Commentary Par XXIII 64-66

This is an 'indirect address to the reader,' as it were; for the extent of the real kind in the poem, see C.Inf.VIII.94-96 and C.Par.X.22-27.

Daniello (DDP Daniello.Par.XXIII.64-66), Lombardi (DDP Lombardi.Par.XXIII.64-66), Tommaseo (DDP Tommaseo.Par.XXIII.64-66), Scartazzini (DDP Scartazzini.Par.XXIII.64-66), and Torraca (DDP Torraca.Par.XXIII.64-66) all cite Horace's much-quoted passage ('sumite materiam') from his Ars poetica (38-41): 'Take a subject, you writers, equal to your strength, and ponder long what your shoulders refuse, and what they are able to bear.  Whoever shall choose a theme within his range, neither speech will fail him, nor clearness of order' (tr. H.R. Fairclough).  Torraca reminds the reader that Dante had earlier cited this passage in De vulgari eloquentia (V.E.II.iv.4).

The altogether possible pun on Homer's name, unrecorded in the commentaries, in Dante's rephrasing of Horatian humerus (shoulder) as òmero mortal (mortal shoulder), since Omèro is Homer's name in Italian (see [Inf IV 88]), was noted in the 1970s by Professor Janet Smarr, while she was a graduate student at Princeton.  That Dante may have for a moment thought of himself as the 'Italian Homer' would not come as a surprise.  If he did, the profoundly famous Homer (see Horace [Ars 401]: insignis Homerus), by any stretch of the imagination 'immortal,' has an Italian counterpart in the very mortal Dante.  For Dante's earlier reference to a Homeric being seeming like a god (and thus immortal), see V.N.II.8, perhaps a reference to Nausicaa in the Odyssey, but for Dante, who is citing indirectly, without precise Homeric identity.