Who She Is
Beatrice is the woman whom Purgatory has promised since the sixth canto and delivers in the thirtieth: the one whom Virgil names when he reaches the limit of what his reason can reach, the one who descends from a cloud of flowers on the riverbank in the Earthly Paradise, and the one who, instead of consoling the pilgrim who has just lost his guide, calls him by name and accuses him. The scene has three movements: to recognize, to judge, and to order that it be written. Dante recognizes her before his eyes do, by a hidden virtue that comes from her, and it is she who says his name, the only time the poem does so. She judges aloud, first to the angels and then to him, with the gesture of an admiral who goes to the stern and the bow to rouse the crew of the other ships: she does not welcome, she commands. And when the accused confesses and is washed, she orders him to look at the chariot and, back in the world that lives badly, to write what he saw. The identification with Beatrice Portinari, the Florentine whom Dante is said to have met as a child and who died young, comes from the biographical tradition of the first commentators, not from the poem: inside the Commedia she never receives a surname or a verifiable biography, and what the poem gives is the character, guide, and symbol of theology in the prevailing reading.
Trajectory
Before she appears, Beatrice is announced, and each announcement gives her a role. In Hell, it is she who descends to Limbo to send Virgil to help the pilgrim lost in the wood, and the message the guide repeats from memory is that of one who descends for love:
I’ son Beatrice che ti faccio andare; / vegno del loco ove tornar disio; / amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare, I am Beatrice, who makes you go; I come from the place to which I long to return; love moved me, which makes me speak.
On the mountain, the first time Virgil says her name is in Canto VI of Purgatory, on reaching the limit of what his reason can reach. Dante had asked him whether prayer bends the decree of heaven, and the guide, instead of explaining, refers him to one who can:
Non so se ’ntendi: io dico di Beatrice; / tu la vedrai di sopra, in su la vetta / di questo monte, ridere e felice, I do not know whether you understand: I speak of Beatrice; you will see her above, at the summit of this mountain, laughing and happy.
In Canto XV of Purgatory the announcement comes with the same modesty: if Virgil's reason does not satisfy, she will remove this and any other hunger.
E quanta gente più là sù s’intende, / più v’è da bene amare, e più vi s’ama, / e come specchio l’uno a l’altro rende. / E se la mia ragion non ti disfama, / vedrai Beatrice, ed ella pienamente / ti torrà questa e ciascun’ altra brama., And the more people up there understand one another, the more there is to love well, and the more they love, and as a mirror one gives back to the other. And if my reason does not satisfy you, you will see Beatrice, and she will fully take away this and every other longing.
In Canto XVIII of Purgatory Virgil hands her the term that philosophy reaches only to a point, free will, which she will understand as a noble virtue, and the work is one of faith:
Quanto ragion qui vede, / dir ti poss’ io; da indi in là t’aspetta / pur a Beatrice, ch’è opra di fede, As far as reason sees here, I can tell you; from there on, wait only for Beatrice, for it is a work of faith.
Onde, poniam che di necessitate / surga ogne amor che dentro a voi s’accende, / di ritenerlo è in voi la podestate. / La nobile virtù Beatrice intende / per lo libero arbitrio, e però guarda / che l’abbi a mente, s’a parlar ten prende, Hence, suppose that by necessity every love that kindles within you arises; the power to hold it back is in you. The noble virtue Beatrice understands as free will, and therefore take care to keep it in mind, if she takes you to speak of it.
In Canto XXIII of Purgatory it is Dante himself who tells Forese that he will be a companion to Virgil as far as the place where she is, and that there he must remain without him:
Tanto dice di farmi sua compagna / che io sarò là dove fia Beatrice; / quivi convien che sanza lui rimagna. / Virgilio è questi che così mi dice, He says he will make me his companion, so that I will be there where Beatrice will be; there I must remain without him. This one who says so to me is Virgil.
In Canto XXVII of Purgatory, her name is the only argument that moves the pilgrim before the wall of fire: Virgil tries three reasons and none persuades him, and then he says what he had not yet tried.
Or vedi, figlio: / tra Bëatrice e te è questo muro, Now see, son: between Beatrice and you stands this wall.
Dante turns to the name as dying Pyramus turns to that of Thisbe, and enters the fire. Inside it, Virgil keeps talking about her, as one who already sees her eyes.
The Canto XXX of Purgatory opens with the procession halted before the chariot and a hundred ministers of heaven who scatter flowers. Within the cloud there appears to him a woman with a white veil, crowned with olive, under a green mantle, dressed in the color of living flame, and his spirit feels the power of the old love before his eyes recognize her:
sanza de li occhi aver più conoscenza, / per occulta virtù che da lei mosse, / d’antico amor sentì la gran potenza, without having more knowledge through the eyes, by a hidden virtue that moved from her, he felt the great power of the ancient love.
