Scripture as Enigma: Biblical Allusion in Dante's Earthly Paradise

Scripture as Enigma: Biblical Allusion in Dante's Earthly ParadiseAuthor(s): Eleanor CookSource: Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, No. 117 (1999), pp. 1-19Published by: Dante Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40166534 .

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Scripture as Enigma: Biblical Allusion in Dante's

Earthly Paradise

ELEANOR COOK

the final seven cantos of the Purgatorio, Dante the pilgrim enters, then traverses the Earthly Paradise to the point where he is ready to mount to the stars. Is he acting out in his own person the Apostle

Paul's well-known text: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face" (1 Corinthians 13:12 in the familiar English of the 1611 Authorized Version)? The Vulgate reads, "Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate, tune autem facie ad faciem," in aenigmate being close to the original Greek, ev aiviY[A(XTi. So often does Paul's text hover about

commentary on these cantos that the question may sound superfluous. But I want to concentrate on specific troping rather than general hover-

ing, and especially on the phrase in aenigmate. Augustine himself points the way:1

Quia vero addidit, in aenigmate; multis hoc incognitum est qui eas litteras nesci- unt, in quibus est doctrina quaedam de locutionum modis, quos Graeci tropos vocant, eoque graeco vocabulo etiam nos utimur pro latino. . . . (De trinitate XV.ix.15, PL 42, col. 1068)

[. . . whereas he [Paul] has added, "in an enigma" [in aenigmate], the meaning of this addition is unknown to any who are unacquainted with the books that con- tain the doctrine of those modes of speech which the Greeks call Tropes, which Greek word we also use in Latin. . . .]

Augustine goes on to point out that enigma itself is a rhetorical trope.2 How might a great poet trope on seeing through a glass and in an

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Dante Studies, CXVII, 1999

enigma? How might he be mindful of enigma itself as trope? One way in which Dante used the trope of enigma, I think, was in reading some parts of Scripture itself. To follow Augustine:3

. . . nos erudit magister bonus . . . ut revelata facie a Legis velamine quod est umbra futurorum, gloriam Domini speculantes, per speculum scilicet intuentes, in eamdem imaginem transformemur de gloria in gloriam, tanquam a Domini Spiritu (2 Cor. iii, 18) .... videbimus eum, non per speculum, sed sicuti est (Joan, iii, 2): quod dicit apostolus Pzulus, facie adfaciem (1 Cor. xiii, 12). (De trinitate XV.xi.20-21, PL 42, col. 1073)

[. . . the good master [Paul] teaches us ... that "with face unveiled" from the veil of the law, which is the shadow of things to come, "beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord," i.e., gazing at it through a glass, "we may be transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord" [2 Cor. 3:18]. . . . we shall see Him, not through a glass, but "as He is;" [1 John 3:2] which the Apostle Paul expresses by "face to face" [1 Cor. 13:12].]

For the transition from now to then, Augustine fuses three texts, 2 Corin- thians 3:18, 1 John 3:2, 1 Corinthians 13:12. Through the first text, he moves to a wide sense of trope, also in use today when we say X's body of work is troping on Y's. So also, we may say that the New Testament is

troping on the Hebrew Scriptures. But how? What trope does it use?

Surely the trope of enigma, which is par excellence the trope of revelation. All the Hebrew Scriptures are read as if they were "under the veil," to

repeat Paul's expression. (Veiling is part of the general lexis of enigma, though not all veils belong to enigma.) In typological terms, the Hebrew

Scriptures become the Old Testament by this reading, wherein they shadow forth what stands clear in the New Testament. This is the first

stage of seeing through a clearer speculum and in a less obscure enigma. The second stage will come at the end of time, to follow Augustine's text from John's Epistle, when all the Scriptures will be fulfilled in the sudden

unveiling which is apocalypse.4 When Dante the pilgrim approaches and then enters the Earthly Para-

dise at the peak of the mountain of Purgatory, biblical allusions multiply. It is as if the work of Scripture itself came to concentrate on this crucial

place, this crossing-point or X of the Commedia. The cruciform patterning has obvious doctrinal weight, and Dante brings extraordinary pressure to bear on the point of crossing. His biblical allusions are one example of this pressure.

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Scripture as Enigma: Biblical Allusion in Dante's Earthly Paradise, eleanor cook

There is, I believe, a pattern in Dante's biblical allusions in these last seven cantos of the Purgatorio, a pattern that is especially clear in Cantos 27 and 28. Again and again in these closing cantos, the biblical allusions turn out to be threefold or twofold. When threefold, they draw on the Old Testament, the New Testament (usually the Gospels), and the Apoca- lypse. That is, Dante's allusions act out the threefold pattern of a Pauline and Augustinian reading of Scripture outlined above. Verses from Gene- sis, Psalms, especially the Song of Songs, Ezekiel, and elsewhere are read in the light of the Gospel narratives, the very point of these biblical allusions. In turn, the Gospel narratives point toward the end of time. Scrip- ture itself is enigma here, in the following sense. In the first change, we come out from under the veil (to follow this Pauline and Augustinian trope) though we still see in aenigmate. In the second change, this enigma too will dissolve. Such a patterning may be seen in the full range of Dante's biblical allusions, be they quotation, allusion proper, or echo

ranging from strong to clear to faint.5 This is part of a larger process wherein Dante gives the effect of gather-

ing up language itself through his references as well as his allusions.6 These references and allusions often work out from one word, sometimes im-

plicitly, sometimes explicitly, a word that signifies a physical object or a

place in the examples I have noticed. Such glancing or focused uses of the word build a story, a fictive construct, of that word. It is as if the possible stories of a given word were ingathered and put in order, or rather seen in their right ordering. As this goes on through the closing cantos of the

Purgatorio, the end of such ordering gradually appears to be the Edenic form of the word and its referent, verbum and res. We seem to come outside riddling words, words seen in aenigmate, and instead begin to see them face to face in their unfallen form, so to speak. Dante is preparing us for a face-to-face seeing of language in the Paradiso, at least as far as human words can shadow forth such a thing.7

Dante's ingathering of the stories of a given word is not syncretism, by the way, a somewhat unhappy word insofar as it implies simple fusing of

very different views, say, pagan and Christian. It is important, not only in

theory but also for our own wording of concepts and figures, that Dante sees his world as an ordered hierarchy. Pagan legends are not on the same

footing as biblical stories. His own term, "corollary," which Matelda pro- vides, is exactly right: "darotti un corollario ancor per grazia" (28:136) -

this concerning classical writing about the Golden Age. For that reason, I

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have adopted the term "ingathering," as in s'intema in Dante's last canto of the Paradiso (33:85). Something of that teleological sense informs Dante's use of biblical allusion and reference throughout the cantos of the

Earthly Paradise.

