Dante, having returned from his journey to the highest heavens, now calls upon Apollo to enable him to write down what he saw there. It is the time of sunrise on the Mountain of Purgatory, and Beatrice looks directly into the rising sun. Soon, Dante feels impelled to do the same, and it appears to him that the sun has exploded into countless other suns. Looking back at Beatrice, he feels himself undergoing an amazing transformation he can barely describe, but he realizes that he is rising up into the heavens at amazing speed. But Dante has doubts about whether he is still in his body, and how they can actually be moving through the heavenly spheres. She reads his mind and is happy to answer his questions.
(To read a footnote, click the number in the text. To come back from a footnote, click the up arrow at the note number.)
The glory of God who moves all created things, fills the entire universe as it wills – one part more, perhaps one part less. I myself was in that brightest heaven and was so filled with His light that, having returned from there, I cannot claim to know or recount what I saw, because my mind entered it to such a profound depth that my memory cannot possibly recall all of it. Nevertheless, as much of the treasure of that holy kingdom as I could take back with me I will now share it as the theme of my story.[1]Dante’s Paradiso is not for the faint of heart. As we can see from the outset, he has returned from Heaven, but his experiences there were so profound that he seems uncertain about the strength of … Continue reading
O Good Apollo! Help me to make this last great labor of mine worthy to be infused with your genius so that I may receive the crown of laurels I have so longed for.[2]Dante saw his Comedy as an epic work much in the tradition of the great ancient poets like Homer and Virgil. Like his classical predecessors, he called upon the Muses to assist him in creating the … Continue reading Up to this point, my prayers have been addressed to only one peak of Parnassus, your sacred mountain. Now, I send them up to both peaks so that I can be worthy to meet the challenge of the heavenly realms I have seen.[3]There are differing interpretations among commentators on what Dante here refers to as the “peaks” of Mount Parnassus in central Greece. In mythology, this great mountain is sacred to Apollo and … Continue reading Come and enter my breast and in-spire me with that art by which you literally pulled Marsyas out of his skin![4]Here Dante refers to another story in the mythology of Apollo. There are actually two stories, and to give the fullest picture, let me conflate them. Apparently, it was Athena who invented the flute, … Continue reading
O Divine Virtue, O Holy Power! Just give me enough of yourself so that I can reveal at least a shadow of that blessèd kingdom still imprinted on my mind. Then you, and my theme, will make me worthy to approach your beloved tree and crown myself with its leaves.[5]As Dante continues his appeal to Apollo, asking humbly for just enough of the god’s genius that will enable him to give his readers just a trace of his vision of Heaven while it remains clear … Continue reading
Holy Father, it is so rare that they are gathered to celebrate the triumph of a Caesar or a poet – perhaps the fault of humans who don’t deserve or desire them – that when a person longs for those laurels you should be moved to joy.[6]As a subtle postscript to his prayer, almost a justification for his request, Dante reminds God/Apollo that bestowal of laurel crowns is a rarity, either because they’re not deserved, or, sadly, … Continue reading One small spark can create a great fire; and after me, perhaps, better voices and better words will win your glad response.[7]The aphorism in the first clause here is reminiscent of a line in the New Testament Letter of James: “Consider how a small fire can set a huge forest ablaze.” (3:5) Dante seems to imply here that … Continue reading
We see the sun rise in different places to light our world. But when it rises from that point where the various circles meet by which we measure the movement of the earth against the planets and the stars, this great union showers down special powers upon us.[8]At this point, Dante begins his narrative of the Paradiso with a short, but rather complicated, astronomical image of the vernal equinox. For him, the beginning of Spring brings with it the promise … Continue reading And so, this happy confluence saw the sun rising on the Mountain of Purgatory while it was dusk here where I now take up my story.[9]It becomes clear only at this point that the journey of the Paradiso has not yet begun. Dante, having passed through the stream of Eunoë, is still on the Mountain of Purgatory preparing to rise into … Continue reading
As I looked at Beatrice, she turned to the left and faced the sun, looking directly into its blinding brilliance. No eagle could have matched her gaze into that glowing orb of light![10]Toward the end of Canto 33 in the Purgatorio, Dante told us that it was noontime, when the sun (God, Apollo) shines down most brightly. He and Beatrice had been facing east toward the stream of … Continue reading
And as a ray of light will be reflected back – like a pilgrim yearning to return home – just so her act of looking at the sun found its home in me and, following her lead, I fixed my gaze on that resplendence as no one ever did.[11]Dante uses this simple illustration to explain how he imitated Beatrice as she stared directly into the sun. Her action was like the ray of light that bounces off a reflective surface back upward. … Continue reading
Even though our human senses are far more acute in that Eden where we were first intended to live, I could not look into the sun much longer before it seemed to explode into blazing sparks flying everywhere, like molten iron splashing out from a furnace. In a moment, I was surrounded by so much light it seemed as though God had created a second sun to adorn the sky.[12]Dante reminds us here that, having been purified in Purgatory (where he still is), he has become like a second Adam, with his senses extraordinarily heightened. Then, though he can look into the sun … Continue reading
