Commentary Purg XIX 7-9

This second Purgatorial dream is at least as difficult to interpret as the first (see C.Purg.IX.19).  For a brief and cogent review of Classical, scriptural, patristic, and scholastic views of the nature of dreams see Armour (Armo.1990.1), pp. 13-16.

      Small seas of ink have been poured out in the quest for the source and meaning of this unpleasant woman.  The far from convincing results previously obtained probably should warn anyone against advancing an opinion.  On the other hand, it seems to some that the problem is easier to understand than are the attempts to solve it.  The poem itself, in the words of Virgil, tells us precisely who the stammering woman is: she represents the conjoined sins of excessive love, avarice, gluttony, lust -- the sins of the flesh or, in the language of Dante's first cantica, the sins of incontinence.  (See Virgil's words at [Purg XIX 58-59]: 'You saw... that ancient witch / who alone is purged with tears above us here.')  Dante's dream, nonetheless, must surely also have specific meaning for him.  If the woman is the object of his affection, she must have particular reference to lust, since the poem nowhere offers any indication that Dante considered himself ever to have been avaricious (or prodigal, for that matter) or gluttonous.  The 'good that fails to make men happy' ([Purg XVII 133]), in Dante's case, must then nearly certainly be understood as involving wrongful sexual desire.

      Consideration of the femmina balba (stammering woman) has caused readers to seek out some fairly recondite sources.  Giuseppe Toffanin (Toff.1921.1) argued for a foul female creature described in the Vitae patrum; Francesco Mazzoni (Mazz.1977.2), p. 436, presented still another potential source, an apparently fair but actually foul woman described in the Tabula exemplorum secundum ordinem alphabeti.  The common problem for these 'sources' is that we have no evidence indicating that they were known to Dante. In recent years still other recondite candidacies have been put forward: Paolo Cherchi (Cher.1985.1) urges that of Bernard of Gordon, author of the Lilium medicinae, but admits that proving Dante's knowledge of this text or even acquaintance with the interesting passage that he cites from it (p. 230) in some other source is problematic; Michelangelo Picone (Pico.1993.1), p. 134, reaches out for the nasty widow of Ovid's De vetula; Giovanni Parenti (Pare.1996.1) investigates possible resonances of various potential sources, including (pp. 55-59) the theme of Hercules at the crossroads found in Cicero (De offic. I.118) and (pp. 61-62) the 'idols of the gentiles' found in a Psalm certainly known well by Dante, the In exitu (Ps. 113:4-7).  For a more general analysis of the passage containing the femmina balba see Cervigni (Cerv.1986.1), pp. 123-35.

      What has rarely been noted in modern commentaries (but see Mattalia [DDP Mattalia.Purg.XIX.7] and, citing him, Giacalone [DDP Giacalone.Purg.XIX.25-27] is the fact that balbus is the contrary of planus, the word that describes Beatrice's speech in [Inf II 56] (see C.Inf.II.56-57).  Cf. the entry balbus in Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary, where this view is confirmed.  And see Cicero, De oratore (I.lxi.260), where stammering (balbus) Demosthenes labored so assiduously to correct himself in the pronunciation of initial 'r' that no one could eventually be considered to pronounce it more clearly (planius) than he.  For the 'higher' meaning of planus see the Codice Cassinese (DDP Cassinese.Inf.II.56): 'sermo divinus suavis et planus esse debet' (divine speech should be smooth and clear).