Purgatorio (127 page)

85–87.
   Dante’s double question refers to the explanation of Statius (
Purg
. XXI.43–72) that the earthquake marking his liberation from the memory of sin was not, as Dante had imagined, a natural meteorological event, but a supernatural one. Just so the running water of the stream and the constant breeze, Matelda will explain, are not natural phenomena but supernatural ones, heavenly artifices to harmonize the physical attributes of this place with its spiritual essence.
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90.
   Once again Matelda refers to Dante’s mental processes as “beclouded” or “befogged”; first he did not understand the nature of her love (verse 81) and now he does not understand the nature of the garden.
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91–102.
   Matelda essentially repeats what Statius had said below (see note to vv. 85–87): God limits the natural meteorology of the mountain to the ante-purgatory. The first humans, Adam and Eve, were placed in this spot free of any such disturbance; but they themselves, in their disobedience, disturbed the laws of eternal nature in the garden (vv. 94–96).
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103–120.
   The “weather” here is thus not the sign of some kind of disturbance, but was, from the Beginning, the sign of the harmonious essence of the created universe. The breeze in the garden, limited to this upper reach of the mountain, was (and is) caused by the movement of the highest sphere in the heavens, the
primum mobile
, the first moving (which, we will learn eventually, in
Paradiso
, moves toward God in desire and by so doing creates the movement of all the heavens below it). That breeze scatters the seeds of most (but not all) of the plants of Eden down onto the earth below. And this is why, she explains, that mortals at times cannot find the source of a plant new to their experience; it has been carried by the wind from Eden and then somehow across the seas of the southern hemisphere and deposited in the landmass half a world away. And this is why Dante will also see some plants here that have no counterpart on earth.
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121–126.
   Having explained the source and result of the constant breeze in the garden, Matelda turns to the equally constant water, which also does not suffer the changes of water in our world, condensing and then being released from the clouds (consider the transformations of the Arno’s waters in
Purg
. XIV.34–36). What the rivers here “lose” as they run out of Eden is not restored from the clouds, but from an eternal fountain in the garden, put into operation by God Himself.
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127–132.
   Having answered both of Dante’s questions (vv. 85–87) Matelda now turns her attention to the twofold river in this garden. The Bible says there are four rivers in Eden: the Phison (Ganges), Gehon (Nile), Tigris, and Euphrates (Genesis 2:10–14). Dante says there are two, Lethe and Eunoe. The first of these is looked forward to by Virgil (
Inf
. XIV.136–138) in response to Dante’s wrongful assumption that it is a river in hell. The second, Eunoe, appears to be no less than a Dantean invention. Thus Dante has first of all reduced the number of the garden’s rivers from four to two.

Lethe is the classical river of oblivion, present in the poets best known to Dante: Virgil (
Aen
. VI.713–715, where drinking from it deprives the soul of its entire remembered experience and thus prepares it for another life), Ovid (
Metam
. XI.602–604), Statius (
Theb
. I.296–298), Lucan (
Phars
. V.221–222). As for the word Eunoe, a Dantean Greek-derived coinage, Tommaseo (1837, in his comment to
Purg
. XXXIII.127–129) was perhaps the first commentator to consider Dante as having cited himself (
Convivio
II.iii.11), when he says that the Empyrean heaven was formed by the divine mind alone, or Protonoe (
protos
= first;
nous
= mind). Here Dante reformulates that Greek term, itself derived by Uguccione da Pisa from Martianus Capella (see Vasoli [Vaso.1988.1], p. 138n.), into
eu
(good) and
nous
(mind—or here perhaps “memory”).
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133.
   There is some disagreement among the commentators as to whether the rivers’ water taken as a whole (i.e., that of both Lethe and Eunoe) is sweeter than any other taste, or whether Eunoe’s water is even sweeter than Lethe’s, as our translation indicates that we believe.
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136.
   Chiamenti (Chia.1999.2), pp. 214–15, citing Lewis and Short’s
Latin Dictionary
, argues for the classical Latin meaning for the word “corollary” here, a present or gratuity (e.g., a gift of money offered in exchange for a garland of flowers), as filtered through Old French poems describing ladies in gardens. While we have left the term intact in our translation, we agree with Chiamenti’s inclination to read it in the floral tradition of Romance poems, since the whole passage is so redolent of such scenes.
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139–141.
   When they were inspired on their holy mountain, Parnassus (that is, when they were most inspired by their muses), the classical poets sang of the age of gold (e.g., Ovid in the beginning of the
Metamorphoses
, Virgil in his fourth
Eclogue
). In doing so, they perhaps had some intimation of this place, scene of the true “golden age,” where mankind was created in innocence and joy.
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142–144.
   Ovid’s description of the classical “Eden” (
Metam
. I.89–112) is remembered closely in this tercet. One of its particulars is arresting. Where Dante makes his springtime eternal, in Ovid (
Metam
. I.107) it became ephemeral and now leaves us every year: “ver
erat
aeternum” (the spring
was
everlasting). The drama of the Fall and Resurrection is reflected in this tercet. In this garden humankind was created innocent and fell; nonetheless, the garden awaits our redemption in its eternal unfallen condition, filled with the nectar and ambrosia of the classical Golden Age in its Edenic form: fruit and water (see
Purg
. XXII.148–150).