Suppose we start with a small example of Dante's biblical allusion, the word capra (goat) in the six-tercet epic simile of Canto 27 (76-93). Hav-

ing passed through the wall of fire that guards Eden, Dante and his two

companions, Virgil and Statius, are overtaken by nightfall and must sleep on the mountain-steps leading up to the Earthly Paradise.

Quali si stanno ruminando manse le capre, state rapide e proterve sovra le cime avante che sien pranse,

tacite a l'ombra, mentre che '1 sol ferve, guardate dal pastor, che 'n su la verga poggiato s'e e lor di posa serve;

e quale il mandrian che fori alberga, lungo il pecuglio suo queto pernotta, guardando perche fiera non lo sperga;

tali eravamo tutti e tre allotta, io come capra, ed ei come pastori, fasciati quinci e quindi d'altra grotta.

Si ruminando e si mirando in quelle. . . . (Purg. 27:76-87, 91)

Commentators rightly note both Virgilian and biblical pastoral traditions. This is all very well, but why does Dante call himself a goat, first in general and then pointedly (io come capra), and a ruminator, first in general and then pointedly (ruminando . . . ruminando frame the whole simile). It is not

just that biblical goats do not often lead a happy life, even if classical ones do. It is especially and inescapably that, only six tercets earlier, an angelic voice guiding Dante through the flames has quoted the Gospel of Mat- thew (27:58): "Venite, benedicti Patris met' (Come, blessed of my Father . . . , Matt.25:34). Jesus is foretelling what will happen in the Last

Judgment when the blessed will be welcomed into heaven. What just precedes Dante's quotation is: "and he shall separate them one from an-

other, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats (oves ab haedis): and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left" (a dextris

4




suis, haedos autem a sinistris, Matt. 25:32-33). These goats do not get into heaven.

And is it an accidental felicity that when dawn comes following Dante's

prophetic dream, le tenebre fuggian (27:112), "the shadows were fleeing," in the English of Binyon and Sinclair, who surely (and rarely among the best-known translators) had the 1611 English Bible in their ears.8 For the

Song of Songs repeats the clause, "the shadows flee away": "Until the

day break and the shadows flee away, turn my beloved" (2:17 and see 4:6). It is a verse I have not seen cited, yet consider the context of daybreak, the use of the verb "turn" (revertere in the modern Vulgate) along with Dante's many other words for "turn" throughout these cantos,9 the use of the Song of Songs yet once more in the entry into paradise.10 In Canti- cles 2:17, the verse continues: "turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains" (revertere; similis esto, dilecte mi,

capreae . . .), for indeed a caprea as against a caper is a roe, to follow the 1611 Authorized Version. (The term caprea is also used in Virgil's Georgics 2:37 r4, just as haedis is, 4:10; a caper appears in Eclogues 7:7. All three terms and more appear in the Vulgate, which is to say that Dante was familiar with all three.) Is Dante quietly acknowledging the blessedness that has

brought him here, in spite of everything, caper though he has been?11 The blessedness that will let him know something of what a caprea might know on the mountains of the Song of Songs, themselves one type for the

Earthly Paradise? I think so. Gian Roberto Sarolli has inferred something similar, not from Dante's art of allusion, but from the double tradition

concerning goats in Isidore, who conflates caprea with caper, copra and so on.12

This is an extraordinary if quiet exercise in lexis. The field of association for the word "goat" changes, and Dante thereby shows a world

changing.13 The very word, "goat," can be shown now redeemed and no

longer damned. If these allusive echoes are resounding here, Dante is

working with a threefold patterning of Old Testament (Song of Songs), New Testament Gospel (Matthew), and Apocalypse (anticipated in the

parable in Matthew). Or take the word "mountain" in Dante's range of allusion and refer-

ence. Quotations from the Beatitudes mark the stages of Dante's climb

up the Mountain of Purgatory, the final beatitude being heard at the start of Canto 27. These beatitudes were themselves spoken on a mountain

("ascendit in montem," Matt. 5:1), whence the familiar title, "The Ser-

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mon on the Mount." The goat and herdsmen sleep on a high rock. The echo from the Song of Songs calls on the beloved to be "like a roe or a

young hart upon the mountains" (2:17) and the second example (4:6) reads: "Until the day break and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh ..." (ad montem myrrhae). The end of Canto 28

gathers in Mount Parnassus, as does Canto 29, and, if rainbows recall Noah, Dante is implicitly recalling Mount Ararat. Canto 31 again recalls Parnassus, and quotes part of the Song of Songs 4:8, which goes on to refer to the top of Amana. Canto 32 echoes a phrase from Ovid's story of Baucis and Philemon, itself a mountain-top story ("in ardua montis," Met.

