Purgatorio (89 page)

67–69.
   Nino comments upon the unknown and unknowable purpose of God in bringing this living human soul into the immortal realm. He is content to accept the
quia
, the sheer fact of Dante’s having been chosen to be here. See
Purgatorio
III.37.
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71–72.
   Nino hopes that Dante, returning to the world, will see his daughter, Giovanna, in Pisa and cause her, by recounting this meeting, to pray for his soul. Giovanna’s innocence is the result at least of her age, since she was born in 1291 or so.
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73–75.
   Nino’s unnamed wife was Beatrice d’Este. Sometime after his death in 1296 she stopped wearing widow’s vestments, which featured white bands drawn around the head (her “wimple”), and eventually married, after a previous betrothal, a second husband, Galeazzo Visconti of Milan, in June 1300. The misery that awaits her is to share the exile of her new husband because of the expulsion of the powerful Visconti family from Milan in 1302.
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77.
   For early awareness of the citation of Virgil here, see the Anonimo Fiorentino (1400):
Aeneid
IV.569–570: “A woman is ever a fickle and a changeful thing.”
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79–81.
   Nino’s heraldic language suggests that the device of the Milanese Visconti’s coat of arms, the viper, will not decorate her tomb as well as would have his family’s device, the rooster, had she remained a widow and eventually died in Pisa.

Whether with a purpose or not, Dante plays off the situation that pertained in
Vita nuova
XXIV, when Guido Cavalcanti’s Giovanna preceded Dante’s Beatrice as John the Baptist preceded Christ. Here the innocent Giovanna is a foil to the unnamed but vicious Beatrice d’Este, her own mother. In the language of
King Lear
turned inside out, “bad wombs have borne good daughters.”
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82–84.
   The poet underlines the fact, lest we fail to observe it, that Nino takes no pleasure in his former wife’s coming tribulations, but merely notes God’s justice in them.
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85–93.
   These three tercets distance the reader from the intense family drama narrated by Nino, as though to put that drama into a cosmic context. The protagonist gazes at the pole in the southern sky where, as on a wheel, that which is closest to the axle moves more slowly than points farther from it. The four stars, representing the four cardinal virtues (as almost all agree), seen by the travelers in
Purgatorio
I.23 near the pole, are now setting on the other side of the mount of purgatory and are thus shielded from view. They are replaced in their former position by these three. Nearly all, primarily because of their allegorical reading of the four, also insist that these represent the three theological virtues—faith, hope, and charity. However, some commentators, following Portirelli (1804), argue for a strictly literal and astronomical reference here, the three stars being among the brightest of two southern constellations, Dorado and Achernar in Eridanus; Canopus in Carina. (For Portirelli’s notion that Dante knew about the southern heavens from Marco Polo, see note to
Purgatorio
I.22–24.) Beginning with Andreoli (1856), for half a century most commentators argue for a literal sense that indicates phenomena in the southern sky
and
an allegorical sense. But after Poletto (1894) most indicate only the allegorical meaning.
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94–96.
   Sordello interrupts Virgil’s heavenly discourse to call his (and, once again, not Dante’s) attention to the drama unfolding in the garden.
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97–102.
   We have seen this “snake” before, in
Inferno
XXXIV, imprisoned for his arrogant assault on God. Now we see him replaying his role in the Fall, licking himself in prideful self-absorption as he plans another assault, now that he has lost his first battle, upon humankind. Both Sordello’s urgency in interrupting Virgil’s notice of the heavens’ beauties and the fact that no opposition has as yet deployed its forces have the effect of creating uncertainty (and fear) in the naïve onlooker and in the reader. This serpent seems dangerous indeed, as he was when he tempted Eve in Eden, but in fact is not, as we presently discover.
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103–108.
   Dante’s attention to the snake kept the rapid defensive action of the angels from his view until they suddenly enter his field of vision, immediately thwarting the plans of the snake. We now see why their swords are blunted: they have no need of them because this serpent is powerless to offend. This drama is precisely that, a play, by which the onlookers, now safe in their potentially (but definitively) saved state, may be reminded of their sinful lives—their vulnerability to the serpent—and the grace that has rewarded their goodness with salvation. Mark Musa (Musa.1974.1) examines this scene as a representation of Christ’s recurring second advent, as set forth by St. Bernard in his
First Sermon on the Advents
. Between His first (when He came to earth to save humankind) and final coming (at the end of time, to judge and rule the world), Christ is understood as coming into the heart of each successive believer. For Heilbronn (Heil.1972.1), who accepts Musa’s view, the intervention of the angels represents “an allegorical enactment of the intermediate Advent—that is, the coming of Christ into the hearts of the faithful in this world” (p. 46).
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109–111.
   Heilbronn (Heil.1972.1), p. 55, argues that it is to Nino’s companion’s credit (we will shortly discover that this is Currado Malaspina) that he never takes his eyes from Dante, whose presence marks the really important event taking place here, against the backdrop of this now familiar play, in which nothing is really happening, for all its symbolic significance. The play reflects the past, Dante’s physical presence in purgatory in the present, and the future—Dante’s among Currado’s family in Lunigiana and Currado’s hopes for prayer from them, never expressed, but clear from all the similar requests we have already heard from others.
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115–120.
   The valley of the river Magra, flowing through Lunigiana, home of the Malaspina family. For Currado and his grandfather see note to vv. 61–66. Currado’s disclaimer is probably meant to be taken as a sign of his modesty (his grandfather was the
real
Currado), as is his awareness that his love of the world must be purged above on the mountain.
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121–129.
   Dante’s words in praise of the valor and generosity of the house of Malaspina in 1300 are in fact words of thanks for the hospitality of Franceschino Malaspina in Lunigiana in 1306 (and, according to Boccaccio, in his
Vita di Dante
[Bocc.1974.1], p. 483, of Moroello Malaspina as well [see Dante’s letter to Moroello, his fourth Epistle, ca. 1307]).
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130–132.
   This verse has been variously interpreted. If we agree that
capo
is the subject (and not the object) of the sentence, as almost all do, then we may choose among the following solutions: the wicked chief who corrupts the world may be Satan, the pope (and then surely Boniface VIII), Rome (with its corrupt papacy and no emperor in her saddle), or bad governance in general. Whichever solution Dante may himself have had in mind, it is clear that any and all of these solutions “work,” and are, in fact, interrelated. If Satan is the “prince of darkness” who leads most humans astray, his minions on earth (corrupt popes, pusillanimous emperors), or even corrupt leadership generally understood, all point to a common failing and a common cause: weak humans falling under the influence of those who govern poorly. From this failing only the Malaspina family is currently exempt.
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133–139.
   “Va” (or, literally, “Go”) seems here to have the same sense that it sometimes has in Shakespeare, i.e., “Go to,” meaning “Enough of such words.” Currado, embarrassed by Dante’s praise of his family, goes on to promise his interlocutor that he indeed will have cause to praise it more in 1306 (i.e., before the sun returns to the constellation Aries seven years from now).
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1–9.
   Like
Inferno
IX, this ninth canto is both liminal, marking the boundary between two large areas, and filled with classical reference. And it is the first entire canto devoted to the transition from one poetic zone to another since
Inferno
XXXI. This sort of self-conscious poetic behavior puts us on notice, from the very outset, that we need to pay particular attention here.

