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Home , Matelda, Paradiso (Dante)

Dante, , 28, lines 22-79.1

My steps by now had carried me so deep within the ancient wood that I could no see back to where I’d entered first. Look there! A brook held back my onward pace. Its course was leftward, and its little waves swayed all the grass that rose along its banks. The purest waters that down here may flow would seem to have admixtures in their depths compared with those, which don't hide anything. And yet these waters move dark, dark beneath a shadow that's perpetual and allows no ray of or moonlight ever through. My pace here checked, I passed in sight alone beyond that stream, to see and wonder at these May-things in abundance varying. And then appeared to me – as things appear that suddenly in wonder will deflect the claims of every other thought we have – a donna all alone who walked along, singing and choosing flowers to pluck from flowers that painted all the way she went upon. 'Lady, you warm yourself in rays of love, or so I think, to see your lovely looks – these usually bear witness to the heart. May you incline, in will, to move more close,' sighing I said, 'towards this flowing stream, so I may understand the song you sing. You make me call to mind Proserpina, both where and what she was - when she lost Spring and her own mother lost all sight of her.' Her feet together, firmly pressed to ground as when a donna dances, she then turned and, scarcely setting foot in front of foot, she turned above the yellow and the red of tender flowers, as virgin girls will do when they, for decency, dip down their eyes.

1 , The 2: Purgatorio, translated by Robin Kirkpatrick, London: Penguin Books, 2007, pp. 263-5. allenfi[email protected] 1 Then she in full responded to my prayers, bringing herself so near that that sweet sound came to me, with the meanings that it bore. And now, the moment she'd arrived at where the grass was bathed by waves from that fine stream, she made a gift to me: she raised her eyes. I do not think so great a light shone out beneath the brows of when her son pierced her with love beyond his usual stroke. She stood there, laughing, on the other bank arranging many colours in her hands, strewn by the mighty without a seed. The river kept us still three steps apart.2 And yet the Hellespont where Xerxes passed (a bridle still on all our human pride) did not so much incur Leander's hate, when oceans raged from Sest to Abydos, as this did mine because it would not part. 'You are both new,' she now began to say, ‘in this place, chosen for the human race to make its nest. And you stand wondering, perhaps because I smile, caught up in doubt. …

Extract from Kirkpatrick, Commentary on Canto 28.3

‘The second phase of canto 28 anticipates the philosophical vision of perfected and transfigured nature that Dante will explore in the . (Compare Paradiso I and I3.) It also reflects an appetite for detailed explanation, in quasi-scientific terms, that occurs in all parts of the Purgatorio, particularly in 's comparable discussion of meteorology. (See Purgatorio 21: 41-60.) However, the canto concludes (139-48) with neither science fiction nor , but with a celebration of myth – which is particularly notable since, as emphasises at line 136, it involves a celebration of classical antiquity which is, strictly, only a 'footnote' in her discussion of divine creation. The Earthly is 'perhaps' the place that classical poets dreamed of before the coming of Christ, when they spoke of 'an Age of Gold' and of Parnassus (140-141). In the Italian text of lines 139-41 a significant and very moving sequence of rhymes is constructed to express this:

2 Here [lines 70-75] are two references to the Hellespont (now known as the Dardanelles). Xerxes crossed the Hellespont in 480 BCE to launch an attack on Greece, but was defeated at Salamis and put to flight. Leander swam across the narrowest part of the strait between Sestos and Abydos to meet his secret lover Hero, until, risking the winter storms, he drowned. Hero then drowned herself. (See Ovid, Heroides 18-19 and , Georgics 3: 258- 63.)