8.692). Canto 33 refers to the dark utterance ("narrazion buia," 33:46) of Themis, the whole episode in Ovid ("obscura . . . verba," Met. 1.388-

389) taking place on a mountain-top, Parnassus again, and clearly parallel- ing Noah's story.14 All the mountain-tops are places of blessedness, some of the death of an old world and the start of a new one. The top of

Purgatory ingathers all these mountain-tops, pagan and Christian, Old Testament and New, carefully ordered.15 All but one, that is. For what informs and gathers in the Mountain of Purgatory itself, and thereby all its own ingathered mountains, comes in Dante's visionary dream in Canto 32: it is the Mount of Transfiguration.16

For another example of ingathering centered on the allusions and references to one word, take the canto of fire, which is surely what Canto 27 is, and the word "fire." The process begins with the sun's fire as felt on the scorched ("ri'arse," 27:4) waves of the Ganges. It moves through Dante's memory of human bodies actually burned ("accesi," 27:18), and then informs line 27 in a way that has not been heard. It implicitly in- cludes the fiery love of Pyramus and Thisbe as described by Ovid ("they burned [ardebant] with mutual love . . . the more they covered up the fire, the more it burned" [aestuat ignis, Met. 4.62, 64, Loeb]). It becomes actual present fire in the passage through the wall of flame. And the four- word biblical excerpt welcoming the blessed (" Venite, benedicti Patris mei") goes on in Matthew, though not in Dante, to consign the maledicti to

everlasting fire ("Discedite a me maledicti in ignem aeternum": Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, Matt. 25:41), that fire which Dante has seen in the Inferno. After this, by contrast, the sun behaves

according to the law of the mountain, and the stars appear larger and

brighter seen through a cleft in the rock. Fire will itself be shown as

6




redeemed in an astonishing line about the planet Venus, "che di foco d'amor par sempre ardente" (27:96). 17

In Canto 28, fire vanishes altogether, for this canto of the beauty of the

Earthly Paradise is a canto of air, earth, and water. Canto 27 is the last canto of fire, purging fire, and memories of other fires, whether climatic or consuming or amorous or hellish. As Virgil says, "II temporal foco e l'etterno / veduto hai, figlio" (27:127-128). After that, fire is itself redeemed, not simply in the experience of Dante the pilgrim, but also in the very references of Dante the poet. We might say that fire is transmuted in this passage into an effect of light, heavenly light.

Canto 27:27 offers an extraordinary example of ingathering biblical allusion. Here Dante comes to the wall of fire he must traverse in order to enter Eden. Virgil reassures him that purgatorial fire is not earthly; "non ti potrebbe far d'un capel calvo." Commentators regularly mention Luke 21:18, where Jesus also reassures his disciples that persecution cannot

finally harm them: "But there shall not an hair of your head perish" (thus Sapegno, Bosco-Reggio,18 and Singleton). But this seems to me less

persuasive than the earlier text from Daniel: "nor was a hair of their head

singed" ("et capillus capitis eorum non esset adustus," Dan. 3:94; AV: 3:27, the different numbering because the AV follows the Hebrew Bible and does not include the song sung in the flames). As a companion for

passing through a wall of fire, one would certainly choose the angel that went into Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace with the three Jews and walked around with them, all four unharmed inside the flames. The Book of Daniel, like Ezekiel and Revelation, is appropriately apocalyptic for this

passage. Grandgent mentions this text in addition to Luke 21:18, the only commentator in the Dartmouth database to do so; he adds no comment.19

Further, in the Book of Daniel (Vulgate version, not the Hebrew or Protestant Bible), there is a hymn sung in the fiery furnace, "The Canticle of the Three Children" (Dan. 3:52-90). The hymn was "also used in some Masses of the Roman and other Latin rites during the Middle

Ages."20 It repeats anaphorically, in a schematic echoing, forms of the word, "Benedictus." Consider the effect of a triple echoing, as Dante's trio passes through the flames. First, "Bedrt,"21 from a beatitude in Mat- thew (Canto 27:8); second, "Benedictus," from the story of the fiery furnace in Daniel (27:27); third, " Benedicti," again from Matthew, this time with a prophecy of the Last Judgment (27:58). Or rather, not a

triple echoing but two quotations framing the memory of a very possible

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multiple echo. As always, the literary distinctions matter, here for Dante's command of allusive technique. The first "Blessed" (Beati) sounds out, then a memory of Daniel recalls (if this is allusion) or may well recall (if this is echo) a series of "Benedictus" words. But these are not voiced in the text; they are just there as potential. The triumphant final Benedicti is

heard at the moment when all three, like the three in Daniel, emerge from the fire. For those with Scripture in their heads, the mind's ear

repeats Benedictus, fainter or louder, throughout the ordeal by fire, until the word itself emerges from the flame and into the text, and we hear it

spoken aloud in the form in which Jesus used it. It is as if we hear that move through the wall of flame taking the time it takes to sing those

thirty-nine verses and thirty-nine instances of Benedictus or Benedictum or Benedicite or Benedicat. It is also as if the echo comes from the Old Testa-

ment into the New, where it changes from echo to quotation. Hence also, as if echo is to Old Testament type as quotation is to New Testament

antitype. Once again, we are hearing a pattern of multiple allusion, following the

sequence of Old Testament, Gospel, and Apocalypse.22 And our faintest

hearing, an echo, is from "under the veil," while the two quotations draw on louder, clearer, and less enigmatic New Testament verses.

Similarly, the opening quotation from Canto 27:8: "Beati mundo corde!" As commentators regularly note, Dante in Canto 27 implicitly reminds the reader of what the blessed see, through the portion of the text he does not quote. "Beati mundo corde ..." (Blessed are the pure in heart)

"ipse Deum videbunt" (for they shall see God, Matt. 5:8).23 If readers are

encouraged, indeed expected, to complete this quotation, by the same token they are encouraged to complete it yet more fully by hearing the Psalm behind it. Psalm 23 (AV 24) also offers a holy mountain and also

anticipates a Benedictus: "Quis ascendet in montem Domini? Aut quis stabit in loco sancto eius? Innocens manibus et mundo corde . . ." (3-4: Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart . . .). And then: "Hie accipiet benedictionem a Domino" (5: He shall receive the blessing from the

Lord). Once again, we have the pattern of an Old Testament echo

(Psalms) emerging in a quotation from the Gospels (the beatitude), itself

pointing toward the end of time ("for they shall see God"). Allusion itself can act out the process of "Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate,

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tune autem facie ad faciem," unveiling the Hebrew Scriptures, while still

anticipating a completely unveiled reading at the end of time.

