“Lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest’acque”:
Dante, Ulysses, and the Creation of the World (Par. 29.17-21)

Dante’s reinterpretation of the Creation scene rejects any anthropomorphic narrative of the beginning, in contrast to accounts found in Genesis, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, and, later, Milton’s Paradise Lost. These narratives are characterized by a series of active past tense verbs attributed to a divine figure actively engaged in the act of creation: “and God said… and God saw… and He divided…” (Gen. 1:3-4); “A god – and nature, now become benign – / ended this strife… separated… defined… unraveling… assigning… linked” (Met. 1.22-25)^[8]; “… then founded, then conglobed” (PL 7.241). Dante instead, as Boitani suggests, is “rewriting the Hebrew-Christian Genesis and the prologue of John’s Gospel in the Greek-Latin-Scholastic language of the Platonists and the Aristotelians, and roundly dismissing any anthropomorphism from the Beginning in favor of metaphysics and the categories of thought.”^[9] On a similar note, D’Agostino observes that the traditional division of the creation into six days is notably absent in Dante’s narrative.^[10] For such a division, European epic poetry will have to await the works of later poets like Tasso, Du Bartas, Acevedo and eventually Milton. Nevertheless, in Dante’s highly conceptual account where theological truths are elucidated via Neoplatonic images and metaphors, there is one explicit reference to concrete spatiality and narrative. I am referring to line 21: “lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest’acque.” The line clearly and unmistakably refers to Gen. 1:2: “et spiritus Dei ferebatur super acquas.” My focus here is on the significant addition of the demonstrative adjective “queste” to “acque.”^[11] This adjective ties the cosmology and the narrative of the poem to the tradition of theological commentaries that sought to solve the problem of the waters above the firmament of Gen. 1:7. In his comprehensive essay, Bruno Nardi showed how an entire exegetical tradition variously tried to justify the apparent paradox of a mass of water said to be above the furthest reaches of the physical sky, against common sense and Aristotelian physics.^[12] More recently, a survey of the tradition has been provided by Dino Boccaletti.^[13] What is of importance here, is that Dante sides with the tradition that saw in the biblical waters above the firmament a reference to the Prime Mover or Crystalline Sphere. This sphere, namely the very heaven he now finds himself in together with Beatrice, as noted by Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi, was interpreted by commentators such as Albert the Great, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas to be substantiated by these waters.^[14] In Dante’s cosmology, the Prime Mover serves as the nexus between the One and the Many, connecting the Empyrean as God’s mind with the created world, as demonstrated by Christian Moevs.^[15] Consequently, it provides an apt stage for profound theological discussions about the beginning. Similarly, one could argue that Gen. 1:2 serves as a nexus for its readers, bridging the gap between the very beginning and what existed before it, marking the conceptual and imaginative limits of human understanding regarding the origin of the universe: “terram autem erat inanis et vacua et tenebrae super faciem abyssi et spiritus Dei ferebatur super acquas.” Dante’s insertion of the demonstrative adjective then, represents a rewriting of the line from Genesis that merges a Neoplatonic Christian understanding of cosmic Creation and the linearity of biblical narrative: the pilgrim’s upwards trajectory beyond the Crystalline sphere (Neoplatonic ascension) reverses the forward (linear) trajectory of the Genesis narrative.^[16] In the former, the pilgrim (and the reader) moves from the Many to the One, transitioning from the multiplicity of the created world to the fullness of Being of the Empyrean. In the latter, the reader moves from the One to the Many, from “In principio, In the beginning” to the unfolding of Creation and the history of Israel. These two trajectories explicitly meet in Dante’s line: “Lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest’acque.”

Dante and Beatrice find themselves on the waters, at the spatiotemporal boundary of the created world. The only other figure who has traversed the same waters is God before the Creation of the world. It is crucial to remember that “queste acque” constituting the Crystalline sphere above the firmament were once united with other waters which are not there, as noted by Nardi.^[17] These other waters are none other than the Earth’s Ocean and seas, located below the firmament. They were originally separated from the others now above the firmament during the creation act of the second day. Dante was acutely aware of the theological and cosmological complexities inherent in the biblical account. His late work, the Questio de aqua et terra, clearly demonstrates this awareness. In that text, Dante engages in a heated debate concerning the reciprocal relationship between the sphere of the earth and that of the water, particularly addressing the problem of why certain parts of the former emerge above the latter.^[18] Dante employs a wide range of concepts of natural philosophy and endeavors to address the issue by considering the influence of the heaven of the fixed stars on the sublunary elements. Dante’s thirst for knowledge and his struggle with its limits are most evident here, as they are throughout his works. His reasoning reaches its climax with a deeply felt acknowledgement of the limits of human understanding. Dante argues that the ultimate causes behind certain phenomena of the natural world remain beyond human comprehension. It is at this juncture that Dante references Gen. 1:9, the work of the third day, that is when the waters below the firmament (or “quelle acque,” one could say) were gathered in one place, allowing the emergence of the earth. Then follows chapter 22:

Desist then, let men desist from seeking into things that are above them, and let them seek only so far as their faculties allow, that they may draw near to things immortal and divine so far as they have power to do so, and things beyond their power let them leave. Let them hear Job’s friend saying: “Canst thou understand the ways of God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?.” Let them hear the Psalmist saying: “Marvellous is thy knowledge; it has comforted me, and I cannot attain unto it.” Let them hear Isaiah saying: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways”; and he was speaking even in the person of God to man. Let them hear the voice of the Apostle to the Romans: “O the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and His ways past finding out!.” And finally let them hear the very voice of the Creator saying: “Whither I go, ye cannot come.” And let these words suffice for the inquiry after the truth we have sought.^[19]

This passage appears toward the conclusion of a rigorous treatise on natural philosophy, revealing Dante’s profound involvement with the boundaries of human understanding. His unquenchable thirst for knowledge meets here with the trust in God’s ultimately unknowable plans, as conveyed through biblical passages. The inclusion of numerous biblical quotations introduces a different epistemic dimension when the natural philosopher faces the limits of his own rational endeavors. Dante perceives that the ultimate fate of the individual and the knowledge of the cosmos both adhere to the same mysterious and yet benevolent pattern – God’s plan. Notably, the subject under discussion here pertains to the position of the other waters, the waters below the firmament.

Before the Questio, another significant moment in Dante’s work combines thirst for knowledge, human nature, the physical world, and the inner limits of human understanding. This moment occurs at the intersection between philosophy and theology, and it is one of his most memorable literary episodes: Ulysses’ last voyage narrated in Inferno 26. Another episode that unfolds upon the waters. I have just suggested, in the wake of Nardi, Chiavacci Leonardi, and Moevs, that the waters of the Crystalline sphere in the poem have to be identified with the waters above the firmament of Gen. 1:7. In Beatrice’s vast theological discourse on the Creation of the world, these very waters are said to be the ones God was hovering on at the beginning in Gen. 1:2. Aporias – the very core of exegesis – abound in the biblical text and also in its rewriting within the Christian Neoplatonic cosmology of the Commedia. Regardless of how Dante visually pictured the (simultaneous) beginning of the created world, there has been a primordial moment (even if just conceptual and not temporal) in which the waters above and those below the firmament were together in a unique mass, partitioned now in the Crystalline sphere and the ocean on Earth.^[20] For this reason, it is possible to correct what I have said above: in the Commedia, not two, but three characters are shown to have been on what were originally the same waters: God before the beginning of the universe, Dante himself (together with Beatrice in the Crystalline sphere), and Ulysses.^[21] Not by chance, as John Took has synthetized, the very intellectual presumption Dante is reproaching in the abovementioned passage of the Questio can be defined as “impious Ulysseanism.”^[22]

In the first part of this article, I have demonstrated how, according to the cosmology presented in the poem, Dante’s and Ulysses’ paths intersect once more on different parts of the originally same waters. In the following parts, I aim to examine, through a close reading of the text, whether and how Dante utilizes this cosmological observation to construct the narrative tension of the poem itself. In other words, I intend to explore whether Ulysses is in some way present to Dante the pilgrim at the spatiotemporal boundary of the created universe in Paradiso 29, and, if so, why.

The Shadow of Ulysses on the Waters

When Dante contemplates Earth from above for the last time, as described in the passage at the beginning of this article, he provides very precise spatial coordinates for his celestial journey. He states that during this moment of his second downward gaze, he was “mosso per tutto l’arco / che fa dal mezzo al fine il primo clima” meaning that he moved across the entire arc from the center to the end of the first climate. That is to say, he moved westward from the meridian of Jerusalem to the climate’s western extremity. Therefore, his actual position within the Crystalline sphere aligns with the terrestrial coordinates of the meridian of Cadiz – precisely where Ulysses was standing while trespassing the Pillars of Hercules. Dante too, in fact, is about to trespass a boundary. He makes a very careful use of adverbs of place: “sì ch’io vedea di là da Gade il varco / folle d’Ulisse, e di qua presso il lito / nel qual si fece Europa dolce carco” (Par. 27.82-4). As Giuseppe Mazzotta writes: “Al pari di Ulisse alle Colonne d’Ercole, che dirompe il perimetro chiuso della geografia tolemaica, Dante si ritrova alla frontiera dello spazio fisico e la supera: entra nella metafisica e viaggia nella mente di Dio.”^[23] In his analysis of the Greek hero in the poem, Jurij Lotman similarly remarked: “Ulisse viene ricordato per la seconda volta [the first one being the episode of the syren in Purg. 19.22-3] quando Dante entra nella costellazione dei Gemelli. Trovandosi nel punto che è esattamente agli antipodi rispetto al luogo del naufragio di Ulisse, Dante conclude il volo verso il meridiano alle colonne d’Ercole e ad altezza infinita ripete il viaggio di Ulisse finché non viene a trovarsi sopra il luogo della sua morte, sul meridiano Sion-Purgatorio. Qui, seguendo l’asse della caduta di Lucifero, che passa attraverso il luogo in cui è naufragata la nave di Ulisse egli compie il volo verso l’Empireo. In questo modo è come se il suo viaggio fosse la continuazione di Ulisse dal momento della morte di questi. Da allora è come se l’uno fosse il doppio dell’altro.”^[24] Indeed, both the Florentine pilgrim and the Greek hero are on the verge of entering uncharted waters.

