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Dante “Imagining” His Journey Through the Afterlife
Mirko Tavoni
Dante Studies, Volume 133, 2015, pp. 70-97 (Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/das.2015.0008
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/605111
[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]Dante “Imagining” His Journey
Through the Afterlife*
Mirko Tavoni
V isio or fictio? The debate over whether Dante’s Comedy is a visio or
a fictio has continued for more than a century and a half, with the
vast majority of scholars arguing in favour of the fictio thesis.The
contrast between the literary genres of the “vision” and the “otherworldly
journey” offers more or less the same alternative.This subject is discussed
in an influential essay by Cesare Segre, who argues that the Comedy begins
as a vision, but continues as a realistic, extremely detailed, and purely
literary narrative of a physical journey.1 It is, however, an explicit, unam-
biguous fact that Dante himself presents his poem as a vision. One need
only recall the words of Cacciaguida in Paradiso 17—“tutta tua vision fa
manifesta . . .” (Par. 17.128)—or the words of St. Bernard at the end of
Paradiso 32. After explaining the placement of the angels and the saints
who occupy the various benches of the White Rose of the Empyrean,
Bernard tells Dante that he must now cut short their talk—the clock is
ticking and he has to hurry if he wants to be in time to see God:
. . . e contro al maggior padre di famiglia
siede Lucia, che mosse la tua donna
138 quando chinavi, a rovinar, le ciglia.
Ma perché ’l tempo fugge che t’assonna,
qui farem punto, come buon sartore
141 che com’elli ha del panno fa la gonna;
e drizzeremo li occhi al primo amore,
sì che, guardando verso lui, penètri
144 quant’è possibil per lo suo fulgore.
Vol. 133:70–97 © 2015 Dante Society of AmericaDante “Imagining” His Journey Through the Afterlife Tavoni
Various interpretations of verse 139 (“ma perché ’l tempo fugge che
t’assonna”) have been proposed. Despite every linguistic subtlety being
expended to force the words to mean something different, there can only
be one possible interpretation. I agree on this point with Anna Maria
Chiavacci Leonardi, who insists:
t’assonna: ti tiene come addormentato. Il verbo indica lo stato proprio della visione
mistica, assomigliato tradizionalmente al sonno, in quanto la mente è come distaccata
dai sensi: “oportet in contemplationis principio, ut homo quasi consopitus a sensibus
alienetur, quasi per somnum . . .” (Bonaventura, In Evang. S. Lucae IX 32). Così di
Paolo rapito al cielo Agostino scriveva: “quasi dormiens evigilaret” (Gen. ad litteram
XII, v). La precisa corrispondenza di questo significato al contesto rende secondo noi
sicura l’interpretazione del verbo in tal senso (Dante stesso del resto presenta l’autore
dell’Apocalisse che avanza dormendo a Purg. 29.144).2
I also agree with Ignazio Baldelli, who, as an historian of the Italian
language, states that the alternative interpretations proposed for verse 139
are “incredibly convoluted” and can only be explained as the result of a
prejudice strong enough to forgo linguistic plausibility:
Quel tempo che assonna è stato interpretato nei modi più incredibilmente contorti:
ciò proprio perché se ne è rifiutata l’interpretazione letterale, recalcitrando a vedere
nella Commedia una visio in somniis. Probabilmente le due terzine [vv. 136–141]
alludono all’inizio del ‘sonno’ di Dante (Lucia che manda Beatrice a Dante “quando
chinavi, a rovinar, le ciglia”) e alla fine appunto dello stesso ‘sonno’ (“perché ’l tempo
fugge che t’assonna”), cioè all’inizio e alla fine del sogno-visione.3
T’assonna, in fact, recalls the scene at the very beginning of the poem:
Io non so ben ridir com’i’ v’intrai,
tant’era pien di sonno a quel punto
12 che la verace via abbandonai.4
And Baldelli rightly notes that verse 38 (“quando chinavi, a rovinar, le
ciglia”) recalls Inferno 1.11–12 (“mentre ch’i rovinava in basso loco”),
which suggests that the visio in somniis that was now about to end had
started when Dante was lost in the dark forest. In other words, the entire
otherworldly journey is contained within a vision in a dream.5
71Dante Studies 133, 2015
Inferno. 1 Paradiso 32
Io non so ben ridir com’i’ v’intrai, . . . e contro al maggior padre di
tant’era pien di sonno a quel punto famiglia
12 che la verace via abbandonai. siede Lucia, che mosse la tua donna
138 quando chinavi, a rovinar, le ciglia.
[. . .] Ma perché ’l tempo fugge che
t’assonna,
Mentre ch’i’ rovinava in basso loco, qui farem punto, come buon sartore
dinanzi a li occhi mi si fu offerto 141 che com’elli ha del panno fa la
63 chi per lungo silenzio parea fioco. gonna;
e drizzeremo li occhi al primo
amore,
sì che, guardando verso lui, penètri
144 quant’è possibil per lo suo fulgore.
But this statement and others are not sufficient to convince scholars
who do not wish to be convinced. They feel entitled not to take these
statements seriously, and believe that the text is a work of pure invention
(fictio) which only pretends to be a vision.That is, they believe Dante made
a purely literary choice in placing his poem within the “vision” genre.
Similarly, they believe the numerous textual moments at which Dante
indicates he has seen what he describes should not be taken seriously. To
quote only one of these moments, in Inferno 16:
. . . e per le note
di questa comedìa, lettor, ti giuro,
129 s’elle non sien di lunga grazia vòte,
ch’i’ vidi per quell’aere grosso e scuro
venir notando una figura in suso,
132 maravigliosa ad ogne cor sicuro,
sì come torna colui che va giuso
talora a solver l’àncora ch’aggrappa
135 o scoglio o altro che nel mare è chiuso,
che ’n sù si stende, e da piè si rattrappa.
Statements like these are routinely interpreted by critics as literary
fiction.There is a strong reluctance—indeed, sometimes an outright refus-
al—to take seriously Dante’s insistent declarations that what he describes
is true. This refusal is predicated on our modern scholarly mindset, for
which it is entirely unacceptable that Dante’s masterpiece should contain
any similarities to ingenuous popular beliefs of his day, which routinely
72Dante “Imagining” His Journey Through the Afterlife Tavoni
incorporated visions of the afterlife. This attitude demotes Dante’s state-
ments from truth to mere literary artifice. It is also, in my judgment (as it
was in the authoritative judgement of Bruno Nardi and others), seriously
unhistorical, and shows a remarkable misunderstanding of the system of
medieval culture.
