I was about to start preparing the written version of my ‘reading’ of the Nines, when two things happened that helped me give better order to my reflections. Among the PhD applications I was reviewing, I came across a powerful defence of interpreting the Commedia ‘vertically’. A few days later, after giving a lecture based on the current chapter at a prestigious North American department of Italian, the idea that Dante’s masterpiece might be read ‘vertically’ was received with a degree of skepticism. Indeed, one colleague launched into an attack that was in every way as forceful as the aspiring doctoral student’s justification. I found the conflicting reactions fascinating: the young Dantist enthused by a new way of approaching the Commedia; the established scholar unconvinced and deeply committed to exegetical methods that have stood the test of time and seem to have been legitimated by Dante himself. My own position, ever since I was kindly invited to examine possible interconnections between the Nines, has been closer to that of the older Dantist – I would not say skeptical, but certainly
1 The video of this lecture is available at the Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy website, https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1625418
My aim in this chapter is to recapture something of the range and energy of my spoken presentation. In order to do this and keep to the assigned word-limit, I am not able to document fully some of my claims. For a broader and better-documented ‘vertical reading’ of the Nines – approximately double the length of this one – see my ‘Reading the Commedia’s IXs “Vertically”: From Addresses to the Reader to crucesignati and the Ecloga Theoduli’, L’Alighieri 44 (2014), 5-36.
© Zygmunt G. Barański, CC BY 4.0 http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0066.10
182 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’
wary. Indeed, as my research developed, two questions constantly accompanied my efforts to gauge the efficacy of a ‘vertical’ investigation of the Commedia. First, to what degree did Dante actually want his poem to be read in this manner? Second, how might examining three cantos belonging to different canticles yet sharing the same number illuminate our understanding of both the canti and the poem – and we can at least be certain that Dante did want us to take cognizance of the cantos’ numbering:
‘al ventesimo canto / de la prima canzon’ [the twentieth canto / of the first canzone] (Inf., xx. 2-3)?2
The evidence that, in line with medieval ideas about the divinely created universe as numerically harmonious, Dante wished the Commedia to be considered in its totality and in the interplay of its parts is of course overwhelming. However, to maintain this does not also necessarily imply that a privileged relationship unites cantos distinguished by the same number, and hence that this relationship needs to be examined in itself and as a unique determining feature of the whole. In fact, the explicit indications in this regard are at best scant. They seem to be limited to the opening proemial cantos, to the political Sixes, to the closing canti (but one of these has a unique numbering…), and to a few other triads.3 Rather than forcing our readerly attention upwards and ‘vertically’, Dante normally encourages us to reflect and to look backwards: ‘Ricorditi, ricorditi!’
[Remember, remember!] (Purg., xxvii. 22). In my view, Charles Singleton’s work on what he termed the Commedia’s ‘vistas in retrospect’ is just about definitive on this point.4 Equally, it is generally accepted that the poet regularly established meaningful links between different moments of his poem, and that these associations are rarely dictated by numeration. As regards our three cantos, it is enough to remember the evident bonds that tie Inferno ix to the pair of cantos that precede it and the pair that follow it;
that, through the figure of St Lucy, connect Purgatorio ix to Inferno ii and Paradiso xxxii; and finally, that join Paradiso ix to Inferno v and Purgatorio xxvi (lust), as well as to Inferno xii (Ezzelino da Romano). Indeed, as Amilcare Iannucci demonstrated, this form of organization recalls the Scriptural
2 All translations are my own. My aim is syntactic and semantic accuracy rather than elegance.
3 For an excellent discussion of the tradition of reading the Commedia ‘vertically’, see, in this collection, Simon A. Gilson, ‘The Wheeling Sevens’.
4 See Charles S. Singleton, ‘The Vistas in Retrospect’, Modern Language Notes 81:1 (1966), 55-80.
‘Without Any Violence’ 183 exegetical device of the ‘parallel passage’, which not infrequently had recapitulatory functions.5 Yet, as scholars have also noted, interconnections of setting do unite the Nines. Thus, both Inferno ix and Purgatorio ix are set in liminal indeterminate hinterlands where distinct largescale regions of the afterlife meet, where otherworldly guardians protect the gates and walls that separate the different areas, and where celestial messengers come to the pilgrim’s aid. Dante’s aim is obvious: to underscore the differences between the realm of damnation and that of purgation, and to highlight the progress that the viator has made since his panic-stricken confusion outside Dis. Paradiso ix, too, brings to a close a major discrete section of the Ptolemaic universe, the heavens lying in the shadow of the earth. However, given the marvellous concord and unity of the cosmos, issues of partition, transition, and entry, with their attendant corollaries of uncertain liminality, of obstacles, and of miraculous intervention, are quite alien to the effortless harmony of paradisiacal reality. Thus, unlike the other two cantos, Paradiso ix is set in a specific location, the Heaven of Venus, and is structured according to the Commedia’s standard narrative model of the encounter between Dante-personaggio and exemplary inhabitants of that subdivision of the afterlife. In this respect, considering the Nines simultaneously, the effect is to highlight the singularity of the third realm. However, there is nothing exceptional about the contrasts and parallelisms conjoining our three cantos. Throughout the Commedia, Dante employs similar associative techniques to stress the same general points about the nature of the hereafter as emerge from the ‘vertical’ assessment of the Nines. We are dealing with a commonplace, whose one variation in this instance is that it is the product of a rapprochement between three cantos bearing the same number.