Similarly, and more briefly, the quotation, "Bead quorum tecta sunt pec- cata" in Canto 29:3 from the Psalms (31:1, AV 32:1), also used by Paul (in Romans 4:7: Blessed are they whose sins are covered).24 Dante contracts the verse from the Psalms, so that it sounds like another beatitude from the Gospels, as Singleton remarks in his note to Canto 29:3. The opening verses of the Apocalypse also include a blessing, so that later in Canto 29, when Dante tells his readers explicitly to read Ezekiel (29:100) and by implication John (29:105), he offers the possibility of yet another Beatus to add to the opening one from Psalms: "Beatus, qui legit, et audit ..."

(Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, Rev. 1:3). Similarly also, the quotation adapted from the Gospels in Canto 29:85-86, this time from Gabriel's annunciation to Mary, "Benedicta tu in mulieribus" (Blessed art thou among women, Luke 1:28), itself quoting an older text from Judges 5:24, "Benedicta inter mulieres." Similarly also, the quotation of"Benedictus qui venis!" in Canto 30:19, adapted from the Psalms (117 [118]:26, "Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini," Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord) and heard in Jesus' final entry into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:9). Similarly also, the quotation in Canto 30:83-84, from Psalm 30:2, 9 (31:1,8), "In te, Domine, speravi. . . . pedes meos" (In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust. . . . my feet), though here the words echoed in the Gospels occur between Dante's two quoted verses: "in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum" (into thy hands, I commend

my spirit), the last words of Jesus in Luke's Gospel (23:46). I also want to suggest a very possible echo in Canto 28, the lovely

canto of the Earthly Paradise, which seems to gather in all those dreams

prefiguring it, including the fictions allowed to classical poets. Here Ma- telda speaks of a fountain, "di fontana salda e certa" (28:124), variously translated as "safe and certain" (Longfellow), "constant and sure" (Car- lyle-Wicksteed, Sinclair, Singleton), "unfailing stores" (Binyon), "with constant force" (Ciardi), "sure and constant" (Sayers), "undecaying, sure"

(Cary). For myself, I should translate it as "sure and steadfast," the Vulgate rendering being "tutam ac firmam" - the rendering, that is, of Hebrews 6:19. (One older version [Sabatier] gives the adjectives as "tutam & fortis-

simam.") It is the power of the English translation, here Tyndale's, that made me hear "sure and steadfast" in Dante's "salda e certa," though it needed the context to confirm that Dante very likely has this text in mind.

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"Which hope," says Hebrews, "we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil" (. . . spem, quam sicut anchoram habemus animae tutam ac firmam, et incedentem usque ad interiora velaminis). In Dante, the attributes of hope are transferred from the anchor to the medium of water. The silent implication of this revised echo is that Eden's water is itself as strong as an anchor. That is the nature of a paradisal fountain of living water. If this echo is at work, Dante is undoing a biblical metaphor and a familiar

iconographical emblem in order to remake it in paradisal form. Hope in Eden is different in kind from earthly hope, even if one is still on the

wrong side of this remarkable water. Further, the echo in context offers another example of "that within the

veil," asserting that patriarchal and priestly faithfulness among the Jews is to be counted as faith in the new dispensation. The examples are Abraham and the high priest Melchisedek, a forerunner of Jesus as the new high priest. Melchisedek appears in Paradiso 8:124, Dante presumably being familiar with his justification by faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews.25 Dante's echo evokes all this only at a distance, of course, except for that

phrase about the veil ("ad interiora velaminis"). But there are too many veils floating through the entry to paradise for this echo not to move, if

only slightly. Though it is no more than an echo, albeit a clear one to my ear, once again it goes back to the Old Testament (both the fountain of Eden in Genesis 2:6,26 and Abraham and Melchisedek), refers to rather than quotes the Gospels, and goes forward to the end of time (Jesus wait-

ing as the new high priest). Allusions and references to the Song of Songs (and there are many in

these closing cantos) are triple by definition, so to speak. For the allegori- cal tradition of reading Christ and his Church as lover and beloved, antici-

pating Spirit and Bride in Revelation, is longstanding and powerful. Thus with the echo I have suggested of "the shadows flee away." Thus with the griffin's colors in Canto 29:113-114. Thus also with the quotation sung thrice at the beginning of Canto 30 (11): "Few/, sponsa, di Libano" (modern Vulgate: "Veni de Lebano, sponsa mea"), "Come, spouse from Lebanon." And what surrounds this text? "Until the day break and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, And to the hill of frankincense. Thou art all fair, my love; There is no spot in thee, Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse" (Donee aspiret dies, et in- clinentur umbrae, Vadam ad montem myrrhae, et ad collem thuris. Tota

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pulchra es, arnica mea, Et macula non est in te. Veni de Libano, sponsa mea, 4:6-8). Then follows: "Look from the top of Amana" (de capite Amana) and "Thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes" (Vuln- erasti cor meum in uno oculorum tuorum, 4:9).

Throughout these examples, Dante shows himself a master of the strat-

egies of allusion, from its loudest sounding out in a quotation, to allusion

properly so called, to the scale of clear through faint echo.27 If allusion acts out a story of inheritance, as Christopher Ricks has argued,28 here is the largest inheritance of all, mankind's entire inheritance of this earth. Dante also knows how allusion can bring with it a powerful sense of the context of the original. And his very patterning of allusion through the

entry into paradise suggests that allusion too is acting out a move from

"per speculum in aenigmate" to "facie ad faciem." Whatever might it mean to see the words of scripture face to face? It

does mean seeing them as the living word in procession, walking before

you, and not as dead source.29 It might mean seeing them all at once, and not laid out in time, whether over historical time or in the linear sequence of a sentence. Browning, who said he had all of Dante in his head and heart, and wrote a notoriously difficult poem on Sordello, spoke of fallen

language in these terms:30

. . . perceptions whole, like that he sought To clothe, reject so pure a work of thought As language: thought may take perception's place But hardly co-exist in any case, Being its mere presentment - of the whole By parts, the simultaneous and the sole By the successive and the many.