All the while, Beatrice stood there entranced as she looked upon the eternal spheres of the cosmos. But I, having looked away from them, I now fixed my eyes on her. And as I feasted upon her radiance, I realized that I was becoming what the fisherman Glaucus became when he ate the herb that made him immortal like the other sea gods.[13]As Dante and Beatrice ascend into the heavens, he realizes that she has become transfigured as she returns to her home in Paradise, and he lets his eyes feast upon her beauty. And since we have … Continue reading I cannot possibly explain in mere words what was happening to me except to say that I was being “transhumanized.” This word will have to suffice until God grants me the ability to make sense of this experience to the fullest extent.[14]Telling us that he cannot explain “in mere words” what was happening to him, he creates a new word: in Italian, transumanar. He was “transhumanized.” Though he implies that the word doesn’t … Continue reading
As a result, I cannot say precisely whether it was my soul or my body – or both – that rose upward. You alone know, O Blessed Love, by Whose light I was lifted up.[15]Mark Musa continues from what I just noted above:“The wondrous change in Dante’s condition is explained by the fact of his purification, which has taken place in the Earthly Paradise. In his … Continue reading When the greatest of the heavenly spheres – the one closest to You – filled me with the eternal music it pours throughout the cosmos, the skies seemed to blaze forth with the sun’s flames in such abundance, not all the water on earth could create a lake so immense.[16]Dante looks away from Beatrice again into the depths of the cosmos. He feels himself filled intensely with the presence of God that emanates from the Empyrean and fills the universe with music. As … Continue reading
Lost as I was in this light, and surrounded by such heavenly music, I was filled with a overwhelming desire to know their origin, the likes of which I have never experienced! And she who could read the words of my mind, happy to restore my peace, answered the question I was just now ready to ask: “It’s your own fault,” she said smiling, “for filling your mind with flawed conceptions that have hindered your ability to see clearly what was really there before you. You’re thinking that you are still on the earth. But I assure you, lightning never sped downward from the skies as fast as you are now rising toward your true home.”[17]For the first time in the Paradiso Beatrice speaks. Reminiscent of Virgil, she is able to read Dante’s thoughts and answers the question that is weighing heavily on his mind even before he puts it … Continue reading
Her smiling words freed me from my first misconception, but I was immediately burdened with another one. “I now understand the marvel of my ascending to the heavenly spheres,” I said, “but how can it be that we are rising through them?”[18]Dante’s important second question here will generate a very long answer from Beatrice. And perhaps only in the next canto will the answer become clear both to Dante and to the Reader.A brief … Continue reading
When she heard this question she sighed with pity and looked at me as a gentle mother might look upon her delirious child. “There is an order that exists among all created things, and this order gives form to the universe and makes it resemble God,” she said. “Within this order, all God’s higher creatures – the angels and saints, and humans, too – see the mark of eternal goodness, the goal for which the entire universe was created.[19]Beatrice’s conclusion that the universe resembles God is a deeply spiritual insight and recalls Psalm 19:2: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaims the works of his … Continue reading
“In this order, also, each creation maintains its proper place, according to its nature; and each moves toward a different destination on the vast sea of existence, guided by its own specific instinct. This is what makes fire burn upward, it’s the living power within our hearts, and it’s what holds the earth together. Not only is it the instinct that animates creatures without reason, but it is that force which moves those who can think and love.[20]Having spoken above of the order of the universe which makes it resemble God, Beatrice fine-tunes her explanation by telling Dante that every created thing, determined by its particular nature, has a … Continue reading
“The love of God that orders and animates the cosmos, spreads out from Heaven its calming radiance to the fastest and greatest of our spheres; and it is to that place we now soar, shot forth by the bow of Love which always hits its glad Target.[21]Beatrice expands here on the theme of Love, telling Dante that it is the animating force of the universe. Its “calming radiance” holds chaos at bay as it sets in motion the outermost sphere of … Continue reading
“However, just as the clay may not always act in accord with the artist’s intent – created matter not responding to the call – so too, God’s creatures, even though they are impelled toward the heavenly goal, have within them the will to swerve, and thus stray from the course. As lightning is seen falling from the sky, just so our primal desire for the Good can be misdirected by unruly desires and thus bring us down.[22]The subtlety of our place on the Great Chain of Being becomes clearer here because, while we are the lowest of the higher creations, the spirit we share with them can also be hindered in its flight … Continue reading
“So, to return to your second concern, you really should be no more amazed that you’re flying upward than you would be at seeing water fall from a mountain’s height to its base. And since you are now free from everything that would hold you down, if you had remained there on earth, that would be as strange as a flame that never moves.”[23]Having explained to Dante that all of creation reflects the Creator, and that our primal instinct is to be united with Him, Beatrice tells him that, while it may seem strange to him, it is perfectly … Continue reading
And having said that, she turned and gazed again toward the heavens.[24]As a sign that she has finished her long explanation and satisfied Dante’s curiosity, Beatrice physically turns back toward the heavens as though to say: “Now, let’s be on our way.”
