6—
The Rime petrose and the Commedia

In this book we have endeavored to demonstrate how rich and complex is the art of the rime petrose, which represent, we argue, the major turning point in Dante's development, after "Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore," for in them Dante achieves for the first time what we have called his microcosmic poetics. The question of the relation between the petrose and the Commedia is highly problematic and has so far received little close attention.^[1] In our view, the poetics of the Commedia is fully understandable only in the light of the petrose, and it is the task of this chapter to show in part how the principles that inform the latter are at work also in Dante's masterpiece.

As we suggested in the Introduction, the petrose are the first of Dante's works to explore the extent to which the speaker's predicament and the poet's art are instances of the cooperation of the whole of creation in the destiny of a single individual. This theme provides the principle on which the whole of the Commedia is constructed. At the lowest point of the Inferno, the pilgrim must endure—and the poet must represent—the weight of the entire cosmos that impinges on the center. And in the Paradiso the longest span of text devoted to a single sphere—nearly six cantos—goes to Dante's natal sign, to which he attributes his ingenium. In this way, Dante treats the world of the poem as a macrocosm of which the pilgrim is a microcosm. This constructive habit exactly reflects the structure of the geocentric cosmos itself, whose heavens revolve around and form the sublunar world, all for the sake of humankind.

A full inventory and study of the uses of the petrose in the Commedia would require another book, for the petrose enter and inform the later work in innumerable ways. As is well known, their aspro diction informs some of the most remarkable cantos of the poem:^[2] those of Pier delle Vigne, of the Malacoda and the sowers of discord, of Maestro Adamo, and in particular the entire circle of the traitors, where the petrose return in force.^[3] As Contini and others have argued, the rich multilingualism of the Commedia, its variation of stylistic registers, its "concreteness" of

semantic fields, look directly to the petrose as their model. It may be that sufficient attention has been directed to the lexical and stylistic dimensions. Because we contend that many passages in the Commedia betray the presence of the petrose even in the absence of harsh diction,^[4] we shall place more emphasis on thematic and structural connections, which have received less discussion. Two examples, one specific and one general, will illustrate our point.

An important aspect of the presence of the petrose in the Commedia is technical: it entails the stylistic and structural gambits associated with the poems. As Russo pointed out, Stazio's treatise on generation in Purgatorio 25 is inconceivable without the precedent of the petrose. The fashioning of lucid poetry out of dense scientific reasoning—in particular, we note, the language of sexual generation, perception, and the powers of the soul; the use of rimas caras (e.g., -agro, -izzo ); the articulation of Stazio's speech in syntactic periods adding up to canto length (seventy-five lines); the abundance of tropes and figures (homeoteleuton, etc.) typical of Dante's most elevated style; a phonic web as densely organized as that of "Così nel mio parlar"—all these features look back to the petrose .^[5] Nor is this without reason, for the passage, as Martinez has argued elsewhere, is based on the thematics of man as the horizon between corruptible and incorruptible; the production by God of the immortal soul and its joining to Nature's perfected work is itself the horizon, the union of mortal and immortal natures in a substance that is "one in reason." In a fulfillment of the myth of Castor and Pollux, the union with the body of the immortal soul confers on the body its share in immortality. The thematics of man as horizon, fundamental to the petrose, appears in the Commedia in terms of the Neoplatonic scheme of return to the stars.

Indeed, the larger themes of the petrose—the relation of sexuality to the principle of mind, the relation of the imagination and the poet's art to the art of nature, the power of gems and crystals—are woven deep into the fabric of the whole Commedia. In the Paradiso, both the spheres and the blessed are compared to gems.^[6] The relation of precious stones and the heavens is logical, indeed inevitable, because the formation of gems depends directly on celestial influence.^[7] Like the heavens, gems are (variously) diaphanous and emit or reflect light: Albertus Magnus once refers to gems as "earthly stars." And intelligible light, conditioned by the spheres, is a power forming the imagination of the poet (as noted in Purgatorio 17.17: "Moveti lume che nel ciel s'informa") and thus his craft. The transitivity of the stars' influence in the poet's craft

justifies placing a discussion of poetic fame in Purgatorio II between displays of divine sculpture; thus the poets are given their place in the hierarchy of makers.^[8] The complex interaction of stellar influence, imagination, and sexuality is posed, finally, in Purgatorio 7–9, amid a flurry of echoes of the petrose.^[9]

To make a vast subject tractable, we shall study the presence of the petrose in the Commedia under rubrics derived from our Introduction. There we claim that the petrose (1) mark a decisive advance in Dante's poetic use of a scientific view of the natural world; (2) systematically imitate specific aspects of the cosmos and the human body in theme and form; and (3) treat normally excluded themes in an attempt to overcome or mediate negative impulses and experience. Because of the close interrelation of these topics, some overlapping is inevitable, especially between points 1 and 2; thus, our discussions below of Inferno 24–25 and 32–34 necessarily bring up topics of the microcosm, treated more systematically in the second half of the chapter.

The Cosmos of the Petrose in the Commedia

The Legacy of "Io son venuto"

The extent to which the achievement of the petrose conditions Dante's presentation of the natural cosmos in the Commedia can be gauged in those passages where "Io son venuto" has left traces. All five stanzas of the canzone are echoed by Stazio in his account of why conventional weather ceases above the gate of Purgatory (Purgatorio 21.46–57; emphasis added):

Per che non  pioggia,  non grando, non  neve, 
    non rugiada, non  brina più  sù  cade 
    che la scaletta di tre gradi breve; 
nuvole  spesse non paion né rade, 
    né coruscar, né figlia di Taumante, 
    che di là  cangia sovente contrade; 
secco vapor  non surge più avante 
    ch'al sommo d'i tre gradi ch'io parlai, 
    dov' ha'l vicario di Pietro le piante. 
Trema forse più giù poco od assai; 
    ma per  vento che 'n terra si nasconda, 
    non so come, qua sù non tremò mai.

Phenomena of the lower elemental spheres (of air, water, and earth)—clouds, rain, snow, frost, lightning, and earthquakes caused by ter-

restrial vapors—are mentioned here, just as they are mentioned, in descending spatial order, in "Io son venuto": wind, clouds, fog, and snow in stanza 2; brina in stanza 4; terrestrial vapors ("vapor che la terra ha nel ventre") in stanza 5. The same passage returns to inform Purgatorio 5.109–120 and Paradiso 28.79–84.^[10] Individual stanzas, however, also receive specific mention in the Commedia; and the whole of "Io son venuto" also functions as a microcosmic form for the Inferno, as we show later.

The skyscape of stanza 1 of "Io son venuto" returns in the Commedia at the beginnings of the three cantiche (see below). The beginning of stanza 2, describing the vento peregrin that arises in Ethiopia, furnishes the rhyme of copia (referring to snakes) with Etïopia in Inferno 24 and the terms for the allegorical storm prophesied by Vanni Fucci ("tragge Marte vapor di Val di Magra / ch'è di torbidi nuvoli involuto"), which echoes turba, nebbia, vapor in "Io son venuto" (15, 19, 54).^[11] Stanza 3, describing the flight and silence of birds, is echoed three times in the Commedia, in Inferno 5 and in Purgatorio 24 and 26, each case treating of migratory birds. In the first instance, migrating cranes are compared to the group of damned lovers, including Paolo and Francesca ("cantando lor lai / . . . traendo guai," Inferno 5.46–48; cf. "Io son venuto," 6–7: guai gai ). In the second, the poet Bonagiunta's departure is compared to a flight of birds ("Come li augei che vernan lungo 'l Nilo," Purgatorio 24.64; cf. "Fuggito è ogne augel che'l caldo segue / del paese d'Europa, che non perde / le sette stelle gelide unquemai . . . ," 29). In the third, it is love-poets who are likened to cranes migrating in different directions ("come grue ch'a le montagne Rife / volasser parte, e parte inver'l'arene, / queste delgel, quelle del sole schife," Purgatorio 26.43–45). Finally, stanza 5, with its reference to the assault of winter and the conversion of ice into crystal, is evoked in the lowest regions of Hell, as we show in the second half of this chapter.

As this list of parallels may suggest, the events in the middle stanzas of "Io son venuto"—winds, movement of birds and of the sun, death, and return of vegetation—are a repertory of changes in the world of the elements, the realm to which the poet of the petrose is in part bound. Similarly, the migration of birds in the similes of the Purgatorio underlines the alternation of the seasons, the alternae vices of the solar year. But the crucial link is the association of migrating birds with poetry, for both Bonagiunta and Guinizelli, each described by the tenor of one of these similes, were (and figure as) poets.^[12]

The complex thematic links established in the central stanzas of "Io

son venuto" between the poet and nature are found again at the heart of the Purgatorio. In the Commedia as in troubadour and stilnuovo lyrics the song and movement of birds is a canonical metaphor for desire, and especially desire in poetry. As we noted in Chapter 2, the stilled bird-song and evergreens at the center of "Io son venuto" are juxtaposed to the poet's persistent song and vigorous love. In turn, the flights of birds in Inferno 5 and in (and near) the seventh terrace of Purgatory are not accidental, for both zones treat of sexual desire and its representation in lyric and narrative poetry.^[13] These emphases affect the structure of the Purgatorio. Dante places three discourses on love and free will squarely at the center of the middle cantica. Especially in Virgilio's two discourses (cantos 17 and 18), we find echoes of both Inferno 5 and Purgatorio 24–27 in the language of appetition, inclination, and motion toward desired objects used to explain how all human motivation is a form of love. Love is thus the central topic of the Purgatorio (amor or its related verbs and adjectives occur seventeen times in Cantos 16–18), just as it appears at the center of "Io son venuto":

     e tutti li animali che son gai 
di lor natura, son d'amor  disciolti 
però che'l freddo lor spirito  ammorta: 
e 'l mio più  d'amor porta . . . 
           (33–36)

A striking verbal link helps confirm the echo of "Io son venuto" here. Just as the birds keep their song under truce in winter ("a le lor voci triegue," 30) in the canzone, the pilgrim's forward movement in Canto 17 is interrupted ("la possa de le gambe posta in triegue" ) by the setting of the sun.^[14] Moreover, the problem at issue in this part of the Purgatorio—that of the primary notions and instincts, which do not admit choice and are thus free of blame—appears through imagery that echoes the language of "Io son venuto" on animal activity and vegetation in relation to the lover's own vitality: the rising of flame ("come'l foco movesi in altura," 18.28), the greening of vegetation ("come per verdi frondi in pianta viva, " 18.54), the labor of bees ("studio in ape," 18.58). Compare, from the canzone:

     Passato hanno lor termine le  fronde 
che trasse fuor la  vertù  d'Arïete 
per adornare il mondo, e morta è  l'erba; 
     ramo di  foglia verde  a noi s'asconde 
se non se in lauro,  in pino od in abete. 
           (40–44) ^[15]

We recall, too, that the beginning of the discussion regarding love and free will originates in the pilgrim's question to Marco Lombardo regarding the power of the heavens ("i cieli i vostri movimenti inizia," 16.73). Thus, the center of the Purgatorio is devoted to the question of celestial influences and human freedom, just as the complexities of "Io son venuto" and the other petrose develop from the poet's struggle with his horoscope. As we showed in Chapter 2, one problematic of the petrose derives from the double nature of the lover, who both suffers and transcends the influence of his stars. We find at the center of the Purgatorio a similar crucial threshold or horizon between appetition, ruled by inclination or talento, and election, ruled by reason and the spirit. The center of the Purgatorio develops the themes of celestial influence, the mutable seasons, the distinction of day and night, love, and poetics, much as if it were an extended lyric poem enclosing at its heart the spark of love.

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."

Landscapes 1:
The Semblance of Winter

Inferno 24–25—more exactly, the seventh bolgia of Malebolge—is especially rich in reference to the petrose. Rime aspre abound (-astro, -appa, -eggia, -ucci, -adro, -oppa, -orra ), including the rare instance of a word aspro because of excessive syllabic length, disconvenevole.^[32] But we also find instances of equivocal rhyme and rich rhyme (tempra, 24.2, 6; tempo, attempo, 26.8, 10, 12) opening and closing the bolgia, and of course the rhyme on -opia (copia, Etïopia, elitropia, 25.89, 91, 93) linked to "Io son venuto" and, less obviously, to the sestina. The three terms tempra, tempo, and -tropia define the thematic axis the bolgia shares with the petrose: temporal cycles. The bolgia opens with reference to the seasons and repeatedly invokes the human life span ("chi sua vita consuma," 24.49), the life of the Phoenix ("more e poi rinasce," 24.107), and shorter cycles like that of Vanni Fucci's combustion or the mutations of the thieves; it closes with the poet's allusion to his own life ("più m'attempo"). Within this frame, there is a systematic evocation of the annual winds from the third stanza of "Io son venuto" in Vanni Fucci's hostile prophecy of Florentine strife (24.142–151).

