Purgatorio (95 page)

91–93.
   Oderisi’s outburst subtly changes the topic of his discourse from human talent and ability to its reception among other human beings. Where before he had spoken of Franco’s honor, he now bewails the emptiness of these same talents as recipients of the praise conferred by fame.

The phrase “com’ poco verde in su la cima dura” (literally: how briefly lasts the green upon the top) has never been adequately explained. What object does the poet have in mind for the noun
cima
? Hollander (Holl.1994.1) has argued—citing its next use in the poem,
Purgatorio
XV.13, where it refers to Dante’s forehead, the space above his eyebrows—that it refers to exactly that part of our physiognomy here and that the green is the green of the laurel. The language of the passage, which addresses the question of the brief limits of fame unless a “dark age” allows fame to continue for longer than it usually does (by not producing other “winners” quickly), seems clearly to reflect exactly such a concern—one that was not far, as we know from
Paradiso
XXV.1–9, from this poet’s mind.
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94–96.
   Giovanni Cimabue (ca. 1240–1308) was a highly praised Florentine painter. His pupil, Giotto di Bondone (ca. 1267–1337), is given credit by art historians for changing the nature of Italian painting, moving from the “flat” tradition to “roundness,” representations that seemed more realistic than anything seen before him. (In this vein see Boccaccio’s treatment of him in
Decameron
VI.v.5.)

The notion that Dante is in this passage putting Giotto’s art ahead of Cimabue’s is baseless, though widespread. Dante
may
himself have admired Giotto’s painting more than Cimabue’s, but that is not the point here. All that Oderisi is saying is that, in accord with what he has just said about fame being brief unless a dark age assures the last “laureate” his continuing green reward, Cimabue had the public’s cry but now Giotto has it. There is no evaluation of the relative worth of the work of these two masters stated or implied.
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97–98.
   Moving his attention from painting to poetry, Oderisi says the same thing about Guido Guinizzelli (ca. 1225–1276) and Guido Cavalcanti (ca. 1250–1300): one held the highest place in the public’s esteem until the other displaced him. A problem here arises from Dante’s use of the noun
gloria
, which can mean “reputation, fame” in the vulgar sense, or “just renown for great deeds,” or “heavenly glory” (as in the experience of paradise). The word occurs some twenty-two times in the poem and has this first meaning less frequently than it has either of the other two, e.g., in
Inferno
III.42, where it is explained that the neutral angels are not in hell lest they be placed lower than the rebel angels, who might then have “boasting rights” over them. But the word has just been used in its most negative form seven lines earlier: the “vana gloria” that prompts our desire for fame. In this reading, the more recent Guido (Cavalcanti) has taken the public’s laurel from Guinizzelli.
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99.
   While there is still some dispute about the reference, most now agree that Dante is clearly pointing to himself as the one who will in turn replace Cavalcanti in the “nest” of the public’s admiration.

Stierle (Stie.2001.1), p. 163, thinks Oderisi predicts Dante’s “triumph” here and believes that Dante meant us to take from his words the understanding that he believes pride a necessary and positive aspect of his own
ingegno
and not entirely to be dispraised. To medieval readers this would surely have seemed an inappropriate reading. On the other hand, recent modern readers, with whose work Stierle seems not to be acquainted, have tried to make essentially the same case: Barolini (Baro.1992.1), pp. 133–37, and Marks (Mark.1992.1). For a response see Hollander (Holl.1994.1).
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100–108.
   Oderisi’s moralizing is pungent and clear: earthly fame is not worth even a moment’s affection. It is difficult to justify any positive role for earthly fame in light of these forceful words.
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105.
   These are babytalk words for bread
(pappo
=
pane)
and money
(dindi
=
denaro)
.
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109–114.
   Without as yet naming him, Oderisi tells the cautionary tale of Provenzan Salvani, “Ghibelline of Siena, where he was at the head of affairs at the time of the great victory over the Florentine Guelfs at Montaperti, Sept. 4, 1260; it was he who at the Council of Empoli after the battle advocated the destruction of the city of Florence, which was averted by the firmness and patriotism of Farinata (
Inf
. X.91); he was Podestà of Montepulciano in 1261; he met his death in an engagement with the Florentines at Colle, in Valdelsa, June 11, 1269, when he was taken prisoner and beheaded”
(T)
. It is curious that, of these two great Ghibelline leaders, Dante has condemned Farinata (who saved the city) to hell and saved Provenzan (who wanted to destroy it).
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115–117.
   For the biblical passages that underlie this image of the fleetingness of grass as being similar to human ambitions in this life see the Old Testament (Isaiah 28:4, 38:27, 40:6; Psalms 89:6 [90:5–6]), as noted by Tommaseo (1837).
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118–119.
   This is Dante’s first and not last (see
Purg
. XIII.133–138) admission of his pridefulness.
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126.
   Here again is the word
sodisfar
. See note to vv. 70–72. Provenzan is completing his
satisfactio operis
before Dante’s eyes, so intent on it that he is not allowed a speaking part, but has Oderisi as his mouthpiece.
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127–132.
   If Provenzan died in 1269 and was (as is obvious) more than thirty-one years old when he died, the protagonist wants to know how, if the sentence in ante-purgatory is a year for each year spent in failure to repent and if Provenzan apparently, from Oderisi’s narrative, died in his presumption, he can have come up here so quickly. We should remember that Dante was
not
surprised (see note to vv. 88–90) at Oderisi’s quick advent (perhaps less than a year separating his death and his arrival), somehow understanding that Oderisi had purged his pride quite early in his life and chosen to live for God. Why Dante might have thought so is not known.
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133–138.
   Oderisi’s third speech, devoted to Provenzan, shows Dante that, in his lifetime, Provenzan had come to grips with his pride.
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135.
   The phrasing here has its roots in—is indeed a translation of—a passage in Bonaventure’s life of St. Francis, the
Legenda maior
(II.7), “omni deposita verecundia,” where Francis, setting aside all shame, becomes a mendicant. The attribution, which seems undeniable, has made its way into the commentary tradition over the last one hundred years, often unassigned. Bosco/Reggio and Marks (Mark.1992.1), p. 177 (n. 55), give credit to Passerini in 1898.
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139–142.
   And just as Provenzan humbled himself in public by his own volition, Dante will have humility thrust upon him by his own people when the Black Guelphs will exile him from Florence in 1302. For the predictions of Dante’s personal fortunes in the poem see note to
Inferno
VI.64–66.
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1–3.
   Dante and Oderisi are continuing their movement forward in humility, purging their pride in their differing ways until such time as Virgil will insist on Dante’s pursuing other instruction. Strictly speaking, in ancient Greece a “pedagogue” was a slave whose task it was to guide children to school and supervise their conduct generally (but not to teach them); in ancient Rome the slave was frequently a Greek and had similar responsibilities, but also introduced the children to the beginning study of Greek. Dante’s word,
pedagogo
, here in one of its first appearances in the Italian vernacular, according to the
Grande Dizionario
(Batt.1961.1), has a brief but important role (occurring twice) in a single biblical passage, Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians 3:24–25 (Longfellow [1867] seems to have been the first to note the possible connection). In that passage Paul imagines us as having once been, under the Old Testament, guided by the
paedagogus
(the Law) but as now being taught by Christ, and thus as no longer requiring such guidance. This Dantean hapax (a word occurring only once in a given universe of words) may reflect that biblical near-hapax.