This is the danger, I believe, inherent in the ‘vertical’ reading: it can grant priority to what is obvious—and if there is one writer who is rarely obvious, that writer is Dante Alighieri. Thus, despite what might be presumed in light of the basic narrative similarities uniting Inferno ix and Purgatorio ix, the poet appears to have actually been more interested in yoking together Inferno ix and Paradiso ix. Unlike Inferno ix and Purgatiorio ix, whose connections are externally narratological, those between Inferno ix and Paradiso ix are calculatedly formal. The two cantos share several rhymes
5 See Amilcare A. Iannucci, ‘Autoesegesi dantesca: la tecnica dell’“episodio parallelo”’, Lettere italiane 33 (1981), 305-28.
184 Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’
and rhyme words6 – a sophisticated technique that medieval vernacular poets employed to suggest affinities between texts, and which Dante used with some regularity in the Commedia.7 In addition, the cantos share several other features that distinguish them from Purgatorio ix. Specifically, both make reference to heresy, to cemeteries, to sieges, and, most visibly, to sinful cities. What is thus striking is that rather than present the Nines as a triad, Dante was concerned to organize them into two distinct pairs – on the one hand, Inferno ix and Purgatorio ix; on the other, Inferno ix and Paradiso ix.
Other hermeneutic perils attend the ‘vertical’ critical engagement with the Commedia. In general, the need to avoid flattening out differences between the canti, and so ensuring that each canto’s distinctiveness is maintained, is paramount. Yet, the essential associative nature of the
‘vertical’ approach, with its resultant emphasis on (common) structural, thematic, and ideological concerns, militates against this. For the method to gain currency, it needs also to demonstrate that it can cast light on matters of style and, more vitally, that it contributes to the poem’s sophisticated metaliterary system. Finally, when treating a trio of canti, the temptation ought to be resisted to equate ‘verticality’ with numerology. The latter was unquestionably important in medieval culture; however, its impact on Dante was circumscribed. Indeed, I believe this to be the case even as regards the cantos marked with a nine, the number indicating the miraculous, divine intervention, and the power of God, and whose sacred symbolic valences the poet himself underlined in the Vita nova (xxix. 3).
As embodiments of the nine, our cantos fittingly affirm and dramatize the ‘marvellous’ workings of the ‘Trinity’. However, and this is the point, there is nothing extraordinary about this. Every canto of the Commedia, in recounting a unique providentially sanctioned experience, does exactly the same. The spectre of the ‘obvious’ once again looms large.
My methodological words of caution are not meant to undermine the possibility that a ‘vertical’ reading is valid and authorized by Dante himself. Thus, to test out the validity of the approach, it becomes necessary to establish whether elements exist that might confirm a deliberately constructed system of correspondences uniting the Nines. However, it
6 See ‘pianto’/‘tanto’ (Inf., ix. 44, 48 and Par., ix. 5, 9); ‘alto’/‘assalto’ (Inf., ix. 50, 54 and Par., ix.
28, 30); ‘sembiante’/‘davante’ (Inf., ix. 101, 103 and Par., ix. 64, 66); ‘bagna’ (Inf., ix. 114 and Par., ix. 47); ‘cruda’ (Inf., ix 23) and ‘crude’ (Par., ix. 48); ‘chiuso’ (Inf., ix. 55), ‘chiudessi’ (Inf., ix. 60) and ‘richiude’ (Par., ix. 44); ‘disio’ (Inf., ix. 107) and ‘disii’ (Par., ix. 79).
7 See Roberto Antonelli, ‘Tempo testuale e tempo rimico. Costruzione del testo e critica nella poesia rimata’, Critica del testo 1 (1998), 177-201.
‘Without Any Violence’ 185 is difficult to find clear textual evidence that permits us to extend such a rapport beyond a few basic narrative motifs at the service of reinforcing a few of the Commedia’s standard fixed points: most notably, the glory and variety of divine creation, whose constituent parts are providentially ordered and unified. In any case, Paradiso ix twice explicitly draws attention to these matters, thereby reminding us just how unexceptional is the ‘vertically’ established relationship between the Nines. Contrasting his earthly to his celestial love, Folchetto describes the divinely ‘ordered’
interplay between this world, Purgatory, the Earthly Paradise, the heavens, and the Empyrean (Par., ix. 103-08). A few tercets earlier, when introducing the Occitan poet, Dante observes: ‘Per letiziar là sù fulgor s’acquista, / sì come riso qui; ma giù s’abbuia / l’ombra di fuor, come la mente è trista’
[By rejoicing up there brightness is gained, as laughter is here; but down there the shade grows dark on the outside, as the mind is sad] (Par., ix.
70-72). Once again, the interconnections and disparities between Paradise, our world, and Hell are made clear. As he does throughout the Commedia, Dante also implies that his own artistic practices are modelled on those of the Deus artifex. Outlining the external signs of emotion that characterize human beings on earth, in Heaven, and in Hell, Dante introduces a new piece of information about the state of the damned which he had not revealed in Inferno: the shades ‘grow dark’ – abbuiare – on feeling sadness (ll. 71-72). Like the ‘worth’ (valor; 105), the poet too carefully organizes the unfolding of his poem, forging meaningful links between its parts. The subtlety of Dante’s presentation is noteworthy. With exemplary concision, he adds to our knowledge of Hell, of the workings of the universe, and of his authorial status. The understated, yet richly connotative intricacy of Paradiso ix. 71-72 stands in contrast to the mechanistic repetition of narrative motifs that unites the Nines. If Dante had indeed intended our cantos to be read ‘vertically’, one cannot but wonder whether he would not have made this apparent in that refined and economical manner that marks his recourse to abbuiare.