PURGATORIO, canto 30: Dante sees and meets Beatrice again, loses Virgil. In the next canto he confesses--to infidelity (Purg. 31.34-36). In this canto Beatrice delivers a brief biography of him which chronicles the circumstances of that infidelity. All this and more unfold in the presence of the twi- form griffon, figure of Christ. The very density of the symbolic environment suggests that if this is the Garden of Eden it still resembles the "selva oscura" where Dante "came to himself." The verb "mi ritrovai" stems from the same root that generates North French (langue d'oïl) "trouvère" and South French (langue d'oc) "trobador"--both words meaning "poet." 1 When Dante "finds" himself, in a sense he "poets" himself; underwriting this sense is the Latin equivalent of "trov-" or "inventio," the rhetorical term for that process by which a poet "finds" or "invents" or "discovers" his matter. 2 Dante's "self-discovery" is very much of, by, and in poetry. On the one hand, explicitly, is Beatrice's mandate to Virgil to aid Dante with his "parola ornata" ("fair or ornate speech"; Inf. 2.67). On the other hand, implicitly, is the suggestion that the "selva oscura" itself is language. Three times in the De vulgari eloquentia, Dante likens the Italian language to a "silva" ("wood" or "forest"). 3 In keeping with this metaphor, the "selva" of poetic language would be precisely "oscura"--dark with allegory, multivalence, and hidden intention--and only the poet could find his way through it. Much more "oscura," however, if not exactly a "selva," is the Garden of Eden, which mortal man has not seen since the Fall of his first parents. Here, because of deeper, more primal obscurity more than "invention," more than "poet-ing," more than facility with the "ornata parola" of poetry are required for finding oneself. Here being a poet is not enough. Here interpretation demands that the nature of imagery itself be questioned even as the sonship of the poet be tested. Here discovery is often an ambiguous recovery. Here, if Beatrice chastens Narcissus, falsifier of images, only forgetfulness {49/50} (the river Lethe) purges him; and even then he does not die. Here it is still possible for Dante to be "troppo fiso" in Beatrice's smile (Purg. 32.9). Moreover, "sotto l'ombra / ... di Parnasso" ("under the shade /also: image/| ... of Parnassus"; Purg. 31.140-41), the poet still sees shades-- "ombra"/images. Here, the light is still dark.

If Dante in Inferno 30 barely escapes the fate of Narcissus ("tutto fisso"), in Purgatorio 30, he only barely endures the self-consciousness of his narcissism. That he becomes self-conscious of his narcissism before he drinks of Lethe is evident from his physical reaction to Beatrice's outraged rebuke (lines 76-78):

Li occhi mi cadder giù nel chiaro fonte;
ma, veggendomi in esso, i trassi a l'erba,
tanta vergogna mi gravò la fronte.

(My eyes fell down to the clear fount, but, seeing myself in it, I drew them back to the grass, so great shame weighed on my brow.)

Now Dante's shame, "vergogna," further proves his self- consciousness of narcissism and consequent repudiation of it, or refusal to continue speculating. Note that the shame "gravò la fronte." The word "gravò" asks to be read in conjunction with Virgil's "disgrava" in Inferno 30.144. There Virgil told Dante to disburden himself of all sorrow; in effect, this was to tell him to "disadam" himself. Virgil's argument for this advice was that Dante's "vergogna" was already sufficient to excuse him. To the burden of shame Dante should not add the burden of "trestizia": the shame is valid and valuable--it is true--and Dante ought to feel it; not so with the infernal "trestizia," however. Moreover, Virgil also told Dante to remember that he, Virgil, would be with Dante in other like cases and that, therefore, Dante should not give in to such emotions again (Inf. 30.145-47). Consequently, {50/51} when in Purgatorio 30 "vergogna gravò la fronte," the word "gravò" not only suggests a burden which Dante ought to bear but also suggests that, although Virgil has just moments earlier disappeared (lines 49-54), he is still, just as he promised in Inferno, with Dante. His legacy to Dante, it will be remembered, is a will "libero, dritto e sano" ("free, upright and whole"; Purg. 27.140), a will set in order under reason's guidance. To be sure, Virgil was only human reason, inspired (by Beatrice) but not yet reformed, not yet illumined. Hence Dante, the Image of God, though much healed, remains in the region of dissimilitude 4--his mind is still essentially dark-- but his will or intention is strong enough now at least to interrupt the narcissistic gesture. Hence, if he does speculate in the "chiaro fonte," he sees with Virgil's aid his shame-burdened brow. In Inferno, he did not, at first, see his shame and consequently desired it so as to will it "come non fosse"; in Purgatory, on the other hand, with his will healed, Dante does see his shame, and the vision finally triumphs over narcissism, since neither desire nor belief impedes correct construction of his behavior and subsequent right action.