Notes & Commentary
| ↑1 | Dante’s Paradiso is not for the faint of heart. As we can see from the outset, he has returned from Heaven, but his experiences there were so profound that he seems uncertain about the strength of his literary ability to recall them in a way that will make sense. After all, we have been told by St. Paul, recalling his own experience, that “…eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into people’s hearts the things God has prepared for those who love him.” (1 Cor 2:9) At the same time, however, and in spite of his uncertainty, Dante assures us that he was really there and that he will now share with us the treasures he brought back. Interestingly enough, Dante, thinking of St. Paul’s apparent vision of Heaven in 2 Cor. 12:2ff, told Virgil in canto 2 of the Inferno that he did not consider himself to be a St. Paul who said: “I was caught up to the third heaven…. Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don’t know – only God knows. But I do know that I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell.” And yet, Dante clearly has this in mind by the time he writes the Paradiso. And, contrary to St. Paul’s warning, he promises us he is going to tell all. At this point, even before we begin, it is worth reminding the Reader, as we have done in the Inferno and the Purgatorio, that Dante is telling the truth, and he fully expects us to believe everything he tells us in his Poem. As a matter of fact, he constructs his Poem with his Reader in mind, not simply as a passive spectator, but as an active participant and witness to the truth of his claims. Only in this way do we come to enjoy the fullness of the experience he shares with us in the tragedy of the Inferno, the reconciling hope of the Purgatorio, and now the mystical vision of the Paradiso. Almost 500 years after Dante wrote the Commedia, the English poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wrote about what he called “the willing suspension of disbelief” which, he said, constitutes “poetic faith.” What this refers to is the conscious choice on the part of readers to set aside their critical faculty while reading a work of fiction and believe as truth everything the author writes. Dante knew this intuitively, and while he was overwhelmed by his experiences of the afterlife, he never flinches from including the Reader as an eyewitness to the truth of his divine vision. May this “poetic faith” lead us into this third Canticle of Dante’s Poem with the same assuredness of St. Paul (and Dante himself): “Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Cor. 13:12) The opening words of Dante’s Paradiso – the glory of God – remind us of the opening line of Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows us the work of his hands.” The Paradiso is Dante’s declaration of God’s glory in poetic form, and the heavens – all of creation, as we will soon see – are God’s poem of Love. And all of this loved universe is manifested in a diversity that overwhelms our Poet. Is this any wonder, one asks, when we read that he is just returned from the highest/brightest heaven where he saw God – in His glory! God’s glory ties this Canticle together from beginning to end – or, perhaps we should say, from end to beginning. We might be tempted to laugh at such dangerous literary bravado, but Dante might laugh as well and tell us that Heaven is filled with laughter. The highest/brightest heaven Dante refers to here is, of course, the Empyrean. The Empyrean is the “home” of God – Heaven proper. To understand this we need to know that Dante constructs his cosmos (and thus, the Paradiso) based on the cosmology of Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria (100-170 CE) in which the Earth was considered to be the center of the universe. This understanding of the cosmos lasted for more than a thousand years and was eventually replaced by Copernicus and Galileo with the heliocentric model of the cosmos. In Ptolemy’s elegant system, the cosmos was constructed of a series of nested crystalline spheres, most of them named after the then-known planets. The outermost of these spheres was known as the Primum Mobile (the first mover). This sphere rotated at a tremendous speed, and as it did, it imparted motion to the sphere within it which rotated at a slightly slower speed. This globe, and so on with the rest, rotated at slightly slower rates. The Earth, at the center of the system, did not move. Beyond the Primum Mobile was the Empyrean or Heaven proper. The tremendous speed of the Primum Mobile came from its proximity to the Empyrean. The Paradiso will follow Dante and Beatrice’s journey among all these spheres until they reach the Empyrean, the highest/brightest heaven. Now, back to the very beginning of this canto. When the Poet immediately tells us that God moves all of creation, he wants us to see this as an act of homage to the One who speaks creation into being, and Who, through him – Dante – speaks the Commedia into being as well. Here is Aristotle’s unmoved mover, but an unmoved mover infused with the treasure of glory. Dante is both the scribe of this glory and the purveyor of its treasure. