Dante's daring claims for celestial inspiration have a way of making his readers retreat from responding in the way his authorial strategy in fact encourages them to. They have behaved in this way at least since Pietro di Dante felt it necessary to distance himself from his father's asseveration that he had seen the afterworlds with frequent embarrassed filial demurrers: "hic autor fingit," etc. This examination of a verse that, occurring in one of the most discussed examples of Dante's self-presentation as poet, has not exactly gone unnoticed, will be put to the service of clarifying that which the commentary tradition has made even more difficult than it is. "Se mai continga che 'l poema sacro / al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra...": what does it mean to say that "heaven and earth have set hand" to the Commedia?

Eugenio Ragni, entrusted with the voce "terra" by the Enciclopedia dantesca (V, 575-578 [1976]), has offered an exhaustive survey of its various meanings in Dante's writings (I re-assemble here only those that appear in the Commedia): (1) "l'elemento naturale, uno dei quattro che compongono l'universo"; (2) "il materiale di cui e' costituita la superficie terrestre"; (3) "terra cotta e' il materiale che compone 'l destro piede del gran veglio di Creta" [Dante thus translating the noun fictilis of Daniel 2.33, 34, 42]; (4) "come sinonimo di 'terreno agrario'"; (5) "col significato estensivo di 'possedimento rurale,' considerato come bene economico"; (6) "per indicare il pianeta" [Earth]; (7) "la Terra, personificazione mitica, madre dei giganti"; (8) "il globo terrestre, ma come sede della vita umana e animale"; (9) frequently the word is "legato o comunque posto in relazione... con 'cielo'" with the following two contrastive meanings: (a) "l'accostamento dei due sostantivi, particolarmente nella locuzione 'cielo e terra,' si configura come sinonimo di 'universo,' comprendendo la totalita' del creato" [Ragni lists our passage in this category]; (b) "disposti in opposizione, i due sostantivi intendono mettere in evidenza l'antitesi tra i due ambiti, l'umano e il divino"; (10) "in relazione con 'mare,' indica in particolare la parte solida dell'orbe terracqueo," a usage that includes the "accezione piu' circoscritta, 'terraferma'"; (11) "sinonimo di 'suolo,' 'superficie terrestre,' anche strato di una certa profondita', in cui puo' esser chiuso o custodito qualcosa'"; (12) frequently joined with prepositions "a formare ora semplice locuzione locativa..., ora locuzioni piu' complesse in aggiunta a verbi di stato"; (13) "con particolare riferimento alla direzione dello sguardo, in atteggiamento denotante vergogna, paura, riflessione, sbigottimento"; (14) "il terreno sul quale si posano i piedi in camminare"; (15) "frequente l'accezione piu' specifica di 'territorio,' 'regione,' 'citta'.'"

The 137 uses of the substantive in the Commedia thus offer a wide ambit of meaning. What does terra mean in our verse? The commentators show some interesting results {I have resorted to the Dartmouth Dante Project for these}. As early as 1333 the Ottimo commento, reflecting the possible ambiguities in the phrase, put forward three differing interpretations: (1) the verse speaks of the informing power of the constellation (Andrea Lancia must surely, as will Benvenuto, in his wake, refer to Gemini) to give the author scienza fitting his task; (2) cielo refers to God's grace, terra to "ingegno umano"; (3) the two nouns refer to what is treated in the work: the things of heaven and those of earth. While the first two of these interpretations refer to the sources or agents of the poem, the third refers only to its subjects. The last must be considered problematic, even if it became the perhaps dominant understanding over the centuries, for the verse obviously speaks of the poem's sources or agents, not its content: "il poema sacro / al quale ha posto mano" cannot have any other meaning: it speaks of a writer, not of what is written. Benvenuto, who similarly advances three interpretations, tends to favor the following: cielo refers to the "gratia Dei per quam influentia coeli [it is clear that he refers to the constellation Gemini] facit auctorem habilem ad habitum scientiae"; terra indicates "humanum studium et exercitium," and Benvenuto sensibly goes on to attach this last to the labor that has made the poet thin with care in the following verse ("si' che m'ha fatto per molti anni macro"). The early commentators by and large do a better job than most recent ones in wrestling with the verse's subleties. Starting with Lombardi at the end of the eighteenth century, most commentators take the verse to refer only to the content or subject of the poem, with Brunone Bianchi adding an allegorical formulation that had a certain vogue until our own century: cielo equates with "la scienza delle cose divine, Beatrice...," while terra finds its meaning in "l'umana ragione e la filosofia, personificate in Virgilio." These content-directed interpretations received an important confirmation from Scartazzini, who, having given a thorough review of preceding readings, as is his wont, reverts to Iacopo della Lana's early gloss (reprocessed by the Ottimo as one of his three interpretations), which he considers the simplest and best: "Al quale ha dato materia e soggetto il cielo e la terra." Traces of this general view are seen almost everywhere, e.g., Steiner: "al quale hanno contribuito la scienza delle cose terrene e la dottrina delle cose celesti...." But if, and as Grabher notes, without departing from the usual interpretive bias, it is the "ardua opera che ha fatto macro il Poeta," should not the agent of the poetic making be co-terminous at least with the fatigued body of the poet? It is only with Luigi Pietrobono, a commentator with whom I rarely find myself in agreement, that such an understanding begins to develop. He reads the verse as follows: "non solo nel senso che ad esso han fornita la materia il cielo e la terra..., ma nell'altro, piu' preciso, che alla composizione di esso han concorso direttamente il cielo e la terra, e' un'opera compiuta da un mortale, ma per volere divino...." As far as I can see, only Momigliano, among the commentators who follow, has cited this opinion. And the general view in our time may be represented by Singleton (whose notion it is that the verse signifies that "nothing less than the whole [universe] is the subject of this poem" [and see similar statements in Bosco/Reggo and Pasquini/Quaglio]). Pietrobono doesn't quite say what he probably ought: that the second mano is Dante's own, but he is, I think, on the right track. The verse may be paraphrased as follows: "the sacred poem to which both God and I have set hand."

Two usages of the phrase "terra e cielo" that Ragni considers as indicating the "totality of creation," at Purg. 29.25 and Par. 25.2, have a slightly different meaning, it seems to me, from the one that he proposes. Dante, voyager who has attained the Garden of Eden, blames Eve for sinning in that place where "ubidia la terra e 'l cielo." Clearly the meaning here points to Adam and Eve (before they trespassed) and the angels, the "inhabitants of earth" and those of heaven, as it were. Adam, inhabitant of earth, is also made from the same element: "Formavit igitur Dominus Deus hominem de limo terrae" (Gen. 2.7). And, formed of the muddy clay of earth, he is fated to return there as a handful of dust: "In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es; quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris" (Gen. 3.19). These passages are regularly adduced by commentators in the margins of Purg. 17.114 and Par. 2.133, respectively. I think they also help us understand the reference here as well: after the Creation man's clay was obedient until the Fall.

What of the terra that put its hand to the creation of the Commedia? Does it have a name? Here is a fragment from John Keats {found in the margin of his unfinished poem, "The Cap and the Bells"}:

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed -- see here it is --
I hold it towards you.