Dante continues to comment on his behavior under Beatrice's rebuke with an important simile of maternity and sonship: "Così la madre al figlio par superba, / com' ella parve a me; perché d'amaro / sente il sapor de la pietade acerba" ("So does the mother seem harsh to her child as she seemed to me, for bitter tastes the savor of stern /lit.: unripe/ pity"; lines 79-81). We will have occasion, in the reading of Paradiso 30, to return to this extraordinary and in many ways pivotal simile, but for present purposes the crucial point is the implication of Dante's immaturity. He is like a boy overwhelmed by his mother. Although Dante's will is now "libero, dritto e sano," his reason, image in him of God, is still immature; this, of course, is why Virgil has left him--Another must reform the reason. And to the immature, naturally, the taste of pity will be bitter; moreover, the immature will predictably assign his subjective state to the pity, sensing it as unripe. "Pietade," however, is "pietade" and not "acerbe." A mother's "pity" is her love for her son, and she corrects her son because she loves him; that it should seem otherwise to him is his emotion and his projection, not her behavior. Because of his projection, the "sapor" of "pietade" does taste "d'amaro" to the boy--taste is taste, completely subjective--but the "pietade" itself is "acerba" only because it seems so to the boy. The boy, in short, has confused the "sapor" with the "pietade"--he has added his taste to the "pietade," subtracting from it its reference to the mother's love--with the result that it seems "acerba," its reference corrupt, just as Master Adam added "mondiglia" to the "fiorino," thus corrupting its reference to the credit and the creditability of Florence. Dante in his reason is as yet far from mature because he is still, as Master Adam will be forever, a {51/52} narcissist, corrupting reference.

Not only does Dante's speculation in the "chiaro fonte" prove that he is still a narcissist, even though his will has been healed; there is also his extraordinary resemblance, even here in Purgatory, to Master Adam himself. Three particulars insist on the resemblance; and we will take up each in order. First, he contains within him a flame, a burning; second, he bears water pent up inside him; third, he thirsts with a thirst no ordinary water can satisfy (the thirst for Lethe). Dante feels the "antica fiamma" of Didonian ardor (line 48); he releases a torrent of tears when the ice melts from around his heart (lines 97-99); and he burns with stinging tears, paying thus his "scot," before passing through and drinking of Lethe (lines 142-45).

Dante's recognition of Beatrice, the event which first exposes Narcissus still within him, is a moment of profound emotional disturbance (lines 43-54):

volsimi a la sinistra col respitto
col quale il fantolin corre a la mamma
quando ha paura o quando elli è afflitto,
per dicere a Virgilio: "Men che dramma
di sangue m'è rimaso che non tremi:
conosco i segni de l' antica fiamma";
ma Virgilio n'avea lasciati scemi
di sé, Virgilio dolcissimo patre,
Virgilio a cui per mia salute die' mi;
né quantunque perdeo l'antica matre
valse a le guance nette di rugiada,
che, lagrimando, non tornasser atre.

(I turned to the left with the confidence of a little child that runs to his mother when he is frightened or in distress, to say to Virgil, "Not a drop of blood is left in me that does not tremble: I know the tokens of the ancient flame."

But Virgil had left us bereft of himself, Virgil sweetest father, Virgil to whom I gave myself for my salvation; nor did all that our ancient mother lost keep my dew-washed cheeks from turning dark /lit.: black/ again with tears.)

