Canto 2 is the poem’s first crisis of nerve. Dante has agreed to go; lines 10–42 record his immediate reversal. Lines 109–142 record the recovery — Virgil finishes his account of Beatrice’s mission, presses Dante with three rapid questions, and something shifts. The flower simile at line 127 is where the passage becomes genuinely difficult: flowers pressed shut by frost do not choose to open. The sun opens them. That image has generated centuries of disagreement about whether Dante’s recovered resolve is an act of will, an effect of grace, or something the poem deliberately refuses to name.
Inferno · Canto 2 · Lines 109–142 · Scene 6
With Virgil’s account of Beatrice’s mission complete, the canto turns on a single question: why does Dante still hold back? Virgil names three women of Heaven who have intervened on Dante’s behalf, and presses the point with deliberate economy — the case for proceeding has been made; no further argument is available or needed. What follows is one of the Commedia‘s most precisely observed psychological moments. Dante compares himself to flowers that cold has pressed shut through the night: they do not recover by effort but by exposure to warmth, and they straighten one by one, opening in sequence. On one reading, the simile locates the change outside Dante’s volition — something acts on him rather than he upon himself, closer to grace than to willpower. His reply to Virgil makes this explicit: both the woman who showed mercy and Virgil who obeyed so promptly have moved him. He does not claim to have recovered his courage; he acknowledges that it has been restored. The declaration that follows — tu duca, tu segnore e tu maestro, you my guide, you my lord, you my master — echoes and resolves the crisis of confidence that opened Canto 2, and the canto closes not on speech but on motion: Virgil moves forward, Dante follows, and they enter what the text calls the high and wild road without further comment on what Dante feels.
Go deeper: the college-level reading (about 150 words)
Quotes the Italian closely, with philological detail and cross-references.
The closing movement of Canto 2 resolves the crisis opened at line 10 through three gestures: Virgil’s direct challenge to Dante’s lingering cowardice (lines 121–126), the narrator’s extended simile comparing Dante’s recovery to flowers opening after frost (lines 127–132), and Dante’s formal declaration of trust in Virgil (lines 133–142). The flower simile is one of the Comedy’s most celebrated: its images of cold, night, frost, and then sun and opening are often read as a compressed figure of conversion — the soul restored to its proper orientation. Dante’s final address — ‘tu duca, tu segnore e tu maestro’ (you my guide, my lord, and my master, line 140) — answers the doubts of the canto’s opening: he who questioned whether he had the right to travel now names his guide with a triple honorific and steps forward.
Go deeper still: the scholarly reading (about 200 words)
The commentary tradition, the sources, and what is documented versus inferred.
The resolution of Canto 2 has often been read as a conversion scene in miniature. The structure supports the reading: the will divides against itself in the simile of the man who un-wills what he willed (lines 37–42), help arrives through a chain of women in heaven, and the will is made single again, ‘ch’un sol volere è d’ambedue’ (line 139), one will now in both of us. Whether the canto is consciously modelled on a particular account of conversion, Augustine’s being the obvious candidate, is a matter of inference, not of explicit allusion. The flower simile at lines 127–132 can be read the same way, as nature restored to its proper end: flowers closed by the night’s cold open on their stems when the sun whitens them, as Dante’s failing courage opens under Virgil’s words. The simile also works without allegory, as an exact observation of something flowers do, and much of its force comes from that literalness. Hollander’s commentary connects the canto’s repeated emphasis on speech to its role as a ‘canto of the word,’ in which Virgil’s words, and Beatrice’s behind them, accomplish the change.
The Italian — The New Resolve
Source: Wikisource (public domain, pre-1929 text)
Lines 121–123
121. Dunque: che è perché, perché restai,122. perché tanta viltà nel core allette,123. perché ardire e franchezza non hai,
translation note: Line 121 — Virgil turns from narrative to direct challenge — three rapid questions that strip away any remaining excuse. The triple ‘perché’ (why, why, why) mirrors the structure of Beatrice’s triple intercession, now applied as a rhetorical hammer. After the gentleness of the Beatrice story, Virgil shifts register: urgency, almost impatience. [Model knowledge · medium]
Lines 124–126
124. poscia che tai tre donne benedette125. curan di te ne la corte del cielo,126. e ‘l mio parlar tanto ben ti promette?».
