Introduction

Pur. IV 119-120 contain a question being asked to Dante and a contemporary comment uses the word 'bizar/bizzaro' for these verses. At first sight the lines are about the upside-down space-construction that is Purgatory: now we move uphill and what was on the left side is now on the right hand side.
"I came to him he hardly raised his head,
Saying: 'Hast thou seen clearly how the sun
O'er thy left shoulder drives his chariot?'"
But does this explain the contemporary use of the word bizarre? The question is being asked by a florentine and that should make us suspicious I think for another level of reading. One day I thought the meaning left shoulder referred to the left shoulder of the stellar constellation the Big Bear (ursula major) as a bear as one can see in all the stars of this constellation, which points to the the Little Bear (ursula minor) and finally to the Polar Star. This could be Dante's star in the sense of 'follow your own star', the poetical advise earlier in the poem. "Waitest thou an escort?" could perhaps also be interpreted as a reference to the poet Dante learning how en what to write.
Other people have had a similar reading experience of the work of Il divino Poeta as I'll illustrate in the first chapter. In the following part I'll describe the philosophical and theological nature of this reading experience and how it changed over time. In the last chapter I'll describe the episode in a literary and historical context.