The terms of Vanni Fucci's prophecy evoke the elemental world of "Io son venuto." His opening, "Tragge Marte vapor . . . ," echoes, and has the energy of, the finite verbs beginning the stanzas of that canzone (cf. especially "Levasi de la rena d'Etïopia / lo vento peregrin . . . ," 14–15). "Di torbidi nuvoli involuto" (146) and "spezzerà la nebbia" (149) resume the snow-bearing scirocco of "Io son venuto" 14–22, especially "l'aere turba " (15) and "copia / di nebbia" (17–18). And Vanni Fucci tells his prophecy to cause the pilgrim sorrow ("perché doler ti debbia," 151) in a way reminiscent of the speaker's aggressive conclusion to "Così nel mio parlar": "dàlle per lo cor d'una saetta." Vanni Fucci's meteorological allegory, moreover, forms a clear pendant to the long opening simile. Because this is an astronomical incipit of great scope and significance, it is a fitting companion to the incipits described above. In it Dante establishes, as in "Io son venuto," a complete microcosm; as in that canzone, the establishment of a winter scene prepares for an inversion, an eventual "unwintering."^[33]

At the beginning of Canto 24, after the narrow escape from Malacoda and his devils in the bolgia of barratry, the pilgrim's reaction to Virgilio's change of expression is compared to a shepherd's response to the landscape during an early morning in February:

In quella parte del giovanetto anno 
   che'l sole i crin sotto l'Aquario tempra 
   e già le notti al mezzo dì sen vanno, 
quando la brina in su la terra assempra 
   l'imagine di sua sorella bianca, 
   ma poco dura a la sua penna tempra, 
lo villanello, a cui la roba manca, 
   si leva, e guarda, e vede la campagna 
   biancheggiar tutta; ond' ei si batte l'anca, 
ritorna in casa, e qua e là si lagna, 
   come 'l tapin che non sa che si faccia; 
   poi riede, e la speranza ringavagna, 
veggendo il mondo aver cangiata faccia 
   in poco d'ora, e prende suo vincastro 
   e fuor le pecorelle a pascer caccia. 
Così mi fece sbigottir lo mastro, 
   quand' io li vidi sì turbar la fronte, 
   e così tosto al mal giunse lo 'mpiastro; 
ché, come noi venimmo al guasto ponte, 
   lo duca mio si volse con quel piglio 
   dolce ch'io vidi prima a piè del monte. 
           (1–21)

Like "Io son venuto," the passage descends through creation, from the stars of Aquarius, to the sun, to the sphere of air from which frost condenses, finally to the display of hoarfrost on the ground. The final term is a human microcosm, the shepherd. The parallels of macro- and microcosm are developed through parallels between the human realm and the natural world: the year is a youth; the sun tempers his locks in the water of Aquarius; hoarfrost, snow's sister, writes itself on the earth with a pen. The anthropomorphisms prepare the application of the vehicle to the tenor, Virgilio's change of expression, which passes from a turbata fronte to the piglio dolce he had at the beginning of the poem. The changes recorded are of the soul as they are manifest, or written, in the body: for Dante, the face is the supreme physical expression of the soul (Convivio 3.8.7–8), so the transformations described are signs of the inner man, of the occulta cordis. The passage establishes a thread linking the movement of the heavens to the psyche.

Because tenor and vehicle are mediated by a discernible change, the passage also implies a panorama of time in the cosmos and in man: if Virgilio's expression is mapped by the changing appearance of the earth (and thus, in a metonymy of effect for cause, by the whole cosmos), the

brevity of this change is the smallest of a series of intervals that includes the melting of hoarfrost (in poco d'ora ), the daily routine of the shepherd, the duration of seasons, and the annual motion of the sun.^[34] The linking of the cosmic scale with the rural vignette is probably one that Dante considered characteristic of pastoral.^[35]

Thus the parallels between the petrose and the simile that opens Inferno 24 involve the topics of the microcosm with respect to both cyclical time and hierarchical space. The simile is framed by references to the sun. The first, to Apollo, is explicit; but the second is implicit: Virgilio's sweet look harks back to the scene in Inferno 1 where the pilgrim is comforted first by the sun, and then by Virgilio, whose voice serves "là dove il sol tace" (Inferno 1.60). Dolce is thus already linked to the comforting effects of the sun and the spring, "la dolce stagione" (Inferno 1.43).^[36] The pairing in the simile of the sun's position with the movement of night to the south recalls the astronomical openings of "Io son venuto" and "Al poco giorno," which juxtapose the predominant darkness to the remote sun; we shall return to this important detail in a moment.

Simile and petrose also show parallels in the use of brina and bianco, terms associated with meteorological events.^[37] Transitory weather phenomena are rendered in both contexts with cangiare and tornare: the cangiata faccia of the world in the Inferno contrasts with the lover's refusal to change in the petrose ("e'l mio disio . . . non cangia il verde," "Al poco giorno," 4) and echoes the return of green to the earth under the effect of the sun ("il dolce tempo . . . / . . . che li fa tornar di bianco in verde," "Al poco giorno," 10–11).^[38] A similar principle governs the use of poco in Inferno 24: the pen of the frost poco dura, so the interval the villanello must wait is poco d'ora. Poco in these cases echoes the catachretic poco in "Al poco giorno," though with opposed meaning: in the sestina, the brevity of the day marks the sun's yearly nadir; in the Inferno, the brevity of the frost marks the sun's return.

In technique as well as diction the passage echoes the moment of the petrose. The use of identical rhymes (tempra, faccia ), rich rhymes (anno, vanno ), and harsh rhymes (-astro, -anca, -agna, -accia, -empra ) makes the derivation certain (Dante 1957b 263). For readers who treat the petrose as examples of a fixated poetics, their reprise in the language of this simile has only negative implications: the risk of paralysis, the loss of Virgilio, the end of the quest.^[39] In a related view, the passage is a double warning: to the poet as author, reminding him that his own writing is

as ephemeral as the hoarfrost, and to the reader, who is liable, like the villanello, to misread what is before him.^[40] These readings assume that the technical mastery in the simile and subsequent cantos is divorced from true inspiration and therefore an instance of the poet's reprehensible virtuosity.^[41] In our view this reading neglects a major dimension of the text.

A difficulty with treating the winter simile as the embodiment of a paralyzed poetics is that the immediate (and demonstrably the latent) sense of the simile is positive. The scene is one of winter relaxing, of hope returning. The suffering of the villanello is temporary, the trend back to warmth will prevail. Far from expressing stagnation, the allusion to the petrose here focuses on the return of spring; it also recalls a previous artistic and personal triumph against odds. The poco d'ora in the passage is not only part of a tour de force unfolding a brief frown on Virgil's face into a panorama of seasonal change; it is itself an atom of that change and prepares for the larger vistas that follow.

For the application of the simile to the pilgrim's situation is auspicious. The pilgrim's fear at Virgilio's perturbation is a result of the danger just escaped—a peril that, given the nature of the previous bolgia, must in some sense recall the successful escape of the historical Dante from prosecution for barratry. The return of Virgilio's original expression from il piè del monte both comforts the pilgrim and presages the next cantica, which will unfold on the slopes of a mountain.^[42] Suggesting the unlocking of winter's grip in February, a full month before the equinox, the simile anticipates the wayfarer's escape from wintry Cocito and his emergence, on Easter Sunday, on the shores of Purgatory, where Venus and Love, not Saturn and cold, dominate the sky. In Purgatory, the pilgrim will enjoy the bucolic otium of the Valley of Princes and hear Virgil's eclogue quoted by Stazio; pastoral similes will adorn the text. In Eden, which Matelda will identify with the Golden Age of classical poetry, the pilgrim will be poco tempo silvano.^[43] The pastoral quality of the passage, though the villanello 's lot be a hard one, is a striking relief from the fumy arzanà of the devils (as traditional commentary has always agreed); more important, it is a promise of better to come. The simile is a kind of pertugio or channel, replacing the broken bridge over the bolgia and revealing what is ahead.

The melting of the hoarfrost, some readers argue, marks the erasure of both a text and its writer.^[44] But this erasure is less a cautionary example for poet and reader than the advent of a new poetics, underwrit-

ten by the sun. The hoarfrost, less permanent than ice or snow, is an unlikely symbol for a threatening poetics.^[45] The echo of the opening chapter of the Vita nuova in assempra suggests rather that the hoarfrost is a phantasm, a negative ombra of snow, and its erasure an image of the mind in its ability to become a tabula rasa for new forms, new "writing."^[46] In addition, that the hoarfrost is erased by the sun is only part of the story. The equivocal rhyme on tempra establishes the ratio between the quickly blunted penna of the hoarfrost and the sun's rays (crini ) acquiring temper—that is, strength—in the cold water of Aquarius.^[47] The implication of the simile is that the sun's rays, too, are a writing instrument but that its "words" are to be (in a metaphor not infrequent in Dante) the foliage of the new season.^[48] Dante is in a sense reinverting Raimbaut's description of ice crystals as inverted flowers, flor enversa: in Dante's simile, the writing of the sun will supplant the frosty script of winter. But this "solar" writing will be different because of its tempering in the cold waters of Aquarius; that is, the sun's remission in winter is part of its discipline, a tempering that will make it—or, out of metaphor, the poet—write all the better. The tempering implied involves both the sun and the writer: it is cosmic.

The impoverished villanello of the simile and the weather of February create a scene that is unmistakably Saturnine, and so appropriate to the planet whose house is Aquarius.^[49] The pastoral context of the passage, however, suggests that Saturn's domination will itself be transformed. We have suggested that the opposition of the sun in Aquarius and the nights that head al mezzo dì is a specific point of contact between the simile and the petrose. As in "Io son venuto," the positions in the simile of night and day in relation to the zodiac are suggestive: if the sun is in Aquarius, a house of Saturn, then the night (thought of as a point) is in Leo, the house of the sun. More significant still, Aquarius is one of the extreme terms of the zodiacal division between the luminaries and the planets that gives rise to the rhyme-word scheme of "Al poco giorno."^[50] The signs between Aquarius and Cancer are lunar, those between Leo and Capricorn solar. Aquarius (with Capricorn) are the two houses of Saturn, the most distant planet from the luminaries; they are also the hinge where the system of apportioning planets to signs reverses direction and moves back toward the sun and moon. In this sense Aquarius, like the solar nadir of the petrose, is a cosmic extreme, from which the sun and the cosmos are bound to return, indeed are already returning.^[51]

As in the petrose, moreover, we are invited to foresee the antithetical season. Should we have difficulty doing so, Dante gives us, at the beginning of the next bolgia, a pastoral scene of fireflies observed by a villan at high summer:

Quante 'l villan ch'al poggio si riposa, 
   nel tempo che colui che 'l mondo schiara 
   la faccia sua a noi tien meno ascosa, 
come la mosca cede a la zanzara, 
   vede lucciole giù per la vallea, 
   forse colà dov' e' vendemmia e ara  . . . 
          (Inferno  26.25–30)

Whereas the winter scene emphasizes labor, the chill of early morning, and the sun still tempered by cold, the summer scene depicts leisure (si riposa ), dusk, and the season when the sun shines longest.^[52] The hope of the villanello, marked in the winter simile by an image of gathering (la speranza ringavagna ), is fulfilled in the summer simile in the intimations of harvest (vendemmia e ara ); he is no longer giù per la vallea but resting on the slope, al poggio si riposa. We would seem to have here another preview of the bucolic scenes awaited in the Purgatorio.^[53] But there is more. The image of the sun tempered in Aquarius projects how the present Saturnine season will be replaced by the Saturn of the Paradiso. There, Saturn in Leo, the house of the sun, tempers its cold and regains the distinction of ruler of the Golden Age, the saturnia regna of Virgil's fourth bucolic. In the sphere of perfected monastic contemplation, the hoarfrost of February will be transformed into crystal, ice so cold that it can emit fire.^[54] As in the petrose, the ultimate import of Saturnine influence in the poet's life is to strengthen his bent for intellectual work and contemplation, to temper his gifts and make him worthy of his high task.

Landscapes II:
The Floor of Heaven

In Cocito the pilgrim approaches the center of the earth ("il punto / al qual si traggon d'ogne parte i pesi," Inferno 34. 111). The punto is the lowest point in the physical cosmos ("Quell'è il più basso loco e 'l più oscuro / e 'l più lontan dal ciel che tutto gira," 9.28–29). It corresponds to the winter solstice—the sun's lowest position in the ecliptic (il punto della rota ), endured by the poet of "Io son venuto"—and to the central stanza of "Amor, tu vedi ben," dominated by the rhyme-word freddo.

The transposition of the solstice in "Io son venuto" to the geocenter of Cocito is a continuation, in a much greater spatial range, of the pattern of descent to the earth in "Io son venuto." The assistance that Virgilio and the pilgrim receive from the giant Anteo both causes and signifies their descent to the punto, for the grip of a son of the earth ("figli della terra," 31.121) is by metonymy the grip of earth itself. The predominance of earth and cold in Cocito echoes its predominance in the fifth stanza of "Io son venuto." Sixteen terms from that fifth stanza, many with thematic force, recur in Inferno 31–34: acque, vapor, terra (and its rhymes guerra and serra ), ventre, abisso, freddura, verno (vernare ), smalto (vetro ), tornare, morte. We may speak of a sedimentation of terms from the lowest realm of "Io son venuto" in the lowest realm of Hell. Such a concentration is itself mimetic, as the center of the earth was, in Dante's scientific lore, the darkest, densest place in the cosmos.^[55]

The domination of earth means the domination of cold. At the winter solstice of "Io son venuto," the stella d'Amor is remote, and Saturn, distant and malefic, rains cold on the earth. In Hell, the pilgrim is most distant from the Empyrean in a frigid realm dominated by Satan, the infernal Saturn. Fallen, dark, immobilized, parricidal (he has his "children" in his mouths), Satan, as Georg Rabuse showed, is a figure of Chronos-Saturn who devoured his children, who presides over winter, cold, death, heaviness (his metal is lead, his element earth), and who is thought of as cast down, at the imum coeli.^[56] The remoteness of Saturn from the earth is inverted in the remoteness of Satan from the warmth of the Empyrean.

Saturnine Cocito harks back to the petrose for the effects of cold on water: the "acqua morta che si converte in vetro" of "Io son venuto" (60) is closely echoed in Inferno 32.23–24:

 . . . un lago che per gelo 
avea di vetro e non d'acqua sembiante.

This language, as well as that for the lady in "Al poco giorno" ("gelata come neve all'ombra," 8) and the terms for the transformation of ice to crystal in "Amor, tu vedi ben":

    Segnor, tu sai che per algente freddo 
l'acqua diventa cristallina petra 
là sotto tramontana ov'è il gran freddo, 
           (25–27)

return in the gelatina (32.60), the gelati guazzi (32.72), the gelata (33–91), and the visiere di cristallo (33.98) of the fredda crosta (33.109).