Many critics have invoked the shadow of Ulysses in their analysis of the scene set in the Crystalline sphere. Giuseppe Mazzotta, as mentioned earlier, interprets the “varco / folle d’Ulisse” as both a farewell to and an identification with the Greek hero.^[25] Teodolinda Barolini has demonstrated that this awareness of boundary trespassing was more keenly felt by the poet than by the pilgrim.^[26] In another passage, while commenting the Creation narrative in Paradiso 29, Barolini observes that “within the metaphoric universe of this poem, God’s moving over these waters, ‘quest’acque’, cannot fail to recall Ulysses’ watery journey, or, therefore, the poet’s.”^[27] Here, Barolini briefly alludes to Ulysses only on a metaphorical level, in connection with the waters of the Crystalline. In his Lectura Dantis Romana on Paradiso 29, Alfonso d’Agostino introduces Ulysses only after connecting the image of God’s spirit hovering over the waters with the astonished Neptune gazing upwards at the shadow of Argo on the sea surface, as depicted in the simile of Par. 33.96. This connection is made in conjunction with the myth of Jason and the medieval interpretation of the word umbra ‘shadow’ as distorted image of something.^[28] This is a fascinating and plausible pairing in which Ulysses inevitably plays an important role. In various ways, all these critical readings incorporate the presence of Ulysses to help us comprehend how Dante conceived, depicted, and experienced the narrative of the Creation of the world in Paradiso 29. This crucial counterpart of Dante’s journey is explicitly invoked during the downward gaze before reaching the Crystalline sphere in Paradiso 27. Critics sensed that the shadow of Ulysses must be present in an episode of such importance for the poet, the theologian, and the human being – the scene set on the Crystalline sphere at the spatiotemporal boundary of the world. I contend that these critics are right in introducing Ulysses into their hermeneutics because Ulysses is actually conjured within the text itself, and in a distinctly Dantean manner, as I will try to demonstrate in the next part of this article.

Shipwreck, Repentance, Creation

To my knowledge, no commentator or critic has ever highlighted the fact that “quest’acque,” at the end of line 21, is embedded within a pattern of rhyming words that has a significant precedent in the Commedia:

…
in sua etternità di tempo fore,
fuor d’ogne altro comprender, come i piacque,
s’aperse in nuovi amor l’etterno amore.

Né prima quasi torpente si giacque;
ché né prima né poscia procedette
lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest’acque.

This pattern of rhyming words consists of: (1) a parenthetical clause; (2) a past-tense verbal form of the second conjugation; (3) the plural substantive ‘acque,’ accompanied by a demonstrative adjective. There are only two other instances in the poem in which the same pattern of rhyming words recurs: Inferno 26 and Purgatorio 1. Specifically, in Inf. 26.136-42:

Noi ci allegrammo, e tosto tornò in pianto;
ché de la nova terra un turbo nacque
e percosse del legno il primo canto.

Tre volte il fé girar con tutte l’acque;
a la quarta levar la poppa in suso
e la propra ire in giù, com’altrui piacque,

infin che ’l mar fu sovra noi richiuso.

And Purg. 1.130-36:

Venimmo poi in sul lito diserto,
che mai non vide navicar sue acque
omo, che di tornar sia poscia esperto.

Quivi mi cinse sì com’altrui piacque:
oh maraviglia! ché qual si scelse
l’umile pianta, cotal si rinacque

subitamente là onde l’avelse.

These two passages have frequently been highlighted as textual evidence of how Dante skillfully wove his dialectic with the figure of Ulysses into a fundamental narrative element of the Commedia. In her comprehensive study of the figure of Ulysses in the poem, Maria Corti emphasized the significance of Dante’s system of auto-citation as a key component of his textual strategy.^[29] This is how she comments on the final lines of Purgatorio 1: “Come già rilevò Thompson [D. Thompson, Dante’s Epic Journey, 1974], il modo di proiezione di questi versi su alcuni dell’episodio di Ulisse è chiaro indizio di autocitazione: il segnale più vistoso è la ripetizione dell’enunciato com’altrui piacque, indicante l’inattingibilità dei due territori se non in un’esperienza rispettivamente eccezionale a livello sia negativo che positivo; il piacque dell’enunciato si collega in Inf. XXVI alle rime acque : nacque; qui acque : rinacque. Dio manda a fondo (v. 141: ‘e la prora ire in giù, com’altrui piacque’) la nave a punizione di una superba curiositas, laddove Dante è cinto con l’umile pianta (v. 135), simbolo dell’umiltà della ricerca […].”^[30] Corti follows this pattern of allusions up to the second canto of Paradiso, where Dante further engages with the shadow of Ulysses using nautical metaphors and language. Corti’s analysis illustrates how, for Dante, Ulysses embodies the perspective of the radical Aristotelians, with possible textual echoes from Boetius of Dacia’s Modi significandi in Ulysses’‘orazion picciola’.^[31] At the beginning of Paradiso 2 Dante urges his readers to accompany him on his sea journey only if they partake in the “pan degli angeli,” which is, as Corti paraphrases it, “un sapere confortato dalla Verità teologica e dalla contemplazione.”^[32] This very theological contemplation reaches its zenith in Beatrice’s grand and final theological discourse within the Crystalline sphere, just before penetrating into God’s mind – the Empyrean itself. It is surprising that neither Corti nor other critics appear to have included Par. 29.17-21 within the context of the rhyming words pattern mentioned above.