Singleton (Sing.1958.1), pp. 192–99, points out that the virgin Astraea, or Justice, is a significant presence in both Ovid’s and Virgil’s presentations of the Golden Age, the last goddess to leave the earth in Ovid’s myth, only to return in Virgil’s prophecy. And just so, for Singleton, does Matelda serve in the role of Astraea here in Dante’s garden, representing original justice (as well as our memory of the unfallen Eve).
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146–147.
   The protagonist’s series of smiles (beginning at
Purg
. XXI.109), caused by his pleasure in the prospect of the joy that Statius will experience once he discovers that he is in the company of Virgil, is now matched by the two smiling countenances of those two poets as they understand, through Matelda’s “corollary,” that they have finally found the true Golden Age.
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1–3.
   Echoing Guido Cavalcanti (see the note to
Purg
. XXVIII.43–48), the poet begins this canto by returning to the situation that we found early in the last one: Dante thinking that a beautiful young woman was in love with him. Now the poet himself seems to confirm this. We, nonetheless, probably realize that the song Matelda sings is once again utterly different from the sexually charged
pastorella
and is indeed once again a Psalm (31:1 [32:1]): “Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.” As Singleton (1973) points out, St. Paul (Romans 4:3–8) interprets this Psalm as indicating God’s reward for just humans. However, this is not, in short, to “fuse” the “theme of profane love” with that of “charity, love of a higher order” (Singleton [1973]), but simultaneously to include and supersede it. Matelda is a very different sort of “shepherd girl” from the one we found in Cavalcanti; that seems to be Dante’s main point. She does indeed love the protagonist, but she is not in love with him, as he at first believed. The word that describes her affective state,
innamorata
(touched by love), here appears for the first time in the poem. It seems to collocate itself in the Cavalcantian world of sexual love. However, as a graduate student at Princeton, Sheila Colwell, pointed out in the spring of 1984, the verb
innamorare
, in an inflected form or as a past participle, will be used eight more times in
Paradiso
, always to indicate, as we may realize either now or retrospectively, heavenly affection.
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4–6.
   Why are these two groups of nymphs made part of the simile, when Dante and Matelda are moving near one another and in the same direction? Benvenuto (1380) glosses the tercet simply. In the old days some nymphs wanted to leave the shade for the sun, while others desired to leave the sun for the shade. Beginning with Tommaseo (1837), some commentators have suggested a relationship with Virgil’s two bands of nymphs (
Georgics
IV.383), one hundred guarding the woods, another one hundred guarding the streams (“centum quae silvas, centum quae flumina servant”). Neither the gloss nor the citation, however, answers the question, above, that has bothered many commentators, none more than Porena (1946), who posits a lost classical source to explain our puzzlement but has not convinced others of this hypothesis. It would seem that Dante wishes to express only the thought that, just as in the distant (classical) past nymphs would move purposefully from one place to another in the forest, so did he and Matelda move from where they had been standing to go somewhere else. However, the brightness that they shall soon find would seem intrinsically to associate them with those nymphs who move from shade to sunshine.
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7–12.
   Since the stream normally flows east to west but now makes a 90-degree veer to the north, Matelda, followed by Dante, heads south for fifty paces until it makes a second 90-degree bend, and they are once again heading due east. Why the poet wanted to have this bend in the river, which accomplishes the removal of Dante and Matelda to a point some fifty feet south of where they had been and from which they resume movement in an easterly direction, has not been clear to the commentators.
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15.
   Matelda’s addressing Dante as “frate” (brother) reminds him (and the reader) of his earlier misunderstanding of the nature of her affection for him (see
Purg
. XXVIII.43–45).
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16–21.
   The lustrous presence is so bright that the protagonist, forgetting his recent and abundant instruction by Matelda on the absence of “real” weather here (
Purg
. XXVIII.85–126), at first takes this shining for lightning, until its duration makes it clear that it is something altogether other. In this way the poet builds suspense for the pageant yet to come.

