Commentary Par XXV 2

In response to this challenging verse, Pasquini (Pasq.2001.1, pp. 145, 147) moves away from the traditional exegesis, which has it that the words cielo and terra both refer to what God has created, the twin subject of the poem, as it were, heaven and earth.  That is, he realizes that the verse is not about the subject of the poem but about its heavenly agency.  However, while an improvement in one respect, his reading seems deficient in the main one.  For what may seem a radical (but perhaps only a necessary) view of the matter, see Hollander (Holl.1997.1) and, for a similar view, Baranski (Bara.2001.2), pp. 393-94.  Such a reading of this line has it that Dante insists, however covertly, that the poem has two makers, God (the divine 'dictator') and himself (the human 'scribe').  The notion that he thus portrays his own hand writing the poem finds support in Rime.CXIV.1-5, Dante's answer to a sonnet from Cino da Pistoia, in which he portrays his tired fingers grasping the pen with which he writes his own responsive sonnet.  Recently (25 Feb. 2006) John Scott was kind enough to call the present writer's attention to the following relevant passage from an encyclopedist whose work Dante nearly certainly knew.  His self-presentation is remarkably similar to what is here being proposed as Dante's in this tercet: 'Si quis querat huius operis quis autor, dicendum est quia Deus; si querat huius operis quis fuerit instrumentum, respondendum est quia patria pisanus, nomine Uguitio quasi eugetio, idest bona terra […].  Igitur Sancti Spiritus assistente gratia, ut qui est omnium bonorum distributor nobis verborum copiam auctim suppeditare dignetur, a verbo augmenti nostre assertionis auspicium sortiamur' (Uguccione da Pisa, Derivationes, ed. Enzo Cecchini and others [Florence: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2004], vol. II, p. 4).