Before she does, however, the mirror in which Dante the narcissist is at this moment gazing becomes visible. It is the Aeneid, and in particular the figure of Dido: "conosco i segni de l'antica fiamma." In effect, upon his first sight of Beatrice, Dante turns back to look into poetry and into the epic poem, where he sees not Beatrice but his Didonian version of the fire which consumed Narcissus. The Aeneid is here a distorting mirror which mediates only to interrupt the first vision of Beatrice. Dante the pilgrim sees himself, not Beatrice, and sees himself in the famous lines of epic ardor. Such a reaction after so long a separation was perhaps predictable, but it is hardly pardonable, as Beatrice will make clear. Dante sees an old love when he should see a new love; he reverts to an old life when he should turn at last to a new life ("vita nova"). If Dante's will is healed, his reason is still corrupt, not yet reformed, and it corrupts the text of Virgil to substitute the Virgilian name of desire, or Dido, for the new reality which confronts him. Here it is important also to recall that the poet had already named Ulysses, whose "ardore" (Inf. 26.97) for experience is the very type of self- fascination, a "fiamma antica" (Inf. 26.85). Ulysses the rhetor is swathed in the flame of rhetoric; and this flame is "old." 6 Dante, then, in Purgatorio 30 quotes himself as well as Virgil, so as to insist that the fire which consumed Narcissus and consumes him is not only Didonian but also Ulyssean. Love and rhetoric, desire and language, vicious with a nostalgia for "esperïenza" (Inf. 26.116) and "il disïato riso" ("the longed-for smile"; Inf. 5.133), both bend Dante equally to the poetic text where his own "ardore" is mirrored-represented to replace reality.

Dante the pilgrim is not only Narcissus but also Dido and Ulysses--he reduces the Aeneid to a mirror, corrupting Virgil's text, and founds his recovery of Beatrice on error. A terrible emblem. But there is more. There is another poet in Purgatory who reads and who read Virgil. He is Statius. And Dante the pilgrim's reading is itself a distorted reflection of the true maternity of the Aeneid for this other poet (Purg. 21.94-99):

"Al mio ardor fuor seme le faville,
onde sono allumati più di mille;
de l' Eneïda dico, la qual mamma
fummi e fummi nutrice poetando:
sanz' essa non fermai peso di dramma."

("The sparks which warmed me from the divine flame whereby more than a thousand have been kindled were the seeds of my poetic fire: I mean the {53/54} Aeneid, which in poetry was both mother and nurse to me--without it I had achieved little of worth" /lit.: I had not weighed a dram/.)

Statius was converted to Christianity by his reading of Aeneid 3.56-57. This reading, according to Dante, was a deliberate "spoiling" of Virgil's letter so as to take from it the meaning which conduced to salvation (Shoaf 1978:195-99). Statius's relationship to the Aeneid then is not a passive one; he did not merely gaze into a mirror. Quite the contrary, he violated the poem just as every infant violates its mother, in birth, and its nurse, in suckling. But before such violation there must be conception; and in Statius's case, "seeds" of fire begot his "ardor." In other words, the "divina fiamma" was the father--who, in Dante's physiology, is the source of the seed or the image (Purg. 25. 37-51)--and Statius is saying, in effect, that Virgil was his father while the Aeneid was his mother. I admit that the locution "de l'Eneida dico" appears to contradict this position. Yet I would argue that this locution is not in apposition to the preceding tercet. Given Dante's physiology (and how seriously he took it), 8 Statius would hardly go from speaking of "seme" to speaking of "mamma" with the intent of equating the two; for Dante, the mother provided no seed. Hence, rather than an apposition between "la divina fiamma" and "de l'Eneida dico," I would suggest that the latter locution serves for emphasis and specification--something like, "in all this I am referring to the Aeneid, which was......

Certainly the suggested reading serves the logic of Statius's discourse. Virgil, the father, begot Statius's "ardor" upon the Aeneid, the mother. If, in fact, this is the correct reading, immediately apparent in its light is the seriousness of Dante's error when he turns "sinisterly" to Virgil as to a mother: if, at that moment, Virgil is "mother," then the Aeneid is "father"--and just so, as from the seed or source of the image, Dante takes from the Aeneid Dido's image as his own. Dante approaches the Aeneid as if it were a father when, as Statius rather proves, it can only be a mother. Statius's description of the birth of his "ardor" is physiologically correct: the poet provides the seed; the text, the matter. And the flame of the father always exceeds the matter of the mother; the "mother," then, as Statius implies, can {54/55} always be "violated" to recover more of the father--as he himself does, when he spoils Virgil's text for the meaning which tends to his own salvation. The birth, on the other hand, of Dante's "ardor" when he first sees Beatrice again is unnatural: the father, Virgil, is the mother; the mother, Aeneid 4.23, is the father. In a sense, we see now, it is Beatrice's task to reverse this unnatural birth as she, in some measure to be adequated to Scripture and revelation, becomes the text-mother (Purg. 30.79-81, especially) of Dante.