Having identified a previously overlooked instance besides the two already known sequences of rhyming words, I now delve into a close reading of these three passages to substantiate my argument regarding the pivotal role of the narrative of the Creation of the world in Paradiso 29 within the confrontation between Dante and Ulysses in the Commedia.

To begin with, all three passages inherently contribute to the greater numerical pattern embedded in the poem – the omnipresence of the number three with all its narrative and theological implications.^[33] Furthermore, the figures who pronounce those lines are also three in number: Ulysses, Dante the author, Beatrice. These passages depict three different scenes: a shipwreck, a ritual of repentance, the Creation of the world. For the sake of my analysis, I will refer to these passages numerically, as follows: (1) Inf. 26.136-42; (2) Purg. 1.130-36; (3) Par. 29.13-21.

1. Shipwreck: Inf. 26.136-42. This moment stands as the most tragic in Ulysses’ account of the sea voyage and marks the ending of the canto. The mariners have just glimpsed a towering, dark mountain on the distant horizon and they are filled with joy. However, suddenly, a powerful and tempestuous wind arises (“nacque,” 137) from that very mountain and generates a kind of watery whirlpool (“con tutte l’acque,” 139), that tragically engulfs the ship. The narrative is both climatic and straightforward, conveyed through brief, descriptive sentences with single verbs that build toward the final moment. The only non-descriptive sentence is the parenthetical clause in line 141 (“com’altrui piacque”), which poignantly encapsulates the hermeneutics of the entire story and Ulysses’ destiny.^[34] The “altrui,” in fact, refers to God himself. Ulysses subtly alludes to a divine agent behind the natural events that led to his shipwreck. The same character whose voice resounded few lines earlier in his brief oration about human nature (note the pattern of rhyming words: “esperïenza,” “semenza,” “canoscenza,” 116, 118, 120), now concludes his narrative precisely where his journey reached its terminus, in the silence of the sea: “infin che ’l mar fu sovra noi richiuso’ (142). Ulysses’ shipwreck represents an epistemic tragedy, and this a tragedy is underscored by the indirect yet explicit mention of a great unnamed entity: “com’altrui piacque” (141). This parenthetical clause serves as the hermeneutical key for the entire scene, a function it shares with the other two passages. Ultimately, it is possible to argue that, for Dante, Ulysses’ shipwreck was the most significant and tragic event to occur on the waters below the firmament.
2. Repentance: Purg. 1.130-36. These lines mark the conclusion of the liturgical rite of repentance performed by Virgil at the beginning of the journey up the mountain of Purgatory. Cato, the guardian of the second reign, imparts instruction to Virgil and Dante about the liturgical rite that takes place on the shore. Dante the author remarks how that shore is the very desert shore with “sue acque” (131) which have never been visited by anyone who has been able to return. The phrase “com’altrui piacque” (133) alludes to the chain of guides that goes from Virgil, who physically girds the pilgrim with the humble plant, to Cato, who instructs Virgil, and, ultimately, leads to God. The third element, “rinacque” (135), signifies the wonder of witnessing the humble plant miraculously regrowing. In his commentary, Robert Hollander acknowledges the reminiscence of the rhyming words of Inferno 26 in these lines, but his analysis concludes there. Notably, there is no reference to Paradiso 29 in this chain of allusions.^[35]
3. Creation: Par. 29.13-21. Beatrice has seen Dante’s question in God’s mind and begins her discourse on the Creation of the world. While God was under no obligation to create the world, he did so as an outpouring of love. The brilliantly direct line “s’aperse in nuovi amor l’eterno amore” (18), denoting the Creation of the angels, concludes a series of clauses that began at line 13. Each clause in this climatic passage carries a profound theological significance, including the final one: “come i piacque” (17), signifying God’s absolute freedom in the act of creation. Placed parenthetically within the sentence, this clause exudes a sense of casual lightness, as if it were spoken in everyday conversation. Following line 18, a new section of the discourse begins, marked by a full stop. The next rhyme word is ‘si giacque’ (19), the past form of the verb ‘giacere’. Despite the temporal nature, the sentence challenges the notion that God lay inactive before Creation, for there was neither ‘before’ nor ‘after’; there was no time. By negating it, the reflexive ‘[non] si giacque’ (19) implies God’s atemporal, if not eternal, activity. The final rhyme word in this sequence is ‘acque’ in ‘quest’acque’ (21), already analyzed. These two words ground the theological discourse in the only framework that could potentially transform it into a narrative scene. Yet, ultimately, it remains a theological, conceptual, and Neoplatonic myth, unfolding in the subsequent lines.