In this article, I will focus on one particular aspect of this vast and com-
plex issue: how did Dante reconcile, or try to reconcile, the assertion that
the entire poem occurs within a visio in somniis, with the sheer size of this
content, the enormous amount of information contained in the text, and
the enormously complex structure of this content? The Divine Comedy
comprises hundreds of characters, each with their own distinct character-
ization; hundreds of historical events, each with precise chronological and
geographical coordinates; the whole philosophical, theological, political
and literary worldview of Dante himself; the highly detailed architecture
of the three realms of the afterlife, which has been justly compared to
a Gothic cathedral; and, finally, a flawless narrative construction of the
journey through the three realms with a perfectly defined chronology.
Can all this have been dreamed? It seems impossible that Dante should
have attempted to convince his readers of such an implausibility.
2. Vision, imagination and the structure of the poem. The specific purpose of
this article is to try to answer the question of whether Dante intended
to give his entire poem—that is, the vast narrative of the otherworldly
journey, from dark wood to vision of God—the structure of an experi-
ence lived within a dream-vision.The question, of course, is not whether
Dante “really” lived this experience, although he repeatedly professes and
swears that he did. As Giuseppe Mazzotta writes, “it matters little whether
Dante ‘really’ has a mystical experience or rhetorically concocts it as the
overarching discourse of his poetry.”6 It is not unimportant, however, to
ask whether the poem’s structure is indeed a dream vision. Answering the
question is not easy: the text contains explicit statements in this respect,
but also contradictory signals.
For the purposes of this article, I would like to compare my own
approach with two essays concerned with the same major issues—vision,
imagination, dream—but with different slants.The first is the above-men-
tioned book by Giuseppe Mazzotta. In chapters 6, 7, 8—respectively
entitled “Imagination and Knowledge,” “The Dream of the Siren,” and
“Language and Vision”—Mazzotta explores the development of these
73Dante Studies 133, 2015
themes throughout the Comedy at length, focusing on the relationship
between imagination, knowledge, moral responsibility and poetry in
Dante’s thought and creativity. He also considers the superiority of imag-
ination over reason as the foundation of an all-embracing knowledge; the
affinity of imagination and dream as “passive,” contemplative, inspirational
modes of knowledge; the link between visionariness and prophetism,
investigated not only in the solidarity that binds them to each other, but
also in the opposition that sets them apart, with visionariness moving
towards mysticism and the ineffable, and prophetism moving towards
the language of society, of the exile, of history. His is a very broad and
enlightening analysis, with which I feel in tune.
Indeed, I might add that the “primacy of vision” that Mazzotta posits
as constitutive of the Commedia, already foreshadowed “in the Vita nuova,
which can be called Dante’s ‘sentimental education,’ the apprenticeship of
love and of writing,” stands out even more in contrast with the primacy
of reason and Aristotelian philosophy that characterizes the intermedi-
ate stage between Vita nuova and Commedia, Dante’s period as the “lay
philosopher” of the Convivio and the De vulgari eloquentia.7
While giving much importance to the oneiric dimension as connected
to the imagination, however, Mazzotta does not seem interested in asking
whether the Commedia is or is not a dream vision. This seems confirmed
by “the list of texts centered on dreams as the vehicle to conjure up and
deliver visions,” which “ranges from the Romance of the Rose to the Book of
the Duchess, from the Vita nuova to the Amorosa visione”: a list which does
not distinguish the three texts that are technically dream visions from the
Vita nuova, which is not a dream vision at all.
The second essay is “St. Augustine’s Three Visions and the Structure
of the Commedia” by Francis X. Newman,8 which considers the three
types of vision distinguished by St. Augustine in the twelfth book of his
De Genesi ad Litteram in relation to the three canticles of the Commedia.9
“The first cantica of the poem,” Newman writes, “leads us through a
realm that is emphatically corporeal throughout, a place of mud, ice, pal-
pable air, running sores, stone sarcophagi, grappling hooks, leaden cloaks,
etc. The almost tactile experience of reading Inferno is a commonplace of
Dante criticism” (61–62). “The dominant note in Dante’s experience as
a seer in Purgatory is the perception of images. For example, it is only in
Purgatory that Dante dreams. The Middle Ages had many theories about
dreams, but the theorists were virtually unanimous in assigning dreams to
74Dante “Imagining” His Journey Through the Afterlife Tavoni
the faculty of imagination” (68–69).“When Dante passes from Purgatory
to Paradise he enters a world that is light-filled throughout, but even here
there is progression toward a moment of climactic brilliance” (72); “it is
only at the very end of his journey that Dante’s eyes are ready for the
vision of God without semblances, the visio intellectualis that tradition
associated with St. Paul” (75).10
Newman’s essay convincingly demonstrates that “this Augustinian pat-
tern gives us a very direct clue to the structure of the Comedy as an act of
vision”; that “the Augustinian tradition provided Dante with the essential
clue to how such an act of total vision might be structured” (78). The
twelfth book of De Genesi ad Litteram is a source of primary importance
that influenced the structure of Dante’s poem according to a progression
as significant on the theological level as it was effective on the poetic level.
I am all the more convinced of this intertextual relationship because
the first eleven books of the de Genesi ad Litteram are the fundamental
source on which Dante relies to “rewrite Genesis” in Chapters IV–VI of
the first book of De vulgari eloquentia, written in 1304–05, as I believe I
have demonstrated in my commentary to this treatise.11
In his unpublished PhD thesis, Somnium. Medieval Theories of Dreaming
and the Form of Vision Poetry, Newman explains that “the visionary world
[. . .] is wholly within the mind of the dreamer. It is quite literally a
world of insight, in which the dreamer, looking into himself, finds there
a kind of mirror, a speculum aenigmitatis, reflecting a transcendent world”
(297–299).12 Furthermore, “using St. Augustine’s triple mode of vision as
a paradigm” (299), St. Augustine’s three modes of vision are included in
a single dream-vision:
Perhaps it would be more accurate then to say that rather than involving three worlds,
the dream poem deals only with one.The universe is one, but there are different ways
of looking at it. This is more precisely what Augustine meant when he turned the
three heavens of St. Paul into three visions. As the dreamer of the poem falls asleep, he
is actually awakening, not to a new world, but to a new perspective on the world he
has always known. But his new perspective is that of the prophet, poet and dreamer,
an imaginative reconstruction of the total universe made up of images suffused with
meanings (306).
It is true that later in the same piece, Newman wonders if the Divine
Comedy is a dream vision and concludes—despite several indications in
favor, and despite several fourteenth-century commentators who interpret
75Dante Studies 133, 2015
it as such—that it is not, because “God, whom Dante looks upon at the
end of his quest, is not a body, nor an image [. . .] Quite simply, he [Dante]
is narrating an experience which utterly transcends imagery” (348).13 “In
answer to our original question, then, we can say that the Comedy is not
a dream poem. Rather, it is a vision, and the dreaming in the poem takes
place in the central section, in the purgatorial kingdom, where images are
the proper object of vision” (356).
