Paradiso (80 page)

35–36.
   The translation is based on an interpretation that may strike those who know the commentary tradition as erroneous (but see Hollander [Holl.1993.7], pp. 20–21; [Holl.1993.2], p. 91). These verses are usually (nearly universally) interpreted to refer to other
better
poets who will be inspired to write by reading Dante (and who, because of his example, will have even more success in finding Apollo’s favor). Michelangelo Picone has in fact suggested (Pico.2002.4, p. 212n.) that Cino da Pistoia may be one such. And even the generally skeptical Scartazzini (1900, comm. to verse 35) falls victim to a probably unwise spirit of unanimity, although he is plainly uncomfortable with the portrait of the poet that results from this interpretation. “Troppa umiltà” (overabundant humility) is his muttered response. Indeed, the very notion that Dante might envision the possibility that a single other poet (much less a whole crowd) might outdo him in poetic accomplishment seems nothing less than preposterous. In the later twentieth century, several commentators tried another solution, one first reflected in the commentary tradition by Daniele Mattalia (1960), who cites Giuseppe Toffanin’s remarks (Toff.1947.1), pp. 80–82, even though he does not agree with them, that try to make the case for the
saints in Heaven, including Beatrice, as being those whose prayers will be amended by Dante’s poem. That also seems a strained interpretation, since self-interested prayer is a necessary instrument only for those who are on earth, not yet experiencing their salvation. Nonetheless, the view impressed Rocco Montano (Mont.1963.1), p. 321, enough to make its way to print yet again and, through him, in 1968, to the commentator Giuseppe Giacalone (comm. to vv. 34–36). This minority position, however, does not hold up very well to scrutiny, either, though it is a welcome, if belated, response to the standard, if unlikely, gloss. There is a “third way,” fortunately, of solving the problem. (See Hollander [Holl.2005.2 and 2006.1].) Literally, the verses seem to express the (not immodest) hope that the
Comedy
will help those who will read it to pray more effectively (and thus put themselves in the way of salvation—that would seem to be the necessary conclusion). It is no wonder that for centuries most of Dante’s readers avoided recognition of the barely hidden daring in such religious claims as this. But it seems to be the simplest explanation of these verses, one that is in harmony with the avowed aim of this poet, which is to move those living in the bondage of the sins of this life toward the liberty of eternal glory (see the
Epistle to Cangrande
, v. 21).

See the similar dispute that dogs a similar passage,
Paradiso
XXX.34.
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37–45.
   This long and difficult beginning of the narrative portion of the final
cantica
may be paraphrased as follows: The Sun (“the lamp of the world”) rises on us mortals from various points along the horizon, but from that point at which four circles intersect in such a way as to form three crosses (generally understood as the circles of the horizon, the equator, the zodiac, the colure of the equinoxes, the last three of which intersect the horizon in this way on the vernal equinox, March 21), it comes forth conjoined with a better constellation (Aries) and takes a better course, and it better tempers and imprints the material compound of the world with its informing power. And from that point on the horizon it had made morning there, where almost all was light (Purgatory), and evening here, where almost all was dark (i.e., in the Northern Hemisphere). As Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 37–42) point out, Dante has marked the beginnings of all three
cantiche
with references to the time (
Inf
. II.1–5;
Purg
. I.13–30, 115–117). Singleton refines the point (comm. to vv. 44–45): Where
Inferno
begins at evening (around 6 pm) and
Purgatorio
at dawn (shortly before 6 am),
Paradiso
begins, more propitiously, at noon, the most “noble” hour of the day (see
Purg
. XXXIII.104 and
Conv
. IV.xxiii.15). And see the note in Bosco/Reggio to the following tercet (vv. 43–45) for some of the elaborate exegesis attached to the astronomical
problems here. For a detailed discussion in English, see Alison Cornish (Corn.2000.2), pp. 87–92.
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46–48.
   The lengthy opening description of the heavens yields to the first presence and first naming of Beatrice in
Paradiso
. Her superhuman ability to gaze directly and fixedly at the Sun reflects a tradition insisting on eagles’ ability to do so found in Aristotle among the ancients (
De animalibus
IX.xxxiv) and in Brunetto Latini among the moderns (
Tresor
I.v.8). And see
Paradiso
XX.31–32. As Carroll points out (comm. to vv. 49–64), we probably should not draw allegorical conclusions about Beatrice’s turning leftward (a movement frequently symptomatic, in this poem, of moral deficiency); here her turning in this direction is necessitated by her being in the Southern Hemisphere where Beatrice was facing east; north, where the Sun shone, was thus to her left.
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49–54.
   This, the first formally developed simile of
Paradiso
, is in fact double (and that its second element deploys the image of a completed pilgrimage should not surprise us). We may sense an increasing degree of abstraction in the similes of this
cantica
(but not always—see vv. 67–69, where Dante’s “transhumanation” is cast in physical terms; he is changed as was Glaucus). For the increasingly abstract nature of the poetry of roughly the first two-thirds of
Paradiso
, see Chiappelli (Chia.1967.3). And for two bibliographies of studies devoted to the Dantean simile, see Sowell (Sowe.1983.1) and Varela-Portas (Vare.2002.1).

