Commentary Purg XV 85-114

The three visions that follow are set off from the narrative by a precise vocabulary of vision, one that Dante had established as early as in his Vita nuova (see Hollander [Holl.1974.1], pp. 3-7).  This begins at once with the verse 'Ivi mi parve in una visione...' (There it seemed to me... in a... vision...), a formulation that needs at least its verb to take its meaning.  If that verb were a form of vedere (to see), Dante's usual practice would assure us that he was describing a dream, indeed a 'Macrobian' dream, a 'fictive' visio that required allegorical explanation.  The next line, however, adds two crucial terms, the adjective estatica (ecstatic) and the verb esser tratto (to be drawn up).  These technical terms, the first of which occurs only once in the poem's universe, establish the radical difference between this visionary experience and that obtained in conventional dreams, for here what is at stake is the sort of sight that was given to such as Paul and John in the New Testament (and, as we shall see in a few lines, to St. Stephen as well).

      In Dante the verb parere can have two quite different meanings (a common enough phenomenon in early modern poems -- see Spenser, for instance, who 'specializes' in the first usage) -- 'seem' (thus expressing a potentially limited or even non-existent truthfulness) or 'appeared' (to indicate something perceived that is actually present).  The verbs parere and apparire are used throughout this passage ([Purg XV 85], [Purg XV 93] [Purg XV 94] [Purg XV 102]) to indicate presences that are experienced as being in fact present to the beholder in his ecstatic seeing; this is true as well of the verb vedere ([Purg XV 87], [Purg XV 106], [Purg XV 109]), used each time to indicate what has truly been made manifest to the beholder.

      Momigliano's discussion (DDP Momigliano.Purg.XV.84-114) of the passage points out that the verbs used to indicate what the protagonist sees in his rapture are in their infinitive form (vedere, [Purg XV 88]; dir, [Purg XV 97]; risponder, [Purg XV 103]; ancider, [Purg XV 107]; chinarsi, [Purg XV 109]), thus lending to the experience a sense of timeless, placeless intensity -- precisely, one is encouraged to add, in accord with the nature of ecstatic experience.