(Sordello 11.589-595)

"Face to face" would also mean hearing simultaneously the earlier verses that inform later verses of scripture. All these things are impossible literally and very possible figuratively. Something of this sort is implied, I think, in Dante's art of allusion.

Compare also the lightning-flash of Dante's momentous vision in Canto 29. First, he sees a sudden great brightness from the east, like lightning, except that it stays. The lightning owes something to the apocalyptic lightning of Matthew,31 but it also owes something to the apocalyptic lightning of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, in another example of Dante's

li




multiple alluding. "For as lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be"

(Sicut enim fulgur exit ab oriente, et paret usque in occidentem: ita erit et adventus Filii hominis, Matt. 24:27); there is a variation in Luke 17:24. Ezekiel's four living creatures are lit as by lightning: "de igne fulgur . . . in similitudinem fulguris" (1:13,14), whence the Apocalypse (4:5), where "out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices" (de throno procedebant fulgura, et voces, et tonitrua), that same throne around which sit the four and twenty elders we shall meet in Purgatorio 29:83.32

First bedazzlement, then a march past, then, with a thunderclap, a halt. The procession begins as with lightning and ends with the sound of thunder - much as if the vision itself took place in that interval between light- waves and sound-waves on this earth, as received by human eyes and ears, even though in the heavens lightning and thunder occur simultaneously.33 Again, Dante is figuring time doubly, as if it were experienced in the body and out of the body at once.34

Dante's threefold ingathering from Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocalypse is a Pauline kind of riddle-reading, as laid out above. That

is, to follow Augustine who follows Paul in 2 Corinthians, the Hebrew

Scriptures were read "under the veil" until the time of Christ, when their

enigmas were resolved in the Incarnation. The further enigma in which we all now see is the in aenigmate of the well-known verse in 1 Corinthi- ans 13.

Just before describing the great procession, Dante makes an extraordi-

nary biblical allusion that is much under-read in the literature I have seen. It is part of his invocation, and so powerful that it not only governs the invocation but also makes it a renewed vow of vocation, poetic vocation. Here Dante is not working with the threefold allusive pattern I have

observed, but with something close to his own person, in a linking of

Scripture with praxis. A sense of enigma comes only at the end, insofar as it points toward what follows in Paul's Epistle, where enigma dissolves into inexpressible mystery.

In Canto 29:37-38, Dante claims attention because of his devoted service: "se fami, / freddi o vigilie mai per voi soffersi." The allusion, as

commonly noted, is to 2 Corinthians 11:27, the culmination of a long passage where Paul recounts what he has suffered: "... in labore et aer-

umna, in vigiliis multis, in fame et siti, in ieiuniis multis, in frigore et

12




nuditate" ( ... in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness). Dante selects from the

list fame, frigore, vigiliis. Now, says Dante (29:40-42):

Or convien che Elicona per me versi, e Uranie m'aiuti col suo coro forti cose a pensar mettere in versi.

To transfer the tribulations of Paul's calling to the travails of a poet, even a poet of sacred things and even a poet suffering in exile: this is a bold move.

Yet consider what the surrounding context offers Dante. Paul says: "Though I be rude in speaking, yet I am not so in knowledge" (Tyndale, 2 Cor. 11:6, Nam etsi imperitus sermone, sed non scientia). If Dante wants a biblical argument for writing in Tuscan rather than Latin, this is

the text he wants. Then, in verse 10 (Tyndale): "If the truth of Christ be in me, this rejoicing shall not be taken from me in the regions of Achaia"

(Est veritas Chris ti in me, quoniam haec gloriatio non infringe tur in me in regionibus Achaiae) - in Achaea, which is to say (loosely) Greece, in-

cluding (loosely or tightly), Helicon. Dante through his allusion has em-

bedded his own defense for working "in the regions of Achaia," that is, in the home of the muses and more widely classical poetry. For all that, Paul not only preached in Athens and Corinth, but also himself alluded

to classical verse (Menander in an Epistle to the Corinthians, for example), even if he did not do so as often as the Fathers thought.35 But this is more

than a defense for Dante: it is his claim for recognition. Paul then begins what he calls his "boasting" (thus in the AV and

Tyndale, the Vulgate using forms of gloria). He warns his readers in ad-

vance that he is not speaking "in the Lord," that is, with special authority, and begins with a species of allegory, sarcasmos. You (says Paul) "suffer

fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise" (19). (The Latin makes a fine

pun of it: "suffertis insipientes: cum sitis ipsi sapientes."36) If you want

boasting, Paul continues, then I can boast better than any of you, for this

is what I have undergone. If you need my credentials, Dante says along with Paul, here they are.

It is after this that Paul comes to visions; "It is not expedient for me

doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord"

(Si gloriari oportet (non expedit quidem), veniam autem ad visiones et

13




revelationes Domini, 12:1). So also Dante, as he moves to the apparent trees of gold (29:43). Nor can he have forgotten that Paul goes on imme-

diately to talk of a man "caught up to the third heaven . . . (whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) . . . how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter" (sive in corpore nescio, sive extra corpus nescio, Deus scit, rap turn huiusmodi usque ad tertium caelum. . . . raptus est in paradisum: et audivit arcana verba, quae non licet homini loqui, 12:2-4). Paul claims authority thereby, "though I be nothing" (tametsi nihil sum, 12:11), and so does Dante by evoking this passage. At the start of his extraordinary mystic vision, he knows how to defend himself, how to claim artistic authority, how to claim the authority of one who has seen visions and dreamed dreams and known enigma and mystery beyond human laws. This single allusion opens up into an entire apologia for Dante's poetry and his poetic vocation.

