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.