Commentary Purg IX 20-21

The reality corresponding to the eagle outside the dream is, naturally, Saint Lucy (identified by Virgil in verse 55), who is bearing Dante higher up the mountain while he sleeps in her arms.  But does this eagle have a symbolic valence?  Some early commentators (the Ottimo the earliest) read the text strictly literally: the eagle is the bird of Jove (or, perhaps, Jove in the shape of an eagle).  However, beginning with Pietro di Dante the eagle is allegorized as divine grace, and then, by various commentators up to and including Giacalone (DDP Giacalone.Purg.IX.19-21), as one form of grace or another (e.g., prevenient, illuminating, etc.).  In the twentieth century there was a vogue for a quite different allegorical reading, the eagle as symbol of empire.  (To be sure, this is often, even usually, true in this highly political poem; in this context, however, it seems a forced reading.)  It would seem most likely that a literal reading is the best procedure here, following the Ottimo (DDP Ottimo.Purg.IX.19-24), and simply noting that this eagle is the one who flew off with Ganymede, as the context allows and encourages, i.e., we are to understand that Dante dreams, literally, that he was carried off by Jove; metaphorically, that he was rapt by God. Within the dream, as elsewhere in the poetic text, the reader confronts a metaphoric pagan expression of a Christian reality.