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Dante saw his Comedy as an epic work much in the tradition of the great ancient poets like Homer and Virgil. Like his classical predecessors, he called upon the Muses to assist him in creating the Inferno and the Purgatorio. Now, at the outset of this final canticle of his Commedia, he summons Apollo, the leader of the Muses and the god of music and poetry, to lend his divine genius to this final part of the epic work he is about to begin. Not only does he invoke the genius of Apollo upon his Poem, but his fondest hope is to be given the laurel crown, a symbol of great distinction, bestowed on the finest artists since the classical era to honor their highest achievement, making them virtually immortal. This crown has its origin in the mythological story of Apollo and the forest nymph Daphne. Having fallen in love with Daphne, Apollo chased after her in the forest. In desperation, she cried out to her father, the river god Peneus, who saved her by turning her into a laurel tree. Outdone by Daphne, Apollo made the laurel his sacred tree and fashioned a wreath of her branches to wear in his hair. But Dante’s hope for this laurel crown is not the selfish desire of an over-inflated poet. Rather, as we will see, it is the logical outcome of his experience of Paradise and his ability to write it down and share it with the world. He sees his experience of Heaven as a gift from God (poetically Apollo) – a gift which compels him. If nothing else, the laurel crown is a symbol of Heaven itself, from where Dante has just returned, and where he is about to lead us as he retraces his steps in the Poem. In his commentary here, Ronald Martinez notes that Apollo was the patron of those who strove for the laurels of victory. Dante will want us to image Heaven as the eternally triumphant reward where the blessed see God. |
| ↑3 | There are differing interpretations among commentators on what Dante here refers to as the “peaks” of Mount Parnassus in central Greece. In mythology, this great mountain is sacred to Apollo and the Muses, and Dante’s reference to it follows from his invocation of Apollo. Geographically, there is only one peak on Mount Parnassus. However, the Roman writer Lucan records in his Pharsalia (5:72ff) that there are two peaks: “Parnassus with its twofold summit reaches to the skies, a mountain sacred to Phoebus (Apollo) and to Bromius (Bacchus).” Dante refers to one of the peaks as Nisa (sacred to the Muses) and to the other as Cyrrha (sacred to Apollo). But according to Robert Hollander in his commentary here, some of the ancient sources Dante relied on were most likely referring to two peaks that rose above Delphi, a small city along the southern slope of Parnassus. Delphi, of course, was the site of the famed temple of Apollo where the Delphic Oracle spoke in the god’s name. Regardless of the source errors which Dante could not have known, his appeal to both peaks of Mount Parnassus highlights the importance he places on the divine guidance of both the Muses and Apollo in meeting the challenge facing him in the writing down of his celestial experiences in his Paradiso. In his commentary here, Robert Martinez notes that Dante makes nine appeals for power and help with his poetic undertaking. This is the fifth and longest of the nine. |
| ↑4 | Here Dante refers to another story in the mythology of Apollo. There are actually two stories, and to give the fullest picture, let me conflate them. Apparently, it was Athena who invented the flute, actually a double-piped flute called an aulos. Once, she saw herself in a mirror while playing it and was embarrassed by how her cheeks puffed out and distorted her lovely face. So, she threw the flute away with a curse that whoever found it would die terribly. But it was discovered by the satyr Marsyas who became an expert at playing it. In an act of sheer hubris, Marsyas later challenged Apollo to a musical contest that was judged by the nine Muses. Although Marsyas stunned the audience with his music, Apollo won the contest (obviously) with music on his lyre that was even more beautiful. And as a punishment for challenging him, Apollo flayed Marsyas alive! Ovid recounts the scene in his Metamorphoses (6:382-400): “As he screams, the skin is flayed from the surface of his body, no part is untouched. Blood flows everywhere, the exposed sinews are visible, and the trembling veins quiver, without skin to hide them: you can number the internal organs, and the fibers of the lungs, clearly visible in his chest.” While Dante’s appeal to Apollo is far less gruesome, he may have the image of Marsyas’s open lungs in mind as he prays that the god enter into his own chest and breathe into him the artistic genius that enabled him to defeat the prideful satyr. Did Dante, the creator of the Paradiso have in mind that scene in Genesis 2:7 where the Creator “…formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being”? If Apollo’s art “literally pulled Marsyas out of his skin,” can the reader expect anything less of Dante’s art? |
