| Lightness in Dante Purgatorio, Canto 9
Peter Y. ChouKay Ryan's Stanford Poetry Workshop
(English 192V) Winter Quarter 2010
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In her first class of Stanford's English 192V "The Occasions of Poetry",
Kay Ryan,
current U.S. Poet Laureate (2008-2010) gave us Chapter 1 "Lightness" from Italo Calvino's
Six Memos for
the Next Millennium to read. The assignment was to bring in a poem
(not our own) on the theme of lightness to share with the class. I had already composed
a web page "Dante's Paradiso I.91-105:
The Lightness of Being" (9-26-2008), but realized another episode in Dante's Commedia
conveying lightness. During Kay's class, she asked us to introduce ourselves and think of some
mnemonic device to remember the names. When the student next to me said her name is Lucia,
I thought of Lucia, the Patron Saint of Florence who carried Dante up Mount Purgatory
while he was dreaming of Jupiter snatching Ganymede up Mount Olympus to be his cup-bearer
(Purgatorio, 9.19-63).
Since Ganymede became
the cupbearer to the gods,
after Dante's purification by fire, his poem is exalted so that he's bearing a spiritual message
from the gods to the reader. Beatrice, Lucia, and Mary are the three blessed ladies aiding Dante's
pilgrimage to paradise (Inferno 2.124),
so Dante places Lucia at Purgatorio 9.55 because
of the importance of his spiritual ascent in this canto. The symbolism of 9 as square of the Trinity
as well as Beatrice's number (La Vita Nuova 29)
and 55 as Plato's Cosmic Soul number are perfectly fitting for Lucia— “eagle of light”
carrying Dante upward to paradise.
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In his essay on "Lightness", Italo Calvino said "At certain moments I felt that the entire world was
turning into stone." With this heaviness weighing down on him, Calvino turns to the mythology of Perseus.
This Greek hero killed Medusa, the snake-headed Gorgon who turns people to stone who gazed upon her.
Perseus accomplished this by indirect vision, seeing Medusa on his shining shield and cutting off her head.
Out of Medusa's blood, sprang the winged horse Pegasus that lifted Perseus aloft. Pegasus is also a metaphor
for poetry which Dante calls "the bread of angels"
(Paradiso, 2.11)
that lifts our mind upward.
I chose Dante's Purgatorio 9.21-30 as an example of lightness, since Dante is dreaming the
mythology of Jupiter and Ganymede. Dreams by their nature are lighter than the waking state of
our material world which is dense and concrete. Since Calvino said that "a bird is light, a feather is not",
the image of Jupiter as eagle in flight conveys this lightness.
Ganymede is a beautiful youth of Phrygia.
He was taken up to Heaven by an eagle (Jupiter) as he was tending his father's flock on Mount Ida, and he became
the cup-bearer of the Gods in the place of Hebe (also named Ganymede, a goddess). This story is recounted by
Ovid's Metamorphoses,
Book X, v. 155
and Ganymede is cited in Virgil's Aeneid,
Book 5, v. 252.
I chose Dante's Purgatorio 9.55-57 as an example of lightness, for Lucia, the Patron Saint
of Florence carried Dante who is asleep up Mount Purgatory. The sleep state is even lighter than
the dream state since it is devoid of both the waking world as well as the dream world. In essence
it is empty (Buddhist: sunyata). Vedantic sages say that which is most subtle is closer to
reality and that which is dense is illusion (Sanskrit & Buddhist:
maya). So deep dreamless
sleep is more real than the waking or dream states. What could be lighter than an empty vacuum?
Also Lucia is an anagram for acuila or aquila (Latin for eagle), so
Lucia which is etymologically connected
to lucent (light) also conveys the theme of lightness. The eagle is the only creature that can
gaze directly at the sun without being blinded. Dante alludes to this comparing Beatrice seeing
the sun as an eagle (Paradiso 1.46-48).
Thus it's interesting that Lucia is synonymous with both light and eagle. Light is dematerialized matter or photons
and also equated to energy divided by mass from Einstein's E=mc2, where c = speed of light.
And nothing is faster than the speed of light. It's interesting that Italo Calvino's following chapter
in Six Memos for the Next Millennium
after "Lightness" is "Quickness".
I chose Dante's Purgatorio 9.61-63 as an example
of lightness for it conveys Calvino's "gesture of refreshing courtesy" which Perseus showed Medusa after killing this monstrous Gorgon. "Perseus
makes the ground soft with a bed of leaves, and on top of that he strews little branches of plants born under water, and on this he places Medusa's
head, face down." (Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV.740-752). Virgil tells Dante after Lucia carried him up Mount Purgatory:
"And here she set you down, but first her lovely
eyes showed that open entryway to me;
then she and sleep together took their leave."
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Saint Lucia (1521)
by Domenico Beccafumi
Pinacoteca Nazionale,
Siena, Italy
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This stanza is soft, serene, and sweet in its loveliness. Lucia sets down the sleeping
Dante gently. Then she signals to Virgil the entryway, pointing not with her hand but gestures with her eyes.
Dante knows that Lucia is the
Patroness Saint of sight
[See Anthony K. Cassell, "Santa Lucia as Patroness of Sight: Hagiography, Iconography, and Dante",
Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, No. 109 (1991), pp. 71-88].
Lightness is conveyed in the stanza's last line when she
(Lucia, angelic saint of light) and sleep (Hypnos, god of darkness)
took their leave. Kay Ryan told the class that "Lightness always operate
in the realm of the heavy, never alone, only by contrast." The Yin-Yang
symbol in the circle of Tao is operating here with Lucia/Wakefulness/Lightness/Female & Hypnos/Sleep/Darkness/Male
together carrying Dante aloft midway in his journey to paradise (Tao). |
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— Peter Y. Chou
January 27, 2010
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