The references to crystal and ice in Cocito continue the microcosmic implications of the natural science of "Amor, tu vedi ben." Tears condensed from pneumatic "thought" and driven from the lover's eye ("e quel pensiero . . . / mi si converte tutto in corpo freddo / che m'esce poi per mezzo de la luce," 34–36) reappear in the tears forced from the fratricides in Caina (32.38–39) and in the frozen tears ("visieri di cristallo," 33.98) of the treacherous in Tolomea. The hard visors ("duri veli," 33.112) are cognates of the icy velo of Cocito. In the presentation of Alberigo as blind, and of Cocito itself as a darkened glass (vetro ) or crystal, Dante suggests that it is like a great blind eye, a sphere whose diaphaneity will never be informed by light. "Lucerna corporis tui est oculus tuus . . . si autem oculus tuus fuerit nequam: totum corpus tuum tenebrosum erit" (Matthew 6:22–23); and Lucifer, formerly the light-bearer, has become dark ("per non aspettar lume, cadde acerbo," Paradiso 19.48). In the implicit continuities we recognize again the poetics of "Amor, tu vedi ben."

The causes of ice and stone in the petrose and in Cocito are homologous in each case to the poetic principles at work. In the petrose, harsh rhymes and exacting forms represent a mimesis of the rigor and pressure of cold in hopes of fashioning the perfect, efficacious crystal. Cocito echoes the specific effect of cold in each petrosa: the burdensome thought of the lover ("ond'io son carco," 11) mirrored in the downward thrust in the stanzas of "Io son venuto" returns in the ubiquitous gravity ("ogni gravezza," 32.74; also 32.3, 34.111);^[57] the lover hemmed in by his love in the sestina ("che m'ha serrato . . . ," 17; "chiuso intorno," 30) in the constriction of the brothers ("sì stretti," 32.41, 47); cold as a cause at the center of "Amor, tu vedi ben" ("Per cagion del freddo . . . ," 25, 30) is repeatedly invoked ("per la freddura," 32.53; also 31.123, 32.70–71, 33.101).^[58] The association of cold with the chattering of teeth and jaws ("sonar con le mascelle," 32.107; also 32.36, 108) echoes the rime aspre of "Così nel mio parlar."^[59] Indeed, if the four petrose had not been linked by tradition, the reading of Cocito would have ensured their association.

In Cocito, the poet's art of enclosing words in meter imitates the pressure on the central point.^[60] Invoking the myth of Amphion, who made stones come together in the walls of Thebes, the poet imagines his poetics as the enclosure of the punto itself.^[61] Evidence of this cen-

tripetal art appears everywhere: in verbal juxtapositions ("legno legno," 32.49), in the proximity of the brothers Napoleone and Alessandro, in the poet's call to draw Capraia and Gorgona to the mouth of Arno (33.82).

The poet's imitation is announced in verses that closely echo the first verse of "Così nel mio parlar":

S'ïo avessi le rime aspre e chiocce, 
   come si converrebbe al tristo buco 
   sovra '1 qual pontan  tutte l'altre rocce, 
io premerei  di mio concetto il suco 
   più pienamente . . . 
           (32.1–5; emphasis added)

Later terminology ("il dolor che'l cor mi preme," 33.5; "Il duol che'l cor m'impregna, 33.113) suggests a continuum linking the gravity at the center to the inner grief of Ugolino and Alberigo and to the poetic effort required for their presentation. The convergence of material fact, moral state, and poetics is what the poet asks of Amphion's Muses: the convenientia or decorum, which fits subject matter to language "sì che dal fatto il dir non sia diverso." Such a decorum is already manifest in the opening of Canto 32, cited above, which promotes terms with the con prefix to the status of rhyming word (converrebbe, concetto, conduco ).^[62]

As in the petrose, the poetics of the text derives from the specific cosmological feature described. Like a giant press, the accumulation of physical weight and grief at the center presses down on the poet, extruding the harsh rhymes ("premerei di mio concetto il suco"). The poet is like a telamon bearing the weight of the entire cosmos—not merely of the Inferno, as reference to the poem as a soma or ponderoso tema later in the Commedia will suggest.^[63] The petrose figure both as a basis to the poetics of the rest of the Commedia and as part of the burden the poet has borne. Thus the dramatic confrontation of the lover and the petra imagined in "Così nel mio parlar" is pointedly recalled in the episode of Ugolino and Ruggieri.

Virtually all the narrative elements of "Così nel mio parlar" are alluded to: betrayal and revenge, blows, barking, gnawing, cries, cruel language. To mention only the most striking parallels: the terms bruca, manduca, and rode in the canzone are developed in Ugolino's feast on Ruggieri's skull ("come'l pan per fame si manduca," 32.127; "non altrimenti Tidëo si rose le tempie a Melanippo," 32.130–131); Ugolino

dreams that his children are pierced by the teeth of Ruggieri's dogs ("fender il fianchi," 33.36) in what is a rehearsal of his own doglike attack on Ruggieri ("coi denti . . . come d'un can, forti," 33.77–78), just as the speaker of "Così" imagines the lady pierced by love's sword ("vedess'io fender  . . . lo core," 53–54) in retaliation for his own suffering of Love's strokes ("mi fiede sotto il braccio," 48); Ugolino gazes at his progeny ("guardai nel viso," 33.47–48), as the "Così" speaker imagines staring at his lady ("guarderei presso e fiso," 76); Ugolino turns to stone within ("sì dentro impetrai," 33.49), as the lady in the canzone opts for cruelty ("impetra maggior durezza," 3–4); the child stretched out before his father ("si gittò disteso," 33.68) recalls the speaker supine before Love ("disteso a riverso," 42).

But there are crucial differences: Ugolino, mute in his hatred ("stemmo tutti muti," 33.65) offers no help as his sons die ("padre mio, ché non m'aiuti?" 33.69); in the canzone, the speaker imagines offering help to the lady as she sinks in the caldo borro ("Io vi soccorro," 61). Ugolino's speech to his dead offspring ("due dì li chiamai . . . ," 33.74) is pointless, but the lover's fantasy of reciprocal cries begins an exchange of gestures, and the poem itself is an utterance that would compel hearing, a richiamo to heed Love's call, as the children's example in the mews is a call to heed the message of forgiveness. The speaker's struggle to escape the interiority of his suicidal frustration is mirrored, though in reverse, by Ugolino's withdrawal into a petrified silence. Ugolino desires revenge, but the lover's desire is both for his own survival and for the transformation of the lady. Ugolino's silence and despair represent the possible final phase of both lover and lady in the petrose: the lady hardened in refusal, the lover petrified by her Medusa-like power. The implicit solution, in both cases, is the offer of words that shatter the isolation and withdrawal of despair. And it is this offer that the petrose, however problematically, attempt.

Thus the Ugolino episode, and Cocito in general, stage a simplification of the ambiguities of "Così nel mio parlar"; the theme of the rigidity of the petra as traceable to an obscure and perverse sensuality reappears in Ugolino as the refusal of both pietas and Christian forgiveness. The reciprocal violence of the traitors echoes the speaker's struggle with the petra, but in a context of exasperated political faction and demonic cruelty that justifies the pilgrim's treatment of the traitors Bocca and Alberigo.^[64] The poet's reiteration of the language of "Così nel mio parlar" in Cocito implicitly acknowledges his own violence; but

it also marks his distance from the personal aggression of "Così." The Medusa—darkly alluded to in Ugolino's stoniness and in the poet's reference to "Gorgona" (33.82)—loses its sexual content and returns to an orthodox role as an instrument of justice, indeed of the justice visited by the poet on the traitors when he encloses them in Cocito. In this sense, the rime aspre of Cocito augur (like the rime aspre of "Così") the poet's victory. Like a new Perseus, he makes the power of the Gorgon his own.

Thus, it ought not to be thought that reference to the petrose in Cocito means their rejection. Far from rejecting the petrose, the poet compares his art to the walling of Thebes by the power of song. It is of course more than that: it is a cosmogonic poetics, marking out the foundation of the universe (discriver fondo a tutto l'universo ); it is the poet's equivalent and reflects the Creator's drawing of his compass around the heavens ("Colui che volse il sesto / a lo stremo del mondo," Paradiso 19.40–41); it is evidence of the penetration of the poet's gift, of his microcosmic poetics, as far as the dark center of the cosmos. It also reiterates the poetics of the petrose in that it marks a moment of birth.

Ironically for its tenants, but auspiciously for the pilgrim, Cocito includes references to birth and childhood: Ugolino's figliuoli who are the new life ("l'età novella," 33.88); Napoleone and Alessandro, who are uterine brothers ("d'un corpo usciro," 32.58); Anteo who is figlio della terra. Implicit is a countermotive to the oppressiveness of the center—or, rather, a redefinition of its meaning. To the asperity of the speech of Cocito, with its imitation of clucking and chattering jaws, Dante opposes the equally onomatopoetic speech of the infant, who speaks the puerilia of mamma and babbo (32.9). The child's call to his parents for nourishment and protection affirms the bonds of kinship so spectacularly violated by the traitors of Caina; it draws our attention, moreover, to the words of Alberigo, the pilgrim's last interlocutor in Hell, who portrays himself as pregnant with pain ("il duol che'l cor m'impregna," 33.113). For Alberigo's pain there will be no accouchement. But the pilgrim, by passing through the center of the earth, is uprooted from the cave of Hell (". . . prima ch'io dell'abisso mi divella," 34.10). What for Satan and the damned is a devouring maw ("il fondo . . . che divora / Lucifero con Giuda," 31.142–143) is for the pilgrim a womb in which he prepares for the labor of rebirth on the shores of Purgatory ("Prima ch'io dell'abisso mi divella," 34.100). That the icy veil of Cocito is a legacy of the poet's natal ingegno along with the bel nido of Gemini will emerge in the heaven of Gemini itself, where we will also have to

reckon with the fantasy of the power of poetry figured in Amphion's moving of the stones.

Microcosmic Form

The Body of Hell

We begin with a striking parallel of a general kind, which had escaped notice until the microcosmic structure of the first of the petrose had been pointed out: the fact that Dante's Hell is a giant projection of the human body.^[65]

Dante and Virgil begin their descent through Hell at what corresponds to the head (Limbo, which represents at one level our knowledge of the ancient world—that is, our memory—and may well correspond to the rear ventricle of the brain, thought to be the seat of memory);^[66] we pass the devouring gullet among the gluttons, the spleen with the sullen. Within the city of Dis we reach a river of blood, the forest of the heart, and what should be a fountain or reservoir of life but is instead an arid burning plain. Some years ago Charles Singleton pointed out the existence, in Inferno 12–13, of what he called a "semantic field" of references to the breast, which he connected with the theme of man's double nature. We first see Chiron when he is looking at his breast; a while later Virgil stands at Chiron's breast, "dove le due nature son consorti" (12.84; cf. 12.97).^[67] The circles of violence, in other words, correspond to the human breast. The Malebolge, furthermore, where fraud is punished, are based on an elaborate parallel between the digestion of foods and the work of the mind, for truth is the food of the soul, fraud its poison, and their concentric circles have an obvious relation to the labyrinth of the intestines (see Durling 1981a). Hell is divided, and Dante requires transportation, at points roughly corresponding to the major divisions of the human body. Flegïàs carries Dante across what corresponds to the division between head and breast, Geryon across what corresponds to the diaphragm. Anteo and the other giants are in a location that corresponds to the genitals, and they are like grotesque rebellious penises. Cocito, finally, corresponds to the large intestine, and there we find the infernal Saturn immobile in the ice.

Dante's spiral through Hell is a reenactment—in much greater detail, with much greater complexity, and in a different register—of the solstitial and microcosmic sequence of "Io son venuto." There are many correspondences between the five stanzas of this first of the petrose and

the realms of Hell: a sky—the hemisphere of light in Limbo—as memory (Canto 4, stanza 1); wind and storm as erotic passion, related especially to mouth and eyes, cries and weeping—and to lyric poetry (Canto 5, stanza 2); the breast, especially the heart, as seat of fire (Cantos 12–16, stanza 3); the correlation of animal souls and plant souls with the vital powers of the human soul (Cantos 12–16, stanzas 3–4). Cocito and the descent thereto, finally, as we have said, have a clear correspondence with the last stanza of "Io son venuto."

Dante's Hell is, of course, an inverted parody of the body of Christ, the Church. It is Babylon, the body of Satan. In De genesi ad litteram, explaining Isaiah 14:12–14, Augustine wrote:

Quae in figura regis velut Babylonis in diabolum dicta intelliguntur, plura in eius corpus conveniunt, quod etiam de humano genere congregat. . . . Et sicut corpus Christi quod est Ecclesia, dicitur Christus sicut illud est . . . . "Sicut enim corpus meum unum est, et membra habet multa, omnia autem membra corporis cum sint multa unum est corpus; ita et Christus" (1 Cor. 12:12): eo modo etiam corpus diaboli, cui caput est diabolus, id est ipsa impiorum multitudo.^[68]

What is said figuratively as if of the king of Babylon is to be understood of the devil, they apply to his body, which he too congregates out of the human race. . . . And just as the body of Christ, which is the Church, is called Christ, so that one. . . . "For just as my body is one but has many members, for although the members of the body are many, the body is one; so also Christ" (I Cor. 12:12): in the same way also the body of the devil, whose head is the devil, is the multitude of the damned.

Dante's other two realms, Purgatory and Paradise, are also microcosmic in form. We have anticipated some of the microcosmic aspects of the Purgatorio in the first section; we turn now to a more elaborate consideration of how the microcosmic poetics of the petrose inform the Paradiso. We depart from our contention that "Amor, tu vedi ben," the poem as crystal, also represents the "crystalline" eye, for the Paradiso, because it is Dante's itinerarium mentis, is in physical terms the journey of his highest sense, his vision; more concretely, it is the journey of his eye.