Let’s begin by examining these passages in sequence and exploring the vista in retrospect (Singleton). I would like to address two potential objections regarding passage (3) that may explain why previous critics have not emphasized the rhyme word pattern I am focusing on here: (a) The two terzine are divided by a full stop into two distinct phrases; (b) the second rhyme word, “si giacque” (19), diverges from the linear progression of forms like nascere and rinascere, which were associated with the whirlpool and the reed in the preceding two cantiche. In response to objection (a), I argue that it might not be a substantial objection after all. While passages (1) and (2) can be seen as belonging to the same syntactic unity within Ulysses’ and the author’s discourses, passage (3) exhibits a stronger thematic unity as it is part of Beatrice’s discourse on Creation. Addressing objection (b) allows for a deeper analysis. It is of course true that the verb giacere departs from the semantic meaning of (ri)nascere. But if we focus our attention on the parenthetical clause in the sequence, a clearer view will start to emerge: ‘com’altrui piacque’, ‘com’altrui piacque’, ‘come i piacque’. God himself is the direct reference: first, as the obscure cause of a natural phenomenon; then, as the ultimate reference in the chain of authority; finally, as the creator of the world. Nowhere else in the poem does Dante utilize this clause in rhyme.^[36] Read vertically, the sequence shows a progression from reproach/hostility to humble obedience/wonder to serene and majestic contemplation. Grammar itself signals this vertical progression by transitioning from the two reiterations of the indefinite pronoun ‘altrui’, in Inferno and Purgatorio, to the definite archaic pronoun ‘i’ in Paradiso. The three sentences, in fact, are centered around God. In the first scene, Ulysses experiences God as Great Unnamed behind his epistemic and physical shipwreck. Dante, in the second scene, experiences God as forgiving father in the liturgy of repentance. In the final scene, Beatrice refers to God’s absolute love and freedom as creator of the world within the grand theological fresco of the Crystalline sphere. We can now observe how the concept of birth is intertwined throughout the past verb sequence: nascere, rinascere, giacersi. In fact, the last verb giacersi pertains to the birth of the entire physical world, negating any possible temporal coordinates to frame God’s inaction (‘torpente si giacque’) before the existence of time and space. Not only was God’s love never inactive, but his free act marks the nascita, the beginning of everything. The concept of birth then is not semantically explicit but strongly conjured in a thematic and radical way. In conclusion, let’s turn to the third element of the sequence, namely the waters. The ‘waters’ provides the stage for the unfolding of all the three episodes: Ulysses’ shipwreck, Dante’s liturgy of repentance right on the shore, God’s Creation over the abyss of waters. Whenever a poet rewrites lines from the Bible and Genesis in particular, every minor change carries major implications. As Piero Boitani has demonstrated, Dante’s rewriting of the line from the Bible in Par. 29.21 is three-fold.^[37] To Boitani’s analysis of this line I propose to add a fourth element via the virtually major poetical generator of meaning in the poem that is the rhyme words pattern. Not only in fact does Dante rewrite a line from Genesis, but he also makes it rhyme with the highly significant parenthetical clause sealed by ‘piacque’, exclusively used in the Commedia to refer to God alone.

At the height of Paradiso 29, Dante is responding to Ulysses’ sea narrative in Inferno 26. One saw the Creation where the other experienced shipwreck. Indeed, it is true that these waters “già mai non si corse[ro]” (Par. 2.7). Only Dante himself and God successfully did. Ulysses tragically failed.

Conclusion: “They that go down to the sea in ships”

In the first part of this article, I have demonstrated how, according to the cosmology of the poem and in line with a specific exegetical tradition, the Crystalline sphere and the ocean can be seen as originally part of the same mass of water, as indicated in Gen. 1:2, before the division between the waters above and below the firmament. Dante and Ulysses can both be seen as venturing on these originally united waters, a parallel strengthen by the astronomical coordinates and the explicit mention of the Greek hero in Par. 27.83. Ulysses trespasses the threshold into uncharted waters just as Dante trespasses from the Starry sphere to the spatiotemporal boundaries of the created universe. In the second part, I have shown how many critics have evoked the shadow of Ulysses in their analysis of Paradiso 29, particularly in reference to line 21: “Lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest’acque.” This evocation has consistently remained metaphorical or general, without ever being accounted for in the text. Subsequently, I have demonstrated through close reading that Par. 29.17-21 should be read in conjunction with the only two other passages in the poem that share the same rhyme word pattern: Ulysses’ infernal shipwreck in Inf. 26.136-42 and Dante’s liturgy of repentance in Purg. 1.130-36. This nearly identical rhyme word pattern, to my knowledge, has gone unnoticed by critics thus far. I propose placing these three passages into a cohesive sequence: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. Ulysses, Dante, God. Shipwreck, Repentance, Creation. This sequence can be read backwards as a vista in retrospect: in the Crystalline sphere, Dante juxtaposes his own navigation one last time with Ulysses’ by evoking the tragic shipwreck of the Greek hero, while, conversely, he has reached knowledge about the Creation of the world. In response to two potential objections, I have argued for Dante’s profound authorial awareness in his reworking of the line from Genesis and in his crafting of it to rhyme with the parenthetical clause referring to God exclusively within the poem.^[39]

Psalm 106 in the Vulgate (107 in the King James) portrays the image of sailors at sea: “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; / These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. / For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. / They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble. / They reel to and fro, and stagger like drunken man, and are at their wit’s end. / Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. / He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. / Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.”^[40] Like the sailors of the psalm, both Dante and Ulysses ventured far away, pursuing knowledge through a journey on the sea. Both Dante and Ulysses beheld God’s work “and his wonders in the deep.” Their wisdom, too, has been shattered – “come i piacque.” Though in opposite directions.