At this point the coin image is intelligible. The child receives matter, precisely weight, from the mother (Purg. 25.51); just so, Statius notes, "`sanz' essa non fermai peso di dramma'" (Purg. 21.99). To have even so much weight as a "dramma," Statius had to have the Aeneid's matter; without "her" matter he would have weighed nothing-- he would not have been alive. Dante, on the other hand, as a result of seeing Beatrice again, turns to the false "mother" Virgil and measures his blood in "dramma"--the blood which, in his physiology, is the source of seed or the image (Purg. 25-37-45)--and then takes his image, of Dido, from the text. Dante, in short, is so confused that he measures paternal blood with maternal weight, applying "dramma" to the source of the image rather than, as did Statius, to the source of weight. Dante confuses substance and matter, which is also the sin of Master Adam. The image (not the infernal but the generative and creative image) is substantive, not material (the infernal image is material only), and that substance may join matter but must never be seen as matter. Dante, however, precisely sees his "dramma"--substance as matter and therefore necessarily matter, "sangue," as substance--and thus, in effect, falsely coins substance into "dramma" of matter. As Narcissus would body his image in water ("corpus putat esse quod unda est"--"he thinks that a body which is water only"; Met. 3.417; cf. Innes 1955:92), so Dante would body his image in a text. 9 He has the wrong text, however. He must have a text, yes; but his text is Scripture (Beatrice : revelation), not the Aeneid. 10 He is Dante, not Statius.

A brief summary here, before the next step in the argument, will be of great help. Dante the pilgrim's vision of his Didonian ardor and flame is a distorted reflection of the birth of Statius's "ardor"; as a poet, in comparison with Statius, Dante has not yet found, or--perhaps better--returned, to his "inspiration." He is about to rejoin Beatrice, whose eyes are the "suggelli" of his craft. But to fold himself within her inspiration once again, Dante must transcend his narcissism, and to do that, he must acquiesce in the passing of poetry's authority. This he is reluctant to do because the fascination of Narcissus is still so strong in him, and he does see himself in the epic text. He is still a son of (Master) Adam, and he falsely coins substance by confusing it with matter. The flame with which he burns does not yet illumine; he cannot {55/56} yet see his text. Dante the pilgrim, on the way to being the poet, does not yet know who his father and mother are.

Dante is "aware of Virgil's purpose," but Virgil's "purpose" is also, fittingly, an "art," and by that "art" he washes Dante's tear-stained cheeks with dew so that he "discovers" the color which Hell had hidden there. 11 When, however, Virgil suddenly disappears, and with him "sua arte," Dante's cheeks, though washed with dew, turn black with more weeping. Obviously Virgil's efforts were limited and their effects temporary: "art" can only wash away the stain of Hell, and the "dis-covery" of normal color is far from that "reformatio imaginis Dei" which it is the purpose of Dante's askesis to achieve. Virgil is Dante's father in poetry--not the only one, to be sure (see Purg. 26.97-99), but the most important, without doubt--and yet the image which he provides is fleeting as well as secondary. It is, of course, only a poetic image ("sua arte") and therefore, inevitably, transitory. Dante's true Image--true Image of both the pilgrim and the poet, his personal and primary Image--has its source elsewhere, in a Father whom he has yet to see. He has yet to see that Father because the Image of Him which he bears, the Fall, and especially the sin of pride, has seriously deformed. And Virgil's "arte" cannot {56/57} reform this Image. So temporary is Virgil's "arte" that, when he disappears, its effects disappear too, and the black stain of Hell reappears on the as yet unreformed Image of God, or Dante's face.

Now, for the same reason that Dante's Image exceeds Virgil's "arte" (and, ultimately, his paternity too), it also defeats restoration by Eden, or "quantunque perdeo l'antica matre" ("all that our ancient mother lost"). The key is "antica" and hence the periphrasis. The old mother, Eve, wrought the deformation of the Image, and only the new mother, Mary, Mother of God, can reform the Image through the agency of her Son. Because Eve is the old mother and because her "antiquity" taints Eden, neither she nor what she lost can prevent the tears which blacken the Image of God in Dante. As Virgil finally is not the true Father, neither is Eve the true mother. Dante's Father is God; his mother, Beatrice: the Trinity reforms him to similitude with Itself through the mediation of Scripture.