Beatrice’s miraculous (to ordinary mortals) ability to look into the Sun is momentarily granted to Dante, who sees the reflection of the Sun in her eyes and somehow is able to look up into that planet with his returning gaze. When we reflect that, according to
Purgatorio
IV.62, the Sun itself is a mirror (
specchio
), Beatrice then becomes a mirror of the mirror of God.
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55–57.
   Some of the early commentators make the understandable mistake (since “here” obviously refers to the earth) of thinking that “there” applies to the heavens and not the pinnacle of the Mount of Purgatory; however, both Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to vv. 49–57) and Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 49–63) comprehend that Dante and Beatrice are still in the earthly paradise, a fact that the title of this new
cantica
tends to make us forget.
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58–60.
   Dante is able to make out the corona of the Sun. The reader must assume that his greater sight results from his greater closeness to the Sun at
this highest point on the earth’s surface as well as from his regaining the vision of innocence (see the note to vv. 55–57).
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61–63.
   Venturi (comm. to vv. 62–63) believes that this additional brightness was caused by the sight of the Moon, now grown larger in its appearance because Dante is so much higher. However (and as Lombardi [comm. to this tercet] correctly objects), this cannot be the sphere of the Moon, which awaits Beatrice and Dante in the next canto, but is the sphere of fire, in the outermost situation of the four elements that constitute our earth (water and earth, then air, and finally fire), a solution at first proposed in 1333 or so by the Ottimo (comm. to vv. 58–63). And see verse 115 of this canto (“This instinct carries fire up toward the moon”), where the sphere of fire is apparently again alluded to.
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64–66.
   The guide and her charge presumably have passed through the (unnamed) sphere of fire that girds the earth just below the sphere of the Moon; Dante’s eyes are guided by Beatrice’s beyond this home of earth’s highest-dwelling element and to a first sight of the heavenly spheres.
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67–72.
   Glaucus’s transformation, described by Ovid (
Metam
. XIII. 904–968), is a dazzling rendition of how an ordinary fisherman, chancing upon a magic herb, is metamorphosed into a god of the sea. Dante can sharply reduce the poetic space he devotes to the Ovidian scene because it is so familiar to his readers (at least the ones he most cares about). For the classical history of Glaucus as it comes into Ovid, Dante’s primary source, see Diskin Clay (Clay.1985.1).

For Dante’s Glaucus (along with Marsyas) as figures of Dante’s own divinization, see Rigo (Rigo.1994.1), pp. 109–33. For the theme of
deificatio
in St. Bernard’s
De diligendo Deo
as clarifying Dante’s notion of “transhumanation,” see Migliorini-Fissi (Migl.1982.1), who indeed sees traces of Bernard’s work throughout the poem, as does Mazzoni (Mazz.1997.1), especially pp. 178–80, 192–230.
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68.
   For Glaucus’s “tasting” of the grass that transforms him as “reversing” Adam’s “tasting” of the forbidden tree (
Par
. XXVI.115), see Rigo (Rigo.1994.1), p. 113. (The notion of Glaucus as Adam in his refound innocence goes well with that of Dante in his: See Carroll’s observation in his note to vv. 49–64.) We observe here a conflation of Ovid’s
Heroides
XVIII.160, a verse (cited by Rigo.1994.1, p. 114) referring to Glaucus: “reddidit herba deum” (whom a plant once deified—tr. H. C. Cannon).

