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.