The second of Francesca's famous three tercets reads as follows:

Amor, ch'a nullo amato amar perdona, mi prese del costui piacer si' forte, che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona. Inf. 5.103-105

While the first line is generally said to echo Cappellanus' De Amore 2.8 ("Amor nihil posset amore denegare"), and the second is noted both syntactically (because of the French genitive "del costui piacer") and semantically (because piacer means, a la provencale, "beauty"), the third line does not seem to get anyone's scholarly juices flowing, and is generally bypassed without even the shortest of footnotes. Yet, as Bernardino Daniello had long ago (1568) noted, Inf. 5.105 has a very noble and, in my opinion, most certain pedigree: it is Aeneid 6.444, "curae [amoris] non ipsa in morte relinquunt" -- not even in death do the sorrows [of love] leave them [i.e., the dead lovers].

In Virgil's underworld, just beyond the place where dwell "the sorrowful who, though without guilt, gained death for themselves by their own hand" {I am quoting from W. F. Jackson Knight's translation, Penguin Classics, 1956, p. 160}, Aeneas finds, stretching in every direction, the Fields of Mourning. It is here that a myrtle-wood hides all those who have pined and wilted under the harsh cruelties of love ("quos durus amor crudeli tabe peredit," 442). And why are they so full of sorrow? why do they still weep so much? Because -- Virgil explains -- "curae non ipsa in morte relinquunt": "even in death their sorrows never leave them" (Jackson Knight). Here Aeneas sees Phaedra and Procris, Eryphyle and Pasiphae, Laodamia and Caeneus, and above all the unforgettable Dido, all of them, like Francesca, still wounded, beyond death, by the power of love.

This then is, most clearly, where Francesca got her line from. And knowing this helps us to get closer to what Dante makes her say. Love, she says, took hold of me so powerfully, or -- better -- my desire for Paolo's beauty possessed me so violently that, as you can see, it hasn't left me yet: this love is indeed stronger than death itself. As I have suggested in an article due out soon, the encounter of Aeneas with Dido in the sixth book of the Aeneid provides Dante with a compelling model not only for Francesca, but also for Geri del Bello (Inf. 29.1-36), who, like Virgil's Dido, uses silence as a weapon more effective than speech: interestingly enough, both episodes are distinguished by Dante's unusual (and problematic) stress on the pilgrim's pieta'.

Robert Hollander has counted fourteen Virgilian borrowings in Inf. 5 {"Le opere di Virgilio nella Commedia," in Dante e la bella scola della poesia, ed. A. Iannucci (Ravenna: Longo, 1993), pp. 247-343, esp. pp. 264-67}, eight of which are from Aen. 6, including lines 432-33, 441, 442, and 450-51. Following the model of Edward Moore, Hollander has classified 4 borrowings in the group "A" (translated quotations), 2 in "B" (clear borrowings) and 8 in "C" (echoes, reminiscences -- some even perhaps involuntary). I would have no hesitation in calling line 105 a "B".

What is surprising is that this fact has never become part of the standard exegetic tradition, even if -- as a quick glance through the Dante Dartmouth Project proves -- after Daniello, Tommaseo (1837), Grabher (1934: he has an extensive commentary on the Virgilian background), and Padoan (1967) mention the Virgilian connection. The reason for this oversight, I suggest, is perhaps our recent 'vernacular' bias: i.e., the widespread conviction that Dante's Francesca is meant to be, like Guinevere, a rather shallow user of courtly literature. As it points in a different direction, the Virgilian intertext is conveniently overlooked or forgotten: after all, who wants a tragic Francesca, a Francesca more like Dido than like Madame Bovary? In spite of what I wrote in this Bulletin on 26 June 1996, if in Bonconte's case a footnote needs to be deleted, in Francesca's case one needs to be added, for the benefit to us in discovering the "popular" Bonconte is as great as that in rediscovering the "Virgilian" Francesca.