Paradiso (83 page)

13–15.
   
We are warned that even a Christian reader, losing track of the ship that is
Paradiso
, may get lost in these precincts. The daring of these lines, far beyond approaching what in Yiddish is referred to as
chutzpah
, is perhaps not imaginable in any other poet.
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16.
   The “famous men” are the Argonauts who accompanied Jason on the first voyage made on a ship, in the thirteenth century b.c., to Colchis, a voyage already referred to (
Inf
. XVIII.86–87) and that will furnish the matter for the ultimate “historical” reference in the poem (
Par
. XXXIII.95–96), a final look at the voyage of the
Argo.

Dante refers to Colchis by the singular form of the adjectival noun of place, “colco.”
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17–18.
   In order to gain the Golden Fleece, Jason, aided by Medea’s herbal concoctions, performs wondrous deeds in Colchis (
Metam
. VII.100–158). In Ovid, however, it is not Jason’s shipmates who stand amazed at what they witness of Jason’s astounding feats (e.g., plowing a field by means of the iron-tipped horns of two bulls, turned upside down and serving as Jason’s plow, and seeding it with serpents’ teeth, with a resulting harvest of soldiers), but the onlooking Colchians (“mirantur Colchi” [
Metam
. VII.120]). Dante is here not nodding, but “rewriting” the classical text in order to make it more worthy of bearing a Christian message, as Picone is aware (Pico.2002.2), p. 47.
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19–22.
   The narrative continues with Dante and Beatrice being drawn heavenward by their desire for God, she with her eyes fixed on Heaven, he with his fixed on hers, which serve as his mirrors. This is the first of the formulaic ascents that will precede the arrival and description of each new heaven. For a listing of them all, see the page facing the “map” of Paradise in the front matter.
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21.
   While some complicate the meaning of the comparison, it is perhaps better to see it in simple terms: The poet, who knows that the stars are actually moving rather rapidly in their orbits, compares their movement to the rapid upward movement of Beatrice and himself.
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23–26.
   One of the most frequently discussed examples of Dante’s employment of the device
hysteron proteron
, a rhetorical figure that, to denote speed and the resultant difficulty of knowing which event in a sequence preceded which other(s), reverses the normal order. As a speeding
arrow (actually a bolt shot from a crossbow) is suddenly released from the catch (or “nut” or “peg” [according to Tozer on vv. 23–24]) on the bow, flies, and strikes its target, that is how quickly Dante finds himself within the surface of the Moon, so quickly indeed that the constituent moments of the ascent seem to have been experienced in reverse order. Gabriele (comm. to vv. 23–24) informs us that this iron “arrow” (the bolt) was usually four-sided.
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30.
   Beatrice makes plain what we have probably fathomed: Dante is in the sphere of the Moon, within the body of this “star” itself. Dante’s terms for the heavenly bodies are, from a modern point of view, both inconsistent and, at times, different from ours, as the reader has already probably noted. (Later on in this canto, he will refer to the Moon as a planet [
pianeto
, verse 76] and not, as here, a “star.” He uses the terms interchangeably; for us the Moon is neither of the above.)
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31–36.
   Dante’s first impression of the physicality of the Moon tells us that its matter is less “material” than Earth’s: For all its rocklike qualities, it seems a cloud. As Singleton (comm. to verse 31) points out, Aristotle taught in
De caelo
that the Moon and all above is physically different from our material world. It is thus that Dante must describe it as “eternal,” since, unlike Earth, it is imperishable. That Beatrice, pure form, penetrates the matter of the Moon, is not surprising; that Dante also does so raises the question in his mind that we find referred to in vv. 37–39.
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32.
   The poet is of the opinion that the Moon shines with its own light as well as reflecting the light of the Sun (
Mon
. III.iv.17–18), as Singleton observes (comm. to verse 32). In this canto, Dante refers only to the second phenomenon (vv. 79–81).
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37–45.
   The poet raises the question once more (see
Par
. I.4–6,
Par
. I.73,
Par
. I.98–99) of his presence in the heavens with his flesh in such a way as to make us feel that he wants us to believe he was there in body (otherwise the “bonus” referred to in the tercet that concludes this passage will not apply).

Singleton (comm. to
Par
. I.98–99) refers to St. Thomas’s words that were clearly meant to calm fearful Christians, worried that at the general resurrection, saved souls would be kept from approaching Heaven by the substance of the spheres. Here is Thomas’s answer (
Summa contra Gentiles
IV.87): “Neither does this divine promise meet an impossibility in the
assertion that celestial bodies are unbreakable so that the glorious bodies may not be elevated above them. For the divine power will bring it about that the glorious bodies can be simultaneously where the other bodies are; an indication of this was given in the body of Christ when He came to the disciples, ‘the doors being shut’ (John 20:26).”