But if this “vision” is not a dream vision, it is hard to grasp what it
might be. In this article I assume that the Comedy recounts a visio in
somniis, and I will compare this assumption with the elements of the text
that seem to contradict it.
3. Dreaming the Inferno. The three dreams that Dante has in Purgatory
insistently communicate the message that the dream-visionary experience
is important for the poem.14 Paradoxically these three dreams, as well as
the ecstatic experience that Dante has on the third terrace (the three
visions of meekness) and on the fourth terrace (the three visions of wrath
punished) in Purgatorio 15 and 17, lead us even further away from taking
seriously the assumption that the entire poem is a vision, that the whole
otherworldly journey is “seen” or experienced within a single vision in a
dream. In Robert Hollander’s words: “the fact that there are ‘real’ dreams
presented in the poem (e.g., in Purg. 9, 19, and 27) certainly implies that
the rest of the time Dante is having a ‘normal’ experience of the decidedly
post-normal things he witnesses in the afterworld.”15
Dante the pilgrim’s ascent of Mount Purgatory lasts three days and
three nights, he sleeps each night, and each night has a dream.What should
we believe? That these three dreams, which occur during the journey,
exist within a hyper-dream that contains all of this?
In Inferno, Dante does not dream. He cannot, given the narrative struc-
ture—the descent lasts only one day, from the evening of Good Friday to
the evening of Holy Saturday, and the pilgrim does not stop to sleep as he
does later in Purgatory. The new fact that I propose should be recognized
and taken into consideration, however, is that there are two passages in
Inferno in which Dante presents the action that is taking place as one that
is being dreamed exactly at that moment. Furthermore, I propose that a
third passage should be interpreted as a statement that the poem narrates
the development of a dream occurring in real time.
76Dante “Imagining” His Journey Through the Afterlife Tavoni
To my knowledge no one, either among the ancient or the modern
commentators, has ever interpreted the first and the second passages in
the way I have, and only a few—albeit authoritative—among the ancient
commentators have interpreted the third passage in the sense that I pro-
pose to restore.This is understandable, as Dante presented this information
in a cautious, unobtrusive way. Yet however discreet, or rather reticent,
his words, I believe that he did intend to suggest this idea, incisively and
unequivocally. Moreover, he expressed this same fact in the final verses
of Paradiso 32. In this case as well, this fact was only accepted after three
centuries of scholarship; then, after remaining unchallenged for another
four centuries, it was once again questioned at the beginning of the 20th
century. Even today, the idea does not remain universally accepted (see n. 3).
The first passage in which Dante presents the action as being dreamed
exactly at that moment is at Inferno 16.115–23:
Io avea una corda intorno cinta,
e con essa pensai alcuna volta
108 prender la lonza a la pelle dipinta.
Poscia ch’io l’ebbi tutta da me sciolta,
sì come ’l duca m’avea comandato,
111 porsila a lui aggroppata e ravvolta.
Ond’ei si volse inver’ lo destro lato,
e alquanto di lunge da la sponda
114 la gittò giuso in quell’alto burrato.
“E’ pur convien che novità risponda”
dicea fra me medesmo “al novo cenno
117 che ’l maestro con l’occhio sì seconda”.
Ahi quanto cauti li uomini esser dienno
presso a color che non veggion pur l’ovra,
120 ma per entro i pensier miran col senno!
El disse a me: “Tosto verrà di sovra
ciò ch’io attendo e che il tuo pensier sogna:
123 tosto convien ch’al tuo viso si scovra”.
Sempre a quel ver c’ha faccia di menzogna
de’ l’uom chiuder le labbra fin ch’el puote,
126 però che sanza colpa fa vergogna;
ma qui tacer nol posso; e per le note
di questa comedìa, lettor, ti giuro,
129 s’elle non sien di lunga grazia vòte,
ch’i’ vidi per quell’aere grosso e scuro
venir notando una figura in suso,
77Dante Studies 133, 2015
132 maravigliosa ad ogne cor sicuro,
sì come torna colui che va giuso
talora a solver l’àncora ch’aggrappa
135 o scoglio o altro che nel mare è chiuso,
che ’n sù si stende, e da piè si rattrappa.
The two poets are on the brink of the deep ravine (“alto burrato,” v.
114) that separates the seventh circle from the eighth. The “alto burrato”
is a terrifying leap, at the bottom of which lies the abyss of Hell, the king-
dom of boundless evil.Virgil makes a mysterious move here (vv. 106–114):
he orders Dante to loosen the rope he had tied around his waist (which
had not been mentioned before), and then he tosses it over the cliff.
What can we make of this gesture? It conjures a monstrous creature from
the abyss, who swims through the thick dark air like a diver emerging
from the sea after freeing his ship’s anchor from the deep (vv. 130–136).
Ever the master of suspense, Dante closes the canto on this spectacular
underwater sequence. At the beginning of the next canto we learn that
this monstrous creature is the demon Geryon, guardian of the circle of
the fraudulent.
Ancient and modern commentators have continually tried to decipher
the meaning behind Virgil’s actions, without any particularly compelling
interpretation, and in no way that can live up to the emotional intensity
of the text itself. The most interesting interpretations, instead, take the
visionary nature of this appearance literally, and see Geryon as represen-
tative of the emergence into consciousness of a dreadful polymorphic
content from the depths of the psyche.16
What, then, is the meaning of the solemn advice to men to be careful
when they find themselves close to someone who can read their mind
(vv. 118–120,“Ahi quanto cauti li uomini esser dienno . . .”)? What
thoughts might Dante be ashamed of, or at least want to keep private, at
this particular moment?
The current interpretation of v. 122—“ciò ch’io attendo e che il tuo
pensier sogna”—is: “Soon the thing will emerge that I am awaiting and
that you vaguely try to imagine.”17 If we accept the current interpretation
of this passage, the caution Dante urges seems to have no motivation.18
And yet:
78Dante “Imagining” His Journey Through the Afterlife Tavoni
• the verb sognare is used almost exclusively in its literal sense in the poem, pre-
cisely to express and analyze the dream experience, in a number of occurrences
of great semantic intensity and literary significance, of which this is the first.19
• “. . . che il tuo pensier sogna” recalls “. . . e ’l pensamento in sogno trasmutai”
(Purg. 18.145): both verses express the characteristically Dantean idea that
dreams are a form of thought.20
• The two occurrences of the noun pensier, two verses apart—“. . . ma per entro
i pensier miran col senno”; “ciò ch’io attendo e che il tuo pensier sogna”—
clearly refer to the same pensier, the same thought(s). This implies that what
Virgil reads in Dante’s thoughts, the hidden content of his mind, is what Dante
is dreaming:Virgil is waiting for the fruit of Dante’s dream, which will then be
made manifest to Dante himself.The wonder that will emerge from the bottom
of the ravine is the product of Dante’s dreaming mind.