| ↑5 | As Dante continues his appeal to Apollo, asking humbly for just enough of the god’s genius that will enable him to give his readers just a trace of his vision of Heaven while it remains clear enough in his memory to retell it (quite a trace as it will turn out!), his ways of addressing Apollo (“O Divine Virtue, O Holy Power,” and later “Holy Father,”) suggest that he is really addressing the Trinity. The Father is the creative force he requests in order to complete his Poem; the Son is the Word of God spoken into creation, the Poem; and the Spirit is that divine breath that brings his Poem to life. Recall also that Apollo is the sun god, the god of light. And so is the God of creation in the Book of Genesis. On several occasions in the Poem, Dante uses the sun as a symbol for God. Furthermore, with the laurel crown still in his mind, note how Dante sees himself as a kind of Apollo, approaching the laurel tree as the god himself did, plucking its branches, and crowning himself with them as a new Apollo. This is quite amazing! And yet, having asked the (G)god to breathe into him his divine genius, the resulting Poem becomes an act of communion, a partaking of the (G)god, so that in Dante’s Christian theopoetics, God becomes his Muse, and the Poem becomes a kind Eucharist. Robert Hollander’s commentary here offers more insights to consider: “In the Ovidian [mythology], the tree is Apollo’s laurel, to which Dante comes to crown himself with its leaves, as his subject [the Paradiso] and the god himself shall make him worthy. However, poets are not usually portrayed as crowning themselves. Perhaps that is a clue to our necessary radical transformation of the pagan myth as it applies to Dante. In the Christian version of the myth, Apollo is Christ whose “tree” (the cross) the Christian poet approaches to gather to himself the Christian version of the laurel wreath, the immortality won for humankind by Christ, which his poem and Christ’s love will make him worthy to receive….And thus the ‘beloved tree,’ to which Dante shall address himself, is, to be sure, the laurel, but it is also the wood of the Cross; and the laurel’s leaves shall not be a sign of earthly glory alone.” |
| ↑6 | As a subtle postscript to his prayer, almost a justification for his request, Dante reminds God/Apollo that bestowal of laurel crowns is a rarity, either because they’re not deserved, or, sadly, because no one seems to want one. But Dante most definitely wants one, and this, he more than hints, should be a motive for divine joy. |
| ↑7 | The aphorism in the first clause here is reminiscent of a line in the New Testament Letter of James: “Consider how a small fire can set a huge forest ablaze.” (3:5) Dante seems to imply here that the Poem he will create through God’s inspiration (one is reminded that Scripture was created that way) is a “small spark.” But nothing could be further from the truth. To speak of a small spark is Dante’s way of making a last humble plea for that small portion of divine inspiration he has already requested. That small spark will enable him to inspire us with his experience of Heaven, and to join him on this sacred journey (the great fire) so that we, too, might ultimately be crowned among the blessed and see God in the face. After all, this is the stated purpose of his Poem, as he writes to his patron, Can Grande della Scala: to bring those living in darkness into the light of heavenly glory. Our ultimate salvation, Dante the evangelist hopes, will be “the better voices and better words” that merit God’s inspiration now as he begins to write. And here ends the Invocation to this third canticle of the Comedy. |
| ↑8 | At this point, Dante begins his narrative of the Paradiso with a short, but rather complicated, astronomical image of the vernal equinox. For him, the beginning of Spring brings with it the promise of longer, warmer, and more bountiful days, all symbols pointing to the inherent power of God’s benevolent care of the universe and His creatures. All of this is another way for the Poet to highlight what he stated in the opening line of this canticle: The glory of God fills the entire universe. Recall that Dante and Virgil emerged from Hell to Purgatory on the morning of Easter Sunday, signifying the new life of the Resurrection. And with Creation thought to have taken place at the beginning of Spring, what more auspicious time is there for Dante to begin the Paradiso than with the alignment of several major celestial markers. Explaining these celestial markers, or “circles” is always a challenge. First of all, for Dante, the sun is a symbol of God. In this passage, he is describing that sunrise moment when four “circles” meet: (1) the celestial horizon (that place in the distance where earth and sky seem to meet), (2) the celestial equator, (a projection of the Earth’s equator out into space), (3) the ecliptic (the flat plane or disc that shows the Earth’s orbit around the sun, running along the middle of the zodiac), and (4) the equinoctial colure (that circle around the Earth whose edges touch the north and south poles). Thus, at sunrise on the Spring equinox (March 21) circles 2, 3, and 4 cross the horizon (circle 1) at the same point, forming crosses with the horizon (a cross for each of the three circles as they touch the fourth circle). The point Dante wants to make here by means of this image is that its immense size is a very modest symbol of the Paradise from which he has just returned. More than that, this celestial confluence is another example of the glory of God and his love poured