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.