Who He Is
Dante the pilgrim is the one who, on the summit of the Purgatory mountain, already washed and purified, climbs through the nine heavens guided by Beatrice and ends before the light that the poem cannot tell. In the third canticle the journey changes its nature. In the Inferno he learned to look at the sins of others, and in Purgatory to recognize his own; here he learns to ask well and to be examined. The weight of the body vanishes without his noticing, the ascent is too swift to be felt, and the matter of the canto becomes light, doubt, and answer. The one who narrates, years later, is the poet who returns to the reader to tell what memory did not keep, and the two figures coexist in every interruption: the pilgrim of 1300 is a curious student, vain of his blood, timid before the truth, and capable of forgetting his guide when he falls in love with God, while the poet writing in exile knows the price of telling what he saw. He is the only living man in heaven and the only one who carries the charge of bringing back to the world what he heard: Cacciaguida tells him to make known the whole vision, John has him carry the correction concerning his body, Peter tells him to open his mouth.
Trajectory
Paradise opens with the confession that what the pilgrim saw cannot be told, and the gesture that puts him in this condition is a glance. He fixes his eyes on the sun beyond custom because Beatrice does, and from there comes the change he cannot recount, which the poet calls going beyond the human with a verb he himself invents:
Trasumanar significar per verba / non si poria; però l’essemplo basti / a cui esperïenza grazia serba.To signify what "transhumanize" means, to pass beyond one's own humanity, cannot be done in words, and only one who has lived the experience understands the example. The incapacity to say is not a stylistic flaw, it is the subject.
Dante still thinks he is on earth, and Beatrice corrects him before he asks. In canto II the pilgrim is put to the test by method: he claims that the spots of the Moon come from bodies rare and dense, and she refutes him with an experiment with three mirrors. In canto III he falls into the error opposite to Narcissus's, because he takes persons for reflections:
tali vid’ io più facce a parlar pronte; / per ch’io dentro a l’error contrario corsi / a quel ch’accese amor tra l’omo e ’l fonte, such I saw many faces ready to speak; for which I ran into the error contrary to that which kindled love between the man and the fountain.
In the next canto his silence is a balance between two doubts, and when he speaks he gives the theory of what moves him to ask:
Nasce per quello, a guisa di rampollo, / a piè del vero il dubbio; ed è natura / ch’al sommo pinge noi di collo in collo, from this, like a shoot, doubt springs at the foot of the true; and it is nature that pushes us to the summit from hill to hill.
In canto IX, he coins two new verbs from the pronoun to say what he lacks before the souls: to enter the other as the other enters him:
perché non satisface a’ miei disii? / Già non attendere’ io tua dimanda, / s’io m’intuassi, come tu t’inmii, why does it not satisfy my desires? I would not wait for your request if I intuated myself, as you inmii yourself; that is, if I entered into you as you enter into me.
In canto X, the pilgrim forgets who guides him as he surrenders to God, and the guide laughs. In canto XI he writes from above, free of the cares of earthly offices that the poet enumerates. In canto XIII he receives from Thomas the rule that applies to him: he was about to conclude without distinguishing kingly wisdom from total wisdom, and the answer is lead on the feet:
E questo ti sia sempre piombo a’ piedi, / per farti mover lento com’ uom lasso / e al sì e al no che tu non vedi, and let this always be lead at your feet, to make you move slowly like a weary man, both toward the yes and toward the no that you do not see.
In canto XIV, before the cross of lights, he asks pardon for having set aside Beatrice's eyes:
Forse la mia parola par troppo osa, / posponendo il piacer de li occhi belli, / ne’ quai mirando mio disio ha posa, perhaps my word seems too bold, setting aside the pleasure of the lovely eyes, in which, gazing, my desire finds rest.
The meeting with Cacciaguida shows his two faces. In canto XVI, the pilgrim confesses the vanity of blood and measures it by the place where he feels it:
O poca nostra nobiltà di sangue, / se glorïar di te la gente fai / qua giù dove l’affetto nostro langue, / mirabil cosa non mi sarà mai: / ché là dove appetito non si torce, / dico nel cielo, io me ne gloriai, O little nobility of our blood, if you make people glory in you down here, where our affection languishes, it will never be a marvel to me: for there, where appetite is not turned aside, I say in heaven, I gloried in it.
In canto XVII he asks what is coming to him, since the arrow foreseen arrives more slowly, and he hears that exile is coming and that the bread of others will taste of salt. His answer is not that of one who resigns himself, but of one who calculates the price of speaking:
e s’io al vero son timido amico, / temo di perder viver tra coloro / che questo tempo chiameranno antico»., and if I am a timid friend of the truth, I fear losing my life among those who will call this time ancient.
The order he receives is to tell everything, even if the voice is unwelcome at first taste. In canto XVIII he sees the souls form letters in Jupiter and, in canto XIX, he puts to the Eagle the doubt every reader has, that of the man born on the bank of the Indus. The answer refuses the judge's place and returns the question to the one who asked it:
Or tu chi se’, che vuo’ sedere a scranna, / per giudicar di lungi mille miglia / con la veduta corta d’una spanna?, now, who are you, who would sit on the bench to judge from a thousand miles away with the short sight of a span?
