Who She Is
Piccarda is the first soul that Dante meets in Paradise, in the sphere of the Moon, the lowest and the slowest. She appears as a faint face, almost a reflection in clear glass, and it is because he takes her for a reflection that the pilgrim turns his eyes back, looking for whoever might be the image. She answers his first request with the courtesy of someone who does not shut the door, names herself without reservation, and states her place without complaint: she was a virgin sister in the world, she is among the blessed, and she is happy in the slowest sphere. She herself also states the cause of her rung, with a play on words between vows and voids: her vows were neglected. What brought her there is told later, in few verbs: while still a young girl she followed a woman of perfect life, put on the habit of the cloister and promised the rule, and men more inclined to evil than to good tore her from the sweet cloister. Tradition reads in that taller woman Saint Clare, whom the poem does not name. The identification with the Florentine Piccarda Donati, sister of Forese, comes from the very canto XXIV of Purgatory, where her brother describes her, and from the name she herself gives here.
Trajectory
In canto III of Paradise she appears beside a light that she herself will present as the great Constance. The pilgrim asks her for her name and her lot, and the answer already defines the place that was given to her:
E questa sorte che par giù cotanto, / però n’è data, perché fuor negletti / li nostri voti, e vòti in alcun canto, and this lot, which seems so low, was given us because our vows were neglected and empty in some respect.
Dante notices something divine that transforms the faces he remembers, and that is why it took him time to recognize her. He asks whether they do not desire a higher place, to see more and to be dearer friends of God. Piccarda smiles with the other shades and answers like one who burns in the first fire of love, without resentment:
«Frate, la nostra volontà quïeta / virtù di carità, che fa volerne / sol quel ch’avemo, e d’altro non ci asseta, brother, our will is quieted by the virtue of charity, which makes us want only what we have, and thirsts for nothing else.
The argument is logical: to desire to be higher would be to disagree with the will of those who placed them there, and that does not belong where charity is necessary. The sentence that closes the reasoning:
Piccarda's answer on peace in God's will.E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace: / ell’ è quel mare al qual tutto si move / ciò ch’ella crïa o che natura faceIn His will lies the peace of one who no longer desires more than he has received: it is the sea toward which all that He creates and all that nature makes is drawn. The thesis resolves at the outset the doubt that will return in every heaven from here to the end: there is no hierarchy of envy among the blessed, because to desire more would already be to disagree with the very will that makes them happy.
Carpeaux reads it as the utopia that poetry realizes where the world does not realize it:
In la sua voluntate è nostra pace.
Dante then understands that in every place in heaven there is paradise, even though grace does not rain there in the same way:
Chiaro mi fu allor come ogne dove / in cielo è paradiso, etsi la grazia / del sommo ben d’un modo non vi piove, it became clear to me then how everywhere in heaven is paradise, even though the grace of the supreme good does not rain there in one way.
She takes her leave singing, and the image is that of a heavy thing that sinks into deep water:
Così parlommi, e poi cominciò ‘Ave, / Maria’ cantando, e cantando vanio / come per acqua cupa cosa grave, so she spoke to me, and then began singing "Ave, Maria," and singing she vanished like a heavy thing in deep water.
In canto IV Beatrice returns to the case of Piccarda and Constance to resolve an apparent contradiction: the souls say they remained in the lowest sphere through negligence, but they were torn away by force. The answer distinguishes absolute will, which does not consent to harm, from the will that consents out of fear of a greater evil, and it says Piccarda was speaking of the first and Beatrice of the other:
Voglia assoluta non consente al danno; / ma consentevi in tanto in quanto teme, / se si ritrae, cadere in più affanno, absolute will does not consent to harm; but it consents to it insofar as it fears that, if it draws back, it will fall into greater distress.
Themes Embodied
Piccarda embodies Faith, which resolves itself into joyful obedience, and Love, which wants only what it has. She does not ask and does not complain: the charity that calms her is the same one the poem defines on her lips, and what Dante sees, for the first time in Paradise, is that the lowest rung does not measure the happiness of the one who occupies it.
The text sustains two readings. In the first, Piccarda is the example of the fully conformed will: if peace lies in wanting what God wants, she has already arrived. In the second, the poem leaves a question she does not answer: was it her negligence or the violence of others that put her there, and the difference between the two does not appear in her smile. Beatrice, in canto IV, does not excuse her: she keeps the measure of firm will high, and the two souls remain where they are.
Relationships
- Constance: the light that accompanies her, also torn from the cloister.
- Beatrice: who explains, in canto IV, what Piccarda said in canto III.
- Dante: the living man who took her face for a reflection.
- Forese Donati: the brother who, in Purgatory, says she triumphs joyfully on high.