Turning, like the child who runs to his mother to say this to Virgil, he finds the place empty:
Ma Virgilio n’avea lasciati scemi / di sé, Virgilio dolcissimo patre, / Virgilio a cui per mia salute die’mi, But Virgil had left us bereft of himself, Virgil my sweetest father, Virgil to whom I gave myself for my salvation.
Her first word is the pilgrim's name, and it is an order not to weep yet:
Dante, perché Virgilio se ne vada, / non pianger anco, non piangere ancora; / ché pianger ti conven per altra spada, Dante, because Virgil is leaving, do not weep yet, do not weep yet; for you must weep for another sword.
Only then does she introduce herself, twice, and the question she asks has an irony in its verb:
Guardaci ben! Ben son, ben son Beatrice. / Come degnasti d’accedere al monte? / non sapei tu che qui è l’uom felice, Look at us well! Yes, I am, I am Beatrice. How did you deign to come up the mountain? Did you not know that here man is happy?
This Beatrice breaks the convention of the troubadour, for whom the beloved woman is the object of the song and has no voice.
Dante looks into the fountain and, seeing himself in it, turns his eyes to the grass. The mother seems proud to her son, the poet says, as Beatrice seemed to him, because he tastes the bitter in harsh pity. What melts the ice around his heart is not her accusation, it is the compassion of the angels:
lo gel che m’era intorno al cor ristretto, / spirito e acqua fessi, e con angoscia / de la bocca e de li occhi uscì del petto, the ice that was pressed around my heart turned to breath and water, and with anguish it came out of my chest through my mouth and my eyes.
Beatrice then addresses the angels, so that Dante, who weeps on the other side, may understand the measure of guilt and grief. She says that in his new life he had such virtue that every good habit would have given admirable proof of him, that she sustained him for a time with her face and carried him with her turned to the right path, and what came after:
Quando di carne a spirto era salita, / e bellezza e virtù cresciuta m’era, / fu’ io a lui men cara e men gradita, When I had risen from flesh to spirit, and beauty and virtue had grown in me, I became less dear and less pleasing to him.
He followed false images of good, the inspirations she obtained for him were of no use, and one recourse remained:
Tanto giù cadde, che tutti argomenti / a la salute sua eran già corti, / fuor che mostrarli le perdute genti, He fell so far down that all the arguments for his salvation had already fallen short, except to show him the lost peoples.
For this she visited the gate of the dead and, weeping, directed her prayers to the guide. Lethe would not be crossed without some share of repentance that spills tears.
In Canto XXXI of Purgatory she returns the word to Dante, by the tip, and demands the confession: tell, tell whether this is true, for to so great an accusation the confession must be joined. She asks about the motive, through the desires that led him toward the good beyond which there is nothing, and Dante, between sigh and lips with difficulty, speaks a phrase:
Le presenti cose / col falso lor piacer volser miei passi, / tosto che ’l vostro viso si nascose, Present things, with their false pleasure, turned my steps as soon as your face was hidden.
Even though the judge knows the guilt, the accusation that comes from her own face makes, in her court, the wheel turn back against the thread. But she asks that Dante feel shame now, and when he hears the sirens again, be stronger, and then she gives the argument of the body, the hardest and most intimate of the canto:
Mai non t’appresentò natura o arte / piacer, quanto le belle membra in ch’io / rinchiusa fui, e che so’ ’n terra sparte, Never did nature or art present you pleasure as great as the beautiful limbs in which I was enclosed, and which are scattered in the earth.
If the greatest pleasure failed him with her death, no mortal thing should have attracted him; at the first dart he should have risen behind her. She orders him to lift his beard, and he will feel more pain looking. When he manages it, what he sees is her face turned toward the beast of two natures, and she, under the veil and beyond the river, seems to overcome herself, ancient, more than she overcame the others when she was here. The repentance stings him like the nettle:
Di penter sì mi punse ivi l’ortica, / che di tutte altre cose qual mi torse / più nel suo amor, più mi si fé nemica, Repentance pricked me there so sharply, like a nettle, that of all other things, whatever had turned me most from her love became my enemy.
He falls overcome, is taken up by Matelda and submerged in Lethe. Then, carried by the four ladies to her eyes, he sees in them the sun in the mirror:
Come in lo specchio il sol, non altrimenti / la doppia fiera dentro vi raggiava, / or con altri, or con altri reggimenti, As the sun in a mirror, so in her eyes the double beast shone, now in one fashion, now in another.
The three ladies on the other side ask her to unveil her mouth to her faithful one, so that he may discern the second beauty she conceals, and the canto closes with the poet's question, which goes unanswered, about who would have had firm thought before her when she unveiled herself in the open air.