In canto XXI he asks Peter Damian why only he was chosen and receives the rule of not presuming, and in canto XXII he looks down at the Earth from above and smiles at its vile appearance:
L’aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci, / volgendom’ io con li etterni Gemelli, / tutta m’apparve da’ colli a le foci, the little plot that makes us so fierce, as I turned with the eternal Twins, appeared to me entire, from the hills to the mouths.
In canto XXIV he is examined by Peter as the bachelor before the master, defines faith, is tested with the coin, and recites the creed:
Sì come il baccialier s’arma e non parla / fin che ’l maestro la question propone, / per approvarla, non per terminarla, just as the bachelor arms himself and does not speak until the master proposes the question, to approve it, not to conclude it.
In canto XXV the poet declares the hope of returning a poet to the baptismal font, and in canto XXVI he explains to John what drew him from the sea of crooked love:
con la predetta conoscenza viva, / tratto m’hanno del mar de l’amor torto, / e del diritto m’han posto a la riva. / Le fronde onde s’infronda tutto l’orto / de l’ortolano etterno, am’ io cotanto / quanto da lui a lor di bene è porto», with the aforesaid living knowledge, they drew me from the sea of crooked love and set me on the shore of the right. The leaves with which the whole garden of the eternal gardener is leafed, I love them as much as is the good he carries to them.
In canto XXVII he sees from above the western tip of the world and the mad passage of Ulysses, and the poem does not comment:
sì ch’io vedea di là da Gade il varco / folle d’Ulisse, e di qua presso il lito / nel qual si fece Europa dolce carco, so that I saw beyond Gades the mad passage of Ulysses, and on this side, near, the shore where Europa became a sweet burden.
The pilgrim's end is a request and a loss. In canto XXXI he asks for Beatrice and sees an old man, prays to her from afar, and receives a smile. In canto XXXII he hears from Bernard that the last step is not won by beating one's own wings:
Veramente, ne forse tu t’arretri / movendo l’ali tue, credendo oltrarti, / orando grazia conven che s’impetri / grazia da quella che puote aiutarti; / e tu mi seguirai con l’affezione, / sì che dal dicer mio lo cor non parti», in truth, lest you go back, moving your wings, believing you advance, it is fitting to obtain grace by praying to her who can help you; and you will follow me with affection, so that the heart does not depart from my words.
In canto XXXIII the pilgrim tells what remains of the vision and asks the highest light for a spark:
Da quinci innanzi il mio veder fu maggio / che ’l parlar mostra, ch’a tal vista cede, / e cede la memoria a tanto oltraggio. / Qual è colüi che sognando vede, / che dopo ’l sogno la passione impressa / rimane, e l’altro a la mente non riede, from here on my seeing was greater than speech can show, which yields to such a sight, and memory yields to so great an excess. Like one who sees in a dream, and after the dream the emotion impressed on him remains, while the rest does not return to the mind.
O somma luce che tanto ti levi / da’ concetti mortali, a la mia mente / ripresta un poco di quel che parevi, / e fa la lingua mia tanto possente, / ch’una favilla sol de la tua gloria / possa lasciare a la futura gente, O highest light, that so rises above mortal conceptions, lend again to my mind a little of what you seemed, and make my tongue so powerful that it may leave to future people one single spark of your glory.
Themes Embodied
Dante embodies Knowledge and wisdom as desire: doubt springs at the foot of the true and pushes man from hill to hill, and each canto of Paradise begins with a question he asks or that is read in his face. He also embodies Faith examined, the faith that the poem defines through his voice and that Peter approves before asking him for the coin in his purse. And he embodies Home, exile, and return: what he says along the ascent is said already in exile, and the hope of returning a poet to the baptismal font is the horizon of the poem.
The pilgrim of Paradise is the most passive and the most active of the three. Passive, because he hardly moves: he is carried, corrected, examined, and most of the speeches belong to others. Active, because only he turns what he hears into verse, and the poem warns that what remains of the vision is emotion, not image. This makes the reader the last link in the chain, and explains why the canticle insists so much on the warning to those who stayed on the shore: whoever reads accompanies a student and a lesson, and the lesson is complete only with whoever receives it.
Divergent Readings
Dante stops being the one who speaks about Beatrice and becomes the one who hears her.
The text supports two readings of his modesty before Bernard and Peter. In the first, the pilgrim is a true disciple, and what he writes is what he learned. In the second, the modesty is the rhetoric of one who knows he will be read, and the repetition of the limit (the pen that leaps, the memory that yields) is the way of making the reader believe what cannot be said. The poem gives both and does not choose.
Relationships
- Beatrice: the guide who instructs him, rebukes him, and bids farewell in canto XXXI.
- Cacciaguida: the great-great-grandfather who announces his exile and orders him to tell everything.
- Saint Peter: the examiner of faith, who gives him the charge of opening his mouth.
- Saint Bernard: the final guide, who sends him to ask grace from Mary.
- The Virgin Mary: the one to whom the pilgrim comes through another's prayer.
- Adam: the first man, who answers him without being asked.
- Thomas Aquinas: the master who puts lead on his feet.