Commentary Par X 22-27

There is some dispute as to whether this is a distinct address to the reader or a continuation of that found in vv. 7-15.  However, even Scartazzini, who undercounts the occurrences of the phenomenon in the poem (see C.Par.XXII.106-111), believes this represents a second, separate address.  Because they are rhetorically separate entities ('Leva dunque, lettore, ...' and 'Or ti riman, lettor, ...') and enjoy temporal separation (the reader is asked three times to look along with Dante up at the circling heavens, and then to think upon what he or she has seen, unaided by the poet, who now must return to his narrative), one does not find an easy objection to consider them as being in fact more than one, the first of which is indeed tripartite ('Leva,' 'comincia,' and 'Vedi' [vv. 7, 10, and 13]) and the second single.  Perhaps because the other eighteen addresses to the reader (see C.Inf.VIII.94-96) are all single, this double one has caused some to consider it, too, single; that is probably not reason enough. It may be difficult to believe that Dante would have designed the poem with seven addresses to the reader in each of the first two cantiche and only six in the third. This reader’s inability to do exactly that was the cause of his miscounting of the addresses to the reader in the first version of these notes.

See Muresu (Mure.2002.1), pp. 282-84, and Curti (Curt.2002.1), pp. 147-48, for the closeness of the images of the 'feast of knowledge' found here and in Convivio (Conv.III.v.20-22).  Some thirty-seven years ago, in 1968, when he was a graduate student at Princeton, Prof. Robin McCallister made the suggestion that perhaps we should look upon the Paradiso as in fact the completion of the abandoned Convivio, now properly corrected.  The controlling element in this central metaphor of these two terzine moves from a scholar's bench (verse 22), on which we readers sit, listening to Dante's lecture, to (in verse 25) a seat at a banquet, at which chef Dante is preparing the meal, a 'feast of knowledge' indeed.  He does, however, beg off from serving us, leaving us to do that for ourselves, since he must attend to continuing his narrative. (Note revised 24 August 2013; see the revised preceding note [C.Par.IX.10-12].)