The Canto XXXII of Purgatory begins at the other end of the scale: after ten years of thirst, Dante looks with fixed eyes until the goddesses turn him by force to the left. On waking from sleep under the new tree, his question is for the absent one:
E tutto in dubbio dissi: «Ov’ è Beatrice?». / Ond’ ella: «Vedi lei sotto la fronda / nova sedere in su la sua radice, And all in doubt I said: Where is Beatrice? Then she: See her under the new foliage, seated on its root.
She is alone on the true earth, a guard left beside the chariot, surrounded by the seven nymphs. She promises and commands in the same breath:
Qui sarai tu poco tempo silvano; / e sarai meco sanza fine cive / di quella Roma onde Cristo è romano. / Però, in pro del mondo che mal vive, / al carro tieni or li occhi, e quel che vedi, / ritornato di là, fa che tu scrive, Here you will be a forest dweller for a short time, and you will be with me without end a citizen of that Rome of which Christ is Roman. Therefore, for the good of the world that lives badly, keep your eyes now on the chariot, and what you see, once returned there, take care that you write.
Then Dante sees the eagle strike the chariot, the fox enter it (Beatrice rebukes it for foul faults and puts it to flight), the eagle descend again and leave it feathered with itself, the dragon tear part of the bottom, and the chariot, covered in feathers, sprout heads. Above the chariot thus changed there appears to him:
Sicura, quasi rocca in alto monte, / seder sovresso una puttana sciolta / m’apparve con le ciglia intorno pronte, Secure, almost a fortress on a high mountain, a loose whore sat upon it and appeared to me, with her eyes ready all around.
In Canto XXXIII of Purgatory she hears the nymphs sing the psalm of lament and, sighing and piteous, answers with words from the Gospel of John: a little while, and you will not see me; again a little while, and you will see me. When Dante comes near, she dispels the fear and shame with which he speaks, and gives the prophecy, which she herself calls obscure:
nel quale un cinquecento diece e cinque, / messo di Dio, anciderà la fuia / con quel gigante che con lei delinque, in which a five hundred ten and five, sent by God, will slay the thief with that giant who sins with her.
She orders him to write it down, and to mark for the living, whose life is a running toward death, what he saw of the tree now stolen twice. When Dante says he does not remember having turned away from her, she uses Lethe against him:
E se tu ricordar non te ne puoi», / sorridendo rispuose, «or ti rammenta / come bevesti di Letè ancoi; / e se dal fummo foco s’argomenta, / cotesta oblivïon chiaro conchiude / colpa ne la tua voglia altrove attenta, And if you cannot remember it, she answered, smiling, now recall how today you drank of Lethe; and if from smoke one infers fire, that forgetting clearly concludes the fault in your will attentive to something else.
From then on the words will be bare. Dante asks about the waters, and she sends him to the one who is indicated to him:
detto mi fu: «Priega / Matelda che ’l ti dica». E qui rispuose, / come fa chi da colpa si dislega, I was told: Ask Matelda to tell you. And here she answered, as one does who frees himself from blame.
Beatrice receives Matelda's defense with a maybe, orders that the pilgrim be taken to the Eunoe and, in the gesture of the lady who makes another's will her own, confirms that the scene ends as it began: with an order from her that another carries out.
Themes Embodied
Beatrice embodies Love that judges. What Virgil explained by reason in cantos XVII and XVIII she applies to a case, that of Dante: the misdirected desire that turned to present things with false pleasure as soon as her face was hidden. Guilt does not come from outside, it is the one the pilgrim himself confesses, and the remedy that brings it out is shame. Redemption reaches Dante in two stages that she herself establishes, the confession and the bath in the two waters, the forgetting of sin and the memory of good done.
Beatrice changes function in each canto of the last part. In Canto XXX, judge; in Canto XXXI, mistress of desire, who uses her own body as argument; in Canto XXXII, guardian of the chariot and author of the order to write; in Canto XXXIII, obscure prophet. The same woman is judge, teacher, guardian and prophet. What unites them is that in each she speaks to Dante as one who can answer, and the poem gives back to her the voice that the earlier lyric denied the beloved woman.
Divergent Readings
The text supports two readings of her harshness. The first is the severity of a judge, who does not let the accused escape through another's pain, and the ice melts only when the angels intervene. The second is the pain of one who has waited, who speaks in the third person to the angels because she cannot speak to him in any other way. The argument of the body in Canto XXXI also has two: the severity of one who speaks of her own body without shame, or fidelity to what the poet lived. The poem does not decide.
Relationships
- Dante: the accused to whom she gives the name, the accusation, the order to write, and the promise of a citizenship.
- Virgil: the guide whom she summoned in Limbo and who leaves the instant she arrives.
- Matelda: the lady whom she orders to take Dante to the Eunoe, and to whom she refers the question about the waters.
- Statius: the poet whom Matelda calls to go with Dante to the Eunoe.
- Beatrice: the same character, seen in the three canticles.