3 Robin Kirkpatrick, op. cit. translation of Dante, 2007, pp.468-471. allenfi[email protected] 2 'poetaro/sognaro': 'they wrote poetry/they dreamed', translated here with the half-rhyme 'poems/ dream'. Poetry and dreaming are, it seems, closely akin, and the dreams of the classical poets are praised here for having kept alive the hopes of , peace and fulfilment that are fully realised in the person of Christ. These lines bring to a climax the concern with Virgil's prophetic writings that began in Purgatorio 22: 70-72 with a quotation from his fourth Eclogue. They also identify one of the most important strands in the imaginative texture of the Commedia. Dante was a syncretist, looking constantly for ways in which classical and Christian texts could be reconciled. He was not, of course, alone in being so. For instance, in the Dominican church of Santa Sabina at Rome (where Aquinas worked on his Summa Theologiae) there is still to be seen a ninth-century Paschal candlestick in which the twofold nature of the incarnate Christ – both human and divine – is represented by a column of intertwining spirals which are supported by sphinxes, alluding to the ancient culture of Egypt. Dante in cantos 29 and 30 constructs his own enigmatic image of Christ's double nature in his depiction of the mysterious Gryphon, simultaneously eagle and lion, drawing on Middle Eastern iconographic traditions. Throughout the final cantos of the Purgatorio, there is an especially rich fusion (and tension) between recollections of pagan antiquity and the impact of Christian reality. Allusions to ancient legend punctuate canto 28. … The most significant of these, at lines 49-51, is to the myth of Proserpina, the daughter of Ceres, who was carried off by Pluto while picking flowers in the apparently perpetual springtime of the vale of Enna. This legend is regularly seen as a myth of the seasonal cycle. But Dante's principal source is Metamorphoses 5: 385-408, in which the scene is depicted with Ovid's characteristic eroticism. In Dante's text it is an introduction to his encounter with the complex figure of Matelda (though she is only named as such at Purgatorio 33: 119). And with Matelda – delicate as the impression of her is there appears a wholly new and momentous theme which will lead Dante away from the world of Ovid and (since it is Matelda who draws Dante across the stream of at Purgatorio 31: 91-102) to the final salvation from his sins which awaits him (beyond all merely seasonal change) on the opposite bank of the dividing stream. Something of Ovid's eroticism does, however, remain in Dante's text. It is appropriate that it should. Pleasure and desire are now – as Virgil has declared – the appropriate guides to Dante's experience. Matelda is characterised by the poise and self-possession of her dance, smiling and laughing (40-69) as no one hitherto has in the course of Dante's journey. At first sight, it might be supposed that this is the Beatrice whom Virgil said Dante would find 'smiling, in all her happiness, on the crest’ (Purgatorio 61: 46-8). But Beatrice will not appear until canto 30 – and then in a very different guise. A model for the relationship between Matelda and Beatrice is shown to exist, in canto 27, between Leah and . Beatrice, like Rachel, will open Dante's eyes to ways in which he may contemplate directly. Matelda, like Leah, serves God's purposes in the active life and is an emblem of the ethical perfection that human beings may enjoy in the perfect exercise of their natural powers. If the Earthly Paradise represents the natural order in its perfect state, Matelda represents the enjoyment that human beings may derive from the full participation in that order, which they acquire by the exercise of their moral and intellectual virtues. In this sense, she is the new Eve, showing what Eve would have enjoyed if she had not been distracted from the path of obedience and justice. In this sense, too, she is an embodiment of all that Virgil would have been if he had been capable of taking 'what pleases you to be your guide' (canto 27, line 131) or if (to put it allenfi[email protected] 3 differently) his own virtues had not been severed from fulfilment by the as-yet unredeemed repercussions of the Fall. It is for reasons such as this that some critics (including Dante's son, Pietro, in his commentary of about 1340) identify this dancing figure as Matelda, countess of Canossa (1046-1115), a powerful supporter of the Church, in whose courtyard the Emperor Henry IV (1050-1106) was obliged to kneel in the snow and display his allegiance to the pope. The Earthly Paradise is a realm of justice such as Dante, in his political philosophy, regularly supposes might be brought about in temporal circumstances by the ideal emperor. However, once established, the order of justice is consistent with, and prepares for, the revelation of the order of grace, which the Church is commissioned to announce. Debate continues as to the validity (or usefulness) of so precise an identification of Matelda. None the less, this reading is broadly consistent with the allegorical role that she performs in subsequent cantos. Though Beatrice, throughout these cantos, profoundly calls into question the competence of the human intellect in making any approach to the mysteries of divine existence, it is Matelda who stands surety for the enduring value of these virtues, once their relation to God's mystery is properly recognised. Dante must lose himself in the river Lethe. It is Matelda who acts as his baptismal advocate and sponsor, drawing him through the stream while she herself walks on its waves as the transfigured image of perfected humanity. (See Purgatorio 31:

91-102.)