This reformation, of course, is very far off. Here and now, surrounded by what the ancient mother lost, Dante falsifies the Image of God in him by blackening his face with tears. He is still a son of (Master) Adam and of the "antica matre," Adam's wife. And so it is that Beatrice must rebuke Dante (Purg. 30.55-57, 73-75).

The effect in him of this rebuke Dante describes in an elaborate simile, far-reaching in its many implications, of ice melting from around his heart. 12 Initially, for present purposes, the most important element of this simile is the word "liquefatta" (line 88), since it answers directly to Ovid's description of Narcissus's "dissolution": "sic attenuatus amore / Liquitur et tecto paulatim carpitur igni" ("thus worn away by love, he dissolved and was slowly consumed by its secret fire"; Met. 3.488-90; emphasis added). Obviously the processes of "liquefaction" in the two cases are similar: although Dante introduces subtle changes of Ovid in his version of the simile (Brownlee 1978:202-203), he retains the basic notion of the sun melting snow or frost (lines 85-90), and he does repeat the crucial term "liquefatta." The emphasis on liquid is necessary to continue the thematization of Adamic parallels. But if the processes of "liquefaction" are similar, the end results of these processes, we know, are widely different. Unlike Narcissus, who as a result of "liquefaction" dies, Dante, dying rather in the sense of "conversion," begins to return to the "new life" (Purg. 30.115) and to return under the guidance of the one who first revealed it to him (cf. Eph. 4:22-24).

So that he may finally enjoy the fruit of his "new life," Beatrice must bring Dante to confess his sins. The Adam in him must confess his betrayal of Beatrice, and this betrayal took precisely the form of falsification, the sin of {57/58} (Master) Adam. So it is that Beatrice proceeds to report Dante's biography (Purg. 30.109-41) in such a way as to emphasize his Adamic error.

Two moments of the biography are crucial for the special emphasis she seeks. First is the metaphor of the rain (Purg, 30.112-20):

per larghezza di grazie divine,
che sì alti vapori hanno a lor piova
che nostre viste là non van vicine,
questi fu tal ne la sua vita nova
virtüalmente, ch'ogne abito destro
fatto averebbe in lui mirabil prova.
Ma tanto più maligno e più Silvestro
si fa 'l terren col mal seme e non cólto,
quant' elli ha più di buon vigor terrestro.

("through largess of divine graces, which have for their rain vapors so lofty that our sight goes not near thereto, this man was such in his new life, virtually, that every right disposition would have made marvelous proof in him. But so much the more rank and wild becomes the land, ill-sown and untilled, as it has more of good strength of soil.")

These are the generations of the heaven and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth: And every plant of the field before it sprung up in the earth, and every herb of the ground before it grew: for the Lord God had not rained upon the earth; and there was not a man to till the earth.

Now /after the Fall/ God makes the fields green, but by raining upon the earth /as opposed to before the Fall when he "had not rained upon the earth"/--that is, he makes souls to flower again through his word; but He waters them from clouds--that is, from the Scriptures of the Prophets and the Apostles. And rightly are they called clouds, since these are words which sound and pass away, having struck the air. Moreover, they have {58/59} the added obscurity of allegories, as if they were darkened with a sort of mist, just as happens with clouds. But when by explication they are glossed, it is as if the rain of truth is poured out on those who understand them. 13

Our Lord deigned to assume the cloud of our flesh and pours out the most generous rain of the holy Gospels, promising also this, that if someone drinks of his water, he may return to that fountain within, so that he will not seek the rain without (PL 34:199).

... for man laboring in the earth--that is, settled in the dryness of sin--divine doctrine, from human words, is necessary, just like rain from clouds. Such knowledge, however, will be destroyed. For we see now in aenigmas, as if seeking food in a cloud: then, however, we will see face to face (1 Cor. 13.8, 12), when the whole face of our earth shall be watered by the inner fount of leaping water (PL 34:199).