The visionary procession of Canto 29 itself acts out a before and after, with the griffin, chariot, and Beatrice at the center.37 The white-robed elders come first, as the living books of the Old Testament. Their very whiteness comes first from the Old Testament (Isa. 1:18, and Ps. 50:9, AV

51:7, in the full Asperges me text of Dante's river Lethe, Purg. 31:98): "though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow" (Et si fuerint rubra quasi vermiculus, Velut lana alba erunt - in the Latin, "as white wool"). "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow" (Asperges me hyssopo, et mundabor; Lavabis

me, et super nivem dealbabor). In this aspect, they sing the advent of the four gospels which then follow in the shape of the four beasts. These elders Dante calls "quelle genti elette," the chosen people, the elected as in Pauline "election."38 Reading Ezekiel's four beasts iconographically as the beasts of the four gospels is also to see simultaneously Ezekiel and

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Seeing the full procession is to see history all at once. It is to see all at once that "which is, and which was, and which is to come," as the Apocalypse twice describes the Almighty in its

opening chapter (qui est, et qui erat, et qui venturus est, 1:4, 8). So also, as the visionary procession moves into sight, Dante's patterning

of both allusion and reference gives the effect of enacting all human his-

tory simultaneously. Memories of Eve, of Paul's vision of paradise, of the start of the Apocalypse, of the Hosanna sung to Jesus on his entry into

Jerusalem just before his death, of the rainbow, of Gabriel's annunciation

14



Scripture as Enigma: Biblical Allusion in Dante's Earthly Paradise, Eleanor cook

message to Mary - all these memories mean we are approaching three

things all at once. First, a new creation, including new creation after sin and destruction (Eve, Noah, and by implication Dante himself at this moment). Second, the incarnation of Jesus from the advent through to the crucifixion and resurrection (Gabriel to Mary, the crowd to Jesus entering Jerusalem). Third, the Last Judgment and the end of time (Paul's vision, John's Apocalypse). Dante's doubly or triply echoing texts from the biblical books have anticipated this effect.39

So has his claim to authority in the invocation. Along with the Apostle Paul, Dante implies, he too has authority for seeing not just "per speculum in aenigmate" but even "facie ad faciem," as far as his vision allows. The claim becomes explicit when Dante writes that John of Patmos agrees with him rather than Ezekiel concerning the details of the four beasts

("Giovanni e meco e da lui si diparte," 29:105). Dante, along with Ezek- iel and John of Patmos, as well as the Apostle Paul, can speak with author-

ity as a prophetic master poet40 of enigma.

Victoria College

University of Toronto

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

NOTES

The following abbreviations are used throughout:

AV: The Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible (1611) (Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from the English Bible are from this translation.)

Binyon: Laurence Binyon, Dante s Purgatono with a translation into English triple rhyme (London: Mac-

millan, 1938).

Carlyle-Wicksteed: The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, the Carlyle-[Okey]-Wicksteed translation

(New York: Modern Library, 1932).

Cary: Henry Francis Cary, tr., The Vision; or, Hell, Purgatory and Paradise of Dante Alighieri (1805-14), 3rd ed. (London, New York: Frederick Warne, n.d., c. 1844).

Ciardi: John Ciardi, Purgatorio: A Verse Translation for the Modem Reader (New York: New American

Library, 1961).

Longfellow: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, tr., The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri , 3 vols. (Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 1867). PL: Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 217 vols. (Paris, 1878-1890).

Sayers: Dorothy Sayers, tr., Purgatory (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955). Sinclair: John D. Sinclair, tr. and comment, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, rev. ed., 3 vols.

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1961 ).

Singleton: Charles S. Singleton, tr. with commentary, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, 3 vols. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, Bollingen series: 1970-1975, cor-

15




rected ed. 1977). (Unless otherwise noted, all Italian quotations from the Commedia are from this edition.)

Tyndale: Tyndale's New Testament, translated from the Greek by William Tyndale in 1534, ed. David Daniell (New Haven, Connecticut, and London: Yale University Press, 1989).

Vulgate: Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatem Clementiam, 6th ed. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1982). (Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from the Latin Bible are from this edition.)

1 . A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 3, tr. Arthur West Haddan, rev. William G. T. Shedd (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1887; rpt. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1993).

2. Enigma as trope was familiar from Donatus and many another rhetorician. For centuries, it figured as one of the seven species of allegory. A study of enigma as a figure of speech is part of my work in progress on literary riddle and enigma.

3. As Herbert Marks points out, Augustine is quoting the Vetus Latina for 2 Cor. 3:18 ("de gloria in gloriam"), which is more literal, rather than Jerome's and the Modern Vulgate, which retains "gloriam Domini" but changes to "a claritate in claritatem." See his "Hollowed Names: Vox and Vanitas in the Purgatorio" Dante Studies 110 (1992), 171 n. 15.

4. Erich Auerbach, in his classic essay, "Figura," also notes this three-stage pattern: ". . . in certain earlier writers but more definitely in Augustine, the confrontation of the two poles, figure and fulfillment, is sometimes replaced by a development in three stages: the Law or history of the Jews as a prophetic Ji^wra for the appearance of Christ; the incarnation as fulfillment of this figura and at the same time as a new promise of the end of the world and the Last Judgment; and finally, the future occurrence of these events as ultimate fulfillment" ("Figura," in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature, tr. Ralph Manheim [Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1973], 41; originally published in Archivum Romanicum, 22 [1938], 436-489, and in English in Neue Dantestudien [1944], 11-71). The same threefold progression, law, grace, and glory, may also be found in Pascal's remarks on typology (Pensees 643).

5. The three terms are used in the following senses. (1) Quotation is marked as such, e.g. by italics. (2) "Allusion" is used of both the over-all process and the intermediate stage between quotation and echo. An allusion proper, in this latter sense, is what a likely reader would likely recognize at a given time and place. (3) Echo works on a scale of probability, as indicated. See "Questions of Allusion," chap. 6 in my Against Coercion: Games Poets Play (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998), 99-106. The scale is adapted from John Hollander, The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).

