Paradiso (168 page)

109–114.
   In the vehicle of this simile, the stadium in which the saints are seated is “personified” as a hillside that can look down to its foot and see itself, alive with spring (see the
primavera
of verse 63), reflected back up to its gaze. The tenor presents the seeing hill’s counterpart, the protagonist, as looking up (not down), and seeing, not himself, but all the blessed as reflections of the beam, reaching upward a thousandfold. (We are aware that Dante frequently uses this number as a synonym for an uncountable multitude; see at least the next [and last] time he does so,
Par.
XXXI.131.)
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115–117.
   Daniello (comm. to this tercet) wonders, if the circumference of the lowest row in the Rose is greater than the circumference of the sphere that holds the Sun (see the note to vv. 103–108), how great must be the circumference of the highest row, at least one thousand rows higher (and wider by a factor of at least one thousand times a probably constant yet indeterminate measurement).
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117.
   Francesco da Buti (comm. to vv. 109–117) says that the rows of the Rose “are like those in the
arena di Verona
.” He is followed by two modern commentators, Trucchi (comm. to vv. 118–123) and Sapegno (comm. to vv. 112–113). Trucchi, however, prefers the notion of Gioachino Brognoligo that the structure Dante has in mind is the Colosseum at Rome. Both
Dante’s more recent and more certain visit to the Arena and its greater intimacy as a built space give the edge to Verona.
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118–123.
   For a concise statement of the “resemblant difference” of the Empyrean, its way of not relating and yet totally relating to the literally underlying realms of the created universe, see Moevs (Moev.2005.1), p. 82: “The Empyrean is out of space-time, untouched by physical law; it is a dimensionless point, in which all is immediately present, a ‘space’ of consciousness, in which the ‘sight’ of awareness ‘takes’ (
prendeva
) as itself all it sees, all that exists.”

As we will discover, Dante is allowed to see with a new sense of dimension, which abrogates spatial perspective and makes all things equidistant one from another (see
Par.
XXXI.73–78). This passage prepares for that one, and both offer further evidence of the poet’s extraordinarily vivid and inventive scientific imagination.
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124–129.
   Ever since Jacopo della Lana, the yellow has been understood as the center of the Rose (the reader should remember that Dante is not talking about cultivated roses but wild ones, with their flatter profile). Beatrice and Dante are standing at the midpoint of the Rose when she directs him to look up and see the citizenry of the City of God.

As has been suggested (see the note to verse 117), Dante may have found a model for the Rose in the Arena di Verona. The reader is in fact urged to visit that place, to find a way to walk, without looking up, into the very center of its floor, and then to experience the sight of the inner tiers of the amphitheater. And it is just possible that he or she then will share the experience that Dante had there some seven hundred years ago. It really looks like the model for the Rose, vast yet intimate.
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124.
   For the notion that Dante’s Rose is a kind of counterimage to the flower plucked at the end of the
Roman de la Rose
, with its evident reference to the female
pudenda
, see Shaw (Shaw.1981.1), pp. 209–10. Shaw, who accepts Contini’s argument for attributing the
Fiore
, the sonnet sequence based on the
Roman
, to Dante, consequently argues that this passage is a “case of the mature poet making amends for the aberrations of his youthful self” (p. 210). (For discussion of the status of these questions, Dante’s knowledge of the
Roman
and his authorship of the
Fiore
, see the note to
Par.
II.59–60.) Among the surprisingly few commentators to express an opinion on this matter (one that no one considers unimportant), Mestica (comm. to vv. 115–123) raises the possibility that Dante had read it
(and that he had written the
Fiore
). Giacalone (comm. to vv. 124–129) cites Savj Lopez (Savj.1964.1), who thinks that Dante would have made allowances for the profane love championed by the
Roman
and thus seen it as a worthy precursor.
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125.
   The Latinism
redole
(exhales fragrance) is traced to
Aeneid
I.436 first by Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 124–126).
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126.
   For this “springtime” sense of the verb
vernare
, see the note to
Paradiso
XXVIII.118. The verb usually means “to spend the winter” (see
Inf.
XXXIII.135 and
Purg.
XXIV.64).
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129.
   For the phrase
bianche stole
(white robes), see its previous use at
Paradiso
XXV.95, where it clearly signifies the bodies to be returned at the general resurrection. Beatrice has promised Dante that this is the way the saved will seem to him, even though they are not yet resurrected, and so the phrase here allows us to understand that this is indeed how they appear, in the flesh.

For an overview of the history and significance of the concept of resurrection of the flesh in the Western Church (with some consideration of Dante), see Bynum (Bynu.1995.1). For a close look at the importance of the resurrected body, in several writers preceding Dante and (primarily) in the
Commedia
, see Gragnolati (Grag.2005.1). For Dante’s sense of this subject, see also Jacoff (Jaco.1999.1 and Jaco.2000.1).

At least since reading
Paradiso
XIV.61–66 (the passage shows the first two groups, the twenty-four contemplatives, who have shown themselves to Dante and Beatrice in the heaven of the Sun, all longing for their own resurrected flesh as well as for their saved relatives to regain their own), we have been aware that there is something missing in the beatific life. Against more usual views, Dante presents the afterlife of those currently in Paradise as being less than perfect (and less than perfected) because, against the orthodox notion that blessedness itself is the ultimate and eternal reward, there is, according to Dante, one thing that is felt as currently lacking: the resurrection of the flesh. Taught by Jesus (e.g., Luke 14:14) and insisted on by St. Paul, that future event is promised to all the saved. However, the early medieval view (e.g., that of Augustine) was, unsurprisingly, that once with God, the condition of the soul in a blessed and blissful member of the Church Triumphant was already perfected, both in what it knew and what it desired. The general resurrection, promised by St. Paul (most extensively in I Corinthians 15:35–55), of course awaited that soul, but the admixture of
corporality was only “decorative,” at least in a sense. Paul tackles that issue with what seems a curiously defensive insistence, against pagan (and Christian?) mockers (see Acts 17:18 and 17:32), that the saved will indeed regain their own flesh in the long passage in I Corinthians.

