Dante
Dante’s Paradiso: Reading and Commentary
“Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them; there is no third.”
–T.S. Eliot
PART 7
As we begin to discuss the third and final part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the Paradiso, I want to begin with some thoughts on inadequacy. These considerations will, oddly enough, lead us into the poem. The Paradiso is the part of the trilogy which is least read. (The Inferno is the most read.) Very few venture into the highest part. It is not any more difficult than the others. The poetry is not worse here; in fact, most acknowledge that the poetry of the Paradiso is the most magnificent of the three. It is not that there is a failure of imagination. Dante, in reaching to describe what Heaven is really like, outdoes himself.
The problem is our inability to grasp what he is doing and the fact that we prefer the more grotesque images of the Inferno. Somehow we feel closer to the sufferings of Purgatory than to the images of Heaven as they are presented to us; we have difficulty grasping Dante’s idea of Heaven. I have always found the Paradiso very difficult to talk about. Dante himself lays out the problem in the beginning of the poem. Afterward, we will consider where this peculiarity, this sense of failure, comes from.
Let us go to the beginning of Canto 1, the very beginning. We are about to soar upward. We have climbed Mt. Purgatory, gone through the earthly paradise, and crossed the streams. The Purgatorio ends with us soaring upwards towards the stars; this is where the Paradiso begins. Canto 1:
penetrates all the universe, reflecting
in one part more and in another less.
and seen such things that no man, once returned
from there, has wit or skill to tell about;
and fathoms to the depths of its desire,
the memory is powerless to follow;
as I could store and treasure in my mind
shall now become the subject of my song.
So it begins. Most of the major themes of the poem are presented here. You will notice immediately, however, the sense of inadequacy. Dante essentially tells us that he is not up to the task. In his words, no man who has had this vision and returned “has wit or skill to tell about.” Curiously, then, as the Poet begins his ascent into Paradise, what he is most aware of is the distance between what he wishes to do and what he is able to do. The poem is thus, in some way, about the inadequacy of man in the face of God. He does this poetically by talking about the inadequacy of the Poet in attempting to describe God’s glory and His dwelling place, which is what defines the very nature of the Paradiso.
In entering the Paradiso, we are entering perfection. God is all-perfect. The Poet has been granted a vision of perfection. He has gone and seen what very few have ever seen. The fact that he will have this experience and meet all the souls there is a great and extraordinary victory. If the Inferno shows immense failure on the part of human souls within the context of all that exists, and if the Purgatorio is the place of immense suffering where souls begin to understand their own inadequacy and are climbing towards Heaven, the Paradiso is perfection itself, the perfection of victory. The souls in the Paradiso have finished their journey. They dwell with God. In coming back down to describe this, however, the Poet admits defeat. If the vision he has seen is perfection, he must now attempt to render it through the mirror of language. And language, even the greatest poetry ever written, is inadequate in the face of God. Thus, we begin with a certain failure. The Poet admits he cannot do it. Of course, he goes on to write magnificent poetry. All the way through, however, ringing throughout the entire poem, is this sense of inadequacy.
Let us return to the very first line, “the glory of the One who moves all things.” This unity is everywhere in the poem. I have mentioned before how everything in the Divine Comedy is rendered in threes. There are three sections to the poem: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. We have thirty-three cantos in each, in addition to the introductory canto. We have the form of the poem itself in three-line stanzas. The Inferno itself is divided into three sections, as is the Purgatorio. Curiously, the Paradiso is also divided into three, though we don’t notice it the same way. We can find this rendering, but the threeness has become one. The wholeness is now apparent and, as we soar up through the heavens, we are given a vision of unity, the glory of the One. And once we enter that One, the dwelling place of the Three-in-One, the Oneness is emphasized, the wholeness. We will look more at this structure later. It is as complex as the other parts, but difficult to see.
As we soar upward, we eventually reach the Empyrean where the Trinity dwells. First we move through the nine spheres. At the top, the ninth sphere, or ninth heaven, we find the Primum Mobile, that which moves all things, that perfect sphere which causes the other inferior spheres to move. Notice that Dante, in devising the entire Divine Comedy, took that which was known in his own time. There is a sense in the Inferno that we are delving deep into the bowels of the earth. Think of the fire, the stone, the dangerous sense of climbing downward into the earth until we reach the core of ice. Then we climb Mt. Purgatory, on an island in the Southern Hemisphere. When we get to the Paradiso, we soar upward through the heavens as they were known to the medieval mind. What Dante uses as his model of the heavens was the known astronomical model of his day. We begin with the earth and soar outward from there. What is moving all of these heavens is:
penetrates all the universe, reflecting
in one part more and in another less.