theology: Line 124 — ‘tai tre donne benedette’ — such three blessed women. Virgil names the intercession not to repeat it but to use it as a rebuke: you know these three women care for you; you have been told this; what else is needed? The facts of grace are now grounds for reproach if Dante fails to act on them. [Model knowledge · medium]
Lines 127–129
127. Quali fioretti dal notturno gelo128. chinati e chiusi, poi che ‘l sol li ‘mbianca,129. si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo,
simile: Line 127 — The flower simile is one of the Comedy’s most celebrated. Frost bends flowers shut at night; the morning sun opens them. Dante uses the image for the recovery of his courage — but the simile does not show the flowers deciding to open. They respond to the sun as a natural effect. This detail has driven the debate about whether Dante’s recovery is an act of will or an effect of grace — commentators who favor the grace reading point to exactly this passivity, though the classical-virtue camp reads the same image as staging, not explaining, the recovery. [Source: Freccero, Dante: The Poetics of Conversion (1986); Mazzotta, Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge (1993)]
Lines 130–132
130. tal mi fec’io di mia virtude stanca,131. e tanto buono ardire al cor mi corse,132. ch’i’ cominciai come persona franca:
translation note: Line 130 — ‘di mia virtude stanca’ — of my exhausted virtue. ‘Virtude’ here is both virtue in the moral sense and vital energy in the Aristotelian sense — the animating force of the soul. It was not merely cowardice that had seized Dante but an exhaustion of vitality, which the simile of the flowers precisely describes: cold closes living things; warmth restores them. [Model knowledge · high]
translation note: Line 132 — ‘come persona franca’ — like a free person, a frank person, one no longer bound. The word ‘franca’ carries both senses: freedom from constraint (he is no longer paralyzed) and frankness of speech (he will say what he means directly). The hesitant Dante of lines 10–42 has been replaced. [Model knowledge · high]
Lines 136–138
136. Tu m’hai con disiderio il cor disposto137. sì al venir con le parole tue,138. ch’i’ son tornato nel primo proposto.
vocabulary: Line 138 — ‘ch’i’ son tornato nel primo proposto’ — I have returned to my first intention. Dante names what has happened precisely: a return, not an advance. He is back where he was at the end of Canto 1, when he first agreed to go. The intervening crisis was a detour, not a development. The journey can begin again from where it should have started. [Model knowledge · high]
Lines 139–141
139. Or va, ch’un sol volere è d’ambedue:140. tu duca, tu segnore e tu maestro."141. Così li dissi; e poi che mosso fue,
literary key: Line 139 — ‘ch’un sol volere è d’ambedue’ — one will in two. The phrase is the canto’s structural resolution: Dante’s divided will has been healed into unity with Virgil’s. The image of two wills becoming one is Augustinian — the cured will does not strain against its guide but joins with it. [Source: Freccero, Dante: The Poetics of Conversion (1986); Augustine, Confessions]
translation note: Line 140 — ‘tu duca, tu segnore e tu maestro’ — you my guide, you my lord, you my master. The triple honorific inverts Dante’s earlier protest (‘Io non Enea, io non Paulo sono’): where the crisis was defined by what Dante is not, the resolution is defined by what Virgil is, to him, now and for the journey ahead. The three titles cover three domains: duca (practical guidance), segnore (authority), maestro (intellectual mastery). [Model knowledge · high]
Lines 142
142. intrai per lo cammino alto e silvestro.
literary key: Line 142 — The closing line of Canto 2 is grammatically bare: intrai per lo cammino alto e silvestro — I entered the high and wild road. No report of what Dante feels as he enters. No description of the path ahead. The canto closes on motion, not on emotion — and that silence has prompted as much discussion as any of the lines before it. [Model knowledge · high]
Seven Centuries of Reading The New Resolve
Boccaccio on the three questions and the three titles
Boccaccio’s lectures read the end of Canto II closely. Virgil’s triple «perché» (121–123) is repeated, he says, «per pugnere più l’animo dell’uditore», to prick the listener’s spirit harder. The «tre donne benedette» (124) are for him the gentle lady, Lucy and Beatrice, who care for the pilgrim in the court of heaven, «nella quale subsidio non è mai negato ad alcuno che umilemente l’adomandi», where help is never refused to anyone who asks humbly.
