Commentary Par XXXIII 1

This verse establishes the basic modality of the entire canto, making two references to what will be a common theme of so many verses in it: harmonious resolution of impossibly related contraries.  'Virgin' and 'mother' cannot logically be the shared properties of any woman; nor can any woman be the daughter of her son.  This overriding of the logic of impossibility will culminate in the final simile of the poem, the geometer attempting to square the circle.  The only answer to impossibility is miracle.  Reacting to the entire canto, Güntert has said (Gunt.2002.2), p. 505, 'No Christian poet had ever been so daring.'

For the beginnings of the last cantos of the first two cantiche, see C.Purg.XXXIII.1-3, which points out that each of the previous opening lines was in another poetic voice, first that of Venantius Fortunatus and second that of David, both of them speaking Latin.  Here we have another poetic voice, that of St. Bernard, but he does not use his customary Latin tongue (apparently no writing of Bernard in French survives), but the vernacular.  This opening line thus presents us, first with a completed pattern and then, on further consideration, with a broken pattern: We expect Latin here, but do not find it.  We may also speculate on the presence of another linguistic program here.  We first hear the Latin of Venantius, then a Latin 'translation' of David's Hebrew, and finally Bernard's Italian, the three main languages that provide the basic materials for Dante's own literary making.

For both elements of this verse as dependent on formulations found in the fifth book of Alain de Lille's Anticlaudianus, see Ledda (Ledd.2002.1), p. 308n., citing the previous notice by Jacomuzzi (Jaco.1965.1), p. 12n.  Ledda also reports other medieval formulae that are similar to Dante's paradoxical expressions.

This marks the thirteenth time that a canto has begun with a speaker's words (see C.Par.V.1).