• The currently accepted paraphrase of Virgil’s “io attendo” is “I know with
certainty” what will emerge, while “il tuo pensier sogna” is “you do not know,
you are simply trying to guess.” But this paraphrase is not faithul to the meaning
of “attendere,” nor to that of “sognare.” Attendere is certainly not synonymous
with “knowing.”21 It is true that sognare can mean “to imagine,” in a figurative
sense, although the literal meaning, “to dream,” is most prevalent in Dante’s
work. It cannot, however, mean “to conjecture,” or “to try to guess.” In fact,
the true semantic relationship between the two verbs is exactly the opposite of
these two non-meanings: attendere suggests the passive attitude of expecting or
waiting for something to happen, while sognare suggests the mental activity of
dreaming something. Dante’s mind creates Geryon through the act of dreaming;
Virgil is simply waiting for this oneiric creature to manifest, for he has already
seen it by reading Dante’s mind.22
This explanation, however far from the traditional one, is the only one
that can justify the tercet on the caution necessary when in the proximity
of those who can read the thoughts of others. It is also the only reading
that keeps up with the fantastic and emotional intensity of the text.What
emerges from the bottom of the ravine is a “nightmare ectoplasm” (cfr. n.
16). It is truly the bizarre product of a dreaming mind, a composite crea-
ture made up of poetic and scriptural elements that has emerged from the
“meanderings of the soul”.Thus understood, the passage works in favour
of the interpretation of the poem as a visio in somniis.
Framed between the initial sonno in which Dante is lost in the forest
(“tant’era pien di sonno a quel punto . . .” Inf. 1.11) and the sonno that
will end as Dante sees God (“ma perché ’l tempo fugge che t’assonna
. . .” Par. 32.139), the pilgrim’s entire voyage through the afterlife is pre-
sented as occurring within a narratively hyper-structured, theoretically
79Dante Studies 133, 2015
hyper-rational visio in somniis. The second passage in which Dante indi-
cates that the poem’s action is being dreamed is in Canto 23. Here Dante
does something peculiar: he seems to assume that the development of the
narrative action depends on the association of ideas swarming in his mind.
The brawl that took place in the previous canto, which ended with the
two devils Alichino and Calcabrina falling into the hot pitch where the
barrators boil, reminds him of Aesop’s fable of the frog and the mouse,
who also end up underwater. But as Aesop’s story ends with the kite
swooping down onto the two animals and devouring them, Dante fears
that the devils, like the kite, may fly down and seize him and Virgil:23
Vòlt’era in su la favola d’Isopo
lo mio pensier per la presente rissa,
6 dov’el parlò de la rana e del topo;
ché più non si pareggia “mo” e “issa”
che l’un con l’altro fa, se ben s’accoppia
9 principio e fine con la mente fissa.
E come l’un pensier de l’altro scoppia,
così nacque di quello un altro poi,
12 che la prima paura mi fé doppia.
Io pensava così: “Questi per noi
sono scherniti con danno e con beffa
15 sì fatta, ch’assai credo che lor nòi.
Se l’ira sovra ’l mal voler s’aggueffa,
ei ne verranno dietro più crudeli
18 che ’l cane a quella lievre ch’elli acceffa”.
Già mi sentia tutti arricciar li peli
de la paura e stava in dietro intento,
21 quand’io dissi: “Maestro, se non celi
te e me tostamente, i’ ho pavento
d’i Malebranche. Noi li avem già dietro;
24 io li ’magino sì, che già li sento”.
E quei: “S’i’ fossi di piombato vetro,
l’imagine di fuor tua non trarrei
27 più tosto a me, che quella dentro ’mpetro.
Pur mo venieno i tuo’ pensier tra ’ miei,
con simile atto e con simile faccia,
30 sì che d’intrambi un sol consiglio fei.
S’elli è che sì la destra costa giaccia,
che noi possiam ne l’altra bolgia scendere,
33 noi fuggirem l’imaginata caccia”.
80Dante “Imagining” His Journey Through the Afterlife Tavoni
The current interpretation of this passage is that Virgil reads in Dan-
te’s mind the fear that the devils may suddenly appear behind them, he
himself feels this anxiety, and he decides that they should flee. This over-
simplification renders meaningless the reference to Aesop’s fable (vv. 4–9),
everything that takes place in Dante’s “theatre of the mind” (vv. 10–24),
and indeed even Virgil’s ability to read Dante’s thoughts (vv. 25–30). In
other words, Dante would have written nine entirely purposeless tercets.
Instead, I believe that:
• verse 30 does not mean that Virgil bases the decision to flee on both Dante’s
thoughts and his own. This interpretation is grammatically impossible because
intrambi cannot mean “the ones and the others” (two plural entities), but can
only mean “the one and the other” (two singular entities);24
• Virgil bases his decision instead on the two thoughts he reads in Dante’s mind:
the first at vv. 4–6, and the second at vv. 10–18.
Why do Dante’s two thoughts lead Virgil to decide that they must
flee in haste? The answer is that the thoughts or images that flow forth
from one another in Dante’s mind determine what is about to take place,
and Virgil is aware of this. The line spoken by a terrified Dante: “Noi li
avem già dietro; / io li ’magino sì, che già li sento” literally means: “I am
imagining them with such an intensity that already the inner sensation is
about to turn into an external sensation: the devils are about to materialize
at our backs.”
Virgil therefore reads Dante’s mind here much as he did in Canto
16. As before, he reads in Dante’s imagination what is about to happen,
because it is Dante’s imagination that is producing the action itself.25
Verses 10–11 must also be compared with Purgatorio 17.31–36:
E come questa imagine rompeo
sé per sé stessa, a guisa d’una bulla
33 cui manca l’acqua sotto qual si feo,
surse in mia visione una fanciulla
piangendo forte, e dicea: “O regina,
36 perché per ira hai voluto esser nulla?
In this passage, Dante describes how the ecstatic visions of wrath pun-
ished arise from one another in his mind like water bubbles that burst in
rapid succession: just as his thoughts erupt (scoppiano) from one another
81Dante Studies 133, 2015
in Inferno 23 and lead him to imagine that the devils, like the kite, will
swoop down on them.
The “imagined chase” of Inferno 23.33 should be directly compared
with the “imagined fire” of Purgatorio 9.32, a lexical coincidence that
incisively confirms the oneiric nature of the hunt:
Ivi parea che ella e io ardesse;
e sì lo ’ncendio imaginato cosse,
33 che convenne che ’l sonno si rompesse.