Only months more than ten years after Dante’s death in 1321, his old nemesis, Pope John XXII, preached a series of sermons of which a central point was that, until the soul was reclad in its flesh, it would not see God, setting off a horrified reaction within the Church, the eventual result of which was that the next pope, Benedict XII, restored the earlier disposition of the matter, namely, that the saved soul immediately experiences both the highest bliss in and the fullest knowledge of God of which it is capable.

Dante might have been amused to find that John XXII, whom he despised (see the note to
Par.
XXVII.136–138), was in disagreement with him on this important and divisive issue as well as on more pressing “political” concerns.
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130–148.
   For a global discussion of this final passage, see Hainsworth (Hain.1997.1), arguing that it not only fails to destroy the harmony or unity of this canto (a position shared by many—see p. 154n. for a concise bibliography of the question), but that it is part of its integrity. See the similar opinion of Salsano (Sals.1974.1), pp. 232–34, and of Hollander (Holl.1993.5), pp. 31–33.

For an attempt to “save” this passage despite itself, see Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses), who concede that Dante probably should not have turned aside from contemplating things eternal and divine for such a feverish concern with mere contingency, compounding that “fault” by putting this earth-centered speech in the mouth of holy Beatrice, and as her last utterance at that. One can hear awareness of centuries of complaint behind their words. To be just, one must admit that this concern with earthly things seems inconsistent with the usual sort of piety. No one ever said (or should have) that Dante is “usual” in any respect at all.
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130–132.
   There are only two possible considerations of the significance of the few places left in the Rose: Either there are very few good people alive (or who will be born before the end of time), or the end is coming faster than we think. That we should combine these two responses seems prudent. However, for Dante’s possible sense that there are some fifteen hundred years left to run in history, see the note to
Paradiso
IX.40.
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133–138.
   Silverstein (Silv.1939.1) deals with the surprise that most readers exhibit at the empty throne of the emperor being the first object that the
protagonist sees in the Empyrean by reminding us of the far more ample medieval tradition that displayed vacant seats in heaven awaiting “humble friars and simple monks” (pp. 116–17) rather than emperors. He thus sees the salvation of Henry VII not in terms of his imperial mission (failed as it was), but as an “accolade of kingly righteousness” (p. 129), showing that, in passages in the Gospels and one in the
Vision of Tundale
(see p. 124 and n. 19), Dante had available testimony to the personal justness of those kings who, rather than merely ruling them, truly served their people. (He might have referred to Dante’s praise of William the Good; see the note on
Par.
XX.61–66.) However, it is probably a mistake to accept, as Silverstein does (p. 128), the notion that, with Henry’s failure to establish lasting imperial rule in Italy “died all of Dante’s hope on earth.” For a view, apparently shaped in part by Silverstein’s, that Dante had essentially given up his hopes for an imperial resurgence because of the derelictions of the fourteenth-century papacy, see Peters (Pete.1972.1), who goes further than Silverstein in seeing Dante as having modified his imperial hopes. But see Goudet (Goud.1974.1) and Rossi (Ross.1981.1), pp. 43–50 (with a rejoinder to Peters on p. 49) for a more convincing sense of Dante’s continuing imperial hopes.

For Dante’s fifth
Epistula
(addressed to the princes and peoples of Italy) as rechanneling biblical and liturgical reflections of Christ’s majesty onto Henry VII, see Rigo (Rigo.1980.1).

For Henry VII as the seventh divinely selected emperor treated in the poem, see the last paragraph of the note to
Paradiso
VI.82–91.
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134.
   Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse) point out that it is difficult to be certain just what Dante means. Is the crown (a) leaning against the throne? (b) a part of the design on its back? (c) suspended over it? This reader confesses that he has always assumed the third option was the right one.
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135.
   The word
nozze
(wedding feast) drew Mattalia’s attention (comm. to this verse) to Dante’s
Epistle to the Italian Princes
(
Epist
. V.5): “Rejoice, therefore, O Italy, thou that art now an object of pity even to the Saracens, for soon shalt thou be the envy of the whole world, seeing that thy bridegroom, the comfort of the nations, and the glory of thy people, even the most clement Henry, Elect of God and Augustus and Caesar, is hastening to the wedding (
ad nuptias properat
)” (tr. P. Toynbee). This attribution is also found in Rossi (Ross.1981.1), p. 50.
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136.
   The adjective
agosta
(imperial) still honors Henry’s “Augustan” mission, which was to unite the Italians into a nation, as Aeneas had set out to
do. Augustus had presided over its flowering, bringing the world to peace under Rome’s authority.
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137.
   For Henry’s first naming, see
Paradiso
XVII.82, where his betrayal by Pope Clement is clearly referred to. This second (and final) reference to him by name places his coming as “Augustus” in the future, thus reflecting Dante’s willed optimism that the future harbors a “new Henry” even after this one has failed.
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