Who He Is
Sordello is the Lombard soul, proud and disdainful, with honest, slow eyes, whom Dante and Virgil find alone in Ante-Purgatory and who, like a lion at rest, does not answer their request for the way. What makes him rise is the name of a land: Mantua. From there the poem makes three things of him. He is the patrician who embraces Virgil without yet knowing who is speaking, and who by that gesture sets off in Dante the most famous invective of the canticle against Italy. He is the disciple who, on hearing the name Virgil, bows down and greets him as the glory of the Latins. And he is the local guide of the valley of the princes and of the night, who traces a line on the ground to say what the older poet does not see: that one does not climb at night, because darkness tangles the will with the inability to act. The text says no more of him than this, name, homeland, deeds and a gesture of the finger, and that is why every gesture weighs.
Trajectory
In Canto VI of Purgatory Dante has just freed himself from the crowd that asks for prayers, and asks Virgil whether a text of his does not deny that prayer bends the decree of heaven. Further on, at Dante's request, they hurry along as far as they can that day, and Virgil sees a lone soul watching them. It is the Lombard: proud and disdainful, with honest, slow eyes, she lets them pass, looking. Virgil draws near and asks for the best way up; she does not answer, asks about their land and their lives, and the gentle guide begins. The word that undoes everything is the name of the city:
«Mantüa . . . », e l’ombra, tutta in sé romita, / surse ver’ lui del loco ove pria stava, / dicendo: «O Mantoano, io son Sordello / de la tua terra!»; e l’un l’altro abbracciava, Mantua..., and the shade, wholly withdrawn into itself, rose toward him from the place where it had been, saying: O Mantuan, I am Sordello of your land! and each embraced the other.
The one who moved out of pride and disdain is the same one who embraces, and what moves him is the homeland, not the request. From that embrace between two men who had never seen each other, Dante interrupts the narrative with the most famous invective of the canticle, which calls Italy a slave, a ship without a helmsman, no lady of provinces. The central figure is that of the unbroken mount:
Che val perché ti racconciasse il freno / Iustinïano, se la sella è vòta? / Sanz’ esso fora la vergogna meno, What good is it that Justinian mended your bridle, if the saddle is empty? Without it, the shame would be less.
In Canto VII of Purgatory the greetings are repeated three and four times. Sordello draws back and asks who they are, and Virgil answers with the name. The Mantuan poet stands like one who suddenly sees something before him and says "it is... it is not," lowers his brows, returns humbly and embraces him in the place where the lesser clings to the greater:
«O gloria di Latin», disse, «per cui / mostrò ciò che potea la lingua nostra, / o pregio etterno del loco ond’ io fui, O glory of the Latins, he said, through whom our tongue showed what it could do, O eternal honor of the place from which I came.
The patrician has become a disciple. Sordello asks whether Virgil comes from Hell and from which cloister, and hears that he passed through all the circles moved by a power of heaven. When Virgil asks him for a sign of the place where Purgatory truly begins, he replies that no fixed place has been set, that it is lawful to go up and around, and that he will accompany Virgil as guide as far as he can. The day declines, and at night one does not climb:
E ’l buon Sordello in terra fregò ’l dito, / dicendo: «Vedi? sola questa riga / non varcheresti dopo ’l sol partito: / non però ch’altra cosa desse briga, / che la notturna tenebra, ad ir suso; / quella col nonpoder la voglia intriga, See? Only this line you would not cross once the sun has set: not that anything else would hinder going up, except the dark of night; that, with its inability, entangles the will.
It is the lesson of a guide who explains a limit as impotence, not as prohibition. Sordello leads the two to a flank of the valley, to a saddle of the slope where they will wait for the new day, and from there he points to the souls sitting on the grass. He says he will not go down with them among the shadows, because from the ledge the poets will know them better, and he names them one by one: the emperor Rudolf, who could have healed the wounds that killed Italy and did not, Ottokar and his son Vincislao, and those whom the commentators' tradition identifies by a trait: Philip III of France, Henry of Navarre, Peter of Aragon, Charles of Anjou. The rule that closes the list undoes the idea that virtue passes from father to son:
Rade volte risurge per li rami / l’umana probitate; e questo vole / quei che la dà, perché da lui si chiami, Seldom does human probity rise again through the branches; and this is what He who gives it wills, so that it be asked of Him.
In Canto VIII of Purgatory, at nightfall, Sordello proposes going down among the great shadows to speak with them, and Dante finds Nino, the judge. When the serpent arrives, Sordello pulls Virgil to himself and points to the enemy: it is he who warns of the danger, and the angels who came from the bosom of Mary, with swords without points, already posted since evening, move to guard the valley. Out of scene, in Canto IX of Purgatory, Virgil tells Dante that Sordello and the other shades stayed in the valley when Lucia came to carry off the sleeper.
Themes Embodied
Sordello embodies the Politics of the canticle before any theory of it. What is said about Italy in Canto VI is born of a scene: two Mantuans embrace by the name of their land while the living who inhabit it devour one another. Canto VII turns the scene into an examination of the princes who were neither saddle nor bridle, and the criterion is the same that runs through the whole part: what each one failed to do while he could. Redemption appears in him in reverse: the proud man stoops on hearing a name, the patrician becomes a disciple, and the lesson of the valley of the princes, that human probity seldom rises again through the branches, falls to him to tell because he sees it better.
The poem places Sordello between the two poets as a mediator of homeland: he rises at the name of the common land and bows at the name of the poet that land gave. He does not explain or theorize; he shows a valley and draws a line.
Divergent Readings
The text supports two readings of the embrace in Canto VI. In the first, it is proof that the homeland still moves, and that living Italy lacks what the dead have, the affection between equals. In the second, it is the contrast the invective uses against the living: if the dead embrace by the name of the land, why do those who inhabit it kill one another? The canto gives both, and Dante uses the second. Canto VII adds a third layer: the disciple's embrace differs from the patrician's, and the poem makes clear which of the two Sordello gives Virgil when he knows who he is.