1. Of the immense bibliography about Ulysses in Dante’s work I only recall: Mario Fubini, “Ulisse,” in Enciclopedia Dantesca, vol. 5 (Rome: Treccani, 1970); Teodolinda Barolini, “Ulysses,” in The Dante Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 2000); Jurij M. Lotman, “Il viaggio di Ulisse nella Divina Commedia di Dante,” in Testo e contesto. Semiotica dell’arte e della cultura (Bari: Laterza, 1980), 81-102; John Freccero, Dante: The Poetics of Conversion (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1986); Piero Boitani, The Shadow of Ulysses: Figures of a Myth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Maria Corti, “La «favola» di Ulisse: invenzione dantesca?” in Scritti su Dante e Cavalcanti (Turin: Einaudi, 2003) 255-83; Gennaro Sasso, Ulisse e il desiderio (Rome: Viella, 2011); Bruno Basile, “Canto XXVI. Tragedia di Dante, tragedia di Ulisse,” in Lectura Dantis Romana. Cento canti per cento anni (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2013) 823-50. ↑

2. As Teodolinda Barolini notes in her commentary: “Dante thus names the Greek hero one last time, immediately following the Canto where Adam’s sin was defined — in “Ulyssean” code — as the “trapassar del segno” (Par. 26.117),” (https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/paradiso/paradiso-27/). The explicit mentions are in fact three, one for each cantica: Inf. 26.56, Purg. 19.22, and Par. 27.83. ↑

3. Lotman, Il viaggio di Ulisse, 96. ↑

4. “If the pilgrim learns to be not like Ulysses, the poet is conscious of having to be ever more like him. The Paradiso, if it is to exist at all, cannot fail to be transgressive; its poet cannot fail to be a Ulysses, since only a trapassar del segno will be able to render the experience of trasumanar,” Teodolinda Barolini, The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 54. ↑

5. Charles S. Singleton, “The Vistas in Retrospect,” Modern Languages Notes 81 (1966): 55-80. ↑

6. For an updated bibliography on the topic see the Forum “Dante and Cosmology,” coordinated by T. J. Cachey Jr., A. Pegoretti, and C. Sbordoni in Dante Studies 140 (2022): 135-265. ↑

7. As Piero Boitani notes about Paradiso 29: “A canto which is absolute, which speaks with one voice alone, that of Beatrice, sweeping down from before the beginning to the earthly world of the fourteenth century and back again to the fullness of heavens,” “The Poetry and Poetics of the Creation,” in Dante’s Commedia: Theology as Poetry (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 110. ↑

8. Allen Mandelbaum (trans.), The Metamorphoses of Ovid (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993). The Latin text reads: “Hanc deus et melior litem natura diremit… abscidit… secrevit… evolvit… exemit… ligavit.” ↑

9. Boitani, “The Poetry and Poetics of the Creation,” 110. ↑

10. “Quello che sì sembra mancare, come si nota soprattutto nella continuazione del discorso, è ogni riferimento al racconto dell’Esamerone, della creazione in sei giorni, o comunque frazionata, scaglionata, a qualunque cosa si possa riferire, nella mente dell’autore biblico, il termine ‘giorno’,” D’Agostino 869. ↑

11. Piero Boitani writes in detail about this rewriting. See note 37. ↑

12. Bruno Nardi, “Lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest’acque,” in Nel mondo di Dante (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2012) 305-13. ↑

13. Dino Boccaletti, The Waters Above the Firmament: An Exemplary Case of Faith-Reason Conflict (New York: Springer, 2020). See also: Adam Rasmussen, Genesis and Cosmos: Basil and Origen on Genesis 1 and Cosmology (Leiden: Brill, 2019). ↑

14. “[these waters] furono interpretate da molti dottori, tra cui Alberto Magno, Bonaventura e Tommaso, come la sostanza che costituiva il Primo Mobile o cielo Cristallino (detto anche «acqueo», in quanto formato da una materia trasparente e chiara come l’acqua), cielo che appunto avvolge lo Stellato, cioè il firmamento,” Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi in Dante, Paradiso, (Milan: Mondadori, 2005) 799. ↑

15. Christian Moevs, The Metaphysics of Dante’s Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). ↑

16. As well as the primeval emanation from the One to the Many in which Neoplatonic creation consists. ↑

17. “Ad intendere il pensiero di Dante, ritengo non si debba perder di vista il dimostrativo «queste», che vuol dire che le acque cui s’accenna son vicine a chi parla e a chi ascolta, e lascia intravedere che vi sono altre acque dalle quali sono state distinte,” Nardi, «Lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest’acque» 307 (italics mine). ↑