Although these various elements of Augustine's text provoked Dante, he must have found most compelling the image of "nubes" itself, to which his own word "vapori" answers. It is here that Augustine's discourse and his own thematization of Narcissus converge. And the interface is mediation. Augustine's figure of the "nubes" must be seen in the context of his anxiety of figuration itself. 15 Throughout his career Augustine lamented the temporality and spatiality of language because of which it is limited to figuration when it would describe God and his acts. A word is "quod videtur et transit" ("what is seen and passes away"), as he expresses it elsewhere. 16 Clouds, then, figure the fault in language which necessitates figures: they thunder, then blow over; and sometimes they are black, obscuring. And, as in a thunderstorm the rain must break through the clouds, so in an allegory the truth must descend through the obscurity of the letter.

Dante, who shares Augustine's anxiety, adapts his figure to his own. He understands that mediation is the error in which narcissism originates. Because men must use media to communicate, they always risk contaminating the media with their own selfish desires. Indeed, if men could reach the clouds, they would try to control even them for their own selfish interests. Hence, Beatrice's insistence that the divine graces have "clouds so high for their rain / that our sight does not come near them." Dante is anxious to stress that this rain, unlike the rain which Master Adam rains, could never be contaminated with any "mondiglia" of desire. Indeed, so distant is the source of this rain that not even Beatrice's sight--she insists on "nostre viste"--can reach it. So invisible and impenetrable by sight are these "vapori" that no Narcissus can ever look into them and see himself. These "vapori" originate in God, and no man hath seen the Father except the Son (Matt. 11-27).

If safe from Narcissus, these "vapori" are also proof against Master Adam's false coining. Since God is the origin of the "vapori," the rain of divine graces is obviously and even ostentatiously a metaphor, insisting on its figurativity. It never rains in Heaven, and there are no clouds in Heaven (however many there may be in the heavens), just as it never rains and there are no clouds in Hell. But this similarity masks a crucial difference. In Heaven, although it never rains, the referent of the figure of rain is real, namely God. In Hell, on the other hand, it may "rain," but it is the sign "rain" and only the sign "rain" which is real (though it is not true), as in the "rain" which punishes the gluttons (Inf. 6.7-9)--hardly true "rain" in the sense we know it ("regola e qualità mai non l'è nova"--"its measure and its quality are never new") even if very {60/61} real (Inf. 6.34-35). In both Heaven and Hell, which resemble each other as original and disfigured copy, the sign "rain" is qua sign false in that it cannot function qua sign in either region. In Hell the sign is false because reference is corrupt: the sign "rain" does communicate (it is real), but it communicates only itself disjunct from any referent (it is not true). When Master Adam claims "piovvi in questo greppo," the sign infinitely defers the referent; it is a false coin not to be exchanged for any reality other than itself. In Heaven, on the other hand, the sign is false because the referent exceeds it: both it and its reality, or water, are inadequate to circumscribe or circumrealize the referent, God. Not only absent and invisible, this referent is also incomprehensible. God, however, is never not real and efficacious. Hence "rain" can be predicated of Him and of His actions: He will "condescend" to this predication (see Par. 4.43-48). Moreover, such condescension is always available if only there is never any admixture of personal desire in the sign so as to substitute it for the referent. In that event the sign is so many parts dross and a falsification of the pure light of Heaven. To forestall such an event, Beatrice insists "che nostre viste là non van vicine." She excludes the possibility of narcissistic pollution of the image. Hence she speaks in a figure of pure figurativity--which is the only way to speak to Narcissus about his narcissism.

Necessarily, these images evoke the false images which Master Adam made, or the coins three-parts dross. And in the systematics of the three cantos 30, Beatrice, we can see, is accusing Dante of having been a Master Adam. The accusation is the more obvious for the word "promession": in Italy by the fourteenth century one spoke of "promession" in the sense of indebtedness, or obligation to pay, and so Dante could presume that the economic connotation of the word would not be lost on his readers. 17 And that connotation contributes to the sense of the "imagini" as coins. Dante, then, so Beatrice implies, by following false images, as much as falsely "coined" them: he added to them the "mondiglia" of his concupiscence and rendered them thus good for nothing. {61/62}

It will be helpful to recall at this point Dante's Christian Platonism. This Platonism posits that all creation is but an image of a Good which is absent and invisible though always operant. That the creation is an image hardly means that it is not good; quite the contrary: "viditque Deus cuncta quae fecerat, et erant valde bona" ("and God saw all the things He had made, and they were very good"; Gen. 1.31). Indeed, one could go further: the good of creation is that it is an image, an Image of God. Hence the dilemma confronting man fallen, his reason benighted. He often, in fact usually, mistakes the image for the Good of which it is an image. He appropriates the creation or some part of it as an absolute or end in itself, whereupon it becomes, as image, a false image of the Good in which it participates as a creature of the Good. In such a case, from this image or creature has been subtracted the good of its Good, and in its place has been added the dross ("mondiglia") of personal desire--the desire to find the person satisfied or quiescent in an image now belonging to and therefore of the person. From the optic of Christian Platonism, desire falsifies the only substantiality which the image or creature has--namely, its creatureliness, its middled if also muddled being--and thus the image becomes a false coin "che nulla promession rendono intera."