The two major classical myths evoked in this canto, Apollo and Glaucus, along with the associated references to arrows and the ingestion of food, indicate the two main ways to understanding that we will hear about all through the
cantica
, intellectual penetration and a more passive reception of the truth.

That Dante has turned to Ovid for three major myth/motifs in this canto (Apollo and Daphne/immortality; Apollo and Marsyas/being drawn out of one’s bodily limits; Glaucus/transhumanation) would almost seem to indicate that, for Dante’s purposes, Ovid’s poem about the gods, transmogrified by Dante’s Christian intellect into shadows of a higher truth, is a more adaptable source than Virgil’s martial epic for this more exalted and final component of the
Comedy
. If, after our encounter with the first cantos of
Paradiso
, we are of that opinion, we are not altogether incorrect. However, if we believe that Virgil’s text is no longer a valued source in the poem’s most Christian precincts, we will eventually be disabused of this notion, particularly in Cantos XV and XXXIII.
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70–72.
   For Dante “transhumanation” is the passing beyond normal human limits by entering into a state at least approaching that enjoyed by divinity.

Chiarenza (Chia.1972.1), p. 83, holds this passage up to Hugh of St. Cher’s comparison of the difficulty of conveying one’s “intellectual vision” to someone else to the difficulty of describing the flavor of wine to one who had never tasted it.

See Migliorini-Fissi (Migl.1982.1), pp. 41–44, for St. Bernard’s relevant concept of
deificatio
.
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70.
   Dante’s claim is lodged in self-conscious language that, in a single verse, includes an Italian neologism (
trasumanar
), literally “to transhumanate,” an intransitive verb signifying “to become more than human,” and a Latin phrase,
per verba
(in words).
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73–75.
   This tercet reflects the three Persons of the Trinity, one per verse (Power, Knowledge, Love); we also learn in a single line (75) how Dante and Beatrice move upward: drawn instantaneously by God Himself, not propelled gradually by themselves.
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73.
   This citation of II Corinthians 12:3 has not escaped many commentators. There Paul is not certain as to whether he was in body or not in his ascent through the heavens. For his phrase “third heaven” as meaning, not
the heaven of Venus, to which the phrase would ordinarily refer in Dante, but the highest part of God’s kingdom, see St. Thomas,
Summa Theologica
II–II, q. 175, a. 3, r. to obj. 4 (cited from the online edition of the
Catholic Encyclopedia
[
www.newadvent.org/cathen/
]): “In one way by the third heaven we may understand something corporeal, and thus the third heaven denotes the empyrean (I Tim. 2:7; Cf. I, 12, 11, ad 2), which is described as the ‘third,’ in relation to the aerial and starry heavens, or better still, in relation to the aqueous and crystalline heavens. Moreover, Paul is stated to be rapt to the ‘third heaven,’ not as though his rapture consisted in the vision of something corporeal, but because this place is appointed for the contemplation of the blessed. Hence the gloss on 2 Cor. 12 says that the ‘third heaven is a spiritual heaven, where the angels and the holy souls enjoy the contemplation of God: and when Paul says that he was rapt to this heaven he means that God showed him the life wherein He is to be seen forevermore.’ ”

On the Pauline stance of the poet here and elsewhere, see Mazzeo, “Dante and the Pauline Modes of Vision” (Mazz.1960.1), pp. 84–110. (And see his earlier book
Structure and Thought in the “Paradiso”
[Mazz.1958.1] for a wider consideration of the poetics of this
cantica
.) See
Paradiso
XXVII.64–65, where St. Peter finally makes it plain that Dante is present, ascending through the heavens, in the flesh. Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 73–75) make the point that, since Dante eventually allows us to believe that he went up in body (they cite
Par
. XXI.11 and 61, passages that are perhaps less decisive than that in
Par
. XXVII), all this coy uncertainty has a main purpose: to give himself Pauline credentials, since Paul himself either cannot or will not say in what state he was during his rapture. Gragnolati (Grag.2005.1), pp. 162–74, joins those who believe that Dante contrives to make us see that he wants to be understood as having made the final ascent in the flesh.
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