Paradiso (131 page)

3.
   Few commentators point out the obvious (but see at least Carroll [comm. to vv. 1–18]): The third verse reflects Cacciaguida’s promise (
Par.
XVII.43–45) of an eventual harmonious resolution of the problems inherent in Dante’s exile. The protagonist is now capable of a larger and wider view of the impending events in his life, knowing that they are a part of the divine plan, one that includes his writing this text and that corroborates the rightness of his political decisions in the greater scheme of things. Unlike Cacciaguida, however, he is not yet capable of seeing essences without their contingent trappings.
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5–6.
   Beatrice, perhaps having tuned in on the inner thoughts of both Cacciaguida and Dante, reminds her charge that God takes away any sense of loss in earthly circumstances that the saved may feel, according to Dante’s current understanding. Once saved, a soul is
in patria
, not in exile any longer.

Beatrice, who has been uncharacteristically silent in Mars (to make room for the poet’s “Cacciaguida voice,” which is expansive), now speaks for only the second time in this heaven. She has smiled twice (
Par.
XV.71
and XVI.14) and spoken once (
Par.
XVII.7–12); she will speak once more (vv. 20–21), as briefly as she does now.
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7–15.
   The insistent presence of first-person pronouns and pronominal adjectives in this passage (
io
is heard four times, the rhyming
mio
, three) is striking. It reminds us that, from the beginning, we have had to consider the strategic difference between the writing agent and the behaving protagonist, the first seeing all things in the light of his final vision of God, the second experiencing them cumulatively.
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8–12.
   This passage reflects the earlier one at
Paradiso
I.5–9, which similarly insists on the poet’s incapacity to retell what he has experienced and forgotten, since his memory was not up to containing so momentous an experience.
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8.
   The word
conforto
, used as a noun to describe another human being (e.g., “that person was my comfort”), has been employed three times before now (
Inf.
IV.18;
Purg.
III.22, IX.43), on each occasion assigned to Virgil; here, for the first (and last) time referring to anyone else, it obviously refers to Beatrice.
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16–18.
   Beatrice’s beauty is now understood to mirror the greatest beauty of all, that of God. See the note to
Purgatorio
XXXI.47–54 for a discussion of the verbal noun
piacere
, denoting the aesthetic aspect of divinity. For Aquinas on God’s aesthetic dimension, see
ST
I, q. 39, a. 8, where he argues that “the highest form and paradigm of beauty is the splendor of God as manifested through Christ, to whom … the name ‘Beauty’ is most fittingly attributed” (Masciandaro [Masc.1995.1], p. 329).
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19–21.
   Beatrice “conquers” Dante’s will by compelling him to look away from her eyes in order to turn his attention a final time to the words of his great-great-grandfather. This is the last smile she will direct at Dante for quite some time. See the note to
Paradiso
XXIII.46–48.
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22–27.
   This simile compares a particularly affection-bearing glance, perceived on earth, to the visibly increased flame of Cacciaguida’s desire to speak again to his descendant.
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28–36.
   Apparently having finished his performance, Cacciaguida, like Solomon (
Par.
XIV.37–60), returns for an encore. And, like Solomon’s, his
has ramifications for our understanding of the genre of his poem. Solomon’s was a hymn to the Resurrection; his is a piece from a Christian martial epic. For this last as a Dantean genre, see Hollander (Holl.1989.1), arguing that, after an initial series of rebuffs to martial epic in
Inferno
, eventually in
Paradiso
the poet begins to associate himself, through Cacciaguida, with a Christian poetry of crusade, surely a martial subject.
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29.
   The image of the tree that is nourished from its topmost tip, that is, the “tree” of the saved in the Empyrean by God Himself, may reflect, as Battaglia Ricci suggests (Batt.1995.1, p. 11), biblical language in general or perhaps Matthew 13:22 and/or Ezechiel 47:12.
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31–33.
   See the note to
Paradiso
IX.38–42 for the sort of fame that is praiseworthy, even in a Christian context.
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33.
   For the word
musa
as meaning “poet” (or, as seems more likely, “poem,” according to Bosco/Reggio [comm. to this verse]), see the note to
Paradiso
XV.26. For the meaning “poem,” Bosco/Reggio cite Virgil,
Eclogues
III.84 and VIII.5; Horace,
Epistles
I.xix.28;
Satires
II.vi.17.
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34–36.
   Cacciaguida promises that, as he names each of these heroic figures, it will traverse the “arms” of the cross, looking like lightning flashing in a cloud (cf. the first description of these lights as flames glowing behind alabaster,
Par.
XV.22–24).
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36.
   This verse is the last spoken by Cacciaguida. See the note to
Paradiso
XIV.52–57 for the similarly talkative Thomas Aquinas. Of the 628 verses in the heaven of the Sun, 287 are spoken by him (46 percent); of the 553 in Mars, 297 are spoken by Cacciaguida (54 percent).
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37–51.
   For Dante’s knowledge of the French tradition of the
Neuf preus
(Nine Worthies), see Hollander (Holl.1989.1), pp. 83–85, citing Joan Ferrante (Ferr.1984.1), p. 277n., and pointing to the first frontal study of Dante’s eclectic treatment of this traditional subject, a then-forthcoming article by Lauren Scancarelli Seem. See also the discussion in Picone (Pico.2002.5), pp. 268–71. Picone rightly notes that Seem’s article (accepted by
Forum Italicum
around 1989) never appeared. See also Battaglia Ricci (Batt.1995.1), pp. 13–14. Trucchi (comm. to vv. 34–36) observes only that the exemplary fighters are nine, “a symbolic and perfect number,” but is unaware, as is the entire commentary tradition, of the
likely presence of a reference to the Nine Worthies. Seem, in her unpublished article, argues that Dante knew the tradition of these nine heroes, three Jewish, three pagan, three Christian, from either
Les Voeux du paon
, by Jacques de Longuyon (ca. 1298–1309), or from the earlier Latin and French tradition, dating from the eleventh century (with somewhat differing lists of heroes), that Jacques himself relied on.