Oculus Mundi

Dante's first heaven, that of the moon, touches on several features that recall the concerns of the petrose: the question, fundamental for the whole of the Paradiso, of heavenly influences (4.49–63—an explicitly

Platonic context) and the parallel between them and the work of human artists; the first comparisons of the heavens (or their inhabitants) to precious stones; and the first instances of optical effects and analogies. As we shall see, in the moon Dante establishes formal resemblances among the heavens, the human body, and the eye—as worked out in detail in "Amor, tu vedi ben" and predicated on the microcosmic poetics born in "Io son venuto." The status of the moon itself, in turn, as the focal point for the influence of all the heavens implies that the microcosmic poetics at work extends at least to all the parts of the Paradiso that take place in time and space.^[69]

"Amor, tu vedi ben," we have argued, is a gem—a crystal. The moon is referred to as a pearl ("margarita," Paradiso 2.34). Its reflectivity, however, is likened to that of adamant, a stone traditionally described as slightly darker than crystal.^[70] In the lapidary lore of the Paradiso, the relation of adamant to crystal is not accidental. Later in the Paradiso Dante refers to the heaven of Saturn as a crystal; and numerous details justify the pairing of the moon—the first planet—with the last, Saturn, whose importance for the horoscope of the petrose we discussed in Chapter 2. Like the moon, Saturn was thought to radiate cold and as such has usually been taken as the planet mentioned in "Io son venuto," 7.^[71] In the moon and Saturn, this cold, taken in bono, indicates the austerity and dedication of the contemplative life ("caldi e geli," 21.116). Accordingly, in both the moon and Saturn Dante speaks only to religious: nuns in the moon, monks in Saturn. As we shall see later, there are good reasons why Dante wishes to include reference to the outermost planet in his treatment of the innermost. And not only Saturn: Dante also recalls the moon in the heaven of the fixed stars by looking down to see it;^[72] and he remembers it also in the first heaven, the Primum Mobile ("qualunque cibo per qualunque luna," 28.132).^[73] These relations are founded in a common element: the moon, it was generally held, was made in part of elemental water;^[74] Dante's Saturn, because a cristallo (21.25), is therefore also a form of water (Rabuse 1976 20), while the Primum Mobile was "caelum aqueum vel crystallinum."^[75]

In "Amor, tu vedi ben," elemental water, the type of amorphousness, is juxtaposed to the rigidity of crystal, water frozen to lapidary hardness. The poem turns, as we have seen, around a center that represents the cycle of states of water.^[76] The moon also includes several states of water. The souls—nuns who have failed to maintain the rigid purity of their vows—appear as reflections in water (2.13–16) and disappear like

heavy objects sinking (2.123); the pilgrim's mistaken understanding of moonspots, dissolved by Beatrice's correction, is compared to melting snow. The pearl signifying the planet is a form of congealed water: in the lapidaries, pearls are attributed to dewdrops absorbed, hardened, and excreted by oysters.^[77] As in "Amor, tu vedi ben," moreover, the amorphousness of water is implicitly juxtaposed to the informing and unifying power of light: the entrance of the pilgrim and Beatrice into the sphere of the moon is compared to a ray of light entering water without dividing it, "com'acqua recepe / raggio di luce permanendo unita" (2.35–36).^[78]

The presence of cold, of water, of light, thus satisfies the requirements for the crystal ignited by fire that is the form of "Amor, tu vedi ben." Crystal, we have suggested, is already present by allusion in the reference to adamant. But it is also glanced at in the several references to mirrors: in the pilgrim's initial ascent, compared to a reflected ray of light (1.49–53); in the experimental mirror proposed by Beatrice (2.88–90);^[79] and in the simile describing the pilgrim's sight of the souls in the heaven, citing Ovid's Narcissus (3.10–18). As we saw in Chapter 4, crystals, mirrors, and the eye are closely related in Dante's thought.^[80] Thus, crystal is also implicitly present by virtue of the humor crystallinus of the eye, the image with which the canto closes and toward which it moves. The eye, too, is a crystal activated by light.

Cold ( freddo ), the states of water, the burning-glass and the eye, the language and metaphysics of light—these are the topics of "Amor, tu vedi ben." But Dante's central concern in the petrose is the specificity of poetic form. In "Amor, tu vedi ben," as we saw, that specificity—which gives the canzone its forma, its beauty—is in the system of rhyme-words that come to domination in the stanzas and that give the poem its shape as a model of the cosmos. It is this formal perfection and luminosity that justifies the nimia repercussio of the rhyme-words. And it is in the recurrence of such formal principles that the heaven of the moon most richly re-evokes the poetics—and beauty—of the petrose.

The presence of the petrose is especially conspicuous in Paradiso 2 in the use of lexical repetition.^[81] Thus, in the second part of Beatrice's explanation regarding moonspots (106–148) we find cielo (112) repeated at 115 and 130; fare (123) at 128, 130, and 132; terms related to girare (113) at 118, 127, and 138; variations on diverse (116, 135) at 117 (distratte ), 118 (differenze ), 119 (distinzion ), and 134 and 146 (differente ); and on formale

(147) at 110 (informare ), 134 (conformate ), and 148 (conforme ). The repetitions thus strike on the two fundamental principles Beatrice is trying to explain: that variation in the cosmos is the result of formal principles that are diverse. The last example recalls a key term in "Amor, tu vedi ben": forma. At the end of the canto, allusion to the technique of "Amor, tu vedi ben" becomes more direct, in two instances of equivocal rhyme: lega (139, 141) and luce (143, 145). Luce, one of the rhyme-words of "Amor, tu vedi ben," is repeated again out of rhyme in verse 145 ("da luce a luce"), so that the term appears both paired and three times in succession, recalling its cycling in the canzone. Dante's allusion—appropriately, a formal one—to the technique of "Amor, tu vedi ben" calls attention to his elaborate evocation of the poetics and sentenza of that poem in Beatrice's discourse on the moonspots, which occupies the entire second half of Paradiso 2.

As in Boethius's "O qui perpetua," alluded to at the end of Paradiso 2, the principles of form are expressed by a homology between the order of discourse and the order of the cosmos: logical and metaphysical hierarchies are reflected both in the order of the heavens and in the construction of Beatrice's two discourses. Each discourse is a model of the cosmos; between them, they present a descent from first principles to experimental facts, followed by a re-ascent to the first cause expressed in microcosmic terms—techniques that recall "Amor, tu vedi ben" and the models of form, "Donne ch'avete" and "O qui perpetua," that we studied in the Introduction and in Chapter 1.

In Beatrice's first speech, mention of the stars, the sun (and moon), and the observer is apparently casual and for the sake of the argument. In fact, Beatrice returns immediately to first principles in beginning her refutation of the pilgrim's error. Her speech is divisible into two parts. The undivided first part is the rebuttal of the pilgrim's erroneous view: if rare and dense explained the diverse intensity of the stars, then the starry sphere would impart but a single virtue. But this we know is false, for each star produces distinct virtuous influences. The second part is subdivided: the moon could be thought of as pierced throughout by "light" patches (in which case, Beatrice points out, the sun would shine through during eclipses); or it might have light patches of depth short of the whole diameter, beyond which dense material would resume (like the layering of lean and fat in a body, or pages in a book). But if that were the case, the light reflected from the moon would not

show dark patches, for experiment (involving three mirrors at differing distances and a candle placed behind the viewer) demonstrates that dense strata at varying distances would not affect the intensity of reflected light.

Descending from a formal explanation to double empirical proofs, Beatrice refers first to the stars, next to solar eclipses (natural phenomena visible to all), and then to the observer of an experiment. The experiment is at the lowest metaphysical level because it involves induction from the senses and from a particular case. Her description of it, however, also sketches a model of the cosmos: the mirrors suggest the moon; the candle, the sun; the viewer's eye, that of man on earth.^[82] The model is an apparently casual version of the balanced sun and moon in Libra that we discussed earlier.^[83] More important, reference to the observer of the experiment looks forward to the microcosmic analogy with the eye in the second speech. In this sense the movement of reascent has, implicitly, already begun.^[84]

The second account forms a diptych with the first. It is, however, much more complex. Where the first is destructive (riprovando ), hammering away at the pilgrim's error until it is melted and his passive intellect is free, the second is constructive (provando ), like informing light—and this is a key to its structure. It both reflects elements of the first and reverses them. Although apparently descending from stars to the planets to the metaphor of the body, it also ascends to higher and higher poetic and metaphysical levels in a complex design that recalls the structural intricacies of Boethius's "O qui perpetua" and "Donne ch'avete."

Beatrice begins by describing how the uniform influence of the first heaven, the Primum Mobile, is diversified, first by the multitude of stars and subsequently by the planets. In these four tercets she descends from the Empyrean to the planets and speaks of the cosmos as a material creation. In her account of all the planets with a single tercet, however—"li altri giron per varie differenze"—she treats the circle of the Other logically as one circle, as Plato does in his account of how the Demiurge fashions the universe.^[85] The presence of an abstract principle anticipates the ascent to higher levels that follows.

In the next section (127–132), Beatrice explains how the effects of the planetary spheres just mentioned (the arte del martello ) draw their movement and power from their intelligences (the fabbro ).^[86] Although still speaking of the planets, she has ascended in metaphysical level with

mention of the intelligences that govern the planetary and stellar spheres. In the last lines of this section, she speaks of the intelligence of the first heaven ("la mente profonda che lui volve") as the exemplar for the activity of the stellar sphere ("e'l ciel che tanti lumi fanno bello"), directly echoing the language of "O qui perpetua" for the World-Soul turning around noûs. The reference again raises the metaphysical temperature, so to speak, and prepares the microcosmic image of the following section.

In verses 133–138, Beatrice compares the joining of the intelligence with the starry sphere to that of life with the body.^[87] In the comparison of the heavens to a physical body there is another apparent descent.^[88] However, the introduction of the microcosmic simile—a trope—heightens the stylistic level. Where the previous section ascended from material to intelligible realms, moreover, now Beatrice's language adumbrates the unity of the first cause and establishes the human person, soul and body, as an image participating in that unity. In terms like bontate and unitate, Boethian and Neoplatonic terms for the intelligible hierarchy screen the Christian equivalent of the Neoplatonic One.

The last three tercets appear to repeat the previous four. But Beatrice now uses the glow of life radiating from a part of the body to describe the union of intelligence with its sphere: she compares the virtue of the star to the expression of happiness in the human eye. Although the term of comparison is a part of the whole and thus lower in metaphysical rank, at the same time the vehicle of the metaphor is the active, radiant letizia of the soul reflecting the Creator who is its source. In terms that Plato would have found familiar, the diaphanous sphere of the eye is the part of the body most like the heavens, most like the intellect in its permeability to form, most like the lieto fattor himself.^[89] Most striking, the stars, described previously as multiple (tante vedere ) and full of lights (tanti lumi ), are now presented as actively shining: "la virtù mista per lo corpo luce "—the first use of an active verb derived from lux in rhyme position in Beatrice's two discourses. Just as the presence of light in the eye is the sign of a living person, so the visible radiation of light from the stars is evidence of the virtù they possess: only here, in Beatrice's discourse, do the stars actively shine and the eye gleam. The use of the active form, luce, is thus also the act that unifies the whole passage.

The descent from cosmos to the body and its parts has therefore also been an ascent, via terms of the intelligible cosmos, to the first cause,

which logically and metaphysically contains the entire creation. It is in the final, comprehensive tercets that allusion to "Amor, tu vedi ben" is strongest:

Virtù diversa fa diversa lega 
   col prezïoso corpo ch'ella avviva, 
   nel qual, sì come vita in voi, si lega. 
Per la natura lieta onde deriva, 
   la virtù mista per lo corpo luce 
   come letizia per pupilla viva. 
Da essa vien ciò che da luce a luce 
   par differente, non da denso e raro; 
   essa è formal principio che produce, 
conforme a sua bontà, lo turbo e'l chiaro.

Virtù (twice), corpo (twice), luce (three times), forma (and conforme )—all these are important words from "Amor, tu vedi ben" (and in the presence of much other repercussio: repeated diversa, avviva/vita/viva, lieta/ letizia ). Note also the oppositions denso/raro, turbo/chiaro, as against di notte e di luce (46), luogo e tempo (47) in the canzone.