18. In the present article and after the work of Padoan and Freccero among others, I don’t question the Dantean paternity of the treatise. I quote from the most recent edition of the text edited by Michele Rinaldi for the Nuova edizione commentata delle opere di Dante: D. Alighieri, Le Opere: Epistole, Egloge, Questio de aqua et terra, M. Baglio, L. Azzetta, M. Petoletti, M. Rinaldi (eds.) (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2021), 5.653-93. On the treatise see: Sabrina Ferrara, “Il progetto della Questio de aqua et terra: Dante magister,” in La parola dell’esilio. Autore e lettori nelle opere di Dante in esilio, (Florence: Franco Cesati Editore, 2016), 303-10; Zygmunt Barański, “I segni della creazione: il mistero della Questio de aqua et terra,” in Dante e i segni. Saggi per una storia intellettuale di Dante Alighieri, (Naples: Liguori Editore, 2000), 199-219; Francesco Mazzoni, “Introduzione alla Questio de aqua et terra,” in Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, (Milan: Ricciardi, 1979), 693-737; John Freccero, “Satan’s Fall and the “Questio de aqua et terra,” in Italica, 38.2 (1961): 99-115; Bruno Nardi, La caduta di Lucifero e l’autenticità della «Questio de aqua et terra», (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1959); Giorgio Padoan, “La Questio de aqua et terra,” in Umberto Bosco (ed.), Dante nella critica d’oggi. Risultati e prospettive, (Florence: Le Monnier, 1965), 758-67. ↑

19. A Translation of the Questio de aqua et terra with a Discussion of its Authenticity, A. C. White (ed.), (Boston: Gin&Company, 1903), 51-53. The Latin text reads: “Desinant ergo, desinant homines querere que supra eos sunt, et querant usque quo possunt, ut trahant se ad immortalia et divina pro posse, ac maiora se relinquant! Audiant amicum Iob dicentem: “nunquid vestigia Dei comprehendes et Omnipotentem usque ad perfectionem reperies?”; audient Psalmistam dicentem: “mirabilis facta est scientia tua ex me: confortata est, et non potero ad eam”; audient Ysaiam dicentem: “quam distant celi et terram tantum distant vie mee a viis vestris” – loquebatur equidem in persona Dei ad hominem; audiant vocem Apostoli ad Romanos: “O altitude divitiarum scientie et sapientie Dei, quam incomprensibilia iuditia eius et investigabiles vie eius!”; et denique audiant propriam Creatoris vocem dicentis: “quo ego vado vos non potestis venire”: et hec sufficient ad inquisitionem intente veritatis.” ↑

20. The first commentators read these ‘waters’ allegorically. Benvenuto da Imola writes: “queste acque, id est, creaturis”; Francesco Buti: “queste acque, cioè sopra questa creatura dell’universo”; Anonimo Fiorentino: “queste acque, cioè sopra queste creature”; Cristoforo Landino: “queste acque, i. sopra queste creature”; etc. The allegorical interpretation that sees the waters of Gen. 1:2 as creatures, or rather, as prime matter as seen under the aspect of its potentiality to acquire form as creature, goes back to Augustine of Hippo’s interpretation in On the Literal Meaning of Genesis 4.13. For all these commentaries I have used The Dante Dartmouth Project: https://dante.dartmouth.edu. ↑

21. Of course, beyond Ulysses, Dante, and God, there are other figures who in the world of the Commedia traverse the waters: the souls arriving to Purgatory (cp. the beginning of Purg. 2). But their journey is divinely sanctioned, takes place already in the afterlife and, as such, truly “sdegna li argomenti umani” (Purg. 2.31). ↑

22. John Took, Dante (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020), 525. ↑

23. Giuseppe Mazzotta, “La metafisica della Creazione (Paradiso XXVII-XXIX),” in Confine quasi orizzonte. Saggi su Dante (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2014), 97-114:100. ↑

24. Lotman, Il viaggio di Ulisse, 97. ↑

25. “Evocando la tragica grandezza dell’eroe greco, Dante si congeda da lui e a lui si approssima […] [with] la coscienza del rischio [that] incombe sullo stesso pellegrino nel momento in cui si sta avventurando ai confini dello spazio fisico e del pensiero, e ne avverte il rischio,” Mazzotta, La metafisica, 100 ↑

26. See note 4. ↑

27. Barolini, The Undivine Comedy, 238. ↑

28. He then concludes: “Si rammenti anche la fine di Ulisse (Inferno 26), che, inabissandosi con la sua nave, vede la superficie delle acque richiudersi come al rallentatore sopra il suo capo. Se l’impresa degli argonauti è comparabile a quella del Dante poeta della Commedia, possiamo quasi immaginare che il Dante auctor sia il Demiurgo che crea come Dio crea l’universo, mentre Nettuno da un lato e Ulisse dall’altro sono le creature: Dio e Dante trascorrono sopra le acque, Nettuno e Ulisse vedono solo l’immagine dal basso metafisico della loro mitica esistenza,” Alfonso D’Agostino, “Paradiso 29,” 870. ↑

29. “Dante attribuisce un forte potere ermeneutico al ritorno di unità tematico-formali presso il lettore; egli distribuisce con preciso intento le autocitazioni, questi segnali della memoria interna, perché servano a collegare presso il destinatario della Commedia ciò che deve essere collegato e quindi cooperino anche alla lettura allegorica comparata,” Corti, “La «favola» di Ulisse,” 279-80. ↑

30. Ibidem. ↑

31. Cp. Corti, “La «favola» di Ulisse,” 278-79 but also Corti, “Tre versioni dell’aristotelismo radicale nella Commedia,” in Scritti su Dante e Cavalcanti 327-47. ↑