Its reference to Aurora, surprisingly enough, has made this passage among the most hotly debated of the poem. In the “orthodox” version of the classical myth, Aurora, goddess of the dawn, arose from her couch, where she slept with her aged husband, Tithonus, to rise in the sky on her chariot, announcing the coming of day. A brief and incomplete summary of the debate yields the following (for a summary of the essential arguments over the passage and an attempt to restore Benvenuto da Imola’s central and daring reading of it see Hollander [Holl.2001.2]): Moore (Moor.1903.1), pp. 74–85, essentially solved this problem almost a century ago, but in fact the early commentators (to whom Moore pays little attention) had already done so. Nearly all of them are quite sure that Dante has invented a second myth, one in which Tithonus is married to Aurora 1 (of the sun) but has a “relationship” with Aurora 2 (of the moon). The poetic facts are simple, according to Moore. The time is between 8:30 and 9
PM
, the cold animal is the constellation Scorpio (and certainly not that belated other candidate, Pisces, arguments for which identification Moore competently dismantles), and thus the aurora we deal with is that of the moon.

For a review of these tormented verses and their tormentors (up to 1975) see Vazzana (Vazz.1981.1), pp. 180–85. And for one of the most interesting discussions of their meaning see Raimondi (Raim.1968.1), pp. 95–98. See also Cornish (Corn.2000.2), pp. 68–77.
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7–9.
   Much has been made of the phrase “where we were” by the “solar aurorans” in the hopes of counterposing the northern hemisphere (site of the solar Aurora at this hour in Italy) and the southern (where Dante and his companions are becoming sleepy). However, Dante is probably not contrasting the two hemispheres but the glow in the night sky of purgatory that spreads above them and the darkness of their surroundings as night advances. For a similar situation, consider
Purgatorio
II.8, the phrase “là dov’ i’ era” (there where I was) by which Dante refers to his situation in the southern hemisphere looking at the stars from there.

His figure of speech involves mixing metaphors, as the night is given feet, by which she measures her hours, and wings that do the same thing. The meaning is that the time is between 8:30 and 9
PM
.
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10–11.
   Dante’s Adamic sleepiness, that is, the heaviness brought on by his physical being, is adumbrated by a later passage (
Purg
. XI.43–44), in which Virgil comments upon the difficulties experienced by this living soul as he climbs the mountain in his flesh (“la carne d’Adamo”). But the theme is introduced in the first canto of
Inferno
(I.10–12) where Dante’s “sleepiness” is associated with Adam’s, according to Hollander (Holl.1969.1), p. 81n., suggesting a figural relationship between the fallen Adam, sent forth into his exile from the garden, and the sinful Dante.
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13–15.
   Dante’s dream, occurring some nine hours after he fell asleep, takes place in the pre-dawn moments in which the swallow sings sadly
perhaps
(if we credit the mythographers, most certainly Ovid,
Metam
. VI.412–674) in memory of the rape of Philomel by her sister Procne’s husband Tereus and her subsequent metamorphosis into a swallow (in Dante’s version, where most others prefer the nightingale—see note to
Purg.
XVII.19–20, a passage that makes the swallow here necessarily Philomel). Tereus, like Tithonus, has had sexual concourse with each of two sisters—if we accept the notion that the opening passage of the poem posits a lunar aurora (see note to vv. 1–9, above).
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16–18.
   The greater truth, indeed the prophetic power, of dreams that came near morning was something of a commonplace in Dante’s time. See note to
Inferno
XXVI.7. Beginning with Torraca (1905), twentieth-century commentators have reminded readers that in
Convivio
II.vii.13 Dante adduced our awareness of our own immortality from the fact that our dreams foretold the future for us.
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