The third passage in which Dante states that the poem is depicting a
dream in real time is at the beginning of Canto 26, where he launches
his invective against Florence.The poet prophesies (vv. 7–12) that the city
will soon pay a high price for its wickedness:
Godi, Fiorenza, poi che sè sì grande,
che per mare e per terra batti l’ali,
3 e per lo ’nferno tuo nome si spande!
Tra li ladron trovai cinque cotali
tuoi cittadini onde mi ven vergogna,
6 e tu in grande orranza non ne sali.
Ma se presso al mattin del ver si sogna,
tu sentirai di qua da picciol tempo
9 di quel che Prato, non ch’altri, t’agogna.
E se già fosse, non saria per tempo.
Così foss’ei, da che pur esser dee!
12 ché più mi graverà, com’più m’attempo.
What does “ma se presso al mattin del ver si sogna” mean? The common
interpretation is that, because of the common belief that dreams dreamt
as dawn approaches come true—a common idea in Dante’s time and one
theorized by the poet himself in Purgatorio 9.13–18—Dante pretends to
have had a “true dream” in which he sees Florence’s hideous future.
To see this dream as one Dante had outside the framework of the
poem, however, greatly impoverishes its meaning. It makes perfect sense
that, instead, Dante would reiterate the presence of a dream here in order
to substantiate the entire otherwordly journey as a visio in somniis. The
truthful dream to which Dante alludes here is nothing but the vision in
a dream that guarantees the truth of the whole poem. While some of the
most authoritative early commentaries (Ottimo and Benvenuto, followed
82Dante “Imagining” His Journey Through the Afterlife Tavoni
by Johannis de Serravalle) gave this interpretation, it was forgotten over
the course of the following centuries.26
The content of Dante’s prophetic dream, which relates an unspeci-
fied misfortune to befall Florence, should therefore be identified with
the prophecies already revealed to Dante by various infernal characters.
There are four of these: Ciacco’s prophecy (6.64–75), Farinata’s proph-
ecy (10.79–81), Brunetto’s prophecy (15.55–78), and Vanni Fucci’s
prophecy (24.142–151).The four prophecies are strongly supportive of
each other. All prophesy the same thing from different points of view,
and all concern the torments Florence will suffer during the conflicts
between the Black and White Guelphs in the years after 1300, and the
dramatic personal consequences of this collective history for Dante, his
own exile.
These four prophecies, viewed against the timeframe of the journey, are
distributed over a period of eight or nine hours, from just before midnight
(Ciacco) to seven or eight in the morning (Vanni Fucci). The prophecy
that comes just before dawn, and which therefore appears to be the one
to which Dante specifically refers here, is that of Brunetto, which focuses
on Dante’s personal destiny, but also recalls the ruin caused by the internal
struggles of Florence.
That painful fact that Dante hopes will, at the very least, happen soon—
because the later it comes, the more painful it will be (vv. 10–12)—is his
own personal exile, which has already been foretold three times, first by
Farinata, then by Brunetto, and finally by Vanni Fucci. His exile is also
confirmed by the expression “ché più mi graverà,” the same expression
that his ancestor Cacciaguida will use in Paradise as he definitively con-
firms Dante’s forthcoming exile:“E quel che più ti graverà le spalle, / sarà
la compagnia malvagia e scempia / con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle
. . .” (Par. 17.64–66).
4. Dreaming in Purgatory. If my proposed interpretation of these three
passages in Inferno is accepted, it changes the way we perceive the whole
issue of the vision, and its relationship to the extreme realism of the nar-
ration. Even as Dante fully mastered the narrative technique of the poem
and wrote scenes of impressive realism, he also introduced into the poem
semi-hidden but repeated signals that he was narrating a vision in a dream.
Normally, realism is described as a feature in contrast with dream-
vision. But here the opposite is true. The fantastic invention of Geryon’s
83Dante Studies 133, 2015
flight, cinematographically seen through his own eyes, in “point of view
shot,” and the unusual image of the sailor emerging from the sea floor
swimming breaststroke, are so impressive because they are dream or dream-
like images.
This passage in Inferno 23 is also of peculiar interest because it
demonstrates the live process of Dante’s narrative creation, showing
how thoughts and images generate from one another through free asso-
ciations of ideas, corresponding to actual short circuits in Dante’s mind.
These short circuits are described by the poet himself in real time, and
it seems clear that they are “of such stuff as dreams are made”—that
they are similar, in other words, to the weird concatenations of events
that occur in dreams. These passages tell us that the vision in a dream is
not a conventional label extrinsic to the nature of the text, but rather
an intrinsic and essential characteristic of it. (This also helps to explain
the density and audacity of this poetry and its character of strikingly
modern realism, which unsurprisingly is not a feature shared by any
other medieval works.)
These three passages in Inferno must therefore be considered in rela-
tionship to the three purgatorial dreams. Inferno and Purgatorio deploy two
opposite and complementary strategies to intimate the visionary nature of
the poem. A comparison reveals a polar contradiction: the three “dream
moments” in Inferno are all moments within the dream that generates
and contains the entire otherworldly journey. Purgatorio’s three dreams,
conversely, are each dreamed by Dante the pilgrim when he stops to sleep
during his journey; the three separate dreams occur within the journey.
Such moments of vision in a dream are distinct from the events that take
place during the journey, of which they are a sort of symbolic “double”:
the dream of the eagle carrying Ganymede up to Olympus is a dream-like
“double” of St. Lucia carrying the sleeping Dante from Antipurgatory to
the gate of Purgatory, and so forth.
But what of the Paradiso? Here the relationship between the dream and
the journey is completely different than in the two previous canticas.The
ascent through the heavens, unlike the descent into Hell and the ascent
to Mount Purgatory, takes place outside of time and space. Or more pre-
cisely, this is true in the Empyrean, since the nine previous heavens are
still part of the physical world. It is clear, however, that the whole ascent
is conceived of as other-dimensional (“io, che al divino da l’umano, / a
l’etterno dal tempo era venuto . . .”, Par. 31.37–38). This is confirmed by
84Dante “Imagining” His Journey Through the Afterlife Tavoni
the chronology articulated by Edward Moore: the clock stops at noon on
the Wednesday after Easter, Purgatory time.27
Properly speaking, therefore, in Paradiso there is no longer a journey,
there is only a vision that becomes increasingly penetrating and full. Not
a succession of places, but a succession of states of consciousness, leading
up to the vision of God.The heavens are not the seat of the blessed spirits,
as the infernal circles are the seat of the damned and the Purgatory ter-
races the places where the penitents move. All the blessed spirits actually
have their seat in the Empyrean. The nine heavens represent the stages of
mental ascent at which the visions of the various spirits, according to their
inclinations in life, are projected in the mind of the pilgrim.
