the second.
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97–99.
   Bernard’s suggestion might indicate that one of Dante’s unasked questions (see the note to vv. 56–57) had to do with the population of the Rose.
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102.
   Bernard names himself, having sounded like a lyric poet of Dante’s youthful acquaintance talking about his lady, associating himself, however, not with a Giovanna, a Lagia, or a Selvaggia, but with the Blessed Virgin Mary. Everything about this moment comes as a surprise. We did not anticipate a new guide in the poem, if Dante surely decided that he wanted to have a chance to bid farewell to Beatrice, as well as to present her as being back in bliss. In addition, perhaps for reasons reflecting his personal devotion (for a possible confirmation, see
Par.
XXIII.88–89), he wanted a guide more associated with Mary for this highest part of the poem (not that Beatrice would have been in any way unqualified); perhaps he also felt a numerological tug in deciding to have a trinitarian third instructor. Still, one sympathizes with those who feel that there is something ungainly about the substitution of Bernard for Beatrice. (See the discussion in Botterill [Bott.1994.1], pp. 64–115.) And no one who defends the advent of a new guide can argue that it has been at all prepared for, as was Beatrice’s (as early as
Inf.
I.121–126). Pertile (Pert.2001.1), pp. 67–69, goes so far as to argue, if not particularly convincingly, that Dante had planned (and the first sign of such a plan revealed itself, according to him, in
Inf.
II.24–25, with the indication of Mary, Lucy, and Beatrice) to have Beatrice replaced by Lucy. Whatever one thinks of that solution, one must admit that there is a problem here, one that a few strokes of the quill could have avoided. However, see Mazzoni (Mazz.1997.1), who insists on the influence of Bernard’s work (or that which Dante considered Bernardine) behind the text of the poem from its outset. And see Iannucci (Iann.1995.2), pp. 481–82, for the notion that the
surprise of Bernard’s presence is only a tactic to alert us to his importance for Dante. A series of essays discussing the reflection of several of Bernard’s writings in the
Commedia
is found in Aversano (Aver.1990.1). For a summary of Bernard’s importance for Dante and of the presence of his writing behind the cantos in which he appears, see Carroll (comm. to vv. 118–142). For the possible influence of Bernard’s
De diligendo Deo
on the structure of the entire poem, see Hollander (Holl.1976.2, repr. Holl.1980.1, pp. 33–38). And see the notes to
Purgatorio
XXVII.139–141 and
Paradiso
XXXIII.127–132. For a compact treatment of Bernard’s life, see Raoul Manselli, “Bernardo di Chiaravalle, santo,”
ED
(I [1970]), pp. 601a–5b, which, however, skirts the question of the actual literary influence of Bernard on Dante. For an introductory treatment in English, one may, in addition to Botterill, consult Gardner (Gard.1913.1), pp. 111–43.

Dante does not refer to Bernard’s urgent and frequent support of the Second Crusade (1145–1147) in his preaching. For a study of this crusade, inevitably linked to the adjective “disastrous,” see Constable (Cons. 1953.1). Dante’s silence is perhaps not surprising, given its failure.

Bernard names himself only at the end of his speech (vv. 94–102). The impression of humility is perhaps less pronounced than when similar behavior was exhibited by both Thomas Aquinas (
Par.
X.82–99) and Cacciaguida (
Par.
XV.88–135), who indeed speak longer before naming themselves. Nonetheless, his comportment is clearly intended to portray his modesty.
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