Beginning with Nature:
Astronomical Incipits

One of the striking links of the Commedia to the petrose is the use of Natureingang: beginning a canto with a description of nature, usually a particular season and a particular hour, viewed astronomically (thus a horoscope, in the most general sense).^[16] When Dante identifies the season and time of day by reference to the heavens near the beginning of each cantica, he is alluding to the petrose. These passages (Inferno 1.37–43; Purgatorio 1.19–42; Paradiso 1.37–45), it has been recognized, are themselves related one to another: along with the triple repetition of stelle at the end of each cantica, they establish the role of the stars as the chief lure and ultimate destination of the pilgrim. In addition, they establish the close correlation between the pilgrim's journey and its date, during and after Holy Week of 1300, and thus to the topos of the reverdie, the re-greening of Nature in the spring, which commemorates the creation of the world and provokes the poet's resumption of his song.^[17] That commemoration and its beneficent effect on the pilgrim, afflicted after his narrow escape from the dangerous passo of Inferno 1.26, are the subject of the first astronomical passage in the Commedia:

Temp'era dal principio del mattino, 
   e 'l sol montava 'n sù con quelle stelle 
   ch'eran con lui quando l'amor divino 
mosse di prima quelle cose belle;

   sì ch'a bene sperar m'era cagione 
   di quella fiera a la gaetta pelle 
l'ora del tempo e la dolce stagione . . . 
          (Inferno  1.37–43) ^[18]

We recall that in his sestina Dante refers to spring as il dolce tempo (Io), and in fact the spring hour and season mentioned in the last verse of the passage above (Inferno 1.43) are a counterpart to "poco giorno e . . . gran cerchio d'ombra" of the sestina. More generally, the sunset that opens "lo son venuto" ("quando il sol si corca," 2) is reversed in the sunrise of Inferno 1 ("e'l sol montava in su," 2).

More specific parallels with the petrose emerge in the corresponding skyscape opening the Purgatorio:^[19]

Lo bel pianeto che d'amar conforta 
   faceva tutto  rider l'orïente, 
   velando  i Pesci ch'erano in sua scorta. 
           (1.19–21)

Compare, from "Io son venuto":

   e  la stella d'amor  ci sta remota 
per lo raggio lucente che la 'nforca 
sì di traverso che le  si fa velo; 
           e quel pianeta che conforta il gelo 
si mostra tutto  a noi per lo grand'arco 
nel qual ciascun di sette fa poca ombra . . . 
           (4–9)

The scene in Purgatory inverts the opening of "Io son venuto" in several ways: it is spring rather than winter ("Io son venuto," we recall, though set at the winter solstice, alludes to the previous spring, to the vertù d'Arïete that drew forth flora, and to the autumn season during which vegetation dies); the scene precedes sunrise rather than follows sunset; Venus, its influence diminished by proximity to the diminished sun (which has already gone below the horizon) in "Io son venuto," is strengthened by its proximity to the increasing sun after the spring equinox in the Purgatorio. The conflict and danger in the petrose horoscope—Saturn glowering from its command position on the tropic—is not only inverted by the exuberance of Venus but also literally simplified and integrated. Dante has taken from his astronomical beginning to "Io son venuto" the terms used for the sun, Venus, and Saturn and

applied them to Venus alone: a unanimity of reference that magnifies her strength linguistically as well as astrologically.

