Commentary Par XXXI 7-12

The angelic host is given similetic expression.  At first, by Pietro di Dante (DDP Pietro1.Par.XXXI.7-9) and Benvenuto (DDP Benvenuto.Par.XXXI.4-12), these bees were seen as deriving from Virgil (Aen. I.430-431).  However, from Vellutello (DDP Vellutello.Par.XXXI.4-12) onward, commentators have heard the more relevant echo of the simile at Aeneid VI.703-709 (for that text, see C.Para.XXX.64-66).

The conclusion of Albert Rossi's study (Ross.1989.2), pp. 313-24, accounts for the disparities in the two similes by showing that the situation in the Aeneid, from a Christian perspective, is less propitious than it first may seem.  As a central case in point, Aeneas discovers that all these happy shades are about to be (from Dante's perspective) 'reincarnated.' We can hardly imagine the joy felt by the hero of this 'epic' when he sees the souls in the Rose as they will look when they are resurrected.  Surely we are meant to remember Aeneas's quite different reaction, when he learns from Anchises about the flesh that these souls in the Elysian Fields will bear with them as they return to the world and its toils.  Indeed, Aeneas laments their return to the world of flesh (Aen. VI.719-721).  In the post-Platonic Aeneid, the world of flesh has nothing to do with spiritual perfection; in Dante's poem the beatified spirit has only a single unfulfilled desire: to be granted the return of its flesh.  Thus, if Dante allows Virgilian text a renewed presence in his poem, he is not without the ironic distance that we have found present in even the first moments of the poem (for example, see the notes to C.Inf.II.28 and C.II.56-57).

For other possible sources for this passage, e.g., in St. Anselm and St. Bernard, see Scott (Scot.2002.1), p. 478.  For several different passages in Bernard, see the following: Carroll (DDP Carroll.Par.XXXI.1-12), Torraca (DDP Torraca.Par.XXXI.7-12), Casini/Barbi (DDP Casini.Par.XXXI.7), and Trucchi (DDP Trucchi.Par.XXXI.4-12), who also cites Anselm.  A few later commentators also make gestures in both these directions, if without furnishing texts.

A discussion of the elaborate structural play in this simile is found in Lansing (Lans.1977.1), p. 37.  The vehicle and tenor of the simile each mirrors both moments in the movement of the bees/angels, first down to the flowers/souls, then back up to the hive/God.