Heaven and earth, soul and body, generic and specific, whole and part, logical order and trope, containment and contained, exemplar and microcosm—these categories are all exploited in the ordering of Beatrice's discourse. We note with all of them Dante's use of a poetics learned from Boethius and when composing "Donne ch'avete." But the resemblances with "Amor, tu vedi ben" are the most extensive. Beatrice's simile of the pilgrim's mind as snow, melting under the heat of her arguments so that she can reinform it with the truth, forms the center of her whole discussion and corresponds to the central stanza of "Amor, tu vedi ben."^[90] Both the metaphor of the informant as craftsman and that of the heavens as revolving around and informing the sublunar are, we recall, essential to the form of "Amor, tu vedi ben," and they constitute the principal theoretical underpinnings of Beatrice's two discourses. Perhaps most important for the parallels with Dante's crystal poem, Beatrice's speeches are themselves modeled, logically and spatially, to exemplify the activity of circling and informing performed by the heavens; the form of her discourse is itself a model of the cosmos (see Chapter 2, note 75). Finally, of course, Beatrice's speech is itself (as Nardi intuited) a form of light, of luce that informs the pilgrim's mind. That light shapes it as the hammer shapes metal or the spheres shape the sublunar world (thus the reference to the "strokes"—colpi —of the sun melting

the snow); it is as if the colpi of the sun and the blows of the heavens as hammers echo the repercussio of Dante's craft in "Amor, tu vedi ben"—precisely in the crucial term, thrice repeated, of luce. And that same light is everywhere in the canto like the glimmering of lights from a crystal—to adopt an image of Adam of St. Victor. It is a light that radiates, successively, in the three mirrors and in the moon, in the eye, in sources of light like candles and the sun, in the stars.^[91]

Beatrice's discourses focus, finally, on the human body and the eye as microcosms for the cosmos. It is a tendency that will have considerable consequences for the Paradiso as a whole, whose structure, as we argue below, is itself modeled after that of the human mind. In the immediate context, the concluding image of the heavenly sphere as a radiant eye is particularly suggestive. In one sense it might refer to the moon itself, its face turned to the earth like a brightly shining eye, echoing its functions both in the hexamereal tradition and in Dante's own usage—moon and sun are "li due occhi del ciel" in the Purgatorio (22.132). More to the point, Beatrice's discourses in Canto 2 require that the diversity of formal principles represented by the various stars and the diversity of the moon's surface—turbo e chiaro —be homologous phenomena.^[92] In one sense, the moon is a receptacle for (and representation of) all the spheres above it.^[93] And in terms we have already used of the atmosphere and the surface of the eye, the moon is itself a horizon between the sublunar and ethereal realms, as described in the astronomical treatises Dante knew.^[94]

But in metaphor—and metaphor is crucial, as we saw—the eye that concludes Beatrice's discourse is a human eye, part of a human face. In the heaven of the moon, for the last time in the Paradiso with the exception of Beatrice and the final vision, the pilgrim sees and the poet emphasizes the human effigy and visage. From the reference to Cain in the moon to the simile of faces reflected in water ("d'i nostri visi le postille," 3.13) and the beautiful image of a white pearl on a white brow ("perla in bianca fronte," 3.14), the face is constantly presented. Dante's use of volti (2.66, from vultus ) and vedute (2.115) for the stars also suggests faces, and of course the lunar orb is a face, a faccia.^{[ 95]} Dante's appeal, in Beatrice's discourse, to the great chain of being ("di grado in grado / che di sù prendono e di sotto fanno," 2.122–123) rests on Macrobius's image of the chain as a series of mirrors reflecting the same face, vultus eius.^[96] The presence of the human imago is not surprising: as Nardi has shown, the underlying metaphysics of Beatrice's explanations is more Neoplatonic than Aristotelian, depending—as the citation of "O qui

perpetua" confirms—on the Platonic theory of celestial influence, by which ideas in the divine mind (imagines ) are impressed, as formal principles, on the material world below.^[97] In Christian terms, of course, the archetypal human imago is that of the Logos, of Christ—as the pilgrim will discover at the end of the poem.

In a subtle but most important sense, however, the happy radiant eye of Paradiso 2 is the eye of Beatrice. It is Beatrice's eye through which, in a complex optical simile (1.49–54), the pilgrim first leaves the earth. The pilgrim's look to the stars and the glance at Beatrice are inseparable: Beatrice lieta, or bella, or ridente, is constantly the passport upward.^[98] But the heavens smile because Beatrice's smile is the reflex of a fictional cosmos ordered to the satisfaction of the pilgrim by its author, who is Dante.^[99] In the happy, responsive, and solicitous eye of Beatrice, the poet imagines the antidote to the unyielding sembiante freddo of the petra; in his joyful reception in Paradise, the antidote to his painful exclusion from his native city. This inversion of aspects and of outcomes, attempted with such art in the petrose, the poet achieves for himself in that heaven of the stars so often anticipated in the moon.

The Heaven of the Sun

In the Commedia, the great majority of astronomical passages describe or include mention of the sun: the "pianeta / che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle" (Inferno 1.17–18) functions in the poem as beacon, guide, timepiece, symbol, and chief minister of the heavens through all three cantiche. In one sense, its importance culminates in the heaven of Gemini, where it is named "padre di ogni mortal vita" in connection with its role in the nativity of the poet. The importance of the sun in the Commedia is similar to its place in the petrose, where three of the poems exemplify in their form the principles of the sun's motion and effects: "Io son venuto" imitates the sun's descent to winter solstice; "Al poco giorno," in its spiral movement of rhyme-words, graphs the sun's movement with both Same and Other; and "Amor, tu vedi ben" imitates the changing effects of the sun in conjunction with successive constellations or planets and is arranged axially with cold at its center, representing the winter depression of the sun and the central location of a cold earth and the coldness of the lady.^[100] Although "Così" appears to lack the sun (see, however, "nel sol quanto nel rezzo," 57), the treatment of the lady's glances as shafts of light anticipates, as we saw, the imagery in the Para-

diso of the pilgrim's upward motion as a beam of light or arrow seeking its target, and ultimately of emanation and return as the propagation and reflection of light.

The first twenty-seven lines of Paradiso 10 are themselves an astronomical incipit. They introduce the principle that orders the heaven of the sun, the motions of Same and Other that cross at the equinoctial points on the celestial equator:

Guardando nel suo Figlio con l'Amore 
     che l'uno e l'altro etternalmente spira, 
     lo primo e ineffabile Valore 
quanto per mente e per loco si  gira 
   con tant'ordine fé, ch'esser non puote 
     sanza gustar di lui chi ciò rimira. 
Leva dunque, lettore, a l'alte  rote 
   meco la vista,  dritto  a quella parte 
     dove  l'un moto e l'altro si percuote; 
e comincia a vagheggiar nell'arte 
     di quel maestro che dentro a sé l'ama, 
     tanto che mai da lei l'occhio non parte. 
Vedi come da indi  si dirama 
   l'oblico cerchio  che i pianeti porta, 
     per sodisfare al mondo che li chiama. 
Che se la strada lor non fosse  torta, 
   molta virtù nel ciel sarebbe in vano, 
     e quasi ogne potenza qua giù morta; 
e se dal dritto  più o men lontano 
     fosse'l partire, assai sarebbe manco 
     e giù e su del ordine mondano. 
Or ti riman, lettor, sovra 'l tuo banco, 
     dietro pensando a ciò che si preliba, 
     s'esser vuoi lieto assai prima che stanco. 
Messo t'ho innanzi: omai per te ti ciba; 
     ché a  sé  torce  tutta la mia cura 
     quella materia  ond'io son fatto scriba. 
           (emphasis added)

In its twenty-seven lines, the passage enacts the procession of the cosmos from the Creator and the beginning of the creature's return to him. The first two tercets treat of the Trinity, the procession of the cosmos from it, and its immanence in creation. The next five describe the motions of the Same and the Other, which mediate the eternal to the temporal and which through the movements of the sun govern birth and decay in the sublunary world. In the final two tercets the poet invites

the reader to reflect on the text (which is now before the reader, innanzi, as the heavens were straight above, leva . . . dritto ) and testifies to his own yearning to return to its order in his narrative.^[101]

The passage has thus a tripartite structure emphasizing (1) the divine summit, (2) the two motions as mediators, and (3) the reader or poet as last term and subject of return. This structure (like the length of the passage) is clearly modeled on Boethian principles, as has been widely recognized (Dante 1979b 3:153). Boethian derivation is evident in the combination of expressed petitions and yearning for the source (il mondo che li chiama; torce mia cura ). In structural terms, the divisions are nearly parallel to those of Boethius's poem. "O qui perpetua" is divided into a nine-verse section on the procession of the world from the mind of God; a twelve-verse section (with a central five-verse section of lines of fifteen syllables) on the physical form of the cosmos, with the World-Soul at its center; and a final seven-line section, the prayer proper, asking that the speaker be raised up to a vision of the fountain of Good. In Dante's proem, one line shorter than the Latin poem's twenty-eight, the division is six lines on the Godhead, fifteen on the two motions, and six again on the reader-poet's return.^[102]

Dante's passage is based on Neoplatonic principles: the poet and reader ascend by contemplating the movements of the heavens (5–6). The viewer's lifting of his gaze to the celestial cross imitates the Father's unswerving gaze upon the Son and the Creator's (quel maestro ) unswerving contemplation of the cosmic model (che mai da lei l'occhio non parte ). Thus, the whole passage unfolds the procession within the Trinity.^[103] As in Boethius's poem, however, where the participation in the World-Soul by individual souls implies the upward return of the latter (mentioned as early as line 21, "facis igne reverti," but already implicit in the internal meditation of the World-Soul on noûs —"In semet reditura meat mentemque profundam / circuit," 16–17), the movement of return actually begins much earlier, with the poet's invitation to look at the equinoctial point itself (Leva dunque, lettor  . . .)—where, as Freccero notes (1986 242), the logical connective implies that human souls participate in the rationality of the heavens. As in Boethius, the ascent begins with the invitation itself. Descent and ascent, procession and return, are simultaneous, interwoven in the passage.

At the end of the passage the poet himself is twisted back to his subject, the heaven of the sun, imitating the twisting away of the Other from the Same and its return at the opposite point of the circle. The

implication is that the crossed circles are the specific formal model of his poetics. It is no accident that (again like Boethius) Dante places at the exact center of his proem (lines 13–15) the point where the two motions are joined:

Vedi come da indi  si dirama 
   l'oblico cerchio  che i pianeti porta, 
    per sodisfare al mondo che li chiama.

"Si dirama / l'oblico cerchio," the forking away of the oblique circle, is the cardinal event in the whole passage (Freccero 1986 81). It may be hazarded that the spiral form of terza rima is itself an instance of the oblico cerchio crossed with the equator.^[104] That the two circles are the constructive principle of the heaven of the sun will be evident in the rest of this section.

As in Boethius, finally, the last terms are crucial. The Latin poem ends and begins with beginning and end, Alpha and Omega, in the inversion of initial O and final Idem. In Dante's proem the first verse ends with Amore, the Spirit that enlivens creation, and the last verse with scriba, naming the poet who writes under Love's inspiration, who returns to his Author in writing this passage, who extends in words (innanzi ) the intelligible richiamo of the heavens even as he himself hears the world calling to the divine art that informs it, "per sodisfare al mondo che li chiama." The reader, for his part, practices return both in looking up to the heavens and in reflecting on the cruciform cosmos in the poet's text (di retro pensando )—that is, both per mente and per loco —so that the joined actions of memory and vision (which leads here to desire, vagheggiar nell'arte ) themselves imitate the two motions of intellect and will.

The proem to Paradiso 10 also echoes, in addition to "O qui perpetua," distinguishing aspects of the petrose. Some of these are verbal details: the beginning of verse paragraphs with forms of the verb—guardando, leva, vedi, or ti riman, messo t'ho (inverted)—recalls "Io son venuto" articulated by inverted finite verbs (levasi, fuggito son, passato han, versan ).^[105] Its petitions and yearning evoke the reiterated (again, structural) petitions of "Amor, tu vedi ben" and the powerful desire for satisfaction and love throughout the petrose. The rhyme on morta and porta (around torta ) regarding the inclination of the ecliptic echoes the central rhyme of "Io son venuto" (ammorta/porta ) defining the contrast between the winter apathy of animals and the speaker's love: alludes,

that is, both to an effect of the inclined ecliptic and to the spiritual principle of the Same that thrives in the lover. Manco/(banco) /stanco in turn echo the negative moment of "Così nel mio parlar," where the lover is near death (stanco, 43) and wounded by Love in the left side ("sotto il braccio manco," 48) (the third rhyme is bianco ).^[106]

Specific verbal echoes are confirmed by shared thematic concerns and structural principles. The emphasis on the participation of the mind in a cosmic order; mention of divine and human artisanal skill (that of nature is implied); the apparently paradoxical truth that the departure of the Other from the Same is required for the wholeness of nature, and thus the idea that the Other—what twists away—must be included in the ambit of Mind, are general notions underlying both the petrose and the proem to the heaven of the sun.^[107] More specifically, spiral motion as an imitation of the movements of the sun and the soul recalls "Io son venuto" and "Al poco giorno"; and the movement in the text to and from first principles (eternity, the One) recalls "Amor, tu vedi ben." As we shall see, the crossed circles of the proem return in the sun itself, whose status as the heart and governor of the zodiac is implicit in Dante's establishment of the point of the vernal equinox, "dove 'l sol è più vivo." In the poet's elaboration of his solar heaven we see perhaps the fullest development within the Commedia of a range of poetic effects first attempted in the petrose. It is properly Dante's heliotropic heaven.