The idea of linking the action of a poem to a specific hour and season is a legacy of the petrose that decisively affects the whole Commedia.^{[ 20]} We know, of course, the positions of the planets in April 1300 (the horoscope of the poem): the sun, Mercury, and Jupiter in Aries (and Mars very close, on the cusp with Pisces), the moon in Libra, Saturn in Leo, Venus in Pisces (erroneous for April 1300) (see Figure 5, p. 90). As is stated in Inferno 1, the configuration is an auspicious one, because the position of the sun and the planets recalls those at the creation of the world. Not only that: March 25, a date very near the ecclesiastical date for the vernal equinox (March 21, although in 1300 the equinox actually fell on March 15), is the traditional date for the Annunciation, an event that has its own significant horoscope. "Io son venuto" deploys the horoscope for the poet's nadir and implicitly that of his nativity, but the inception of the Commedia commemorates the nativity of the universe along with the incarnation of its creator. If the petrose suggest the homology of the lover's struggle against his stars and the poetics of difficulté vaincue, the temporal setting of the Commedia betrays the poet's wish that his work share in the fertility of annual cosmic renewal, the virtù d'Arïete.^[21] In the context of the horoscopes of the petrose, the time of the Commedia is also propitious: a triple conjunction of the sun, Mercury, and Jupiter, with Saturn in a depressed position (at the imum caeli, in fact); the baneful effects of Saturn are further tempered by being in Leo, the sign that rules Italy (see Figure 5).^[22] The rising of the sun in Purgatory, as Dante says (Purgatorio 2.56–57), chases Capricorn, the sign of the winter solstice, from the skies. Venus in the morning sky pours love out over all the world, as in the season anticipated in "Io son venuto." And in the position of the heavens that Dante describes in Inferno 1.37–40, the ascendant (that is, the sign just about to rise) is the poet's own sign and symbol of the poetics of "Io son venuto," Gemini. The poet's natal sign is about to be born from the horizon just as the Commedia begins.^[23]

The favorable position of the sun and the planets points to the fact that April of the Jubilee year 1300 was a time propitious for the pilgrim's journey and for the world. (The next year, 1301, was hardly very propitious for Dante or—from Dante's perspective—for Florence.)^[24] As we learn, natural auspices are not enough: the fact that it is the world's birthday does not give the pilgrim aid sufficient to ward off the

lion and the wolf. He will need the help first of Virgil—the apologist of Rome—and subsequently of Beatrice. Law and Grace must supplement Nature before the pilgrim can escape the selva oscura, and before he can ascend the mountain mantled by the sun he must first descend to Hell in a katabasis, a poetic and spiritual agon similar in many respects to that of the petrose themselves.

The planets, however, help to signify the universal reformation for which the poet yearns. Repeatedly (Purgatorio 2.1–6, 27.1–6; Paradiso 1.37–43, 29.1–12) Dante returns to the configuration of the sun in Aries and the full moon in Libra (during the action of the poem the moon of course does not remain full, but it is evoked as such) as a cosmic anticipation of the age of justice he hopes is about to dawn.^[25] These passages continue the theme of the astronomical horoscope throughout the poem; for the solstitial poetics of the petrose they substitute an equinoctial poetics adumbrated in the division of light and dark of "Al poco giorno." Two examples will demonstrate this equinoctial poetics. Purgatorio 2 begins:

Già era'l  sole a l'orizzonte giunto 
    lo cui meridïan  cerchio coverchia 
    Ierusalèm col suo più alto  punto; 
e la notte,  che opposita a lui cerchia, 
   uscia  di Gange fuor con le Bilance, 
    che le caggion di man quando soverchia . . . 
           (1–6)

The passage blends reminiscences of both "Io son venuto" (". . . il punto de la rota"—here a high point rather than a low one; "l'orizzonte, quando il sol si corca" ) and "Al poco giorno" ("cerchio d'ombra"; "son giunto" ). It also echoes several astronomical principles from the first two petrose: night thought of both as a point opposed to the sun and as a circle; the presentation of sunrise as well as the opposed rising of night (like the nocturnal rising of Gemini in "Io son venuto"); and the habit of inversion, of discussing one seasonal moment (the spring equinox) in terms of its opposite (the autumnal equinox, when night prevails over day). But whereas in "Io son venuto" the sun is setting and the night rising on the same horizon for the observer, in Purgatory the rising sun and the night rising from the Ganges are in different hemispheres; the point of view is truly bihemispheric. The several inversions of the canzone—winter solstice inverting summer, nocturnal Gemini opposing the poet's native sun in Gemini, a poetry dominated by

winter, cold and night (note soverchia )—become here a series of balanced mediations: the sun, close to the equinoctial point, divides the days and nights equally (schematically speaking, in Aries and Libra). To the emphasis in the petrose on the sun's extreme points on the ecliptic, implying a balance achieved over and through time, the Purgatorio offers a balance attained on the instant, synchronically. The mention of Libra is thus far from ornamental: it symbolizes the poetics of justice that will rule over the terraces of purgation.^[26]