A coin is a promise--no matter how pure its gold--of faith and exchangeability: a coin is not the thing itself (gold is not God, though some men make it a god) but a medium of exchange for other things. A coin, however, three parts dross is no longer a valid promise--it no longer "covers" the promise because the whole promise cannot reside in the less than whole or false coin: a false coin cannot render the promise whole. Just so with the false image of the Good. Through created goods, "ea quae facta sunt" (Rom. 1:20), God promises to man forgiveness, salvation, eternal life. If to the created good is added the "mondiglia" of narcissistic desire, then the image, thus falsified, cannot render God's promise whole. The image, of course, can never represent God--it can never "purchase" God--it is only the promise, where the promise is of something else which, until death, is absent and invisible. But if the image can never represent God, it can, as long as it is not falsified, render the promise whole: the "ea quae facta sunt" rightly read and rightly loved show forth the glory of God--the goods of creation are "good for" the Good because they are the promise of the Good.

But Dante, Beatrice is saying, was a false coiner just like Master Adam, whose son in a sense he is. When Dante followed false images of the good, they were ontically true images which he was falsifying with personal desire. The question pressing on us now is, With exactly what desire did Dante falsify the images?

The answer to this question emerges from the revision of the Vita nuova {62/63} which Dante is prosecuting in the three cantos 30. We have already briefly considered this revision in the discussion of Inferno 30. There we learned that, following Beatrice's death, Dante met and became enamored of a donna pietosa who is almost certainly the "pargoletta" whom Beatrice mentions in Purgatorio 31.59 and who is to be identified with Lady Philosophy. Here, in the continuation of the revision, we learn in greater detail the exact nature of Dante's betrayal of Beatrice for this donna pietosa.

First recall that, when Beatrice accuses Dante of following false images, she claims that he "volse i passi suoi per via non vera, / imagini di ben seguendo false." The claim and especially the emphasized phrases suggest that Beatrice is also describing Dante lost in the "selva oscura" since there the "diritta via era smarrita" ("the direct way was lost"; Inf. 1.3; emphasis added), and there ("vi") all along was the good though Dante was so late in finding it--"ma per trattar del ben ch' i' vi trovai" ("but to treat of the good which I found there"; Inf. 1.8; emphasis added). Now if the direct way was lost and if Dante lost the good, so as to have to find it again, behind these events lay, doubtless among other causes, his attempt at a too narrowly philosophical conversion. 18 Dante had attempted to reason his way through "del bel monte il corto andar" (Inf. 2.120). Much like Boethius in his time of loss, Dante, when he had lost Beatrice, desired to console himself with philosophy; the fragmentary Convivio is probably best understood as Dante's "Consolation of Philosophy." But the consolations of philosophy are severely limited; they are wholly inadequate to supernatural happiness (Freccero 1973:77). And they certainly do not constitute the short way to the Garden of Eden. Indeed, theirs is the long and winding and often tortuous way of rationalization, abstraction, and hypothesis--the way, in short, of the reason still in the darkness of the Fall, the way "non vera." Philosophy is not the true way; it cannot finally lead to the good, because the philosopher's desire is for rationality when the reason, unillumined by grace and unreformed to similitude with God, can only see its own rationality, its own order (often specious) wherever it looks. 19 Images, however, which do lead to the good, always exceed rationalization or escape it, and if reduced to counters of philosophy, they are in that measure falsified. Hence, we can infer from Beatrice's words that the desire with which Dante falsified the images was the philosopher's desire for rationality in the world.

