Paradiso (176 page)

10–12.
   For the elevation of Mary found here (and in all this passage), see Carroll (comm. to vv. 1–39): “[Dante] must have been familiar with the distinction of Aquinas between
latria
, the worship due to God;
dulia
, the veneration given to saints and Angels; and
hyperdulia
, the higher veneration given to Mary, as the most exalted of creatures (
ST
II–II, q. 103, a. 3, 4).”
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11–12.
   For the saved, there is no more need for hope—their hope (as well as their faith) has been rewarded, and now they only love eternally. Meanwhile, while to those (few, we need to recall, lest we get carried away by the warmth of these verses) left on earth who will be saved, Mary offers the surest path of hope for their salvation.
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14–15.
   Campi (comm. to vv. 13–15) cites Monsignor Cavedoni for the attribution of this image to St. Bernard,
Sermones in Vigilia Nativitatis Domini
III.10: “Nihil nos Deus habere voluit, quod per Mariae manus non transiret” (God does not wish us to have anything that has not first passed through the hands of Mary).
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15.
   Geoffrey Chaucer, who knew and understood this poem better than any English writer for many centuries, appropriated this line in his
Troilus
with hilarious result. Stanza 182 of Book III (one stanza from the numerical midpoint of the work, 588 of 1178 stanzas) has Troilus in the midst of his three-stanza prayer to Venus (his “Mary”). Whoever wants to accomplish his love (he is thinking about carnal pleasure), he says, without Venus’s help, “his desire will fly without wings,” that is, will not be successful. It is
Paradiso
XXXIII done as
Some Like It Hot
, one of Billy Wilder’s greatest films. (That Chaucer could do Dante “straight” is witnessed in many of his texts; in the context of this canto, see particularly
his rewriting of the first half of Bernard’s prayer in “The Second Nun’s Prologue” of
The Canterbury Tales
, vv. 29–77.)

As Simone Marchesi, in conversation, has pointed out, Chaucer’s Billy Wilder was Giovanni Boccaccio, whose lascivious Venetian friar Albert (
Decam
. IV.ii), in illicit pleasure with a Venetian matron, “flew many times without his wings.” Albert appears to the credulous woman as the angel Gabriel, decked out in a costume including wings that he takes off only in the darkness of her bedroom. Boccaccio is clearly pulling Dante’s leg; now Chaucer does so also.
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17–18.
   For liberality extending itself unrequested, see
Purgatorio
XVII.59–60 and
Paradiso
XVII.75.
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19–20.
   Here we have a case of a Virgilian borrowing that has apparently remained hidden for centuries (in both texts, CAPITALS mark structural parallels and
italics
indicate secondary repeated sounds of
te
):

See
Georgics
IV.465–466 (Orpheus lamenting his dead Eurydice, a scene Dante has revisited in
Purg.
XXX.49–51 [see the note to that passage] as parallel to his plaint for lost Virgil, as is fairly widely agreed these days):

This seems an obvious revisitation. Perhaps we have not seen it because the situations are so opposed. But that is the point: Bernard is a better Orpheus singing a better Eurydice, Maria. It is a small but telling emblem of how Dante rewrites Virgilian tragedy as Christian comedy. And the Virgilian context is striking: We last heard the notes of
Georgics
IV in tragic mode for his disappearance as a character from the poem; now that poem becomes the subtext for a better moment, his own reentry to this Christian comedy at its highest point.

Notice of this echo is fairly recent. See Hollander (Holl.1993.1), p. 339, citing a communication from Professor Rachel Jacoff in 1987, suggesting
the existence of this borrowing, which also possibly reflects
Paradiso
XXIII.88–89, where Dante presents himself as praying to Mary each morning and evening, while Orpheus presents himself as “singing” Eurydice morning and evening. The stark contrast between Virgilian “Orphic” love that leads to death and Marian affection that leads to eternal life could not be more striking.

We may remember that the first (and only) time we heard Dante’s name in this poem (
Purg.
XXX.55), it was echoing a passage just a little farther along in this
Georgic
(see the note to
Purg.
XXX.63).
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22–23.
   Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses) rightly express surprise that there is any debate at all over exactly which of the souls in which parts of the afterworld Bernard refers to, since he obviously refers to all of them.
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28–33.
   The meaning of these verses is clear enough, but the discussion of them is uncertain with regard to a possible source. While several commentators hear a plausible echo of
Aeneid
II.604–606 (first Gabriele [comm. to vv. 31–32]) in these verses, and a few others hear one of Boethius (
Cons.
III.m9.25–28) and not of Virgil (first Vellutello [comm. to vv. 28–33]), neither text is really close enough to be a convincingly heard citation, if the Virgilian one has the largest following and the more likely context. If we believe that the Virgilian passage is being alluded to, the parallels are fairly inviting. Where Venus removes the shield of invisibility from the gods so that Aeneas may see his true enemies for what they are, Mary takes the cloud of his mortality away from Dante so that he may see his “friend,” God, as He is.
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29–39.
   These verses contain six words for praying, the densest occurrence of noun and verb forms of
priego
in the poem.
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33.
   Once again the precise understanding one should have of the verbal noun
piacer
is an issue. See the note to
Purgatorio
XXXI.47–54. Grabher (comm. to vv. 28–33) believes that here it means
somma bellezza
(highest beauty), as do we.
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34–39.
   See Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 1–21), who observe that this final prayer offered by Bernard may reflect the second and final part of the
Ave Maria
: “Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, / ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, / et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen” (Holy Mary, Mother of God, / pray for us sinners now / and at the hour of our death. Amen).