The cosmic balance is most fully realized in the spectacular moment described in Paradiso 29 in which the duration of Beatrice's gaze at the divine point is compared to the time it takes the opposed sun and moon simultaneously to cross the horizon during the equinox:

Quando ambedue li figli di Latona, 
   coperti del Montone e de la Libra, 
   fanno de l'orrizzonte insieme zona, 
quant'è dal punto che 'l cenìt inlibra 
   infin che l'uno e I'altro da quel cinto, 
   cambiando l'emisperio, si dilibra, 
tanto, col volto di riso dipinto, 
   si tacque Bëatrice, riguardando 
   fiso nel punto che m'avëa vinto. 
Poi cominiciò: "Io dico, e non dimando, 
   quel che tu vuoli udir, perch'io l'ho visto 
   là 've s'appunta ogne  ubi  e ogne  quando. . . ." 
           (1–12)

As Boyde (1981 238–239) points out (arguing in defense of the traditional reading), the length of time in question is a single moment. In its dimensionless brevity it is a figure for eternity. Because sun and moon are in the positions they held at the creation, when they were fashioned to rule over day and night, the whole passage (especially in view of the question, raised in the canto, of the interval between creation and the angels' fall) is a kind of enactment of the procession of created time from eternity.

The passage enacts the moment of balance it describes by the placement of quando at each extreme (once in Italian, once in Latin; once a conjunction, once a noun; once as an empirical instance, once as a metaphysical absolute), by the placement of emisperio and dilibra at the midpoint (sixth of twelve verses), by the two uses of punto (4, 9), and by the coordination of quanto and tanto linking the second and third tercets.

The whole passage is itself a kind of balance, poised on the instant of cosmic equilibrium between the sun and moon. To be sure, the forces balanced are dissimilar: sun and moon are twins (Dante refers to them in the Purgatorio as gli due occhi del mondo ), but like Castor and Pollux or spirit and body they have differing roles and metaphysical status.^[27] Nevertheless, the textual balance between a host of double principles is momentarily achieved: twin luminaries, one active, one passive; the twin signs of the equinoxes (one, the Scales, is double); twin hemispheres halving the passage, syntactically twin (quanto . . . tanto ); twinning and twinned terms (ambedue, insieme, l'uno e l'altro ); twin modes of created reality (ubi and quando ). The metaphysical relation of God and nature is mirrored in the astronomical relation of sun and moon. The whole passage, which begins with Italian quando referring to a single moment, and which concludes with substantival Latin ubi and quando to mark the unifying point of all times and places, enacts a return to the Godhead with Beatrice's gaze, so that the text passes from the world of multiplicity in the first verse (note ambedue ) to the simplicity embedded in appunta.^[28]

Both passages depend on the principle of the visible and astronomical horizons: the horizon is the connective line, the zenith the fulcrum, of the great statera that holds sun and moon evenly balanced at the equinox. We have argued that Gemini at the horizon in "Io son venuto" announces the special poetics of the petrose. In those poems, the horizon suggests the medietas of the embodied soul; it alludes to the constructive properties of the four poems, whose stanza forms allude to the pairing of Same and Other; it can mark the membrane of inner and outer in the body (as in "Amor, tu vedi ben"). We shall see that the horizon is also a key structural principle in the Purgatorio; already in the opening cantos, the land- and skyscapes repeatedly invoke the horizon itself and the moment when the sun approaches, touches, and crosses it. Faint after the passage of Hell, the reader experiences the beginning of the Purgatorio as the return to view of the sky and the horizon. The pilgrim's first recorded sensation is the sight of the blue sky clear as far as the visual horizon ("puro infino al primo giro," 1.15). The narrator observes that the Great Bear has set ("la onde'l carro già era sparito," 1.30), and he begins the second canto with the sun just about to rise, so that the formal articulation of the canto itself is associated with the visual line of the horizon.^[29] The Purgatorio emphasizes dawn, evening, and the horizon because it is the only cantica to take place on the earth; corre-

spondingly, it focuses on the pilgrim as an embodied soul who tires and must sleep, who dreams. These emphases reflect the great theme of the Purgatorio: the recovery of the natural justice of the person in the integration of spirit and flesh, of reason and desire.

