The Golden Bough

At the beginning of the Paradiso, the example invoked for the poet's inspiration is the flaying, or turning inside out, of Marsyas the satyr. As Edgar Wind puts it in his analysis of this passage, "To obtain the 'beloved laurel' of Apollo the poet must pass through the agony of Marsyas" (Wind 1968 174). The full import of this figure is complex; we wish to note here that the poet's self-comparison to Marsyas and invocation of Apollo anticipate the poet's apostrophe of his natal constella-

tion in Canto 22 (see Chapter 2). In addition to the theme of facing a difficult trial (lavoro, aringo, passo forte  . . .), the key terms spirare, virtù and the metaphor of birth are central to both passages:

O buono Appollo, all'ultimo  lavoro 
    fammi del tuo valor sì fatto  vaso, 
    come dimandi a dar l'amato  alloro. 
Infino a qui l'un giogo di Parnaso 
    assai mi fu; ma or con amendue 
    m'è uopo intrar nell'aringo  rimaso. 
Entra nel petto mio, e spira  tue 
    sì come quando Marsïa  traesti 
    de la vagina de la membra sue. 
O divina virtù,  se mi ti presti 
    tanto che l'ombra del beato regno 
    segnata nel mio capo io manifesti . .  
           (1.13–24)

O glorïose stelle, o lume  pregno 
    di gran  virtù,  dal quale io riconosco 
    tutto, qual che si sia, il mio ingegno, 
con voi nasceva  e s'ascondeva vosco 
    quelli ch'è  padre  d'ogne mortal vita 
    quand'io senti' di prima l'aere tosco. . . . . 
A voi divotamente ora sospira 
    l'anima mia, per acquistar  virtute 
    al passo forte ch'a sé  la tira.
           (22.112–117, 121–123)

The powerful image of Marsyas drawn from his own skin associates the infusion of a new poetics with a birth, as in "Io son venuto," and anticipates the moment of departure from the sign of Gemini, when the pilgrim is drawn up from the nest of Leda by the force of Beatrice's glance:

E la virtù che lo sguardo m'indulse, 
   del bel nido di Leda mi divelse
    e nel ciel velocissimo m'impulse. 
           (27.97–99)

We have already characterized this passage as a kind of birth: it establishes, in concert with the image of Marsyas flayed, the idea of Dante's upward motion in Paradise as a succession of births into higher and higher levels. In an ultimate reversal, the pilgrim's vision, in the Pri-

mum Mobile, of heaven turned inside out is the realization, on a metaphysical level, of the flaying of Marsyas.

In fact, Dante's verb divellere (27.98) is etymologically a synonym for flaying (dis-vellere, from vellere, itself meaning "to tear away," and vellus, "pelt, fleece"). The verb recurs at major transitional moments in the poem. Arriving in Purgatory, the pilgrim is cleansed by a rush that is marvelously replaced ("cotal si rinacque / subitamente là onde l'avelse," Purgatorio 1.136). And shortly before, the pilgrim uses divellere to describe his imminent separation from the abyss of Hell ("'Prima ch'io de l'abisso mi divella,"' Inferno 34.100). It is difficult not to conclude that Dante, in this last use, is punning on the method of departure used, that of climbing hand over hand along the thick pelt of Satan:

appigliò sé a le  vellute  coste; 
   di vello in vello  giù discese poscia 
   tra'l folto pelo  e le gelate croste. 
           (34–73–75) ^[196]

Vello and divella in the Inferno thus become avelse in the Purgatorio and divelse in the pilgrim's departure from Gemini. An etymological thread, whose denominators are the verb divellere and the idea of passage or birth, links moments of transition from the cosmic low point of the Inferno to the heaven of Gemini.

Dante's progress as a pilgrim might thus be characterized as a series of births that move him first downward, then upward to new and more inclusive horizons of vision and understanding. In view of the petrose, heralded by the birth of Gemini from the horizon in "Io son venuto," the same may be said of his poetics. That Dante was a ceaseless experimenter who never repeated himself has become a critical commonplace. The ultimate practical failure of his poems set aside, our reading strongly suggests that Dante consciously understood his poetics as a perpetual self-renewal, never achieved without cost. This poetics he announces, and brings to full consciousness, in the rigorous officina of the rime petrose.

Flaying and birth are thus the reverse and obverse of one concept, that of poetic achievement both as a form of martyrdom (we recall Michelangelo's self-portrait [inspired by Marsyas?] on the flayed skin of Bartholomew in the Sistine Last Judgment ) and as access to a new voice—in poetic terms, a new life. In the Aeneid, the plucking of the

golden bough determines the election of Aeneas to journey to the underworld. Virgil's verbs, twice forms of avellere, are surely behind Dante's preference for similar forms at critical junctures of his poem and constitute implicit claims to his election for katabasis and return.^[197] The golden frond (auricomos ) is paired with the Golden Fleece. In the moving verses at the center of Gemini, the changed poetic voice is paired with a new skin:

con altra voce omai, con altro vello 
ritornerò poeta.

Vello, with all its other meanings, may imply the poet's death and return to Florence in the form of a book: his voice, writing; his vello, the vellum of a manuscript; his recognition, posthumous—but in the form of the evergreen ivy or laurel accorded to poets, perennial.^[198]