Commentary Purg XXVII 100-108

The dream of Leah and Rachel is the most transparent of the three dreams in Purgatorio (see [Purg IX 13-33] and [Purg XIX 1-33]).  Leah and Rachel, the daughters of Laban in Genesis, were understood by Christian interpreters to represent, respectively, the active life and the contemplative life (and thus Rachel's staring into the mirror is not to be taken as narcissistic self-admiration but contemplation in a positive sense).  It is clear that Dante is making use of that tradition here.  However, he is also making use of biblical typology in his treatment of Leah, who is related to Eve in her as yet unfallen condition in that she is doing what Adam and Eve were told to do, 'ut operaretur et custodiret illum' (to dress [the garden] and keep it -- Genesis 2:15).  Dante's verb in the last line of Leah's speech, which concludes the dream, remembers the biblical verb in his ovrare, the working in this garden that points back to the tasks of that one before the Fall (see Holl.1969.1, p. 153).  For the balanced relationships between the pair Leah and Rachel and a second pair, Matelda and Beatrice, the two central female presences in the earthly paradise, see Pacchioni (Pacc.2001.1).

      It is probably also fair to say that the text intrinsically presents Dante as a new Jacob: 'As Jacob toiled for seven years in order to gain the hand of Rachel, only to be given that of Leah (Genesis 29:10f.), so Dante has toiled up seven terraces of purgation with the promise of Beatrice, only to find Matelda' (Holl.1969.1, pp. 151-52).  Pascoli (Pasc.1902.1), p. 462, had much earlier suggested that Dante, 'the new Aeneas,' was also the 'new Jacob.'  Pascoli was followed, without their apparent knowledge, by Singleton (Sing.1958.1), p. 108, and by T. K. Swing (Swin.1962.1), p. 95.  The Italian tradition has for a long time insisted only on the 'allegorical' equation here, Leah as the active life, Rachel as the contemplative.  A figural understanding (i.e., one developed from 'historical allegory,' as in the interpretation of the Bible itself), has mainly been absent.  But see Momigliano (DDP Momigliano.Purg.XXVII.100-108), who almost resolves the problem in this way.  Bosco/Reggio (DDP Bosco.Purg.XXVII.91-108) offer a long and confessedly 'perplexed' attempt to account for the resulting supposedly double (and thus inadmissible) valence of Beatrice as both 'theology' and 'the contemplative life.'  For another reading of this dream see Baranski (Bara.1989.1), pp. 219-24.