Purg. 30: The admiral

"Dante, perché Virgilio se ne vada,
non pianger anco, non piangere ancora;
ché pianger ti conven per altra spada".

Quasi ammiraglio che in poppa e in prora
viene a veder la gente che ministra
per li altri legni, e a ben far l'incora;

in su la sponda del carro sinistra,
quando mi volsi al suon del nome mio,
che di necessità qui si registra,

in su la sponda del carro sinistra,
quando mi volsi al suon del nome mio,
che di necessità qui si registra,

vidi la donna che pria m'appario
velata sotto l'angelica festa,
drizzar li occhi ver' me di qua dal rio.

Quasi ammiraglio… Singleton finds strain in the simile – the oddness of likening a beloved woman, not seen since her death ten years earlier, to a busy, officious admiral pacing the deck of his ship.

"Dante, though Virgil's leaving you, do not
yet weep, do not weep yet; you'll need your tears
for what another sword must yet inflict."

Just like an admiral who goes to stern
and prow to see the officers who guide
the other ships, encouraging their tasks; 60

so, on the left side of the chariot
(I'd turned around when I had heard my name-
which, of necessity, I transcribe here),

I saw the lady who had first appeared
to me beneath the veils of the angelic
flowers look at me across the stream.

The moment Beatrice finally speaks to Dante would, in another sort of poem, be a rich, romantic, dreamlike moment -- but not here. Likening Beatrice to an admiral derails romance, and summons up an entirely different order -- a mariner, a leader, charged with responsibility for untold numbers of men and ships -- the fleet entrusted to his care.

What does this striking simile do in this context, and why might it, once one gets past the oddly jarring daring of the analogy, be appropriate and necessary at this moment of the Purgatorio?