Perhaps the most remarkable artistic achievement of the poet's heliotropic art in Paradiso 10–14 is the representation of the sun's annual and diurnal motions, which express the logical motions of the cosmos. The two motions inform the figurative language of the sphere, influence its syntax, govern the selection of topics broached by the speakers, and determine the articulation of the whole heaven. In one sense the two motions refer directly to the sun. The groups of theologians are compared to a clock (10.139) because the sun, set in the heaven for a sign of seasons and times, marks days and years; to dancers (10.79, 12.22, 13.22) because the strophe/antistrophe of choral song imitates the movements of the heavens;^[108] and to double lunar rainbows and imaginary constellations because the sun was ruler of the zodiac.^[109] They are compared to millstones, echoing Dante's comparison in the Convivio of the sun's motions to those of a millstone (Freccero 1986 227–234). The pairing of Francis and Dominic is also stated as that of chiarezza (brightness, intellect) and ardore (heat, charity) near the end of the heaven, in 14.40; both brightness and heat are attributes of the sun.^[110]

It is the two motions themselves, however, that are the principal object of Dante's representation. The division of the theologians into two groups results from the distinction, in the human microcosm, of the two motions: those who approach God through ardent love, like the Seraphic Francis, and those who approach him through the light of intellect, with the Cherubic Dominic (Ferrante 1984 274)—though Dante does not adhere strictly to these distinctions, as Francis and Dominic and their followers share in both forms of devotion, through ardent love and works and through contemplation and study.^[111] As readers have noted, the linkage and concordance of the two reformers to the one end (ad una militaro ) and the movement of the two circles are repeatedly described with the coordinating expression l'un . . . l'altro.^[112] The homology of coordinate phrasing and the cosmic motions is a key to Dante's specific poetics in the heaven of the sun, where paired terms—luce e luce (10.122), voce a voce (10.146), moto a moto e canto a canto (11.5)—reiterate the parallelism of the two circles.^[113] Doubling is itself a reiterated topic, again centered on the two princes ("due principi," 11.35; also "due campioni," 12.44) and the two circles of theologians ("due archi," 12.11; "due segni in ciel," 13.13; "due circonferenze," 14.74).^[114] It recurs in the presence not only of the two champions, but also of the two perfect men, Christ and Adam, and in the two questions introduced by Thomas, one regarding the corruption of the Dominicans, the other the salvation of Solomon.^[115] The two questions are a form of structural pairing whose principal example is to be found in the coordinated, chiastically ordered biographies of the two founders: that of Francis, related by the Dominican Thomas, and that of Dominic, related by the Franciscan Bonaventure. The chiasmic distribution of biographer and subject reiterates the founding chiasmus of the proem, marked both by the celestial Chi and by the movement from center to circumference and back again described at the beginning of Canto 14.^[116]

As is well known, the topics of the effects, birthplaces, birth, and orders established by the two saints show close parallels of position, length, and wording in the two biographies (Dante 1979a 206). Each biography is thirty-five tercets long; each contains an account of the saint's birthplace and birth; each decries the decline of the respective orders. The pairing of the saints persists in the design and detail of the biographies. Thus the binomial l'un . . . l'altro or one of its elements appears at the opening (11.37–38, 12.34) and closing (11.118–122, 12.106—111) of the narratives, while the centers of the passages (11.70–75, 12.70–

75) are marked with appearances of the word Cristo, as the spouse of Poverty (like Francis himself) in the life of Francis and in rhyme in the life of Dominic.^[117] The center, itself a crossing point, is marked by Cristo, by the cross (11.72), just at the moment when each saint is named ("Francesco e Povertà," 11.74; "Domenico fu detto," 12.70).^[118] However, at only one point do the two biographies verbally coincide—we might say cross—in the same line:

   . . .  nacque al mondo un sole, 
come fa questo talvolta  di Gange. 
              (11.50–51) 
non molto lungi al percuoter de l'onde 
    dietro a le quali, per la lunga foga, 
   lo sol talvolta ad ogne uom si nasconde. 
           (12.49–51)

Only talvolta is identical and on the same line in both cases. The sun, explicit in 12.51, is present in the pronoun (questo ) of 11.51 and explicit in the previous verse. Francis appears as a rising sun, and Dominic, born in the west, is associated with a setting one. But the punctual juncture of the two passages has more to tell us than that.^[119] That the terms of identity should be talvolta and (pronominally) sole is important: Dante refers in each case to the variability of where the sun rises and sets. He is thus referring to the sun's proper motion in the ecliptic, the motion that carries it south in the winter and north in the summer, twice crossing the equator at the equinoxes—as implied in the proem to Canto 10.

The commentators agree that the sun rising talvolta from the Ganges is a spring (equinoctial) sun. In fact, questo seems to require that Francis's sun be equinoctial, since it refers to this very sun where the pilgrim finds himself.^[120] But both passages also refer to the year in a more general manner. Thomas mentions the place from which Perugia feels the seasons, which depend on the position of the sun as it rises over the Appenines; Bonaventure refers to the west, from which Zephyrus comes to reclothe the earth with foliage. The sun appears in each passage as the daystar, rising and setting, and in terms of its effects over the year.^[121]

In Paradiso 12, Bonaventure's biography of Dominic passes directly into the list of twelve constellated Franciscans. The juxtaposition implies that the two biographies inset in Cantos 11–12 are themselves paired cycles spinning in the heaven of the sun—like the biga, or two-wheeled chariot, of which Francis and Dominic are the wheels ("l'una

rota della biga . . . l'altra," 12.106, 110). As the circles of sapientes spinning in opposite directions mimic the principles of Same and Other that unify the cosmos, the two "wheels" of the biographies are the fullest imitation in the text of the cosmic motions. Like the circulation of rhyme-words in "Al poco giorno" and "Amor, tu vedi ben," the textual wheels of the heaven of the sun, intersecting precisely in the term of the sun's motion itself—talvolta —imitate the "volta di tempo" and in so doing enact the poet's own return to the Maker. The principles laid down in the proem are thus fully satisfied. But the poet's role in the biographies of Francis and Dominic is not only that of maker. Thirteenth-century accounts of Francis and Dominic as gemelli, noted by Kaske (1961 237–240), would have permitted Dante to associate his inspiration by the stars of Gemini with the providential influence of the two reformers.

It is implicit that the sun also helps to cause the eloquence displayed in talking about it.^[122] Dante's rich linguistic inventions (including the allegory of Francis as a sun, the liturgical song of the Church referred to in 10.139–141, and the wealth of metaphors deployed) are rhetorical colors adorning the heaven like gems and flowers. The several metaphorical series—drawn from the language of chivalry and love service as well as from georgic and pastoral—are linked to what for Dante were traditional subjects of poetry.^[123] As readers have noted, the heaven of the sun features many allusions to the Song of Songs, the biblical book that provided a rich vein of erotic imagery to the lyric tradition of the Middle Ages, including the alba, the dawn song, of which there is a version in the heaven of the sun.^[124]

Dante's exactitude regarding the place of birth of each saint is a key to the importance of the heavens. Francis and Dominic enjoy the virtues instilled before and at birth at the geographical situs where the rays of the sun and the stars coincided to inform them.^[125] But the poet's own genius and destiny, like those of Dominic or Francis, are also a consequence of the influence of the sun in his generation.^[126] Self-included in the bella scola of Limbo, Dante is also self-included in the company of the sapientes, whose circling has the pilgrim as its focus: like the stars circling the earth, the circling of the sapientes around the pilgrim is evidence of his own infusion by wisdom, a paideia that will be repeated explicitly in the heaven of Gemini.^[127] The plenitude and diversity of wisdom in the doctors of the Church is complemented by the poet's own fullness and variousness of art.^[128] It is not unlikely, then, that the

verse Dante attributes to Dominic, "Io son venuto a questo" (12.78), is a distant but deliberate echo of the first verse of "Io son venuto." It links the saint's election, demonstrated by the viva virtute that filled him, to the poet's, equally influenced by the stars to which he turns in his own heaven ("per acquistar virtute," 22.122) and by the sun (22.116). But where in the canzone the speaker arrives at the dark nadir of the winter solstice, the pilgrim-poet in the Commedia arrives in the sun at its moment of greatest fertility, dov'è più vivo.^[129]

As the Timaeus describes it, the crossing of the Same and the Other in the heavens provides the model for the union of intellect and will in the human microcosm. The human soul, we recall, is made from the same "stuff" as the World-Soul.^[130] Thus, in terms of the poetics we have traced, the celestial Chi, where macro- and microcosm intersect, marks the point where the soul coincides, as it were, with the cosmos, and the art of God and Nature with that of the poet ("e io era con lui," 10.34). We can reach further and say that the celestial Chi unifies the poetics of the petrose—based on the motions of the sun and of the planets—with that of the Commedia and authorizes the unfolding of Dante's microcosmic poetics in the universal scope of the Paradiso.

The celestial Chi, the Creator's mark in the heavens (here Dante is following the tradition, as John Freccero has pointed out, of identifying the zodiac as the Creator's signature), is also the poet's mark, a trace of his own history as well as of his artisanal skill. As a form of the Cross, it echoes the cross Christ had to bear; it echoes, too, the negative punto, the katabasis of the petrose. By inviting the reader to consider the cosmic chiasmus as his prelibation, the poet is also inviting him or her to discern the vestiges of that chiasmus in the heaven he has composed, which manifests it everywhere. Where the stigmata mark the flesh of Francis, the corresponding sigillo, the mark that allows us to discern the poet's ingegno and virtù, are in the body of the poem itself, in its perceptible form. As in "Amor, tu vedi ben," it is through the fashioning of formal beauty that the poet touches on his divine gift.

Reversal and Return

The Nest of the Twins

In the heaven of the poet's natal sign of Gemini, the themes and poetics of the petrose return, transformed, with special force. The return of the

poetics of the petrose is one among several. Neoplatonic influence is strong, and with reason. In Paradiso 4.49–60, Plato's doctrine of the descent of souls from the stars is countenanced if taken as referring to the influence of the stars. In Paradiso 22 the tolerant option becomes the poem's fact, as the pilgrim, voyaging to the stars that presided over his birth, recognizes in the technical sense their influence over his genius, as we noted earlier.^[131] The pilgrim's return, by visual retrospection, to earth (twice: "col viso ritornai," 22.133, and "adima / il viso," 27.77–78), to which he must also soon return in the body ("per il mortal pondo, / ancor giù tornerai," 27.63–64), also touches on several Platonic topics. Leaving the planetary spheres behind, the pilgrim comprehends their motions (22.142–150)—a feat held in the Timaeus to be impossible without a model (Plato 1961 1169). In the same passage, Dante subtly recuperates a Platonic tenet by giving the planets in the "astrological" order ascribed to Plato (Macrobius 1970a 73–74, 89), placing Mercury and Venus above the sun.^[132] Dante's reordering is perhaps only verbal; but the principle of benigne interpretare (echoing Macrobius's own attempt to minimize Plato's error) is affirmed, inspired perhaps by the pilgrim's approach to the Good ("Lo ben che fa contenta questa corte," 26.16), in terms Plato and Boethius would recognize, and in his professed love for all the creatures (26.64–65).^[133]

The presence of Adam (26.82–142) suggests, however, that the poet's return is not only intellectual. In returning to his stars, the pilgrim (properly, for a Gemini) acknowledges both his natures, utranque naturam. The reference to Christ as Alpha and Omega (26.17) implies the whole adventure of human time, from creation to apocalypse, and notably the drama of the Fall and redemption: of exile, exodus, and return to Eden. The pilgrim, sitting his exams in the theological virtues, has come to Jerusalem from Egypt (25.55–56); his meeting with James the apostle excites reference to Galicia, where the apostle's tomb was an important destination for pilgrims (25.17–18); meeting Peter is like a pilgrimage to Rome, where Peter was martyred and buried.^[134] But the pilgrimage sites are also figures for the final destination, the celestial Jerusalem: and so the pilgrim's return is also to Paradise, the celestial garden of the lily and the rose, Christ and the Virgin (23.73–74), and to first father Adam, who forfeited the paradise to which his descendant now returns. And if the poet imagines a journey back to his oldest ancestor, he also sketches a future return to his native city of Florence, the specific terrestrial situs where he was born after his information by the stars, indeed to the bap-

tismal font where he was enrolled among the souls that might expect salvation. Gemini, traditionally the gate for returning souls, locates a series of cycles or returns, both in the fiction of the poem and with reference to the future of the poet, both in the abstract terms of Platonic remeatio and in the concrete terms of the poet's own history.^[135] The pilgrim's journey of the intellect and the tragic destiny of the poet form a double cycle, each wound around and reflecting the other.

The pilgrim's journey to the origins of both his natures is also in the largest sense the return to his auctores.^[136] As in the sun, there is a host of writers. Included in the census are the intellectual and spiritual influences that formed Dante's mind and spirit: philosophers (Aristotle by name, Peter Lombard by allusion), Apostles (Peter, James, John, Paul by citation), Moses, David and the prophets, the Muses. Sacred sources and, if more subtly, classical learning are represented.^[137] During his examination on the theological virtues, the pilgrim refers to his authorities as stars, "da molte stelle mi vien questa luce" (25.70).^[138] Dante's ruling metaphor is that the auctores —indifferently the texts and their authors—are like stars because they have poured their power into him, shaping him as the stars help shape sublunar creatures. For his conceit, Dante could draw on Augustine's account of the apostles and fathers of the Church as the heavenly bodies (see Chapter 2, note 75).^[139] He also had his own precedent in the Purgatorio, where the virtues appear first as stars and subsequently as nymphs dancing around the chariot of the Church.^[140] Both Christ and the Virgin, objects of the great double triumph of Canto 23, are stars: Christ is the daystar, sol degli angeli as Beatrice calls him in the sun (10.53); the Virgin is the viva stella invoked day and night by the pilgrim (23.92).^[141]

The principle of return also applies to the text. The sun is mentioned more often in Gemini than in the sun itself.^[142] The beautiful lunar imagery in Canto 23 points to a cosmic proportion: the sun is to Christ—sol degli angeli—as the moon is to the planetary sun. As the sun illuminates the crowns of stars formed by the wise men, Christ illuminates the host of the blessed, a star cluster or galaxy.^[143] Echoes of the cantos of the sun return in countless details: in mention of clocks, gyres, and round dances;^[144] of sapientia and syllogisms;^[145] of feudal and military metaphors;^[146] and of the mystic marriage of moon and sun, of bride and bridegroom.^[147] The text doubles over on itself and brings the sun into Gemini as if to reiterate their conjunction at the poet's birth. (During the time of the poem, of course, the planetary sun is in Aries, two signs away.)

