![]() He will leave behind all that he holds most dear: “ogne cosa diletta / più caramente” (everything you love most dearly ). The first arrow shot from the bow of exile is affective and all-encompassing. With great lucidity, Dante examines the feelings of loss that he experienced. He was not imagining he knew whereof he wrote. The poigancy of these famous verses is guaranteed by our knowledge that the man who wrote them had already endured the sufferings that they recount - indeed, he had endured them for many long years. Of others’ bread, how salt it is, and know 17.55-60) You shall leave everything you love most dearly: Lo scendere e ’l salir per l’altrui scale. Thus, he compares Dante to the innocent Hippolytus, betrayed by his stepmother Phaedra, and announces that Dante’s ruin will also come about because of a wicked stepmother: In Paradiso 17 Dante not only metaphorizes the family motif he also makes it negative. This view of events also echoes the first discussion of Dante’s exile, in Inferno 6. Given that the Pope supported the Black Guelphs, and that Dante was exiled with his fellow White Guelphs when the Blacks took power, this is a valid claim. ![]() The implication in Paradiso 17 is that Dante’s exile comes about through the machinations of the papal court and Pope Boniface VIII. The “spietata e perfida noverca” (fierce and faithless stepmother) of Paradiso 17.47 recalls the use of “noverca” in Paradiso 16, where it refers to the Roman Curia: “Se la gente ch’al mondo più traligna / non fosse stata a Cesare noverca” (If those who, in the world, go most astray / had not seen Caesar with stepmothers’ eyes ). Instead of a real historical mother or stepmother, he now refers to a “perfidious stepmother” in metaphorical - allegorical - sense, referring to the perfidious forces that led to Dante’s exile. In initiating his explanation of future events, Cacciaguida takes the profoundly historicized family motif of the heaven of Mars and metaphorizes it. 17.19-23) while I was in the company of Virgil,īoth on the mountain that heals souls and whenĭescending to the dead world, what I heardĪbout my future life were grievous words. Here, for the first time since Purgatorio 30, we encounter the name of the Roman poet who was the pilgrim’s surrogate father through much of his journey: And thus it is not altogether surprising to find that the pilgrim, in describing to his great-great-great-grandfather the journey through the afterlife in which he learned of his future exile, uses the name “Virgilio”. The female side of the lineage is not absent: Cacciaguida refers to “mia madre, ch’è or santa” (my mother, blessed now) in Paradiso 16.35 and explains that the Alighieri surname comes from his wife, “mia donna venne a me di val di Pado, / e quindi il sopranome tuo si feo” (my wife came from the valley of the Po the surname that you bear was brought by her) in Paradiso 15.137-38.īut most of all this heaven celebrates fathers. The heaven of Mars, as we have seen, celebrates family lineage and family ties: mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, children. Hence, the poet communicates the information about his exile in the form of prophecies - warnings (intended to be helpful, in the case of Brunetto, or vengeful, in the case of Farinata), which are passed on to him by Florentines and other Italians whom he meets. ![]() All offer him prophecies of the exile and disgrace that await him.ĭante was exiled from Florence, we recall, in 1302, two years after the journey to the afterlife in Easter week of 1300. The pilgrim now asks Cacciaguida about the prophecies that were made to him in the course of his journey, by fellow Florentines: Ciacco in Inferno 6, Farinata in Inferno 10, and Brunetto Latini in Inferno 15.
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