6. By "reference" I mean a remark referring to a biblical event or person or text, without using the actual words of the Bible. Allusion involves verbal repetition. The difference sounds small until one reflects on what poets do with words, and how good allusive work can bring a weight of context to bear. For a wide-ranging analysis of kinds of biblical citation, see Christopher Kleinhenz, "Dante and the Bible: Biblical Citation in the Divine Comedy,'' in Amilcare Iannucci, ed., Dante: Contemporary Perspectives (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 74-93. Dante e la Bibbia, ed. Giovanni Barblan (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1988), is indispensable in any study of Dante's biblical allusions. See also Rachel Jacoff and Jeffrey T. Schnapp, eds., The Poetics of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante's "Commedia" (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991), and Peter Hawkins, "Scripts for the Pageant: Dante and the Bible," Stanford Literature Review, 5 (1988), 75-92.

7. Changing the metaphor from visual to acoustic, from sight to echo, we might say that Dante is also preparing us for a face-to-face hearing of language, "mouth to mouth," as God speaks to Moses in the text echoing behind Paul's "face to face" (Num. 12:6-8). Or rather, the paradisal form of a face-to-face hearing.

8. Ciardi also uses the word "shadows," though Binyon's and Sinclair's verb tense comes closer to the biblical verse than does Ciardi's. Cary: "Darkness . . . fled"; Longfellow: "the darkness fled

away"; Carlyle-Wicksteed: "the shades of night were fleeing"; Binyon: "the shadows on all sides were fleeing"; Sayers: "the shades of darkness fled away"; Sinclair: "the shadows were fleeing on

every side"; Singleton: "The shades of night fled away"; Ciardi: "the shadows fled."

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9. See Kenneth Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 57 and passim, on conversus, etc., and the "vert-" family.

10. See also Lino Pertile, La puttana e ilgigante. Dal Cantico dei Cantici al Paradiso terrestre di Dante

(Ravenna: Longo, 1998). 1 1 . Goats are traditionally known as lascivious, as witness Shakespeare's Touchstone (As You Like

It, III.iii.7-9). 12. Gian Roberto Sarolli, Prolegomena alia "Divina Commedia" (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1971),

404-405, esp. 405n.2. In the Latin of the modern Vulgate, the words caper (goat, masc), copra (she-

goat), hircus (he-goat), occasionally hoedus (haedus, kid) and aries (male sheep or he-goat), are all used.

Caprea is infrequent, except in the Song of Songs, where it appear seven times. The AV translates

caprea as roe, occasionally roebuck, as does the Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1982) in the form "roe-deer." T. E. Page, commenting on Horace's ode IV.iv.13, distinguishes caprea, "a roebuck," and

capra, "a she-goat" (T. E. Page, Q. Horatii Flacci Carminum JJbri IV. Epodon Liber [London: Macmillan,

1939]). In the Old Testament, the goat is offered as a sacrifice or sin-offering {pro peccato); see, e.g., Lev. 9:15, Num. 28:22, Ezek. 43:25. In the New Testament, Christ takes on this role, once and for

all, as a spotless lamb and not a scapegoat (John 1:29, 36 and Rev. passim; see Hebrews 9:11-10:4 on this change). At least two medieval commentators on the Song of Songs speak of goats in pejorative terms, in the course of commenting on the haedos (AV, "flock") of 1:7; see Thomas Gallus and Giles of Rome in Denys Turner, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo,

Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1995), pp. 334 and 376. The classical connotations of caprea are a

young and/or a wild animal; biblical examples stress swiftness and a mountain habitat.

13. Milton does something similar with words, showing them in an unfallen then a fallen sense.

I wonder if he learned it from Dante. For example, he introduces the forest of Eden with a prelaps- arian use of the word "savage": "that steep savage hill" (Paradise Lost IV. 172). Later the word moves

from a savage-sylvan etymological association to a savage-barbaric etymological association: "O

might I here / In solitude live savage, in some glade / Obscur'd, where highest woods

impenetrable . . ." (ibid. IX. 1084-1 086). Language, like the forest, participates in the general fall. In

the second example, incidentally, Milton is echoing Dante's "selva oscura . . . selva selvaggia" from

the opening lines of the Inferno. See "The Senses of Eliot's Salvages," in my Against Coercion: Games

Poets Play, 120-127. 14. Peter Dronke notes that "it has not been observed that more of Ovid's context is pertinent

to Dante," comparing in both the story of "repairing mankind's loss, through a heaven-sent interven-

tion on earth" (Dante and Medieval Latin Traditions [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986], 137, n 1). On the typological patterning of Noah, see R. E. Kaske: "Medieval interpretations [of

Sapientia] . . . allegorize the preservation of Noah and his family on the ark as the salvation of

mankind through the instrumentality of the Cross" (" 'Si si conserva il seme d'ogne giusto,' " Dante

Studies, 89 [1971], 52). 15. See Carol V. Kaske: "Mount Purgatory is modeled on Mount Sinai in its guardian, its earth-

quake, its unapproachability, and its place in the Exodus-pattern. From Sinai, New Testament parallels extend to the Mounts of Christ's Sermon and of the Transfiguration. . . . The secondary overtones

of the New Testament mountains . . . join with direct statements to identify it as the New Law"

("Mount Sinai and Dante's Mount Purgatory," Dante Studies, 89 [1971], 15-16). 16. On the Transfiguration, see especially Jeffrey T. Schnapp, The Transfiguration of History at the

Center of Dante's "Paradise" (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986), 110-120.

17. Is it possible that Dante is revising the Apostle Paul and his notorious verse, "It is better to

marry than to burn" (Melius est enim nubere, quam uri, 1 Cor. 7:9)? It is true that Paul does say his

words here are not binding: "But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment" (indulgent- iam . . . non . . . imperium, 1 Cor. 7:6).

