Who She Is
Matelda is the woman whom Dante finds on the other side of a stream in the Earthly Paradise, alone, singing and choosing flower among flowers, and whom he cannot name. Only in the last canto of the canticle does the poem give her name, and it gives it in passing, in the mouth of another character. In between, she does what no other figure on the mountain does: she explains the place. She says that the supreme Good made man good and for good, and gave him that place as a pledge of eternal peace; that the forest sounds because the air turns with the first revolution of the heavens; that the water of the stream comes from a firm spring and opens into two beds; and that whoever drinks from one forgets sin, and whoever drinks from the other recalls the good done. Then she guides Dante along the bank, rebukes him once, gathers him up when he falls, drags him through the river and submerges him. For all this, she is the most discreet figure of the canticle and the one who does the most work. That she is a figure without a biography is a fact of the text.
Trajectory
In Canto XXVIII of Purgatory Dante, eager to explore the divine forest, leaves the bank and goes along a ground that smells on every side, until a stream stops him from going further. On the other side there appears to him:
Before Beatrice appears, Dante crosses the forest alone from the top of the mountain and finds, on the other side of a brook, a woman who sings as she gathers flowers, still unnamed in the canto where she appears, and who is called Matelda only in Canto XXXIII: she explains the place, the plants and the waters, prepares the scene, and after her comes a symbolic procession, with a chariot that announces the arrival of Beatrice.una donna soletta che si gia / e cantando e scegliendo fior da fiore / ond’ era pinta tutta la sua via, a lone woman who went along singing and choosing flower from flower, with which all her path was painted.
Dante's first word to her is a compliment with a myth inside it:
Tu mi fai rimembrar dove e qual era / Proserpina nel tempo che perdette / la madre lei, ed ella primavera, You make me remember where and what Proserpina was in the time when her mother lost her, and she the spring.
She turns with her feet together on the ground, like a dancer, and draws near to the request. Dante sees more light shine beneath her lashes than beneath those of Venus wounded by her son. She laughed, working with her hands more colors than high earth produces without seed, and says that perhaps, because she laughs, in this place chosen as the nest of human nature, some suspicion holds them in wonder. She asks what Dante wishes to hear. The explanation begins at the beginning, and the beginning is a story of gift and loss:
Lo sommo Ben, che solo esso a sé piace, / fé l’uom buono e a bene, e questo loco / diede per arr’ a lui d’etterna pace, The supreme Good, who alone pleases itself, made man good and for good, and gave him this place as a pledge of eternal peace.
She then explains the weather, the mountain that rises so high into the free air, the struck forest that impregnates the air with its virtue, and the water that springs from a firm spring and opens into two beds:
Da questa parte con virtù discende / che toglie altrui memoria del peccato; / da l’altra d’ogne ben fatto la rende. / Quinci Letè; così da l’altro lato / Eünoè si chiama, e non adopra / se quinci e quindi pria non è gustato, On this side it descends with a virtue that takes from one the memory of sin; on the other it gives back the memory of all good done. Here, Lethe; so on the other side it is called Eunoe, and it does not work unless it is first tasted from here and from there.
The taste of the Eunoe, she says, is above all others. She gives Dante a corollary by grace: those who wrote of the golden age perhaps dreamed this place on Parnassus. Dante turns to Virgil and Statius, and they are laughing:
Io mi rivolsi ’n dietro allora tutto / a’ miei poeti, e vidi che con riso / udito avëan l’ultimo costrutto, Then I turned all the way back to my poets, and I saw that with laughter they had heard the last construction.
In Canto XXIX of Purgatory she sings like one in love, and completes the end of her words with a verse of a psalm. She moves against the current, climbing the bank, and Dante follows her step by step. When a flash runs through the forest, it is she who tells him to look and listen, and the rebuke she gives is the only one:
Perché pur ardi / sì ne l’affetto de le vive luci, / e ciò che vien di retro a lor non guardi, Why do you still burn so in the affection for the living lights, and do not look at what comes behind them?
In Canto XXXI of Purgatory, after the confession, Dante falls overcome, and when he comes to himself he sees her above him, who has pulled him in the river up to the throat and drags him behind her, light as a shuttle. The Asperges me sounds near the bank:
La bella donna ne le braccia aprissi; / abbracciommi la testa e mi sommerse / ove convenne ch’io l’acqua inghiottissi, The beautiful lady opened her arms; she embraced my head and submerged me where it was necessary that I swallow the water.
She gives him to the dance of the four ladies, who lead him to Beatrice. In Canto XXXII of Purgatory, on waking, Dante sees her standing, and it is she who answers him where Beatrice is:
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.
In Canto XXXIII of Purgatory the lady appears by name. When Dante asks Beatrice what water that is, he is sent to Matelda, who answers like one freeing herself from blame:
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 her defense with a maybe, and orders that Dante be taken to the Eunoe. Matelda, like the gentle soul who makes another's will her own as soon as it is opened by a sign, takes him and calls Statius: come with him.
Themes Embodied
Matelda embodies the place lost and restored, and Redemption passes through her in two physical scenes: the Lethe, which erases the memory of sin and makes her submerge Dante, and the Eunoe, which gives back the memory of good done. Art lies in her hypothesis that the ancient poets dreamed this place, and Love in the way she sings: like one in love, singing, choosing flower from flower. The poem places her between Virgil, who withdraws, and Beatrice, who arrives: the mediator who carries out orders and explains them.
She is the practical face of Eden. Beatrice judges, the procession symbolizes, Matelda acts: she carries, holds, dives, says where one is and where to go. Her avoidance of a name for five cantos has a consequence: whoever reads her through the text knows her only by what she does, and that is the portrait.
Divergent Readings
The text supports two readings of the comparison with Proserpina. One is the courtesy of one who speaks to an unknown lady. The other is the first echo, in the pilgrim's mouth, that Eden is a place from which man was expelled. The same ambiguity holds for the laughter: the honest laughter which, she herself says, man exchanged for weeping and toil, and the laughter which, on the other side of the river, she shows the pilgrim. The poem does not decide.