Paradiso (150 page)

134.
   For Dante’s distinction between physics and metaphysics here (and the relation of this passage to discussions found in
Convivio
II), see Alfonso Maierù (Maie.2004.1), especially his concluding remarks.
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136.
   This verse repeats, nearly verbatim, Luke 24:44, as was pointed out by Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 136–138). Jesus speaks: “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”
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137–138.
   See Tozer’s paraphrase of these lines: “
voi
, &c.: St. Peter and the other apostles, who derived the inspiration of their writings from the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost.”
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139–147.
   Dante recites his
credo
in the Trinity. He goes on to say that his proofs for God’s trinitarian nature are Scriptural, without specifying
where these appear. Somehow it does not come as a surprise that Scartazzini (comm. to vv. 143–144) was the first to offer such a list: Matthew 28:19; John 14:16–17; II Corinthians 13:14 [see, instead, 13:13]; I Peter 1:2; and I John 5:7.
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148–150.
   A source for this vehicle of the concluding simile, which seems to be based on a particular scene as described in some previous work, has escaped the commentators. However, see Aversano (Aver.2000.2), pp. 113–14, suggesting that two passages in St. Luke may be conflated in Dante’s text, Luke 19:17 and (somewhat more convincingly) 15:20–32, the parable of the Prodigal Son. As Aversano admits, the connections may seem a bit tenuous; however, as he points out, Dante’s gerund
gratulando
may pick up Luke’s two uses of
congratularsi
in this chapter (15:6 and 15:9), according to him the only two uses of that verb in the Gospels. (He has overlooked one other, also in Luke [1:58].)
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151–154.
   St. Peter now “laureates” Dante in Faith. While the phrase
tre volte
(three times) occurs on seven other occasions in the poem, its first and last appearances are the only ones that occur in the final four verses of a canto, here and in
Inferno
XXVI.139. It would seem possible that this use remembers
in bono
that first occurrence, in which the ship of Ulysses spins around three times before it sinks. Here Dante is not being punished for his presumption, but rewarded for his faith.
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1–9.
   
This passage is surely one of the most personal statements Dante makes in the entire poem. However, it tends to cause disagreement, the central issue of which is whether Dante presents himself as vigorous in his hope for laureation or as sardonic about its likelihood. As representative of the first school of thought, which has its roots in Jacopo della Lana (comm. to verse 1) and, more vociferously, in the Ottimo (comm. to vv. 1–12), one might choose the recent treatment of Scott (Scot.2004.2). His “optimistic” reading (and it is a reading at least apparently in keeping with Dante’s “hopefulness,” the subject on which he is being examined by St. James) is found both in Scott’s translation and paraphrase of these lines. In the first, he supplies the following (the square brackets are in his text): “If it comes [and may it come] to pass that the sacred poem to which both heaven and earth have lent a hand …” (p. 98); in the second, he offers his eventual sense of the passage (p. 295), intrinsically denying to Dante a proper Christian sense of the contingency of all earthly things. Scott considers the two subjunctives in vv. 1 and 4 optative, expressing “what the exiled poet longs for with all his being, a burning desire that opens the canto dedicated to the theological value of hope.”

On the other hand, see, among others, Sarolli (Saro.1971.1), pp. 384–89, Chiarenza (Chia.1983.3), pp. 147–48, and Chiavacci Leonardi (Chia.1988.2), p. 268, for appreciations of the
contingent
nature of Dante’s hope for laureation in Florence, which they find in the passage. Such an attitude is typified by a resigned tone rather than the hopeful one that most readers, like Scott, assign to him. A playful paraphrase in tune with this second view of the passage might run as follows: “Should it ever fall out [even if it seems most unlikely to do so] that I return to Florence [but those bastards will
never
allow me to come back home] and then [perhaps equally implausibly] that those fools decide to give me the laurel [which Giovanni del Virgilio has already offered me if I write a Latin poem for those sharing his dreadful Bolognese taste in poetry] ….” In such a view, where the first two verbs are circumspectly (and correctly) dubious, and thus in the subjunctive mood, the last two are triumphantly (and illogically) indicative (“I shall return,” “I shall take”). (The subjunctive in a dependent clause almost necessarily causes a reader or a listener to expect the conditional [“I would return,” “I would take”].) Indeed, in one sense Dante already has crowned himself (he allows St. Peter to be the agent of his heavenly “laureation” at the conclusion of Canto XXIV, an “event” he
refers to in verse 12). In this reading, the desired but improbable hometown laureation is represented as being both totally unlikely and as inescapable, were the world (and particularly Florence) only honest; thus the truculently aggressive tone of the indicatives. To summarize, to those of this persuasion, Dante seems to be saying, “Well, I do not think it is really likely to occur but, if I do make it back home, I’m going to take the laurel (since I deserve it).” It is notable that Dante, on both occasions on which he considers the prospect of his own laureation (see
Par.
I.26,
coronarmi
[crown myself]), imagines the wreath, not as being bestowed upon him by some benevolent figure, but as being taken by himself. (For this appreciation, see Mattalia [comm. to verse 9].)