The traditional interpretation of these lines, as it is advanced by Sapegno (comm. to these verses); Chiavacci Leonardi (comm. vv. 34.36); and Dronke (Dron.1994.1), p. 28, fits well with the Marian text. It sees the final moments of the prayer as turning to Dante’s
Nachleben
back on earth, and hoping that Mary will intervene to help him remain pure, so that he will indeed be able to return here. This understanding is opposed by Pertile (Pert.1981.1); Bàrberi Squarotti (Barb.1995.1), pp. 367–71; and Ledda (Ledd.2002.1), pp. 309–10, all of whom find it inappropriate for Bernard’s prayer to leave the subject of Dante’s vision being pure for that of his post-Paradiso life back on earth being morally sound. Why is this an unseemly concern, either aesthetically or intellectually? It had already been before the reader in
Paradiso
XXXI.88–90, where Dante himself beseeches Beatrice for this kind of heavenly assistance. Pertile (p. 2) argues that, for the very reason that Dante’s prayer has been accepted, as signified by Beatrice’s smile, there is no longer any need to linger on this issue. Perhaps so. On the other hand, the language of these six verses (particularly at vv. 36 and 37) really does seem to be related to earthly concerns. In other words, even if it seems ungainly to some (but not to most), the standard interpretation seems more plausible.
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40–45.
   The Virgin, evidently made of more august stuff than Beatrice, does not smile when Bernard finishes his prayer as Beatrice did when Dante finished his (
Par.
XXXI.92), but indicates by the expression in her eyes how much she is gratified by the prayers of the devout. Then she turns her gaze (as did Beatrice) back up to God.
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46.
   As Güntert observes (Gunt.2002.2), p. 511, after the formal conclusion to Bernard’s prayer (vv. 40–45), this verse begins the final “macrosequence” of the one-hundredth canto; it is precisely one hundred verses in length.
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48.
   This verse has caused a central disagreement over its two main potential meanings. We follow Singleton’s interpretation (comm. to this verse): “The meaning of the verb in this verse is much debated, but one aspect of that meaning seems beyond discussion:
finii
cannot here be in a normal signification of ‘bring to an end.’ Indeed, the context requires that the meaning be the exact opposite, i.e., ‘I brought the ardor of my desire to its highest intensity.’ ” And see the similar position of Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse). Another difficult passage may be considered a “preview” of
this one (
Purg.
XVIII.31–33) and may help unscramble the sense of this line. See the note to that passage (
Purg.
XVIII.28–33).
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49.
   As Aversano (Aver.2000.2), p. 177, points out, this is the third and last appearance of Bernard’s name in the poem (see also
Par.
XXXI.102 and 139), as a sort of Trinitarian gesture of farewell.
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50–51.
   Bernard was signaling, in his capacity as guide, what Dante should be doing, but Dante was already doing exactly that. He has not outrun his need for guidance so much as he has internalized his guide.
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52–54.
   The poet could not be more precise. Up to now his powers of sight have improved so that he can finally see God’s reflection in the universe perfectly, an ability that was far from his grasp when the poem began. Now he will see Him as Himself. Thus the protagonist’s vision is about to move from reflections of His glory up into the beam of light emanating from Him. It is balanced for seconds between the two aspects of deity, reflection and source (see the note to
Par.
XXIII.82–84). In the next tercet we realize that he has recorded his breakthrough. No Christian except for St. Paul has seen so much—or such is the unspoken claim the poet makes us share.
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55–57.
   The experience of seeing God face-to-face (1) is ineffable, not describable, and (2) the vision cannot be remembered in any of its details anyway (these twin disclaimers were made at the outset [see
Par.
I.7–9]). All that remains is the awareness of having had the experience.
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57.
   For the word
oltraggio
as expressing Dante’s version of the
excessus mentis
of the Christian mystical tradition, see Pertile (Pert.1981.1 [repr. Pert.2005.2]).
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58–66.
   Given our previous experience reading in the
Paradiso
, we expect here exactly what we get. Moving into an area of heightened experience, which challenges his expressive powers (as it had challenged his perceptive powers), Dante has inevitably moved to simile. After, in the last tercet, understating the fact that he saw God, he now turns not to one simile, but to three of them, in order to express the nature of his loss. This is perhaps the only time in the poem that he deploys three similes back-to-back; in any case, the Trinitarian nature of what he has looked upon (which will be made clear to us before long) is perhaps reflected in their number.

These are the penultimate similes in a poem that turns to them more often than we might have expected, and surely his use of the technique reflects his sense of the classical Latin epic simile, so familiar to him, particularly from the pages of Virgil. And the last of these three will be unmistakably Virgilian.
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58–63.
   The first and fullest of the three similes is one of a class defined by Tozer (see the note to
Inf.
XXX.136–141) as “drawn from mental experiences.”
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