Such a reading should not obscure the significance that derives from Matelda's position in the developing narrative, and from the lyric appeal of the verses in which Dante describes her. In narrative terms, her presence in the poem confirms the modulation that occurred at the end of canto 27, where feminine presences begin to displace the male guides on whom Dante has so far been dependent. (Virgil is henceforth silent, while Statius remains a vestigial figure, only intermittently visible.) Matelda is the first of the donne – or nymphs, as the poet frequently describes them – who now bring Dante to perfect readiness for . In imagining the garden as a pastoral scene, Dante draws not only on classical and Virgilian models but also upon the pastorelle of the vernacular tradition. This latter tradition concentrates less upon the perfections of the natural landscape than upon the perfections of the people that inhabit it, and is frequently erotic in its implications. A poet will see a peasant girl or shepherdess, describe her beauty, recognise that she is ready for love and proceed to a (delicately veiled) consummation. An example that Dante would have known is Cavalcanti's 'In un boschetta trova' pastorella .. .' (quoting lines 3-8 and 26):

Cavelli avea biondetti e ricciutelli e gli occhi pien d'amor, cera rosata; con sua verghetta pastorau' agnelli; discalza, di rugiada era bagnata; cantava corne fosse 'narnorata: er' adornata - di tutto piacere. . . . che ‘I dio d'amore - rni parea vedere.

allenfi[email protected] 4 (Her sweet hair was blond, with little curls, her eyes full of love, her complexion rosy; with her staff she was pasturing lambs; her bare feet were wet with dew. She was singing as if she were in love. She was adorned with every beauty ... [She took me by the hand] ... and there I seemed to see the god of love.)

It is entirely in keeping with the value that Dante places upon the erotic impulse (see commentary to Purgatorio 17) that Matelda should exert a comparable influence. Yet Dante's vision is more complex than Cavalcanti's, and brings about a re-adjustment of emphasis comparable to that which emerged in his representation of Arnaut Daniel in Purgatorio 26. Above all, Dante recognises that erotic love can lead (as it does in the final cantos of the Paradiso) to literal union with the 'god' of love, in the all-generating harmony of divined . But refinement of this love is first of all required. And where, previously, that refinement came in the fire that the lustful accept, it is now secured by the stream that flows between Dante and Matelda. This stream insists upon the distance between them. In that respect, it points to the purifications that in Occitan poetry are secured by 'amor de lonh'/ 'love from afar'. Such purification leads, if not always to God, then to a courtesy and concern in the lover which finds solace in devotion to the inner image of the donna, or else from the conversations that her person calls forth. So here the stream – the waters of which will take away Dante's memory of sin – forbids any possibility of the sexual power play which is evident even in Cavalcanti's poem, whereby the aristocratic lover might violate the peasant girl (willing as she usually seems to be). On the contrary, authority lies entirely with Matelda, as it will with Beatrice, not least in so far as Matelda in the second half of the canto speaks in philosophical terms of precisely those intellectual and scientific themes that, for Cavalcanti, were the proud preserve of the male poet. Such revisions and transformations are consistent with the linguistic character of canto 28 at large. In his description of natural phenomena Dante far surpasses in sensuality and detail the conventional idiom of Cavalcanti's pastorelle. The science (fantastic as it may be) that he brings to bear – through Matelda's mouth – on this natural scene exceeds anything that philosophical poets of his age would have attempted. And so, too, does the rich vein of classical allusion. But into these three strands Dante interweaves a fourth, which is his awareness (as a syncretist) of how all talk of love, perfection or nature is rooted in the Scriptural tradition. In the next cantos Dante will write as if he were a prophet (again taking vernacular poetry to levels that his contemporaries could not emulate). The classical Earthly Paradise will be perceived with increasing clarity as the lost . In canto 28, however, the constant point of reference is the verse 'Delectasti …' to which Matelda alludes at line 80, where (in the if less so in the Authorised Version of the Bible) the singer speaks of the all-consuming delight that God offers to those who take pleasure in His creation: For thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy work: I will triumph in the works of thy hand.

Vulgate, Psalms 91: 5-6

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