out upon us. And the fact that the constellation of Aries rises with the Spring equinox adds weight to the Poet’s imagery here since it was thought that the sun rose into this constellation at the Creation. Astrologers note that one of the characteristics of this sign is bold ambition, definitely a force that empowers Dante as he begins this last section of his Poem. Lastly, commentators through the ages have noted that the image of the four circles and three crosses mark this as a particularly favorable time for Dante to begin his Paradiso because they also remind us of the stars noted in the Purgatorio: the cardinal virtues (Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude, Justice), and the theological virtues (Fath, Hope, Love). He began this canto with an invocation to Apollo, seeking the laurel crown through inspiration by the god’s genius so he could share with others the power of his experience of Heaven. And now, seemingly empowered, he ends with an immense astronomical image that sets the tone for the rest of the Paradiso as it brings together the great virtues, the Cross and, finally, the Trinity. |
| ↑9 | It becomes clear only at this point that the journey of the Paradiso has not yet begun. Dante, having passed through the stream of Eunoë, is still on the Mountain of Purgatory preparing to rise into the heavens with Beatrice and making his prayer to Apollo. Observe how the Poet takes us “between the pages” of his story for a moment, noting how it is dawn at the top of the Mountain (in the southern hemisphere) where he is preparing to follow Beatrice, and dusk where he’s beginning to write (in Italy). |
| ↑10 | Toward the end of Canto 33 in the Purgatorio, Dante told us that it was noontime, when the sun (God, Apollo) shines down most brightly. He and Beatrice had been facing east toward the stream of Eunoë. Beatrice now turns toward the north and, to Dante’s astonishment, looks directly into the sun. As a citizen of Heaven she sees God in the face, and can look into the sun without harm. Dante’s reference to the eagle derives from the belief that, of all the birds, only the eagle could look at the sun without harm. It was said that the mother eagle would take her chicks into her talons and soar high up into the air to make them stare into the sun. Those that flinched were dropped and so perished. He may have read this in Aristotle’s De Animalibus (9.23.3). |
| ↑11 | Dante uses this simple illustration to explain how he imitated Beatrice as she stared directly into the sun. Her action was like the ray of light that bounces off a reflective surface back upward. Remember that the sun is an image of God. As she stares at God, she reflects God to Dante. He tells us that her staring at the sun was the ray that struck him and led to his reflecting her in imitation. Note that, in keeping with the unique vision he is about to narrate, he tells us that he was the only human who could do this. But note also that this act of reflection isn’t simply an example of physics. The Poet has something quite personal in mind. For him, the initial ray of light is an “exile” from its original source, and the act of reflection takes on a new spiritual significance: it becomes a pilgrim on a journey who longs to return home. This is a subtle autobiographical moment. On the one hand, Dante is an exile from his homeland, Florence. But in the grand scheme of the Divine Comedy, he and all humans are exiles from our true homeland, Heaven, and we long to go home. Does he have St. Augustine’s famous lines in mind here? “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” For Dante the Comedy is the story of our return home, and the Paradiso is where it takes place. |
| ↑12 | Dante reminds us here that, having been purified in Purgatory (where he still is), he has become like a second Adam, with his senses extraordinarily heightened. Then, though he can look into the sun for only a short time, without fully realizing it, he is moving upwards at tremendous speed. What he thought was the distant sun (God) now explodes in glory around him welcoming him into Paradise. Returning for a moment to Ptolemy’s cosmos, Dante is moving upward from the Earth through the sphere of the air and into the sphere of fire between the Earth and the Moon. |
| ↑13 | As Dante and Beatrice ascend into the heavens, he realizes that she has become transfigured as she returns to her home in Paradise, and he lets his eyes feast upon her beauty. And since we have become accustomed to his use of mythological characters and stories throughout the Poem (we have just encountered Apollo and Marsyas), he chooses a rather humble character with whom he can liken himself at that moment. The story is found in chapter 9 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Glaucus, an ordinary fisherman, one day laid out his catch upon the grassy shore where he had been fishing. Soon enough, the fish began to flop about, very much alive, and quickly made their way back into the sea. Awed by this, he wondered what could have caused this to happen. Then he took some of the grass the fish were lying upon and chewed it. Immediately, he was transformed into a sea creature whom the gods soon welcomed as one of their own kind. What’s interesting about this story