The difference between the structure of Inferno (the journey is con-
tained in the dream) and that of Purgatorio (the dreams are contained in the
journey) is neutralized in Paradiso. Let us keep, then, to Inferno and Purga-
torio. How can this contradiction, and the different strategies displayed in
the first two canticas, be understood? I should like to propose—as a first
working hypothesis, on a subject that is obviously far-reaching and will
require more research—three explanations. I do not consider these three
explanations mutually exclusive, but rather believe that each one captures
an aspect of reality, and that they may offer degrees of approximation to
a comprehensive interpretation of the facts.
The first explanation: Dante was forced to change strategy during the
writing process, because the poem was becoming much longer and the
narrative much more complex than he had expected. Such length and
complexity would render the assumption that all this content was con-
tained within a single dream-vision progressively less tenable.
It is useful in this regard to bear in mind the gap that exists—however
one chooses to interpret it—between the first seven cantos of the Inferno
and the rest of the poem. There are a number of studies investigating this
area, which I will not go into here.28 Dante had originally conceived his
poem as a vision in a dream, and presumably it would have been much
shorter than the hundred-canto poem we know today. If we accept the
interpretation of the three episodes of Inferno that I give in this article, we
can speculate that Dante maintained this initial assumption throughout
the first cantica, even if after Canto 8 it had become narratively embar-
rassing. When he began to compose Purgatorio, however, he had to give
it up. The initial assumption that the entire journey is contained within
a dream is implicitly abandoned. The theme of dream-vision, instead, is
85Dante Studies 133, 2015
recovered through the dreams dreamed by the pilgrim during the three
nights of his purgatorial journey. At the end of the poem, however, the
initial assumption is taken up again, with St. Bernard’s words in Paradiso
32: “Ma perché ’l tempo fugge che t’assonna . . .” which are in fact even
more unequivocal than “tant’era pien di sonno a quel punto . . .”
These words are the final seal affixed to the poem, and confirm that
the poem does indeed recount a vision in a dream. It is the end point in
extremis of a very long parabola launched in the dark wood of the first
canto, and, in the last moments of the poem, superimposed onto the
entire narrative.
The second explanation: The mise en abyme, a trick well-documented long
before André Gide made it famous, especially in medieval representations
that show the work itself being offered to God, from the mosaic of Hagia
Sophia of 944 a.d. to Giotto’s Stefaneschi Triptych.29 The representation
of books inside other books is frequent in illuminated medieval manu-
scripts30 and was certainly known to Dante. The use of mise en abyme is
at its most apparent at the climax of the poem, in the vision of God in
Paradiso 33:31
Nel suo profondo vidi che s’interna
legato con amore in un volume,
87 ciò che per l’universo si squaderna:
sustanze e accidenti e lor costume,
quasi conflati insieme, per tal modo
90 che ciò ch’i’ dico è un semplice lume.
La forma universal di questo nodo
credo ch’i’ vidi, perché più di largo,
93 dicendo questo, mi sento ch’i’ godo.
As this last quote tells us, the idea of mise en abyme—providing we do
not conceive of it as a futile metaliterary game—is not at all at variance
with the idea of a sacred poem.
In the context of our interpretation, a mise en abyme means a dream
within a dream, and this is undoubtedly a psychic experience very much
present in Dante’s own consciousness and memory (Inf. 30.136–41):
Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna,
che sognando desidera sognare,
138 sì che quel ch’ è, come non fosse, agogna,
86Dante “Imagining” His Journey Through the Afterlife Tavoni
tal mi fec’io, non possendo parlare,
che disiava scusarmi, e scusava
141 me tuttavia, e nol mi credea fare.
Equally present in Dante’s mind is the experience of lapsing from
thinking to dreaming, and the implicit awareness, associated with this
experience, that dreaming is a form of thinking (Purg. 18.139–45):
Poi quando fuor da noi tanto divise
quell’ ombre, che veder più non potiersi,
141 novo pensiero dentro a me si mise,
del qual più altri nacquero e diversi;
e tanto d’ uno in altro vaneggiai,
144 che li occhi per vaghezza ricopersi,
e ’l pensamento in sogno trasmutai.
This awareness is also shared by Dante’s guide Virgil, when he says “ciò
ch’io attendo e che il tuo pensier sogna” (Inf. 16.122).
My second explanation (the dream within a dream) seems to me to be
consistent with the first. If Dante did in fact change his textual strategy
between Inferno and Purgatorio, the structure of the text resulting from this
change would have appeared as a dream within a dream. In light of Dante’s
deep acquaintance with dream phenomenology, which shines through in
all his work, I believe that such a textual structure would not have struck
him as bizarre or unacceptable in any way.32
The third, and most comprehensive, explanation is the suspension of the
principle of non-contradiction typical of the dream, in both the classic
Freudian formulation and, more precisely analysed, in the logical-math-
ematical reformulation of Ignacio Matte Blanco in his The Unconscious as
Infinite Sets.33 The two contradictory and complementary arrangements of
Inferno and Purgatorio—the dream containing the journey, and the journey
containing the dream—embody a typical rule of unconscious logic, that
“symmetrical thinking” which makes metonymies (the container for the
content) and synecdoches (the part for the whole) work simultaneously in
both directions. In our case: if the dream includes the journey, the journey
must also include the dream.
In my already-quoted article on the last canto of Paradiso, I have tried
to show how symmetrical thinking intensely pervades the vision of God,
in which the whole vision of the afterlife culminates. The irreconcilable
87Dante Studies 133, 2015
contradictions that I am pointing out here, which extend throughout the
whole poem, indicate that symmetrical thinking also pervades the mac-
rostructure of the poem, but in a more “diluted” form, so much so that
these contradictions are not perceptible to the naked eye.34
This explanation can also account for another paradox, which, though
of primary importance, has so far gone unnoticed. In Inferno 17, Inferno
23 and Paradiso 32 the person who is dreaming is not Dante the author,
outside of the text, but Dante the character, within the text: the character,
that is, who, in the light of logic (asymmetric logic), should not be the
one dreaming, but should be himself dreamed instead.
It is to Dante the character that Virgil says: “Tosto verrà di sovra / ciò
ch’io attendo e che il tuo pensier sogna” (Inf. 16.121–22). It is Dante the
character who declares as his own the association of ideas that leads him to
imagine the hunting devils (Inf. 23.9–24): “E come l’un pensier de l’altro
scoppia, / così nacque di quello un altro poi, / che la prima paura mi fé
doppia. / Io pensava così”;“. . . / . . . i’ ho pavento / d’i Malebranche. Noi
li avem già dietro; / io li ’magino sì che già li sento.” And it is Dante the
character to whom Virgil responds: “Si’ fossi di piombato vetro, / l’imag-
ine di fuor tua non trarrei / più tosto a me, che quella dentro ’mpetro. /
Pur mo venieno i tuo’ pensier tra ’ miei, / con simile atto e con simile
faccia, / sì che d’intrambi un sol consiglio fei” (vv. 25–30). Finally, it is to
Dante the character that St. Bernard says, “Ma perché ’l tempo fugge che
t’assonna” (Par. 32.139). In each of these passages, Dante the author and
Dante the character are consolidated into a single figure.