Scott (p. 296) observes that the
vello
(fleece) in verse 7 aligns Dante, as well as with Jason, with the biblical prophet John the Baptist, that patron of Florence and figure celebrated by its Baptistry, who wore camel skins as his garment in the wilderness, his fleece. For the only slightly more widely recognized reference here, to Jason’s search for the Golden Fleece, see Sarolli (Saro.1971.1), p. 401, and Pohndorf (Pohn.1965.1), p. 189, the latter in particular supported by Hollander (Holl.1969.1), pp. 223–24. (It is a perhaps surprising fact that no commentator in the current version of the DDP seems to have associated this
vello
with Jason, although their connection here seems obvious.)
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1.
   We may do well to remember the offer made to Dante by Giovanni del Virgilio, that he should follow his vernacular
Commedia
with a more worthy instrument of procuring the laurel (see the note to
Par.
XV.28–30), a Latin poem with a political subject. If the hypothesis shared by John Carroll and Lino Pertile is correct (see the note to
Par.
XXIII.130–132), Dante composed his answering eclogue soon after he was writing that canto. It is inviting to think that this insistence on his poem’s being, on the contrary, dedicated to sacred things, is a defiant answer to that invitation, even if that may stretch chronological possibilities a bit much. However, for Dante’s sense of a recent (1315) Italian laureation and its impact on him, see the note to
Paradiso
IX.29–30. And see Hollander (Holl.2003.2), pp. 54–55, for the poet’s handling of the temptations of fame.

Villa (Vill.2001.1) considers both the term
poema sacro
and the related phrase “sacrato poema” at
Paradiso
XXIII.62.

This is the only presence in the poem of the verb
contingere
. For the occurrences of the noun
contingenza
(
Par.
XIII.63; XIII.64; XVII.37) and the participial adjective
contingente
(
Par.
XIII.99; XVII.16), see the entries for those terms, both prepared by Alfonso Maierù,
ED
(II [1970]).
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2.
   
In response to this challenging verse, Pasquini (Pasq.2001.1, pp. 145, 147) moves away from the traditional exegesis, which has it that the words
cielo
and
terra
both refer to what God has created, the twin subject of the poem, as it were, heaven and earth. That is, he realizes that the verse is not about the subject of the poem but about its heavenly agency. However, while an improvement in one respect, his reading seems deficient in the main one. For what may seem a radical (but perhaps only a necessary) view of the matter, see Hollander (Holl.1997.1) and, for a similar view, Baranski (Bara.2001.2), pp. 393–94. Such a reading of this line has it that Dante insists, however covertly, that the poem has two makers, God (the divine “dictator”) and himself (the human “scribe”). The notion that he thus portrays his own hand writing the poem finds support in
Rime
CXIV.8, Dante’s answer to a sonnet from Cino da Pistoia, in which he portrays his tired fingers grasping the pen with which he writes his own responsive sonnet.
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3.
   For the sense of this verse, Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 1–9) looks back to the
fami, freddi o vigilie
that Dante claims to have suffered on behalf of his poem. See
Purgatorio
XXIX.37–38: “O sacred Virgins, if fasting, cold, or sleepless nights / I’ve ever suffered for your sake.…”
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4.
   For
fuor mi serra
(locks me out), see the envoy of
Rime
116, the so-called Montanina: “My mountain song, go your way. Perhaps you will see Florence, my city, that shuts me out from her [
che fuor di sé mi serra
], void of love and stripped of compassion” (tr. Foster and Boyde). The self-citation was first noted by Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 4–6).
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5–6.
   The figurative speech is oversimplified and dramatic: Florence as “sheepfold,” youthful Dante as “lamb,” his enemies (Black Guelphs, others) as “wolves.”
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7.
   
altra voce … altro vello:
lit., deeper voice and facial hair or gray hair (see Dante,
Eclogue
I.42–44) of the mature man; metaphorically, with prophetic speech and this book, written on
vellum
(?); in addition, new “golden fleece” (see Ovid,
Metam.
VI.720: “vellera,” and Dante, in his first
Eclogue
[II.1]: “Velleribus Colchis” [Colchian fleece])—Dante as Jason (cf.
Par.
II.16–18; XXXIII.94–96).
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7–9.
   Tommaseo (comm. to this tercet) was perhaps the first to point to a passage in Dante’s first
Eclogue
, which is addressed to Giovanni del Virgilio,
who had made a conditional invitation that he come to Bologna to receive the poet’s crown there. In that poem Dante says (vv. 42–44): “Nonne triumphales melius pexare capillos, / et, patrio redeam si quando, abscondere canos / fronde sub inserta solitum flavescere, Sarno?” (Were it not better my triumphant locks should hide beneath the green their hoariness, erst auburn-glowing, by the ancestral stream, should ever I return to deck them there, of Arno? [tr. Wicksteed and Gardner]). It seems evident that either this passage is reflected in that one—unless, as seems less likely, this one was written after that one. In any case, it seems clear that Dante was much involved with thoughts reflecting both Mussato’s laureation in 1315 and his own desire for that reward, whether before Giovanni’s goading offer or after it. See the note to verse 1.
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8.
   In this use of the word
poeta
, we have the closest Dante ever comes to calling himself “poet” outright, though he has been issuing statements that all but said as much as early as
Vita nuova
XXV. No vernacular writer of lyric had ever used this term for himself before; it is traditionally reserved for the classical (Latin and Greek) poets.
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9.
   Exactly what Dante means by this word has been a matter of some dispute. See Rigo (Rigo.1994.1), pp. 135–63, for a complex meditation on possible meanings of the poet’s putting on the
cappello
(“crown,” according to her, in the sense of “reward for accomplishment in poetry”), in which she advances the theory that it refers most significantly to Dante’s desire to be given back his Florentine citizenship.
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10–12.
   Whatever we make of the first nine verses (e.g., do they present Dante’s hunger for a not truly Christian poetic immortality or his shrugging it off?), this tercet says the “right” things about the “right” kind of immortality. He wants to be “crowned” in the Baptistry because it was there he entered the Catholic faith. His belief in Jesus Christ has just now (
Par.
XXIV.152) been celebrated when his temples were thrice circled by St. Peter, named for the first time since his appearance in the last lines of Canto XXIII.
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