is that, once in the sea, Glaucus is completely transformed and welcomed by the other sea gods as one of them. The reader is left with wondering whether Dante’s experience of Paradise will have (or has had) the same effect on him as the grass had on Glaucus, who never returned to his original form. Ovid has him saying: “My throat had scarcely swallowed the strange juice, when suddenly I felt my heart trembling inside me, my breast seized with yearning for that other element. Unable to hold out for long, crying out: ‘Land, I will never return to, goodbye! I immersed my body in the sea.” Why would Dante come back from Paradise once he has experienced it, except to tell us all about it as we pilgrims journey through this life toward our true home – the ocean of God! Or, as Mark Musa says in his commentary here: “The Pilgrim, then, must become in a sense divine in order to be accepted by the sea of blessed souls he is about to enter.” |
| ↑14 | Telling us that he cannot explain “in mere words” what was happening to him, he creates a new word: in Italian, transumanar. He was “transhumanized.” Though he implies that the word doesn’t make sense, he’s supplied the Reader with enough context through the story of Glaucus that we understand it perfectly well. Like Glaucus, he was crossing over from being human to something else, something unique, entirely other. |
| ↑15 | Mark Musa continues from what I just noted above: “The wondrous change in Dante’s condition is explained by the fact of his purification, which has taken place in the Earthly Paradise. In his new state, he is to ascend through Paradise and gradually acquire understanding of Divine Love. Thus he already enjoys a condition far beyond mortal limitations, and in this sense he has become superhuman. Dante has crossed an essential threshold: what he is about to experience during the rest of his journey must by its very nature exceed the intellectual grasp of mortals. To those who are deserving, the experience of sanctification will come only after death. For the present, the Poet can only approximate his extraordinary adventure by calling up the example of Glaucus.” |
| ↑16 | Dante looks away from Beatrice again into the depths of the cosmos. He feels himself filled intensely with the presence of God that emanates from the Empyrean and fills the universe with music. As noted earlier, it was believed that the cosmos was a series of nested crystalline spheres. The outermost sphere, called the Primum Mobile (the First Mover), which Dante references here, is closest to the Empyrean, Heaven proper. This proximity gives the Primum Mobile its great speed, which it imparts to each of the lower spheres as noted earlier. They each spin more slowly until, at the center of the cosmos, the Earth doesn’t spin at all. The motion of these spheres creates a harmonious sound which Pythagoras, the 5th century BC Greek philosopher, called the “music of the spheres.” As a result of his heightened sensory powers, Dante seems to hear this music as he ascends through the glorious “fireworks” of the sphere of fire. |
| ↑17 | For the first time in the Paradiso Beatrice speaks. Reminiscent of Virgil, she is able to read Dante’s thoughts and answers the question that is weighing heavily on his mind even before he puts it into words. Everyone in Heaven will be able to do this. Smiling, she humorously chides him for allowing earthly misconceptions to block his understanding of what is right there in front of him. (Her smile will be referenced a great many times throughout the Paradiso.) Thinking that he is still on the Mount of Purgatory, she tells him that they’re actually speeding up toward Heaven faster than a bolt of lightning. As we will see soon enough, Dante (and the Reader) will have to rid himself of many human conceptions (not to mention laws of physics) as he becomes accustomed to the ways of Heaven – his true home. Keep in mind here the story of Glaucus. But one thing he will keep: his intense curiosity, which is necessary for our full experience of his Poem. |
| ↑18 | Dante’s important second question here will generate a very long answer from Beatrice. And perhaps only in the next canto will the answer become clear both to Dante and to the Reader. A brief digression will be helpful here. If we list the spheres in Ptolomaic model of the cosmos, we begin with the Earth at the center. Moving upward through the spheres one follows this progression: the Spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars (Zodiac), and finally the Primum Mobile. Beyond this Dante places the Empyrean (Heaven proper). These spheres are crystalline and thus transparent. One can see through them from the Earth to the sphere of the Fixed stars and beyond. Dante thinks that he and Beatrice are rising upward to these many spheres, but he doesn’t yet understand how they can be traveling through them. More on this in Canto 2. Right now, of course, they have only been rising through air and fire. The Poet is obviously surprised that he’s actually still in his earthly body – which leads to a question that is never answered in the poem. Beatrice’s answer, then, will be rather oblique. |
