Commentary Purg XXXII 64-69

Dante is willing to live dangerously.  What other medieval poet, in a serious moment of a serious poem, would turn to Ovid and to self-conscious literary humor in a moment like this?  Dante has already ([Purg XXIX 94-96]; and see C.Purg.XXIX.94-96) referred to this Ovidian material (Metam. I.568-723) in these cantos dedicated to the recovery of Eden.  He compares himself to Argus of the hundred eyes (Dante of the hundred cantos?), watching over Io at Juno's behest so that Jove cannot get at his bovine girlfriend, set to drowsiness and slumber (disastrously for him) by Mercury's tale of Syrinx and Pan.  At what point does Argus fall asleep?  Just as Mercury's tale reports on the musical sound that issues from the reeds that were Syrinx, who had escaped Pan's lustful pursuit and vanished.  Music and a disappearance are features of Dante's scene, as well.  The parallel scene is done with witty aplomb but is dealt with by the commentators only as serious business.  It is funny, as is Dante's aside to us that, if he could portray the moment of falling asleep, he would do so.  His challenge to us was taken up by Boccaccio in his Decameron (I.viii.14); with Dante's passage apparently in his author's mind, Guglielmo Borsiere (a denizen of hell in [Inf XVI 70]) describes a similar challenge when asked what as yet unseen thing he would advise a wealthy boor to have painted in his receiving room.  Guglielmo says that he wouldn't know how to advise him, unless he were to choose 'a sneeze or something like it.'