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For the record: Rewriting Virgil in the Commedia
Studies in the Literary Imagination, Spring 2003 by Hawkins, Peter S
"My writing is plain and the hope of all these souls is not fallacious, if with sound judgment you consider well; for the summit of justice is not lowered because the fire of love fulfill in a moment that which he must satisfy who sojourns here; and there where I affirmed that point, default could not be amended by prayer, because the prayer was disjoint from God."
Virgil does not shy away from the essence of the pilgrim's pointed question: surrounded as he is by so many clamors for intercession and with the Sibyl's words freshly in mind, could he somehow have misunderstood Virgil's text, or did the ancient poet get it wrong? The answer is No on both counts. Virgil's scrittura is plain, and Dante has understood it correctly. Nor is the Sibyl in error when speaking to Palinurus. The Aeneid is in error only if its teaching is applied to the souls in purgatory (or for that matter, to those on earth)-that is, if applied to those living or dead whose hope is not in vain and whose prayers are not "disjoint" (disgiunto) from God; the passage Dante recalls therefore-cotesto punto-entirely concerns a spiritual universe that does not know that prayer can licitly bend the decree of heaven and release the fire of divine love. To comprehend the reality shared by all the pilgrims in Purgatory, Virgil tells Dante to wait for Beatrice. She will be a "light between the truth and the intellect" (che lume fia tra 'l vero e lo 'ntelletto', v. 45).
The contrast here is not limited to Virgil's deficient understanding in comparison to Beatrice's insight; it is also between the hopelessness of the Aeneids iter durum and that journey toward sanctity proposed by the Commedia. In this game of literary, not to mention spiritual, evaluation, it could not be more manifesto which text is the winner and which the loser. And once again, it is the figure of Virgil and one of his texts used to make the case.
What we have seen thus far are instances in the first two canticles that refer us to specific passages in the Aeneid, which in turn provide occasions for Dantean revision. They help us to see the extent to which Virgil's poem not only underwrites the Commedia but is also undermined by it. In each case, the figure of Virgil forces us to recall a specific moment in his work and then assess it in the light of Dante's own work. Recollection of Polydorus raises the question of how much the pilgrim (and, by extension, the reader) can rely on the Aeneid in the present moment ("S'elli avesse potuto creder prima" 'If he ... had been able to believe before'; Inferno 13.46); memory of the Sibyl's words to Palinurus establishes that Virgil speaks accurately on spiritual matters only within the ancient context and not with regard to the new age of grace. To read Virgil aright, then, is to understand that he is not only "veiled" until interpreted correctly but that he is overtly wrong on many matters. Reinterpretation is finally not enough: the Aeneid must be rewritten.
What happens in the third canticle of the Commedia, however, when Virgil himself is no longer present in the narrative? A glance at the heaven of the sun (Paradiso 15-17) where the pilgrim encounters his great-great grandfather, Cacciaguida, reveals the ongoing process of overt Virgilian citation and revision.18 Only now, instead of the pilgrim's guide pointing to his own work, it is the poet of the Paradiso who does so. For instance, when Cacciaguida descends from the glowing red cross of Mars, the poet-narrator openly directs our attention to the famous meeting between Aeneas and his father in Aeneid 6.684-94:
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