The extraordinary idea of a character, Dante the pilgrim, who is
dreamed by his author, and at the same time is the dreamer himself;
whom Virgil the character treats as such, ready to reveal to him what is
going to happen because he reads it in his mind before Dante himself is
aware of it—this extraordinary idea is made possible, beyond and outside
all conceivable narrative conventions of Dante’s time, because Dante the
author is guided by his “alta fantasia” (Purg. 17.25, Par. 33.142), that is,
by his unique poetic energy, which draws on his creative oneirism and
imports its logic.
Thus, the strictly rational architecture of the Divine Comedy—where
no detail escapes the strict control of its author, nor evades the principle
of non-contradiction—reveals, in its overall construction and on a scale
88Dante “Imagining” His Journey Through the Afterlife Tavoni
too large to be perceived locally, an “impossible” structure, such as may
be found in the drawings of M.C. Escher.
5. Ecstatic and marble “images” in Purgatory. Further evidence of this can be
found in the reliefs carved on the marble wall and floor of the first terrace
of Purgatory.35 These are:
• Purgatorio 10, first terrace. The reliefs carved on the wall represent examples of
humility: the Annunciation, with Mary responding “Ecco l’ancella di Dio” to
the angel Gabriel; the Ark of the Covenant transported to the Temple of Jerusa-
lem, with King David dancing in front of it; the emperor Trajan stopping to talk
to a poor woman who asks him to avenge her son’s death in battle (vv. 28–96).
• Purgatorio 12, first terrace. The reliefs carved on the floor represent examples
of pride punished, taken from the Holy Scriptures and pagan mythology: they
include the fallen angel Lucifer; the giant Briareus struck by Jupiter and other
giants killed in the battle of the Campi Flegrei; Nimrod who built the Tower
of Babel; and Arachne turned into a spider by Minerva (vv. 16–72).
• Purgatorio 15, third terrace. As he walks, Dante has three visions of meekness:
Mary graciously embracing Jesus after he was lost for three days in the Temple
of Jerusalem; the tyrant Pisistratus of Athens pardoning his daughter’s lover;
and finally St. Stephen, who continues to pray for his torturers as he dies (vv.
82–114). After he regains consciousness, Dante wants to recount these visions
to Virgil, but his master already knows what occurred in his pupil’s mind (vv.
115–138). Here again, he calls these images ‘thoughts’: “le tue cogitazion” (v.
128).
• Purgatorio 17, fourth terrace. As he proceeds, Dante has visions of wrath pun-
ished: the infanticidal Procne turned into a nightingale; the Persian Haman
crucified, Queen Amata’s suicide. The poet wonders where such visions come
from: the answer he is given is that when the imaginativa is not stimulated by
the senses, these images descend from the stars or directly from God (vv. 13–39).
The parallel between the bas-reliefs and the visions is evident (although
not generally perceived):36 the four series of episodes exemplify pairs of
virtues / vices that are very similar (humility : meekness = pride : wrath),
and the episodes are taken in part from sacred history and in part from
profane history. All things work together to suggest that the two sets
of bas-reliefs carved in marble (by God) and the two series of visions
projected in the mind of Dante (by God) are equivalent.37
Furthermore, both double sets of episodes are—this lexical link
between them is crucial—imagined:
89Dante Studies 133, 2015
Purgatorio 10: Purgatorio 17:
L’angel che venne in terra col O imaginativa che ne rube
decreto talvolta sì di fuor, ch’om non
de la molt’anni lagrimata pace, s’accorge
36 ch’aperse il ciel del suo lungo 15 perché dintorno suonin mille tube,
divieto, chi move te, se ’l senso non ti porge?
dinanzi a noi pareva sì verace Moveti lume che nel ciel s’informa,
quivi intagliato in un atto soave, 18 per sé o per voler che giù lo scorge.
39 che non sembiava imagine che tace. De l’empiezza di lei che mutò
Giurato si saria ch’el dicesse forma
“Ave!”; ne l’uccel ch’a cantar più si diletta,
perché iv’era imaginata quella 21 ne l’imagine mia apparve l’orma;
42 ch’ad aprir l’alto amor volse la e qui fu la mia mente sì ristretta
chiave. dentro da sé, che di fuor non venìa
24 cosa che fosse allor da lei ricetta.
Era intagliato lì nel marmo stesso Poi piovve dentro a l’alta fantasia
lo carro e ’ buoi, traendo l’arca un crucifisso dispettoso e fero
santa, 27 ne la sua vista, e cotal si morìa;
57 per che si teme officio non intorno ad esso era il grande
commesso. Assuero,
Dinanzi parea gente; e tutta Estèr sua sposa e ’l giusto Mardoceo,
quanta, 30 che fu al dire e al far così intero.
partita in sette cori, a’ due mie’ sensi E come questa imagine rompeo
60 faceva dir l’un “No”, l’altro “Sì, sé per sé stessa, a guisa d’una bulla
canta”. 33 cui manca l’acqua sotto qual si feo,
Similemente al fummo de li surse in mia visione una fanciulla
’ncensi piangendo forte, e dicea: “O regina,
che v’era imaginato, li occhi e ’l naso 36 perché per ira hai voluto esser nulla?
63 e al sì e al no discordi fensi. Ancisa t’hai per non perder
Lavina;
Mentr’io mi dilettava di guardare or m’hai perduta! Io son essa che
l’imagini di tante umilitadi, lutto,
99 e per lo fabbro loro a veder care . . . 39 madre, a la tua pria ch’a l’altrui
ruina”.
Come si frange il sonno ove di
butto
nova luce percuote il viso chiuso,
42 che fratto guizza pria che muoia
tutto;
così l’imaginar mio cadde giuso
tosto che lume il volto mi percosse,
45 maggior assai che quel ch’è in
nostro uso.
90Dante “Imagining” His Journey Through the Afterlife Tavoni
Both the bas-reliefs (10.39, 98) and the ecstatic visions (17.31) are
immagini. And Dante consciously uses the same key-verb—immaginare—to
describe the action of carving the marble (10.41, 62) (intagliare, 10.38, 55),
and of impressing the vision in the imaginativa (17.13).
