Paradiso by Dante Alighieri & Robert Hollander & Jean Hollander

Author:Dante Alighieri & Robert Hollander & Jean Hollander
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Tags: Classics, Poetry
ISBN: 9780307805959
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

PARADISO XIII

* * *

1–24. If the punctuation here is as Dante left it, this is the longest single-sentence canto-opening in the poem. See the note to Paradiso VIII.1–12 for other cantos marked by lengthy openings. This is also the longest address to the reader in the entire poem, if it is an indirect one (marked by the thrice-uttered hortatory subjunctive “imagini” [let him imagine] in vv. 1, 7, and 10). And thus here we have another (cf. Par. XI.1–3) “pseudo-apostrophe” beginning a canto in the heaven of the Sun. [return to English / Italian]

1–18. Dante’s reconstruction of two perfect twelve-studded circles (each of which he has already seen and described in the immediately preceding cantos [Par. X.64–69; XII.1–21]) into apparently fanciful constituent groupings has, understandably, drawn some perplexed attention. (It is perhaps difficult not to think of the role that the poet assumes as being analogous to that of the geomancers, Purg. XIX.4–6, who similarly construct their “Fortuna Major” out of existing constellations.) What is the reason, we might wonder, for the numbering of the three subgroups as fifteen, seven, and two to equal twenty-four? For Bosco/Reggio (comm. to these verses), this is a rare case of Dante’s taste for arid preciosity (un preziosismo tutto intellettualistico). In any case, the fifteen brightest stars found in the eighth heaven are to be imagined as being conjoined with all the seven that make up the Big Dipper and with two from the Little Dipper (see the note to vv. 13–15), thus representing the twenty-four “stars” to whom we have already been introduced. In order to formulate a reason for the fifteen in the first group, Francesco da Buti points out (comm. to vv. 1–21) that Alfraganus, in the nineteenth chapter of his Elementa astronomica, says that in the eighth sphere there are precisely fifteen stars of the first magnitude (i.e., in brightness and size). Niccolò Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 4–6) cites Ptolemy’s Almagest for the same information (first referred to in this context by Jacopo della Lana [comm. to vv. 1–6]), adding the detail that these fifteen may be found situated variously in either hemisphere. However, that there should be nine in the last two groupings, both of which are associated with locating the position of the North Star, may reveal the design of a plan. As we have seen (Par. II.7–9), the Pole Star stands in for divine guidance; thus here the twin circles of Christian sapience are associated both with divine intellectual purpose and with the number that represents Beatrice, who is more clearly associated with the Wisdom of God, Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, than with anything else. [return to English / Italian]

2–3. This self-conscious literary gesture seeks to involve us as coconspirators in manufacturing a substitute solar system. We, as “secondary artists,” are asked to collaborate, making ourselves responsible for literalizing the details of Dante’s vision and keeping them in memory. It is really a quite extraordinary request, even in a poem that perhaps asks for

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.