On the closing line of the dialogue his gloss is a small treatise on guidance: «Non si potrebbe in altra guisa bene andare, se non fosser la guida e ‘l guidato in un volere» (there is no other way to travel well than for guide and guided to be of one will). The three titles of line 140 each name an office. Virgil is «duca» in the going, «segnore» in rank and command, and «maestro» in teaching, «per ciò che uficio del maestro è il dimostrare la dottrina e il solvere i dubbi», because a master’s office is to set out doctrine and resolve doubts.
The flower simile
Benvenuto da Imola called the simile of 127–132 «pulcerrimam et proprissimam», most beautiful and most apt: as flowers bent and closed by the night’s cold rise and open in the sun, so the pilgrim’s failing courage revives. Boccaccio explains the natural fact behind it, that when the sun departs every plant draws in its strength.
Modern readings
Rachel Jacoff has argued that Beatrice’s tears at 116 probably reflect Rachel weeping for her lost children (Jeremiah 31:15), who are eventually restored to her, as Dante will be restored to Beatrice. Jacoff and Stephany also note that the «vere parole» of Beatrice at 135 recall the true words, «veras … voces», that Aeneas longs to exchange with his mother Venus (Aeneid I.409).
What remains open
The canto ends with resolution and a unity of will, «un sol volere» (139), but it does not explain how a doubt that filled the first forty lines could be dispelled by a story. One reading treats the story as grace. Another treats the doubt as a rhetorical preparation that never needed curing. The next canto’s gate, with its inscription, will test the resolve at once.
The Two Main Positions on The New Resolve
Conversion / Augustinian
Canto 2 enacts the Augustinian structure of conversion: will divided against itself is healed by grace into single resolve. The flower simile is not decorative but doctrinal — grace operates on the soul as the sun operates on flowers, from outside, irresistibly, naturally. The healing is not earned or decided; it is received. Dante’s formal declaration to Virgil is the verbal sign of a change that has already happened at the level of the will.
Key passage: ‘ch’un sol volere è d’ambedue’ (one will in two, line 139) — the image of wills unified suggests that the prior division has been resolved, not merely overcome by a stronger impulse.
Decision / Classical Virtue
Dante hears a persuasive argument (the three women care for him) and changes his mind. This is the classical model of rational persuasion: Virgil acts as philosopher-teacher, presents reasons, and Dante’s logos responds. The flower simile describes the feel of the change, not its mechanism — relief feels like flowers opening, but relief is the appropriate rational response to having one’s fears removed by good evidence. No supernatural grace is required.
Key passage: ‘Sé’ savio; intendi me’ ch’i’ non ragiono’ (line 36, earlier in the canto) — Dante explicitly asked Virgil to reason on his behalf, and Virgil did. The recovery follows the reasoning.
What the Text Does — and What That Means (Contested)
On the page: Virgil’s challenge to Dante (asking why he still harbors cowardice after three women in heaven care for him) precedes the change. The change itself is described through a natural simile, not as an act of will. Dante speaks formally to Virgil, commits to the journey, and they enter. The closing line gives no emotional report — only the fact of entry.
What scholars dispute: Whether the recovery is a genuine act of free will (Dante chooses to go) or an effect of grace working on him (the sun opens the flowers; he does not open himself) is debated. One reading sees conversion — the will healed into unity by grace. Others read a simpler narrative logic: Virgil’s explanation removed the uncertainty, and without uncertainty Dante simply moves. The flower simile tips the question toward grace: the flowers do not decide to open.
About This Article
Written by Lucy Bamboo. Lucy Bamboo has been reading the Divine Comedy for fifteen years — first in translation, then stubbornly in Medieval Tuscan with a dictionary and far too many footnotes. Reading Dante is her scene-by-scene walk through the poem: the original Italian, seven centuries of scholarly argument presented as argument rather than answer, and the human questions sitting underneath the theology. More about this site.
Verify this against a primary source
Specifics change, and your situation may differ from the one described here. These are the authorities worth checking directly:
- Digital Dante, Columbia University — text, commentary and translation apparatus
- Princeton Dante Project — the Commedia with historical commentary
- Dartmouth Dante Project — searchable commentary from 1322 onward