Commentary Purg XXX 21

The Latin is Virgilian (Aen. VI.883): 'Give lilies with full hands.'  This is the climax of Anchises' tearful and prophetic speech about the future of Rome and the dreadful loss of Marcellus, the adoptive son of Augustus who was to rule Rome after the emperor's death, but who beat his 'father' to the grave.  In Virgil's text the lilies are flowers of mourning; in Dante's they seem rather to be associated with (according to Pietro di Dante [DDP Pietro1.Purg.XXX.20]) the Song of Songs (Cant. 2:1), when the bride describes herself as the lilium convallium, 'lily of the valley,' a wildflower, not a cultivated plant.  Dante will later associate lilies with the apostles ([Par XXIII 74]).  Traditionally, a flowering bough in the form of a lily was borne by the angel Gabriel in depictions of the Annunciation, denoting the chastity of Mary (see Fallani's comment [DDP Fallani.Par.XXIII.112]).  It seems clear that here the lilies are relocated symbolically, losing their tragic tone for a 'comic' and celebratory one; they have a positive and redemptive valence, not the funerary significance that they have in Virgil's line.  At the same time, for those of us who are thinking of Virgil as well as of Beatrice, they do underline our (and soon Dante's) sadness at this 'death' of Virgil in the poem.  In that respect the verse functions in both a 'Beatricean' and a 'Virgilian' mode.  For a remarkably 'Dantean' and Christian reading of Virgil's verse by St. Ambrose, see Pertile (Pert.1998.2), p. 64.

      This is the closest Dante comes to giving a piece of Virgil's Latin text an uninterrupted verbatim presence in his poem.  His Italian 'oh,' however, does interrupt the flow of the Virgilian line.  It seems more than possible that the exclamation is spoken, since it is uttered by her angels, to mark the moment of Beatrice's appearance on the chariot.  This may also be the moment at which Virgil disappears -- although that hypothesis is perhaps less sustainable.  That the Italian interjection 'oh!' is meant to reflect Isidore of Seville's description (Etym. I.xiv) of interjections (literally, according to Isidore, words placed between other words) as being difficult to translate into any other language, see Hollander (Holl.1983.1), p. 143, n. 46.  The fact that Virgil's sad and beautiful Latin line is interrupted by an Italian interjection was probably dictated by more than the metrical requirements of Dante's hendecasyllabic line.