18. Natalino Sapegno, ed. and comm., La Divina Commedia (Milano: Ricciardi, 1957); Umberto

Bosco and Giovanni Reggio, ed. and comm., La Divina Commedia (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1979). 19. Note to Canto 27:27, in C. H. Grandgent, ed., La Divina Commedia, rev. ed. (Boston: Heath,

1933).

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20. The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed. Don Michael Randel (Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Harvard University Press, 1986), s.v. "Canticle." 21. "Beatus" (from bed), to follow Lewis & Short, was widely used, and included the meaning

of "happy." "Benedictus" (also "blessed") is ecclesiastical Latin (the example in Lewis & Short is

from Matthew). 22. Augustine quotes the "Venite, benedicti Patri" passage as an example of how we are all going

to come face to face with the Son of Man at the Last Judgment ("et ibi erit ilia visio facie ad faciem," Enarratio I in Psalmum xlviii, serm. l.v).

23. Thus also the blind Milton, in a glancing echo, uses only the first part of the beatitude in the

opening invocation of Paradise Lost : "And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer / Before all

Temples th' upright heart and pure, / Instruct me . . ." (1.17-19). 24. The AV uses the singular, "Blessed is he ... whose sin is covered," in Ps. 32:1 and the plural

in Paul's quotation, Rom. 4:7. 25. This is the only time he is mentioned in the New Testament, and a good deal of space is

given to him. He is a familiar figure in the retelling of biblical narrative, for example, in the opening "Dixit Domini"of Mozart's Vesperae Solennes de Confessore (K 339): "tu es sacerdos in aeternum

secundum ordinem Melchisedec" (Thou art a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedec),

quoting Heb. 7:17, 21. In Ravenna, the right lunette of the presbytery in the sixth-century Basilica

of St. Vitale shows Melchizedek offering bread and wine (as in Gen. 14:18). His name appears above

his head as part of the mosaic. See also Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, vol. 2, The Passion

of Christ, tr. Janet Seligman (Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, 1972), 25-26.

26. See Singleton's note to Canto 28.124. 27. Compare John Freccero on Dante's masterly use of quotation, allusion, and echo from Virgil

throughout this passage, in his "Manfred's Wounds and the Poetics of the Purgatorio," Centre and

Labyrinth: Essays in Honour of Northrop Frye, ed. Eleanor Cook et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto

Press, 1983), 79-81. 28. Christopher Ricks "Allusion: The Poet as Heir," in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature

III, ed. R. F. Brissenden and J. C. Eade (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 209-240;

"Tennyson Inheriting the Earth," in Studies in Tennyson, ed. Hallam Tennyson (London: Macmillan,

1981), 66-104. 29. Alas that Dante's allusions are so often read as dead sources. For the difference, see my

"Questions of Allusion" (note 5 above). On different types of sources, see Michael Whitworth, " 'Sweet Thames' and The Waste Land's Allusions," Essays in Criticism, 48 (1998), 35-58.

30. Robert Browning, The Poems, ed. John Pettigrew (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Univer-

sity Press, 1981), I, 189. For the remark on Dante, see The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth

Barrett Barrett, 1845-1846, 2 vols. (London: Smith, Elder, 1899), I, 57. 31. See Peter Dronke on the pertinence of Matthew 24:27, with its the prophecy of Christ

coming from the east, in his "The Procession in Dante's Purgatorio," Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch, 53/4

(1978-1979), 21-22. 32. For all that, there is a rainbow about the throne in Revelation (4:3), so that when Dante

speaks of "l'arco il Sole e Delia il cinto" (29:78), he elicits biblical memories of Noah as well as Ezekiel and the Apocalypse to enlarge the classical corollary.

33. This fact was known to the ancients. See Pliny, Naturalis Historia II.LV.142.

34. Dante notes early in Canto 29 how our senses may deceive us, emphasizing this by the word

falsava and its enjambment (43-44, "sette alberi d'oro / falsa va"). Falsava is astonishing. The senses can be deceived even in Eden, Dante reminding us implicitly that he still has some way to go. So also here, in the matter of apprehending lightning and thunder through our senses.

35. Clement of Alexandria "was the first author who paid special attention to such literary quotations in the books of the New Testament." He identified the quotation from Aratus in Paul's sermon in Acts 17:28, the quotation from Epimenides the Cretan in Titus 1:12, and the echo of Menander in 1 Corinthians 15:33. (See Werner Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia, 112, n. 28.) Jerome repeats the attributions in his Commentary on Galatians (PL 26, 41 6C) and in his Letter LXX (PL 22, 665). Scholars now agree that allusions in the reported sermon in Acts and also in the minor

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pastoral epistles are probably from someone else's hand. This leaves the Menander echo in Corinthi- ans. There was a strong rhetorical tradition at Tarsus, Paul's home.

36. The Tyndale gloss on this bears on Dante's whole development of knowledge and wisdom: "Too much meekness and obedience is not allowed in the kingdom of God but all must be according to knowledge."

37. Richard Lansing has recently recalled "Vellutello's interpretation of the Procession as bearing the shape of the Cross of Christ," a shape familiar from the standard floor-plan of church architecture. See his "Narrative Design in Dante's Earthly Paradise," Dante Studies, 112 (1994), 107-108.

38. Isaiah 42:1 gives "electus meus," and Isaiah 65:7, "electi mei." 39. Incidentally, it is very striking that, at the end of Canto 32, Dante does not use biblical

allusion, for all the crowd of references to monstrous apocalyptic events. There is no quotation, allusion proper or echo in which Dante is evidently mindful of the original words, the weight of their context, and the angle of difference with his own words. He adapts a host of details: the attacks, the whore of Babylon, the monstrous growths. But it is as if he averts his gaze from the fearful words of Scripture themselves as possible words for poetry.

40. Teodolinda Barolini has recently drawn our attention to post-canonical and later examples of

this tradition of visionary commissioning and utterance. See her "Why Did Dante Write the Comme-

dia> or The Vision Thing," Dante Studies, 111 (1993), 1-8.

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Documents

Scripture as Enigma: Biblical Allusion in Dante's Earthly Paradise