32. Corti, 153. ↑

33. Cp. among others: John Freccero, “The Significance of Terza Rima,” in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 258-71. ↑

34. I side with the critics that see in Ulysses’ last voyage and shipwreck a direct correlation with his infernal condition. Too much is at stake in the way Dante crafts this new and powerful literary myth to think that the whole sea journey has nothing to do with the character’s ultimate fate. All the figures Dante meets in the otherworld always shine (darkly or brightly) in front of him with the quintessence of their personality as embodiment of their ultimate destiny, as famously shown by Auerbach. ↑

35. “The reminiscence of Ulysses here has had a recent surge of appreciation, but notice of it is as ancient as the commentary of Benvenuto da Imola (followed, as he often was, by John of Serravalle). As Paola Rigo (“Tra ‘maligno’ e ‘sanguigno,’” in her Memoria classica e memoria biblica in Dante [Florence: Olschki, 1994]), 48, points out, Benvenuto (comm. to these verses), citing St. Augustine’s opinion (in De civitate Dei), says that no one had ever lived at the antipodes who ever returned from there, Benvenuto goes on to suggest that this passage reflects the failed voyage of Ulysses. Some recent writers have also pointed out that the rhyme words in the passage (diserto, esperto; acque, piacque, rinacque) are also found in the Ulysses passage (Inf. XXVI.98f., XXVI.137f.),” Dante, Purgatorio. Eds. J. Hollander, R. Hollander (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 24. ↑

36. He does twice at the beginning of a line in Inf. 34.70 and Par. 22.22, referring respectively to Virgil and Beatrice: “com’a lui piacque,” “come a lei piacque.” In Purg. 8.53-7 we have the rhyme words: “piacque; tacque; acque.” These “acque” are again referring to the oceanic waters below the firmament: “… quand’è che tu venisti / a piè del monte per le lontane acque?” (56-7). ↑

37. “In translating the Biblical expression from the Vulgate, Dante introduces three basic changes. In the first place, he qualifies the waters as ‘these’. […]. Secondly, Dante boldly cuts through centuries of controversy over the expression ‘Spiritus Dei’ (which can mean ‘dreadful wind’, ‘terrible storm’, ‘breath’ or ‘Spirit’ of God), quite simply attributing the action to God himself. Finally, Dante eliminates the neutral ‘ferebatur’ of the Vulgate, rejects the ‘incubabat’ and the ‘fovebat’ (the brooding and incubating) that underlie Milton’s rendering, neglects the ‘volitabat’ and the ‘irrueabat’ (the fluttering and rushing) of the other interpretations, and chooses a word both powerful and delicate, ‘discorrer’,” Piero Boitani, “L’acqua che ritorna equale: Dante’s Sublime,” in The Tragic and the Sublime in Medieval Literature, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 250-78:272. This discorrer, Boitani continues, goes back to Ovid’s Fasti and Virgil’s Aeneid while also partaking in the semantics of effusion proper of Neoplatonism. ↑

38. This is not unusual in Dante’s practice. Always in Paradiso 29, for instance, he writes: “si tacque Beatrice, riguardando / fiso nel punto che m’avea vinto” (8-9). The ‘punto’ here refers to God. Back in Inferno 5, Francesca da Rimini said: “ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse” (132), referring to the fatal passage in the chivalric romance. In Dante’s poem no lexical choice is without major implications. ↑

39. As recalled above, Maria Corti has shown how Ulysses’ “orazion picciola,” centered on the nobility of human nature, presents echoes of radical Aristotelians such as Boethius of Dacia. Ulysses’ epistemic shipwreck is also theirs. It was not the purpose of this article to pursue at length this comparison, on the wake of Corti’s essays. But, at the conclusion of my analysis, it is worth recalling that one of the major tenets of this radical readings of Aristotle in the 13^th century was the belief in the eternity of the world. Having this in mind after what I tried to illustrate in this article, another important aspect of this vista in retrospect emerges. The use of the same rhyme words in Ulysses’ shipwreck and in Beatrice’s narrative of the Creation of the world cannot but point to a direct response by Dante to the radical Aristotelians (and his own possible early doubt): the world had a beginning, as Beatrice is now showing him on these waters. On this topic see Richard Dales, Medieval Discussions of the Eternity of the World, (Leiden: Brill, 1990), and the updated bibliography that can be found in Boezio di Dacia, Sull’eternità del mondo, Sui sogni, Sul sommo bene, L. Bianchi (ed.) (Milan: La vita felice, 2017). ↑

40. The Bible: Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). The Vulgate reads: “qui descedunt mare in navibus / facientes operationem in aquis multis / ipsi viderunt opera Domini / et mirabilia eius in profundo / dixit et stetit spiritus procellae / et exaltati sunt fluctus eius / ascendunt usque ad abyssos / anima eorum in malis tabescebat / turbati sunt et moti sunt sicut ebrius / et omnis sapientia eorum devorata est / et clamaverunt ad Dominum cum tribularentur / et de necessitatibus eorum eduxit eos / et statuit procellam eius : in auram / et siluerunt fluctus eiuet laetati sunt quia siluerunt / et deduxit eos in portum voluntatis eorum,” Biblia sacra iuxta vulgate versione, (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994). ↑