Like the heaven of the sun, the heaven of the Twins is studded with binaries: the double crown of theologians and the double biographies of Francis and Dominic are answered by the double downward look of the pilgrim (Cantos 22, 27) and the double triumph of Christ and Mary (23). Echoing the double crowns, the triumphs enact a cosmic dance and mystery play.^[148] On a smaller scale, the heaven is filled with pairs that represent the mediation of authority. The triumphant Christ and the militant pilgrim suggest the institutional mediation of the Church.^[149] The soul and body, doppia vesta (25.92), and the pairing of Christ and Adam suggest the mediation of heaven and earth in man himself. Double, too, is Scripture ("le nove e le scritture antiche," 25.88), and double are the instruments of authority and revelation ("filosofici argomenti e per autorità," 26.25). There are two kinds of proof, physical and metaphysical ("fisice e metafisice," 24.134); even the terms of Aristotelian metaphysics, form and matter ("la lega e'l peso," 24.84), which provide the discursive forms for the pilgrim's confession of faith, are a pair. Finally, there are personal pairs, like the harmony of Franciscans and Dominicans in the sun; examples include the apostles Peter and Paul and Peter and James, compared to cooing doves ("l'uno a l'altro pande / girando e mormorando, l'affezione," 25.19–20), and the frequently mentioned relation of master and disciple.^[150]

One reason why Dante imagined such a network of links between sun and Gemini might be found in the Convivio, where certain features of the starry heaven (its 1,022 discernible stars along with the Milky Way, its visible and invisible poles, its daily and precessional motions) signify both the sublunar realm governed by the movements of the sun, whose science is physics, and the incorruptible realm, whose proper science is metaphysics.^[151] The starry heaven (the heaven of Gemini) is thus both a sphere of double motion and a horizon between the visible and invisible cosmos. Like the sun, marked with the two reformers and ordered in terms of the two cosmic motions, Dante's heaven of stars is a geminato cielo writ large and small.

More subtle are the returns of the darkest moments of the Inferno— texts whose relevance to the petrose we have already discussed—in the heaven of Gemini. The teeth of love ("con quanti denti questo amor ti morde," Paradiso 26.51) contrast with Ugolino's gnawing on Ruggieri ("riprese il teschio misero coi denti," Inferno 33.77).^[152] The wolves who corrupt the church and promote civil war (Paradiso 25.6, 27.55) recall the Guelph (= Welf) Ugolino and his sons as wolves and cubs.^[153] The poet's appeal to the Muses ("Polimnïa con le suore," 23.56) for help with

a ponderoso tema that strains his mortal shoulders (omero mortal ) is modeled on the appeal to Amphion's Muses in Inferno 32, where the subject is even weightier.^[154] The parallels suggest that the poetics that locks the damned at the center of the earth is to be specifically relaxed in the poetics of the Paradiso, which is modeled after the music of the swiftly whirling spheres.^[155] The magnificent paired triumphs of Christ and Mary, and the circolata melodia reenacting Gabriel's seminal annunciation, are the poet's reward (to himself, to the reader) for having endured the burden of describing the fondo, the static center of the cosmos.^[156] Thus, the terms for both the inspiration and expression of the writer are of expansiveness and fluidity: meare (23.79), roratelo (24.8), s'io spandessi (24.56), diffondere (24.92), piove (24.135), ploia (24.91), distillò (25.71), stillasti (25.76), repluo (25.79). Compression and rigidity are supplanted by grace and generosity (ubertà, 23.130). Consonant with the larghezza proclaimed by Beatrice, grace is showered on the pilgrim in a profusion of elements: light and heat (fire, dry and hot) appear over thirty times; the breath of the Holy Spirit (air, warm and moist) appears over ten times (cf. "l'alito di Dio," 23.114); water and milk (cold and moist) and food (cold and dry), almost twenty times.^[157]

The symptomatic echo of Cocito in Gemini is the opening simile of Canto 23, in which Beatrice, expecting the appearance of Christ, is compared to a mother bird waiting for sunrise so she can forage for her young. The passage is especially important because it is a kind of microcosm of the heaven as a whole. In the simile, Dante transforms the scene of Ugolino watching his sons as the orribile torre is nailed shut (Inferno 33–43–75):

Come l'augello, intra l'amate fronde, 
   posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati 
   la notte che le cose ci nasconde, 
che, per veder li aspetti disï0ati 
   e per trovar lo cibo onde li pasca, 
   in che gravi labor li sono aggrati, 
previene il tempo in su aperta frasca, 
   e con ardente affetto il sole aspetta, 
   fiso guardando pur che l'alba nasca . . . 
           (23.1–9)

The parallels are subtle but resonant. To the mother bird in the nest with her young are juxtaposed Ugolino and his sons in the muda, a place where fledglings molt and hawks are tamed; to the concealing

night, the darkness of the nights in the prison; to the mother's eagerness ("previene il tempo") for the light by which she will see her young ("per veder li aspetti disiati"), Ugolino's dreadful premonitions ("già il mio cor s'annunziava," Inferno 33.41) and the sight of his dying children mirroring him ("scorsi / per quattro visi il mio aspetto stesso," 33.56–57). But the differences are critical. In this canto of the Virgin and her Son, the vengeful father is replaced by a careful mother. There are verbal echoes (veder li aspetti and visi . . . aspetto ) but no common rhymes. The bird is on the "aperta frasca" rather than the closed tower ("in che convien ch'altrui si chiuda," Inferno 33.24). What is ordinarily negative becomes positive when illuminated by love: night conceals the chicks and prevents foraging but also evokes the mother's patience and solicitude, as the darkness and terror of the muda is the backdrop for the eucharistic offer of Ugolino's offspring. The grave labor of finding food is cheerfully assumed (note the shift effected between gravi and -grati ) because it is the dolci nati that are to be fed. The changes measure the poetics by which Dante transmutes the blindness, hatred, and despair of Ugolino. Indeed, the passage clearly enshrines the theological virtues: Faith ( previene ), Hope (s'aspetta ), and Love (amata fronda, ardente affetto ).

The remarkable transformations of Ugolino's darkness into the hopefulness of the simile is an effect of the stars of Gemini and of the sun on the poet's ingegno. More directly, they are consequences of that mediation by Beatrice, gazing at the sol salutis, that is the tenor of the whole passage. With respect to the darkness of the Ugolino episode, the sun rises in the text just as it will rise for the mother bird, just as the poet hopes it will rise for him during the erotic and poetic agon of the petrose. Ernesto Proto has noted that the expectation of the mother bird for the rising sun recalls the verses on the Phoenix attributed to Lactantius: "converso novos Phoebi nascentis ad ortus / exspectat radios et iubar exoriens."'^[158] The immediate import of the allusion is clear: as the Phoenix expects its resurrection to spring from the fire of the sun, Beatrice will transmit the rising light of promised resurrection to the pilgrim. The Phoenix however is also suggestive as the emblem of a poetics that constantly renews itself. The bird cares instinctively for her chicks, cued by the sun and the design of Nature ("quella virtù ch'è forma per li nidi," Paradiso 18.111). In the present context, however, the bird's love of her environment is a clue to the poet's own love of his linguistic dwelling. The amatefronde reiterate a common synecdoche in

the Commedia for language and poetry.^[159] The simile is accordingly rich in echoes of Dante's poetic trajectory. It draws on the topoi of the dawn song, the alba, itself a genre of love poetry; the bird on the bough is a figure of the poet, as in "Io son venuto."^[160] The bird in its habitat also invokes Guinizelli's cardinal "Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore," where the ausello nella verdura is compared to Love dwelling naturally in the noble heart, paired with the sun as the power that prepares earth for transformation into a gem.^[161] This Phoenix, then, is the poet's genius, acknowledging its repeated reinvigoration by the sun. And no ordinary sun: strikingly, when Beatrice turns to gaze at the sun of Christ, where "il sol mostra men fretta" (that is, nearest the zenith, where the sun appears at noon on the summer solstice), the position of the planetary sun is equinoctial and the simile is of dawn. In what we must call a hyperiotropism, all the cardinal positions of the sun in its diurnal and annual movements are implied.^[162] But the passage is further complicated by the maternal imagery—for Beatrice is the antithesis of Ugolino, a father blind to the loving offer of his children and deaf to their requests for consolation. Like the Virgin at the end of the canto, she is a nourishing mother, alma mater.^[163] But Beatrice's role is not narrowly that of a mediatrix for the paschal lamb (il benedetto agnello ) that is Christ. Beatrice as a mother attentive to her dolci nati foreshadows the Virgin as nurse to the souls compared to fantolin at the end of the canto.^[164] And both Beatrice and the Virgin as nurses focus on the latte . . . dolcissimo of the Muses at 23.57. The feminine sources of the poet's inspiration and nurture are closely related and form a decisive counterpart to his information by the auctores. As shown of the poet's virtù in the cantos of the sun, the heaven of Gemini, which contains an abundance—we should say ubertá —of figurative language (Scaglione counts ten similes in Canto 23), is evidence that the poet, nurtured by the sphere of the galaxy, has drunk the milk of Paradise.^[165]

The maternal solicitude of Beatrice and the Virgin are thus more than pretexts for affective poetry. In the heaven of Dante's natal sign, which both begins and ends with allusions to birth (22.112–117, 27.98), the poet's formation and education are implicitly staged. The apostles and the philosophers examine him as if he were a university student, a baccellier. If they have provided spiritual and intellectual food (Dante's adjective is almi, nourishing), the Virgin provides the sustenance of grace and the Muses the inspiration, the latte, of the poetic gift.^[166] The topics of feeding and nurture evoke, as well as allegories of the Muses,

infantile contexts and images: the fantolin that reaches for the breast, the mother bird solicitous for her young, the pilgrim as innocent lamb (dormi agnello ).

In fact, throughout the heaven of the fixed stars Dante returns repeatedly to the language of genealogy and filiation. The planets themselves, during the pilgrim's glance down in Canto 22, are arranged as families: Jupiter mediates between father (Saturn) and son (Mars), Mercury is called Maia after his mother, Venus is called Latona after hers. The apostles are fathers and brothers; Beatrice is a sister (suora, 24.28) to Peter. John approaches his fellow apostles and the pilgrim like a virgin debutant ("a la novizia," 23.105); the Church is the bride of Christ; Adam is the old father, padre antico (26.92). Mothers and fathers together imply generation. Beginning the heaven of stars, Dante had referred to his sign as pregnant, "lume pregno di gran vertù." In the balance of the heaven there is direct reference to but a single conception—but it is an important one. The Annunciation is recalled at the center of the triumph of Mary in Canto 23:

"Io sono amore angelico, che giro 
   l'alta letizia che spira del ventre 
   che fu albergo del nostro disiro . . ." 
           (23.103–105)

The circular song of Gabriel around Mary more than commemorates the Annunciation: it is an archetype for the seminal effect of the stars and planets as they circle the sublunar world, and reiterates the specially propitious placement of the heavens at the time of the Incarnation.^[167] In the heaven of Gemini, authority and intellect (represented by apostles, philosophers, and the Logos) and a loving nature (Mary, the Muses) celebrate a mystic marriage, a hieròs gamós, whose direct beneficiaries are the mind and imagination of the pilgrim.^[168]

Thus, if properly speaking the heaven entered by the pilgrim is a celestial sign, several of its metaphoric names—seno, manto (of the Primum Mobile above it), sfera tondo, arche, ovile, basilica, and especially il bel nido di Leda —argue that Gemini evokes the womb of the pilgrim's gestation, in which he was infused with his physical characteristics, in part by the effect of the stars, in part through the fleshly inheritance from Adam.^[169] The poet's formation reiterates the hieròs gamós of the Creation and Incarnation, as does his tuition, a series of infusions from the apostolic and poetic tradition that shape his segnato cervello.^[170] Ulti-

mately, the image of the mother bird hovering over the nest is a figure for the care the heavens, revolving around the earth, have exercised in forming the pilgrim-poet, directing his development as the writer who would compose the Commedia .^[171] And if Gemini is a figure of the womb, then implicit in the space of the pilgrim's natal sign ("la vostra regïon," 22.120) is also the archetype of the space of the poem itself. As we noted earlier, Plato called the absolute space within which the cosmos is formed the receptacle, or womb (receptaculum, gremium ), of nature: terms Dante then adopts in his treatise for the space—the stanza —in which the poem is elaborated. In Gemini we find albergo for the Virgin's womb, seno for the heaven itself. The sexual metaphor functions equally for the creation and ornatus of the universe, for the information and nurture of the poet, for the matter and form of the poem. The poet's sojourn in Gemini is a happy return to the womb. But it is also a brief one, lasting—not by chance—no longer than Adam's stay in Paradise.

Reversed Polarity

At the center of the vast heaven of Gemini, Dante airs his hopes for the reception of his poem in Florence:

Se mai continga che il poema sacro 
   al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra, 
   sì che m'ha fatto per molti anni macro, 
vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra 
   del bello ovil ov' io dormi' agnello, 
   nimico ai lupi, che li danno guerra; 
con altra voce omai, con altro vello 
   ritornerò poeta, ed in sul fonte 
   del mio battesmo prenderò 'l cappello. 
perchè nella fede, che fa conte 
   l'anime a Dio, quivi entra' io, e poi 
   Pietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte. 
          (Paradiso  25.1–12)

The central position of the passage underlines the relation between the baptismal font, entrance to the faith, and Gemini, the gate to the invisible heavens, associated in the cosmological tradition with the Milky Way.^[172] Thus, a ratio is established between the baptismal font, Florence as the sheepfold, and Gemini as the womb, the nido.^[173] The triple circling of the pilgrim's brow by Peter echoes the circling of Mary by

Gabriel and ratifies the poet's investiture by the stars. The passage may also derive some of its power from astronomical reference. In the heaven of Gemini, which recalls the sun in the poet's natal sign ("con voi nasceva") at his birth ("quand'io senti' di prima I'aere tosco," 22.117), mention of the vello may also allude to the sun. The vello, as the pairing of agnello and vello in rhyme suggests, is that of the ram—and the ram of Jason's fleece became Aries, the place where the sun rises and sets during the spring equinox.^[174] The pilgrim, taking the evergreen crown in San Giovanni, would imitate the most celebrated of returns, the return of the sun to its equinoctial point—the moment celebrated at the beginning of the Paradiso (1.37–42).^[175]

The passage also summarizes the concerns we have broached regarding the relation of the petrose to the Commedia.^[176] It focuses the inevitable topics of Gemini: the doubleness of human ends, earthly and celestial; the problematic necessity to include and give scope to the negative impulses in the poet in order to understand them and integrate the self. The poema sacro is one to which both heaven and earth have contributed. In the metaphor of the hand of heaven, the operation of the heavens as the tools or instruments of the divine will is implicit. The passage echoes the juxtaposition, in the invocation of Canto 23, of the sacrato poema and the ponderoso tema, of celestial power and burdensome responsibility, of the task of sustaining both heaven and earth.^[177] The poems' traverse of earth is recalled: the rhyme on terra/serra/guerra from "Io son venuto" (61–62) echoes the entrance to Cocito, where, in the form of Antaeus, figlio della terra, the earth assists the pilgrim. The aspro poetics returns literally in the consecutive rhymes -acro, -erra, -ello, and emblematically in the poet's altro vello, at once the sign of poetic maturity, the trophy of his quest, and an echo of the vello of Lucifer, which assisted his escape from Hell. The echoes of the petrose and the Inferno suggest that the pilgrim's experience of Hell, and of his own temperament and negativity, have in a sense coauthored his poem.