The division of day and night as a structural feature of the Purgatorio is illustrated at the moment when the pilgrim's forward motion is impeded halfway through Canto 17:

Già eran sovra noi tanto levati 
   li ultimi raggi che la notte segue, 
   che le stelle apparivan da più lati. 
           (70–72)

The shadow line dividing the day from the night thus falls exactly athwart the center of the canto, the cantica, and the poem.^[30] The division implies a host of other twin concepts: in place of forward motion we have Virgilio's discourse on love ("Se i piè si stanno, non stea lo tuo sermone," 17.84), so that we pass from activity to contemplation; from the external light of the sun to the inner light of the mind ("luce dell'intelletto," 18.16); from motion to deliberation and choice, reflected in the discussion of first inclinations ("de' primi appetibili l'affetto," 18.57) and elective actions, which mark the horizon of nature and reason in the self; from a view of the mountain to self-scrutiny, from what is perceived to what is understood in the mind ("vostra apprensiva da esser verace / tragge intenzione, e dentro a voi la spiega," 18.22–23), marking the horizon of the exterior and interior senses, of the body and the mind, which also appears in the cantica as that between waking and dreaming. The appearance of the word stelle in this passage, at the very center of the Commedia, is clearly linked to its recurrence at the end of each cantica, where it stands as the lure and goal of human contemplation: that it appears at the moment of the pilgrim's infirmity in Purgatory seems to insist on the double status of the wayfarer, embedded in his body, but mindful of Plato's advice and so watchful of the stars.^[31]

The principles embodied in the "equinoctial" passages return in the astronomical verses opening the Paradiso proper:

Surge  ai mortali per diverse foci 
   la lucerna del mondo; ma da quella 
   che quattro cerchi  giugne  con tre croci, 
con miglior corso e con migliore stella 
   esce congiunta,  e la mondana cera 
   più a suo modo tempera e suggella.

Fatto avea di là mane e di qua sera 
    tal foce, e quasi tutto era là  bianco 
    quello emisperio, e l'altra parte  nera  . . . 
              (1:37–45)

In addition to the relation established by verse numbering, the passage is recapitulatory of the seasonscapes in the Inferno and Purgatorio: Surge echoes the strong emphasis on this word in Purgatorio I (7, 9, 106); the sun's conjunction with better stars looks back to the sun's upward march with its planets in Inferno 1 (in close conjunction with Mercury and Jupiter)—though here of course the emphasis is on stars, not planets—and the reference to morning and evening reiterates allusion to the hexaemeral skyscape evoked in the proem to the Inferno: night is divided from day by the sun's transit of the equinoctial point. The metrically and syntactically balanced juxtapositions (indeed, the cosmic halving) of mane and sera, of bianco and nero, recall the verbal emphases of "Al poco giorno e al gran cerchio d'ombra" (beside the incipit, see bianchir in 2 and "più nera ombra" in 37); the reiteration of giugne and congiunta in the context of the sun's placement at a given astronomical point ("diverse foci . . . da quella") repeats the model of "Al poco giorno" ("son giunto," 2).

But this final astronomical incipit to a cantica is especially suggestive in its reference to some of the fundamental principles we have identified as important for the poetics of the petrose, as well as anticipating principal themes of the Paradiso. Circle and cross, the symbols of divine perfection and human suffering historically fused in the Crucifixion, prepare the cross and circle in the heaven of Mars, where the pilgrim learns his own destiny as victim and exile. Four circles making three crosses forces the reader to imagine (and not for the last time in the cantica ) a model of the cosmos conceived on geometric and numerological (thus Platonic) lines. The sun as suggello (seal) announces the theme of the causal and formative influences of the heavens, which dominates the whole of the Paradiso. In view of the poet's invocation of the Muses in the verses immediately preceding (13–36) and the insistence on the fatefulness of precise astronomical junctures, the passage recalls the tempering of the poet by the negative punto of the petrose. The sunrise described, finally, is also the appearance of the light of the world, and thus both a nativity and a theophany. In the drama derived from a mere crossing of the horizon, we recall the first verses of Dante's starscape in "Io son venuto."