The traditional list of the
Nove prodi
includes five not included in Dante’s revised list (the right-hand column in the two lists below):

It seems clear that Dante is taking a canonical list and recasting it to conform to his special purposes. He includes two of the first three and the last pair of names (Joshua, Judas Maccabeus; Charlemagne, Godfrey), dropping the middle four, and then adding five more recent “Christian heroes,” three drawn from fictional treatments, sometimes of historical characters (Roland and William of Orange, if not Renouard) and two from history itself (Robert Guiscard, Cacciaguida), and “updating” the list, which had ended with Duke Godfrey, leader of the First Crusade (1096), by adding last his own ancestor, who had perished, a martyr, in the second (1147).
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38.
   Joshua, successor of Moses as leader of the Israelites, was, in Dante’s Christian eyes, the “first crusader” in that he conquered the Holy Land, restoring it to its rightful populace.
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39.
   This line makes it clear that the protagonist hears the names of the heroes spoken by his ancestor, who thus becomes, for a moment, the “author” of this part of the poem, and thus of a crusading epic. See the note to verse 51. However, and as Iorio (Iori.1989.1), p. 474, reminds us, there is not a word about their battles; this text presents them as they are, now and forever, in the sight of God, literally
sub specie aeternitatis
, with all that violence behind them.
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40.
   
Judas Maccabeus fought successfully against two kings of Syria, both of whom wanted to extirpate the Jewish religion. He eventually was killed by a third in 160 b.c., but his mission had been accomplished by then.
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42.
   “It was joy that whipped that spinning top”: That is, joy “was the impulse which caused the rotation. The homely simile is borrowed from Virgil,
Aeneid
VII.378–384, where it is applied to Amata’s wild excitement when under the influence of the Fury” (Tozer, comm. to vv. 40–42).

In the days before mechanized toys, children used to keep their top spinning (once they had imparted energy to it by rapidly pulling a cord wrapped around its top) by following it and “whipping” its sides with a long, thin stick, thus maintaining its rotating motion.
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43.
   Charlemagne (742–814) fought against the Saracens in Spain. He is the only emperor in the group. Roland, while a historical figure (counted among the Christian dead at the battle of Roncesvalles), is better known from the
Chanson de Roland
and other medieval epic poems.
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46.
   William, Duke of Orange (ca. 750–812), adviser of Charlemagne and leader in several military successes of the Christian forces, but still better known from the cycle of poems celebrating his valor. Renouard, while not a historical figure, was perhaps believed by Dante to be one. As Charlemagne and Roland were paired in one cycle of French
chansons de geste
, so were William and Renouard in another.
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47.
   Godfrey of Bouillon (1058–1100) led the First Crusade, resulting in the conquest of Jerusalem.
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48.
   Robert Guiscard (“Robert the Astute”), a historical figure (1015–85), was also celebrated in a Latin poem,
Gesta Roberti Wiscardi
. Exactly why Dante wanted to include him in this list is not clear, indeed is the subject of a certain scholarly puzzlement. Further, he violates the chronology established by the inclusion of Godfrey before him. Dante has previously mentioned him (
Inf.
XXVIII.13–14) as having defeated the Saracens in Puglia, and that may have been his single largest qualification in the poet’s eyes.
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49.
   Cacciaguida has rejoined the temporary residents of the cross and now he also streaks along its radial beam.
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51.
   
The word
artista
, as Hollander (Holl.1992.2), pp. 217–18, has argued, is perhaps used here for the first time in Italian with its modern sense, that is, not only as the practitioner of one of the liberal arts (in this case, music), but as a full-fledged “artist,” both composer and performer of his own work, performing his “mini-epic” of nine crusading spirits, his personal version of the Nine Worthies. Its second such use will be in
Paradiso
XXX.33, where Dante will join his great-great-grandfather as one of the only two “artists” so designated in the
Commedia
.

The musical reference of this canto, its concerns so often expressed in musical terms, is studied by Heilbronn-Gaines (Heil.1995.2).
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