But the passage also locates many of the problematics we have identified with the petrose: the poet's successful traverse of Hell and his crowning in Gemini contrast starkly with his exclusion from his earthly nido, Florence.^[178] The wolves and hounds of Ugolino's dream return in the lupi of civil war that keep the poet from his city. Against the safe enclosures of womb and sheepfold must be placed the strife-torn world, the threshing floor ("l'aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci," 22.151) mentioned at both limits of Gemini. Though the passage begins the canto of Hope,

and appears to express that virtue, the construction is cautious, marked more by resignation than by optimism. The poet's hope for the crown at the place of his baptism echoes Boethius's yearning for the fons boni; but the return envisioned is an earthly one, the crown celebrates poetic virtù rather than the martyr's victory.^[179] The abyss separating the pilgrim's crowning by Peter in heaven and the desired but improbable return to Florence creates an effect of intense poignancy.

Ducite Carmina:
The Poem as Charm

Centrally located in the heaven of Gemini, at its focal point so to speak, the verses on the poet's return to Florence have the quality of a magical charm or adjuration. Peter's triple turn around the pilgrim; the subjunctive mood; the embedded mythological and astronomical patterns; the recall of the solemn initiation of baptism, of the poem as sacrato, and of the poet's physical sacrifice—these gestures attempt to harness the implicit power of the poem and refract it as a force capable of breaking the obstinacy of the Florentines. It is a gesture, we have argued, that Dante first learns with the petrose. And it is a gesture that is repeatedly employed in the heaven of Gemini, where what we might call the magical strategies of the petrose as powerful forms that transmit the craft of the poet and of his makers are re-attempted in terms of the much larger stakes of the Commedia.

When the souls ascend, Dante describes their movement as a reverse snowfall:^[180]

Sì come di vapor gelati fiocca 
     in giuso l'aer nostro, quando il corno 
     della capra del ciel col sol si tocca, 
in sù vidi'io Così l'etera adorno 
     farsi . . .  
           (27.67–71)

The inversions of direction (flakes fall upward), of element (souls are predominantly fires or lights), and of season (Paradise is an endless summer) are accompanied by the name Capricorn in a periphrasis ("il corno / della Capra") that disassembles and inverts the order of its elements, so that the passage is also a kind of rebus.

The reversal in the natural order is one of a series; reversals frame the heaven of Gemini. Gemini is enclosed by the ladder of Saturn preceding and by the vision of the angelic hierarchies following: that is, first by a vertical, subsequently by a concentric model of procession and re-

turn.^[181] The shift from a ladder with angels ascending and descending to a set of circles that reverse center and periphery expresses in symbolic terms the pilgrim's transition from Saturn through Gemini to the Primum Mobile. As readers have seen, the universe turns inside out. In this climate of inversions, both Saturn, at the foot of the ladder, and the Primum Mobile, where the angelic hierarchies are shown in their real order (rather than in relation to their respective spheres), locate striking, explicit inversions. The reference to the Jordan's backward turn (retrorso ) at 22.94 (Gemini begins at 22.100) balances the apparent confusion of the seasons that will result from the centesma negletta in the calendar: after nine thousand years, the equinox, falling in December, will make January a spring month (Gemini ends at 27.98–99). The passage lists two additional reversals, which are in fact rectifications:

Ma prima che gennaio tutto si sverni 
   per la centesma ch'è là giù negletta, 
   raggeran sì questi cerchi superni, 
che la fortuna che tanto s'aspetta, 
   le poppe volgerà u' son le prore, 
   sì che la classe correrà diretta; 
e vero frutto verrà dopo '1 fiore. 
           (27.142–48) ^[182]

In Dante's conception (a kind of false adynaton ), the turning heavens will effect a reversal of human fortunes. The great event will correspond in effect if not in fact to an apokatastasis —the return of stars, as in the great year, to their original positions. The result will be a new Golden Age. The appearance of the topic of cosmic renewal in this region of Paradise is scarcely casual. Rabuse shows that the topics of the aurea secula accompany the pilgrim's sojourn in the saturnia regna of contemplation and tranquillity of the "monastic" heaven. The mildness of the sphere results from the position of Saturn, a cold planet, in Leo, the house of the sun (Rabuse 1978 20–21). The temperate Saturn of contemplation (anticipated in the opening simile of the seventh bolgia ) is the inversion of the negative Saturn of Hell, dominated by water and cold, and the negative astrological moment of the poet in the petrose, dominated by cold, lust, and weeping.

As in the previous passage, reversals in the natural cosmos are expressed in similar language. The term svernare will be once reiterated ("sbernare," 28.118) and once echoed (by verna at 30.126). Sbernare (from exhibernare ), referring to the angelic hosannahs, means "to greet the spring with song." The paradox of a perpetual transition from winter

to spring anticipates verna of the Empyrean rose, always blossoming in perpetual spring. But svernare at 27.142 also means precisely "to unwinter": the privation signified by the prefix s- is foremost. Like the implied abolition of shadows in "Al poco giorno," svernare negates the season of corruption and privation. And in the subsequent angelic praise, the perpetual refreshment of spring is also affirmed with the negation of a negation, with a spring "che notturno Arïete non dispoglia" ("un-despoiled by a nocturnal Aries"—that is, by a sun in Libra, bringing the autumnal stripping of foliage).^[183] Finally, the svernare/ verna group recalls the words of Bocca degli Abate, who quips in Cocito that the traitors are "wintering" there ("dietro a me verna," 33.135), so that the term itself is unwintered, its meaning literally and cosmically reversed.

We saw that in Paradiso 27.67 mention of vapor gelati, of Capricorn and winter, suggests an inversion of seasons that brings the cold of Cocito and the petrose into the text of the Paradiso. But the cold returns in the form of crystal, and it is a cold that emits fire—first tempering the cold of Saturn, then as a shining sun, and finally in the heaven nearest the fire (pyr ) of the Empyrean, the cristallino.^[184] In Saturn, Dante sees the golden Jacob's ladder within the crystalline sphere:

Dentro al cristallo che'l vocabol porta, 
   cerchiando il mondo, del suo caro duce 
   sotto cui giacque ogne malizia morta, 
di color d'oro in che raggio traluce 
   vid' io uno scaleo eretto in suso 
   tanto, che nol seguiva mia luce. 
           (21.25–30)

What follows—the descent of the souls ("tanti splendor," 32) who strike the rungs like sparks ("quello sfavillar," 41), the image of the souls as rooks seeking to warm themselves ("a scaldar")—confirms that the crystal of Saturn is a conduit of light and heat from the Empyrean. In the most stunning implicit reversal within Gemini, John the Evangelist is compared to a crystal bright as the sun, in a passage that includes the only rima tronca (technically an asprezza ) in the entire Paradiso:

Poscia tra esse un lume si schiarì 
   sì che, se 'l Cancro avesse un tal cristallo, 
   l'inverno avrebbe un mese d'un sol dì. 
           (25.100–102)

As Saturn is tempered by its position in the house of the sun, the pairing of the winter sun in Capricorn with a second sun in Cancer (which the sun enters at the summer solstice) is a poetic parhelion, a second or twin sun that abolishes night and winter.^[185] The poet's natal sign becomes the zone of surplus light, the gran dì absolutely inverting the poco giorno of the sestina. And in the context of the pilgrim's attempt to see John's body, the double sun prefigures the future coincidence of due stole of soul and glorified body in heaven, the final and complete integration of utranque naturam, as suggested by the mystical interpretation of crystal as a symbol of the Incarnation—and thus in one sense a significant purpose of the poem.^[186]

The last crystal in the Paradiso glows with the light of the original fiat lux:

E come in vetro, in ambra, o in cristallo 
   raggio resplende sì, che dal venire 
   a l'esser tutto non è intervallo. . . . 
           (29.25–27)

The three uses of cristallo in the upper heaven bracket Gemini as Gemini is bracketed by Saturn and the Primum Mobile.^[187] Each higher mention of crystal is more inclusive and glowing with a more exalted light: cristallo of Saturn refers only to the planet; in Gemini the term refers to a soul compared to a sun; but in the crystalline heaven itself ("il sovrano edificio del mondo, che tutti gli altri inchiude") it is a term of comparison for the whole cosmos: the cosmos as a crystal instantaneously filled with the Creator's light.^[188]

In the heaven of Gemini, where the poet's imagination is, in a sense, nearest its source, Dante's wish to imagine his poetic virtù as efficacious, like the will of God himself, comes to the surface. The passages discussed above show parallels with specific devices in the petrose that raise the question of poetic effectiveness. The upward snowfall, the return of the Jordan, and the backward slip of January closely resemble the adynata of the sestina, which cautiously imagine circumstances in which the lady might be transformed, the bright solstice of her consent achieved.^[189] Other reversals—the notturno Arïete, the winter sun in Cancer—echo the nocturnal risings and horoscopic inversions that shape the latent power of "Io son venuto." The increasingly inclusive crystals of the upper spheres match the struggle toward first principles that moves "Amor, tu vedi ben"; the light that fills those crystals recalls

the poet's hope of using the beauty and luminosity of his poem to stir the petra. And the verses at the center of Gemini, as if they were the focal point of the entire vast heaven, render explicit, as in "Così nel mio parlar," the hope that the poem will move hearts that are hardened to him—as if the capital acquired in creating the forms of the petrose, and in representing the whole cosmos, were sufficient to alter the historical reality of his city. Like the petrose, conceived as talismans directed to changing the lady's mind, the Commedia would be the poet's Archimedean point, from which he might move the political and religious renewal that his direct participation had failed to achieve.^[190] The Commedia might thus be thought of as a great crystal, its composition reflecting both the celestial influence intrinsic in its author—his horoscope—and his personal judgment, desire, and acquired skill.^[191]

The attempt to fashion a poem that will have genuine power is marked by terrible risk. As in the case of the petrose, it isolates the poet in a fictional world, a representation of the cosmos that must be truly inspired, truly the result of heavenly causes, if it is to have authenticity and success. When Dante invokes the centesma negletta, the error of the Julian calendar, in his prophecy of a coming reform, he runs the prophet's customary risk of being refuted by events. But not only that risk: the neglected hundredth is also a measure of the inaccuracy of his own poem in relation to the real cosmos. Dante knew, of course, that the conventional date of the equinox (March 21) was in error by more than a week: in 1300 the true equinox fell on March 12. The dates and positions of the planets in the poem were thus—for Dante—all slightly out of focus. Such an error was perhaps negligible and no doubt rhetorically justified, as Moore has convincingly argued. But another much greater and more important error is not so easily dismissed, and to this error Dante may also have alluded with his mention of the centesma negletta. We refer, of course, to the precession of the equinoxes, by which (as Dante reckoned it) the position of the equinox on the zodiac precessed eastward one degree every hundred years, or 1/100 degree per year—a centesma.^{[ 192]} Otherwise excluded from Dante's astronomical calculations for the Commedia, this amount coincides almost exactly with the error in the Julian calendar of eleven minutes per year.^[193] Thus, assuming the astronomical conventions of the Commedia, in the nine thousand years required for the equinox to fall in late December because of the error in the calendar, the equinox would precede into Capri-

corn, and the winter solstice would fall in Libra: an inversion of solstices and equinoxes. But already in Dante's day the error was considerable; the equinox was in Pisces, and Dante's natal stars were perhaps not those of Gemini but of Taurus (see Figures 3 and 4).

If the Commedia is treated simply as a fiction, these variances between convention and reality perhaps do not matter very much. But what of the announced intent of changing the Florentines and reforming the corrupt world? Dante's evocation of the neglected fraction, the temporal margin of error, opens the possibility that he was aware that his poem would have to renounce its hope (its pretense?) of power deriving from the stars and planets.^[194] Once again, the possibility of the poem's being fraudulent (though deeply implicit) haunts Dante. If he read Isidore and Marbodus on precious stones, he also read that the distinction of true ones from counterfeits was extremely difficult.^[195]

The petrose are thus truly microcosmic of the Commedia, truly the great poem in nuce: not only in their experiments in diction and realism, in their greater inclusiveness of negative themes; not only in their dazzling formal complexity and daring—they are also prototypical of the Commedia in their intentions and in the problematic that besets them, in their aspirations for the power and consequence of poetry and in their haunting intuition of its limits. It is not merely that Dante draws on the astronomical and natural themes of the petrose; the specific problematic of the petrose is assumed into the body and problematic of the Commedia, the poema grows out of the nucleus of the lyrics, which remain central to it. Although the theme of reification is part of their problematic, the petrose do not exemplify it in their poetics, which demonstrate, as perhaps no other juncture of Dante's career as a lyric poet does so well, his capacity for self-transformation through his craft.

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]