Dante therefore relates the same experience twice. The first time is in
the objective form of sculptures: hard, sharp and durable to the highest
degree, white marble carved for eternity. The second time is in the sub-
jective form of the imagination: volatile and precarious, like air bubbles
formed underwater, which exist but for a few instants before rising to the
surface. Dante thereby imparts the message that the sculptures sealed for
eternity, of which God himself is the fabbro (10.99), are, at their origin,
one and the same thing as the images that the soul has imagined in its
most evanescent, dream-like state.
Two final considerations. First, the traces of “symmetrical thinking”—that
is, freedom from the constraints of the principle of non-contradiction
which remained in the finished poem—reveal or rather confirm that
the dream is not an extrinsic, conventional frame superimposed onto the
narrative, but is instead a constitutive, intimate dimension of it. Without
this, it would not achieve its most spectacular effects, its extraordinary
daring in the invention of similes and metaphors capable of bringing
together things that are light years away from each other in the normal
perception of the world.
Second, this rationalist explanation of Dante’s visionary insights in
terms of the mechanics of dreams, as analysed by Freud and especially by
Matte Blanco, is not necessarily an atheological explanation. Matte Blanco
was a man of deep Catholic faith, and among his unpublished writings is
one entitled “God in the Unconscious.” All the Church fathers, beginning
with St. Augustine in the twelfth book of his De Genesi ad Litteram, and
later the theologians of Scholasticism, were perfectly aware that the visiones
in somniis were, in fact, dreams.
Dreams allow the human mind a precarious psychic experience of the
infinite. Both the literal meaning of Dante’s text in a few key passages,
semi-hidden but unequivocal, and the quality of his poetry suggest that
Dante was nourished by this experience, and that this experience became
both essential for conceiving his sacred poem, and a unique resource for
his poetic writing.
91Dante Studies 133, 2015
NOTES
*An early version of this article was presented at the International Conference on “Dante and the
Christian Imagination” at the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto in
March 2012.
1. Cesare Segre, Fuori del mondo: i modelli nella follia e nelle immagini dell’aldilà (Turin: Einaudi,
1990), Chapter 3 “Viaggi e visioni d’oltremondo sino alla Commedia di Dante”, 35–36: “Scelto il
modello della visione [. . .] Dante non ci fornisce un séguito di flash sull’aldilà, come i visionari, ma
una descrizione così accurata da essere traducibile in un vero atlante dei tre regni in rapporto col globo
terrestre [. . .] Queste osservazioni fanno cadere la tesi di Nardi, secondo cui la Commedia sarebbe
una visione in senso stretto [. . .] Dante non ci inganna e non si inganna: l’imponenza architettonica
della sua “visione” è frutto di lunghe, lucide veglie.” The bibliography on the Commedia as a visio
or a fictio, and the related general bibliography on dreams, visions and otherwordly journeys in the
Middle Ages, is extremely vast, both in Italian and in English. This article deals only with a specific
theme within this seemingly limitless topic, proposing a new interpretation of a few key passages
of the Commedia, and it therefore refers only to the bibliography specific to these few passages. A
comprehensive survey of the oneiric interpretations of the Commedia can be found in chapter I.2 “Il
viaggiatore sognante” of Guglielmo Barucci’s “Simile a quel che talvolta si sogna”. I sogni nel Purgatorio
dantesco (Florence: Le Lettere, 2012), 29–46.
2. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, con il commento di Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi, III, Paradiso
(Milan: Mondadori, 1994), 139.
3. Ignazio Baldelli, “Visione, immaginazione e fantasia nella Vita nuova”, in I sogni nel Medioevo.
Seminario internazionale, Roma, 2–4 ottobre 1983 (Lessico intellettuale europeo, XXXV), ed. Tullio
Gregory (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1985), 9. Three distinct phases may be distinguished in the
history of the interpretations of v. 139, from the fourteenth century to the present day (all quota-
tions are taken from the Dartmouth Dante Project: http://dante.dartmouth.edu/search.php). Early
commentators failed to understand and trivialized the issue: e.g. Benvenuto da Imola (1375–80):
“quia scilicet, post longissimum et maximum laborem et vigiliam optas quiescere” and Francesco da
Buti (1385–95): “cioè ma imperò che ’l tempo, che t’è concesso a vedere queste cose, fugge; cioè se
ne va, e siamo presso al suo termine, lo quale tanto è durato, che tu ài vollia di riposarti, e però, che
t’assonna; cioè ti fa venire lo sonno e voglia di dormire.” Trifon Gabriele (1525–41) was the first
to see the correct meaning: “che t’assonna: non so perchè dica, se non forse che voglia dir che venia
al fin la notte ch’el teneva in sogno, e che questa vision, ove il Poeta vide le cose trattate in questa
opera, fu in sogno.” Once it was put forward, this interpretation dominated for four centuries—it
was repeated by Bernardino Daniello (1547–68), Torquato Tasso (1555–68), Pompeo Venturi (1732),
Baldassarre Lombardi (1791–92), Luigi Portirelli (1804–05), Paolo Costa (1819–21), Niccolò Tom-
maseo (1837), Raffaello Andreoli(1856), Luigi Bennassuti (1864–68), Brunone Bianchi (1868), G.A.
Scartazzini (1872–82 [2nd ed. 1900]), The Rev. H.F. Tozer (1901) and John S. Carroll (1904)—until
it was questioned by Francesco Torraca (1905): “Non si creda che il pensiero di S. Bernardo sia:—Sta
per finire il tempo della tua visione—perchè Dante non dice mai di aver compiuto il viaggio per i tre
mondi dormendo, in sogno, e non realmente, desto, ad occhi aperti. Né si può supporre che il santo
accenni al bisogno, che Dante possa avere, di dormire, perchè, da quando riposò su l’ultima scala del
monte (Purg., 27.92), non ha più chiuso occhio. [. . .] Dirgli una cosa simile mentre sta per vedere
Dio stesso, sarebbe un’offesa grave e gratuita.” The alternative interpretation proposed by Torraca
(“Dunque, S. Bernardo intende: Perchè già cessa il tuo essere nel tempo, finisco, per non ritardare la
tua partecipazione all’eternità, la tua visione suprema.—Che t’assonna: il sonno è necessario effetto
dell’essere noi nel tempo, cioè mortali”), however absurd, would later be supported by the eminent
linguist Giovanni Nencioni, “Note dantesche” (“VII. ”Ma perché’l tempo fugge che t’assonna”,
Par. XXXII 139”), Studi danteschi, 40 (1963): 50–56, with the disarming motivation (53): “Che tale
interpretazione pecchi di sottigliezza [. . .] è evidente; ma il suo contributo positivo e ben accettabile
sta nello spogliare il t’assonna di ogni accezione visionaria.” Michele Barbi (1918), Problemi di critica
dantesca. Prima serie 1893–1918 (Florence: Sansoni, 1975), 294–295, expressed doubt as to which of
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