| ↑19 | Beatrice’s conclusion that the universe resembles God is a deeply spiritual insight and recalls Psalm 19:2: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaims the works of his hands.” At the same time, hers is an appropriate principle to keep in mind as she and Dante (and us) are moving through God’s universe. When she says, “…see the mark of eternal goodness,” she echoes the words of the Creator in Genesis 1 who seven times “saw that it was good.” Seeing this goodness, she tells Dante, is “the goal for which the entire universe was created.” The order of the universe is what makes it good, what makes it beautiful, and what makes it resemble God. And though it is outdated, the cosmos of Ptolemy, which was also the cosmos of Dante, is itself orderly, elegant, and beautiful. In Dante’s time it was also believed that there were two books: the Book of Scripture, and the Book of Nature. Both could be read, and both revealed the truth of God. These books will return in Canto 33. |
| ↑20 | Having spoken above of the order of the universe which makes it resemble God, Beatrice fine-tunes her explanation by telling Dante that every created thing, determined by its particular nature, has a proper place within the order of the universe. One might digress here for a moment and consider again the beginning of the Book of Genesis. There God does not create the universe ex nihilo – from nothing. Rather, it was already there, but without “form or shape.” In other words, there was no light and all was chaos. It was waiting to be formed and ordered. As creation progresses in the Genesis story, each creation is drawn forth from the chaos, as it were, and differentiated from the others, given a purpose (“its proper place”), and found to be good. The “vast sea of existence” is an image of creation that highlights the proper place of each created thing in relation all the others, all guided by their particular instincts. Known as the Great Chain of Being, this hierarchy or ordering structure originated with ancient Greek philosophers and was quite at home in the thinking of Dante’s time. At the top of the ladder is God. Then come the higher creatures Beatrice mentioned above – the angels, the saints, and humans. Below us are all the various orders of animals, plants, and minerals. Humans, created in the image and likeness of God, have a unique place in the chain as we share characteristics with those above us (e.g., spirit) and below us (e.g., matter). Each creature (or level on the hierarchy) also has its own unique characteristics, and shares the characteristics of all those below it. Beatrice continues, telling Dante that the force (instinct) that energizes each creation can be seen in the example of fire, which always burns upward. She explains that it’s the force, or power, of God’s love that resides in all creatures, to a greater or lesser extent, a force that holds all creation together. In lower creatures without reason, it’s instinct. In the higher creatures it’s what moves us toward God, in whose image and likeness we have been made. One can say that it’s the force that both draws and propels Dante upward toward Heaven. |
| ↑21 | Beatrice expands here on the theme of Love, telling Dante that it is the animating force of the universe. Its “calming radiance” holds chaos at bay as it sets in motion the outermost sphere of the cosmos, the Primum Mobile. This sphere, she tells him, is their destination. And like an arrow propelled by Love (God), its “instinct” is sure to hit the target. |
| ↑22 | The subtlety of our place on the Great Chain of Being becomes clearer here because, while we are the lowest of the higher creations, the spirit we share with them can also be hindered in its flight to God by our mortality (which we share with all creatures below us) and, as a result of it, our propensity to sin. Thus, to go back to an earlier image, though we are made in the image and likeness of God, and our primal instinct is to be united with Him in love, we humans (the clay) do not always act in accord with the Artist’s intent. Because we have free will we also have the power to reject or misuse the free gift of God’s love, resulting in disorder and chaos. About this free will, in Canto 5 Beatrice will tell Dante: “The greatest gift that our bounteous Lord bestowed as the Creator, in creating, the gift He cherishes the most, the one most like Himself, was freedom of the will. All creatures with intelligence, and they alone, were so endowed both then and now.” Free will: the gift most like God Himself – a remarkable insight! |
| ↑23 | Having explained to Dante that all of creation reflects the Creator, and that our primal instinct is to be united with Him, Beatrice tells him that, while it may seem strange to him, it is perfectly natural that he should be headed toward the Source of his being since he has been freed (by his journey through Hell and Purgatory) from everything that would hold him back. This, perhaps, is the final purging he has needed: to clear away all worldly thinking that, good as it might be, is a hindrance to thinking like a citizen of Paradise, returning to his true home among the stars. Love is his passport. |
| ↑24 | As a sign that she has finished her long explanation and satisfied Dante’s curiosity, Beatrice physically turns back toward the heavens as though to say: “Now, let’s be on our way.” |