It is probably not without purpose that, near the beginning of each of these cantos (XXVIII and XXIX), in which his will is finally integral and good (see
Purg
. XXVII.140 and note to XXVII.139–141), Dante reveals that his problems now center in his weak understanding. Thus this second part of the poem anchors itself in the program of the correction of his intellect, which will last until
Paradiso
XXX. (See the note to
Purg.
XXVII.139–141.)
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22–30.
   The protagonist hears a melody (we will be allowed to know its lyric component at verse 51) so beautiful that righteous indignation causes him to condemn Eve for depriving him of immortal life in this beautiful garden.

The veil that she would not accept is variously glossed, from the first commentators onward, either as being negative (ignorance) or positive (obedience), and some (e.g., Grabher [1934]) have believed that it has both valences.
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31–33.
   The
primizie
(first fruits) are the first fruits of God’s eternal love as these are found here in Eden, “this foretaste of eternal bliss,” promising the joys of eternity.
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36.
   This second reference to the growing intensity of this
son et lumière
again whets the reader’s appetite to know what lies just ahead (see verse 21).
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37–42.
   This is the fourth of the
Commedia
’s nine invocations (see the note to
Inf
. II.7–9).

Fallani (1965) rightly explains that “the marvelous vision is entirely contained in the poet’s memory” and that Dante now requires aid only in finding the correct words to express it. (See the note to
Inferno
XXXII.10–12 in response to a similar second invocation in the first
cantica
.) In other words, he now requires aid from holy Muses to express in poetry the deeper truth of what he has seen in the pageant representing the Church Triumphant. For the increasing importance of the notion of a prior “conception” of God’s truth to Dante’s evolving self-presentation as poet, see the note to
Inferno
XXXII.1–9 and Hollander (Holl.2001.1), p. 59.

Two authors stand behind this passage, as has been variously understood in the commentary tradition. The first is St. Paul (II Corinthians 11:27): “in labor and hardships, in many a vigil, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.” Paul tells us of his trials and tribulations that prepared him for his visionary rapture, when he was taken up into the third heaven (II Corinthians 12:2). The first commentator to make this connection, which now seems fairly obvious, was apparently Torraca (1905). The context fits: we are about to witness a Pauline vision (one which happens, however, to be more Johannine in nature, as we shall see). However, there is another source, a much less apparently appropriate one, given the religious context of the entire scene: Virgil’s invocation in his seventh book (
Aeneid
VII.641): “now, goddesses, cast Helicon forth and move your song”: “Helicon, celebrated range of mountains in Boeotia, sacred to Apollo and the Muses, in which rose the famous fountains of the Muses, Aganippe and Hippocrene. Dante (perhaps through a misunderstanding of
Aen
. VII.641; X.163) speaks of Helicon itself as a fountain”
(T)
. (He may, on the other hand, be indicating all the sources of poetic expression by their common site.) This invocation in Virgil’s poem marks the transition to the “Iliadic” military second half of the epic. That might not seem particularly promising as a parallel here. On the other hand, just as Virgil, some 600 lines into the second half of his martial epic places another invocation, so does Dante, some 185 lines into the second half of his theological epic, insert one of his. For the first notice of the Virgilian reference see Tommaseo (1837). For the meaning of the word
mercé
(translated as “reward”), we follow the reasoning of Bosco/Reggio (1979), who argue that the more common understanding (“aid” or “help”) is countered by the rhetoric of the tercet, in which Dante presents himself as having suffered for the Muses and as now claiming what is due him.

As for Urania, here the highest of the Muses and their leader (where Calliope, muse of epic, had held that role in
Purg.
I.9–12), as the muse of astronomy, of “high things,” she is needed to give the poet fit words to convey the conceptual truth of the pageant to come. Dante has seen it, but now, coming to write of it, he requires an understanding of its theological meaning in order to give it proper expression.
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