See Picone (Pico.2000.1), pp. 7–12, for discussion of Dante’s bodily assumption; and again (Pico.2002.2), pp. 35–39, hammering home his essential observation, that Dante wants us to acknowledge his presence in paradise in the flesh, without, perhaps, paying sufficient attention to the deliberate coyness of his claim, only made indirectly (if clearly enough) some three-quarters of the way into the
cantica
(see the note to
Par
. I.73).
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39.
   The double presence of the word
corpo
in a single verse is a sign of the poet’s concern with materiality here;
corpo
(body) appears nine times in this canto, far more often than in any other (nearly one-sixth of its fifty-five appearances throughout the poem;
Inferno
XXXIII is the closest challenger, with five).
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46–51.
   Having done what Beatrice exhorted him to do (vv. 29–30; thank God for raising him from the earth to the Moon), Dante now asks the question the resolution of which will occupy the rest of the canto—the cause of the dark spots on the Moon.
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51.
   For the legend that Cain was confined to the Moon and bore a bundle of thorns, see the note to
Inferno
XX.124–126. For a study of the question of these “lunar spots,” see at least Bruno Nardi (Nard.1985.1) and Giorgio Stabile (Stab.1989.1), pp. 47–55; according to the latter, p. 48, Dante puts forward “tre interpretazioni: del mago, del filosofo naturale e del teologo” (three interpretations, that of the magus, that of the “scientist,” that of the theologian) only to destroy the first two in favor of the last.
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52–57.
   Beatrice gently chides those rationalists (including Dante) who analyze ineffectively, since they lack the principle that informs the phenomena that they observe, evidence found through the senses.
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58.
   Beatrice’s simple (if loaded) question brings forth ninety verses of response.
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59–60.
   Dante restates (as Beatrice knew he would) his previous argument, found in
Convivio
II.xiii.9, that the dark places in the Moon are the
result of rarer matter (which does not reflect the Sun’s rays as well as denser matter does) in the surface of the Moon. However, and as Bosco/Reggio point out (comm. to this passage), the protagonist has here gone deeper into error by making this phenomenon more inclusive and even, perhaps, general, using the plural in line 60,
corpi
, and thus indicating other celestial bodies in addition to the Moon.

Where most critics believe Dante’s source for this view is Averroës, André Pézard, as is duly reported by Sapegno in his introductory note to his commentary on this canto, believes it lies in the
Roman de la Rose
(vv. 16803–16850 [ed. Lecoy], vv. 16833–16880 [tr. Dahlberg]). And Vasoli (Vaso.1972.1), p. 36, cites Pézard (Peza.1965.1), pp. 1377–78, for Jean de Meun’s passage with its view of the moonspots. What is most fascinating about Jean’s words to the student of the
Commedia
is how clearly reflected they seem to be in Dante’s. (And the closeness is all the more arresting because
Il Fiore
contains no similar passage; there can be no question of the
Roman
’s direct influence on Dante here, no question that Dante is here citing a putative earlier self in
Il Fiore
.) In the
Roman
, Nature, confessing to Genius, resolves the question of the moonspots more or less precisely as Dante had in
Convivio
: “It seems to men that the moon (
la lune
) may indeed not be clean and pure (
necte et pure
), because in some places it shows up dark (
obscure
). But it is because of its double nature that it appears opaque and cloudy (
espesse et trouble
) in some places … because it is both clear and opaque (
clere et espesse
) ….” Jean is arguing that the Moon has two kinds of matter, clear and opaque, and that the Sun’s beams pass right through the clear but are reflected by the opaque; and then, beginning at verse 16825 (16855 in Dahlberg’s translation), Nature, like Beatrice, turns to experimental means of demonstration: “But if one took lead, or something dense (
plom ou quelque chose espesse
) that does not allow rays to pass through, and placed oneself on the side opposite to that from which the Sun’s rays come, the form would return immediately.” It is difficult to believe that Dante did not have this passage in mind when he developed his own discussion, also involving “experimental science,” if coming up with a very different solution, one that objects strenuously to the mere physicality of Nature’s explanation, as we shall see. Thus, if Dante reveals his knowledge of the French text here, he does not reveal himself as an uncritical admirer.

This discussion touches on one of the great unresolved issues confronting readers of the
Commedia
: Dante’s knowledge of the Old French masterpiece of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. To deal with the state of the unresolved issue briefly, we should be aware of at least three
possible answers to the spiny question: (1)
Il Fiore
is indeed by Dante, and thus he knew the
Roman
from his youth (since the latter work is a sort of free translation of passages from the Old French work, and Contini—as well as almost all who make the
Fiore
a part of Dante’s bibliography—places it very early in Dante’s career, in the 1280s or, at the latest, in the early 1290s [see Rossi (Ross.2003.1), p. 20]). (2)
Il Fiore
was indeed read by Dante, but someone else wrote it, which explains why he cites this Italian “translation” of the
Rose
(for some textual resonances of
Il Fiore
in the
Commedia
, see
ED
II [1970], pp. 898–900) but not the original; there is thus no direct relationship between the French work and Dante’s. (3) Another view would hold that, beginning with this passage, Dante reveals his recent reading of the
Roman
, a text that he encountered only after he had finished composing
Purgatorio
. In recent years the dispute has intensified, even in Italy, where—while Contini, much of whose later life was devoted to demonstrating Dantean authorship, remained among the living—dissenting voices were not very often heard. See the balanced volume, edited by Baranski and Boyde (Bara.1997.3), devoted in part to the question of the work’s authorship; Leonardi (Leon. 1996.1), who believes it is authentic; Malato (Mala.1999.1), pp. 138–48, considering arguments
pro et contra
, and tending toward a negative view; and Pasquini (Pasq.2001.1), p. 43, denying Dantean authorship. For what had earlier become the standard view and the basic bibliography, see Gianfranco Contini,
Fiore, Il
(
ED
II [1970]), pp. 895–901; and for a listing of some more agnostic views, see Hollander (Holl.2001.1), pp. 182–83. More recently, we have Luciano Rossi’s attempt to start the investigation over again (Ross.2003.1), reminding us of his senior colleague’s early attempt to accomplish a similar task: Picone’s remarks on the problems of attribution (Pico.1974.1).
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61–63.
   Beatrice begins with a sweeping denunciation of Dante’s position in a thoroughly Scholastic manner, making clear the nature of the thesis that she will set about to destroy (Dante’s hypothesis regarding alternating layers of rarity and density). For this tercet as reflecting the poet’s disavowal of his earlier Averroist views of the issue, see Cassell (Cass.2004.1), pp. 54–55.
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