For the yoke that binds these two “oxen” see the commentary of Fallani (1965) and Scott’s
lectura
(Scot.2001.1), p. 174: “For my yoke is easy and my burden light” (Matthew 11:29–30)—the words of Christ preaching to potential followers.
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4–6.
   Virgil’s metaphor is probably developed, as Bosco/Reggio (1978) insist, on
Aeneid
III.520: “velorum pandimus alas” (we spread the wings of our sails), a passage cited by many commentators at
Inferno
XXVI.125, “de’ remi facemmo ali” (we turned our oars to wings).

Petrocchi, in his reading of the line, overturns the previously favored opinion that Dante’s text read
vele
(sails), but has the disadvantage of forcing the poet into a very mixed metaphor, “wings and oars.” We would have followed the older reading, “sails and oars.”
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7–9.
   The protagonist walks erect, as Ovid describes humans doing so as to be distinguished from brutes (
Metam
. I.84–86). Benvenuto cites Ovid’s words and mentions the additional authority of Cicero, Sallust, and Juvenal on this matter in his comment to this passage.

The word
scemi
, which we have translated as “shrunken,” has caused some discomfort. What exactly does it mean? Aurigemma (Auri.1970.1), pp. 109–10, claims that Oderisi’s dour prophecy of Dante’s future ills (XI.140–141) leaves the protagonist feeling
monco
(incomplete) until such time as that disaster will finally confront him. He is following the nearly unanimous view found in the earliest commentators. However, since the time of Landino (1481) the more usual interpretation relates Dante’s interior moral posture rather to his responses to Pride, whether in pity for the souls he now sees or in recognition of his own (former) pridefulness—the most usual version of that position today, expressed in the form that currently rules by Torraca (1905), who notes the “heavy swelling” (
Purg
. XI.119) of pride that Dante is getting under control. As a result, his thoughts are
scemi
in that they are lacking in pride. In other words, even if he has finally straightened up and begun walking as a confident human being, his thoughts remain bowed under the burden of the recognition of his pridefulness.
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12.
   Dante’s new incredible lightness of being matches Virgil’s usual state as soul unencumbered by body; getting his pride under control, the protagonist experiences the greatest and quickest spiritual growth we will observe in him during his ascent of the mountain.
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13–15.
   Now that Dante has experienced and embraced the positive exemplars of Humility, Virgil wants to confirm his new state by making him experience the negative exemplars of Pride in order to seal his “conversion” to humility. For exemplarity in the Middle Ages and in Dante see Delcorno (Delc.1989.1), esp. Chapter VI, “Dante e Peraldo,” pp. 195–227. And for his discussion of the exemplars in this canto as deriving in part from William Peraldus’s
Summa vitiorum
, see pp. 210–14; Delcorno shows that Dante’s list of six biblical exemplars of Pride is related to Peraldus’s first seven in his list of twelve biblical exemplars. Dante shares five of his six with Peraldus, substituting (for Adam) Nimrod (a choice, one might add, that underlines the poet’s understandable concern with language—see note to
Inf
. XXXI.67). Then, in typical Dantean fashion, he adds six pagan exemplars to his shortened and revised version of Peraldus’s list. For perhaps the first modern recognition of the importance of Peraldus’s listing and description of the vices for Dante, see Wenzel (Wenz.1965.1), pointing out that Pietro di Dante’s commentary to
Purgatorio
XVII (1340) relies strictly and extensively upon Peraldus’s phrasing (wherever he found his version of Peraldus’s text) for his description of the seven mortal sins.
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