Confirmation of this inference is available from Purgatorio 31, where Dante actually confesses to his betrayal of Beatrice. First, she asks him (Purg. 31.22- 30):

"Per entro i mie' disiri,
che ti menavano ad amar lo bene
di là dal qual non è a che s'aspiri, {63/64}
quai fossi attraversati o quai catene
trovasti, per che del passare innanzi
dovessiti così spogliar la spene?
E quali agevolezze o quali avanzi
nella fronte de li altri si mostraro,
per che dovessi lor passeggiare anzi?"

("Within your desires of me that were leading you to love that Good beyond which there is nothing to which man may aspire, what pits did you find athwart your path, or what chains, that you had thus to strip you of the hope of passing onward? And what attractions or what advantages were displayed on the brow of others, that you were obliged to dally before them?")

But when Beatrice's image disappeared, Dante's desire for her was diverted. Seeking the consolations of philosophy, Dante was reduced to reason's version of beatitude, its version of happiness in a fallen world. The twisted, tortuous, painful, and binding experience of reason in its search for happiness is communicated in Beatrice's words "attraversati" and "catene": the latter word speaks for itself, but "attraversati" should be analyzed so as to hear its insistence on turning, on version, which leads astray. Dante himself, in his confession a few lines hence, will admit to the turning of his steps in a wrong direction. But before that Beatrice actually hints at the mode of this "attraversion": she says that he found ("trovasti") the cross ditches and the chains, which is as much as to say that he "poeted" them in the allegorical and philosophical canzone of the Convivio and elsewhere--songs which, however beautiful, are also fraught with the "attraversions" and "concatenations" of {64/65} reason in its search for happiness. Such songs, in fact, are reason's efforts to mirror itself in the unpredictable creativity of history; and Beatrice precisely goes on to suggest that Dante's version from her was an act of Narcissus. She says that the "agevolezze" and "avanzi"-- exactly what they were is not immediately relevant--"nella fronte delli altri si mostraro." Now if Dante was looking "nella fronte delli altri," it is likely that he was seeing his image in those images and his face in those faces--in short, seeing himself instead of the Other and his reason's version of the real instead of the real. Beatrice, then, does not hesitate finally to suggest that Dante was a Narcissus, diverted if not perverted when he should have been converted. 21

Dante himself confirms the suggestion--and does so, little wonder, weeping (Purg. 31.34-36):

Piangendo dissi: "Le presenti cose
col falso lor piacer volser miei passi,
tosto che'l vostro viso si nascose."

(Weeping I said, "The present things, with their false pleasure, turned my steps aside, as soon as your countenance was hidden.")

Responding to Dante's confession, Beatrice asserts that he must now bear {65/66} the "`vergogna / del suo errore'" ("`shame for his error'"; Purg. 31.43-44). Shame, we have seen, is a motion of the will rightly ordered by the reason and a motion which, as such, interrupts the narcissistic gesture; where there is shame, there is consciousness of the Other and no (or at least less) narcissistic emphasis on the self. Hence it is most fitting that Dante now should bear the "vergogna / del /suo/ errore" since earlier it was precisely his "shameless" reason which erred or wandered in pursuit of the "pargoletta," Lady Philosophy, thus leading the will and its desires astray. The darkened reason and disordered will of that time could feel no shame, and now Dante must compensate for that omission.

In addition to his shame, Dante must also pay some "`scotto / di pentimento che lagrime spanda'" ("`scot of penitence that may pour forth tears'"; Purg. 30.144-45). He must pay this "scot" before he may drink of Lethe: this is the draught of cool water, even a single drop of which Master Adam cannot have because he is a falsifier; and the implication is clear that Dante can drink of this water only when the falsifier is purged from within him. Hence the tears--"che lagrime spanda." These tears are true coin because they are natural signs of Dante's contrition; he cannot falsify them, as the whole of canto 31 makes abundantly clear: he hurts too much. Moreover, these tears burn Dante, as the verb scottare = "to scald" suggests, and thus they inflict him for a moment with the same pain Master Adam suffers. Thus, too-- and this is crucial--they are a water that burns but that burns naturally: this in rebuttal of that denaturing of water in imagery- -that image of water that parches--in the vicious materiality of Hell. Hence, in summary, Dante "is" Master Adam (and a son of Adam) suffering the pain of Master Adam just as he "is" Narcissus enduring the sorrow of Narcissus, but only as preparation for "transhumanizing" Narcissus and (Master) Adam on the way to his ultimate reflection of the New Adam--the "vista nova" (Par. 33.136) of his now revised "vita nova." {66}