This is the central theme of the Paradiso, the way in which God’s grace works throughout the universe. Let us begin with the first sphere, the first heaven. This is in Canto 2. If we begin on earth—and we are still on earth even in the earthly paradise at the end of the Purgatorio—Beatrice makes it possible to soar beyond the earth instantly. At the end of Canto 1, she turns her gaze upward as they are about to move. They are on the verge of the first heavenly sphere, which is the moon. So we begin at the moon. But before we get there, we have a very curious astronomical discussion. I sincerely believe one of the main reasons people never make it through the Paradiso is because of Canto 2. It is tremendously peculiar, and many people are intimidated or puzzled; they simply give up there.
So let me explain Canto 2. Dante begins ascending; he and Beatrice are taken into the sphere of the moon, and the first question he asks, having entered Paradise, is a basic scientific one. It was something that had puzzled mankind for centuries, and Dante decides now to ask: what are the spots on the moon? Anyone looking at a full moon in the night sky could see them. Some even refer to them as “The Man in the Moon” since the dark patches seen together can resemble a face. They appear to be areas of shade and light. This is the first question Dante asks. And Beatrice explains it to him at length, comparing it with other spheres, explaining where the light comes from, and then tells him he has misunderstood: they are areas of light and darkness. Dante had been assuming there was something there which caused this, whereas, in reality, what is seen is the nature of light itself. This is the end of her explanation, which has hitherto been filled with puzzling medieval science:
to reach the truth you seek, so that henceforth
you will know how to take the ford alone.
must by the blessed movers be inspired
just as the hammer’s art is by the smith.
and of that image makes itself the seal;
That is, the moon receives light from the source of light.
diffuses through your body’s different parts,
adapted to its various faculties,
its bounty which the stars have multiplied
while turning ever in its unity.
We have in us a living soul, a kind of light. This light permeates our being, but it shines differently in some areas than others. My fingernail reflects less light in this sense than my eye does. My fingernail would not be on my finger if the Divine light had not permeated my being. That fingernail would not grow, or would not exist at all, if I were not infused with light by the Creator. At the same time, no one doubts that the eye is a much better gateway to larger truths. It might be possible for a great mystic to meditate on the beauty of the fingernail. It is possible. But for most of us, we need to look into the eye of another human being to see that light, or we can attempt to grasp and understand the light contained in our own eyes. The glory is reflected more and less; less in the fingernail, though it is still glory, and more in the eye.
with each rich stellar body that they quicken,
even as the soul within you blends with you.
this blended virtue shines throughout that body,
as happiness shines forth through living eyes,
derive those differences of light we see:
this is the formal principle that gives,
Dante was assuming there was something on the moon itself causing darkness and light. He thought it was part of the make-up of the moon. Beatrice tells him he was wrong. The modern scientific account is that huge craters on the moon’s surface cast shadows. Beatrice says it has more to do with the source of the light and how much is given: some areas receive more light and some areas receive less.
But why have this discussion at all? We are beginning to ascend the heavens and it is the vision of the entire Paradiso. Remember the first Canto tells us that God’s glory “penetrates all the universe, reflecting in one part more and in another less.” We are going to be soaring up to the Empyrean where we will receive the final vision at the end. First we will see an unfolding rose, where all the saints with God surround Him in an opening rose forever, spending eternity in contemplation of this mystery. They are one; you can take a petal from a rose and find it unique and beautiful in itself, but you see something more beautiful in the entirety of the rose. For eternity, this rose is constantly expanding outward, forever unveiling. There is a place there for all the souls who are intended ever to be there. Each one has a special seat. We find this out when Beatrice leaves the Pilgrim; she goes to her assigned seat. She must go back to it. According to Dante, there is assigned seating in Heaven. This is the vision.
These souls are there constantly. They are always there. But in order for Dante to understand where he is going, and the differences in grace possessed by those souls, the light of God shines downward through the universe, projecting those souls downward. Thus, those souls with the least amount of grace appear in the first sphere. They appear on the moon. They are visually distant from God, but they are not really there on the moon’s sphere when Dante encounters them. When the Pilgrim talks to them, they are still in their place on the rose, in the highest sphere of Heaven, but as they are in the farthest place from the Godhead, on the outermost petals of the rose, they appear on the most distant sphere, the moon. God is granting the Pilgrim a vision, and for Dante to understand this vision, he must meet these souls in the nine ascending spheres, the spheres representing degrees of grace, as we move with him up through the heavens.
For this reason, you will find that the Paradiso is the least physically substantial of the poems. It is, appropriately enough, all light, all motion, all dance, but not graspable in palpable physical imagery like the other two poems. This is a difficulty. It is easier for us to grasp the fire or the river of boiling blood in Hell, or the souls with heavy rocks on their backs, than it is for us to understand a dancing light out of which a voice comes. It is less substantial; our minds can’t quite get a hold of these images. But those lights we do see, and the intensity of them, has to do with the amount of grace in the blessed souls.
Does this mean that there are souls somehow separated from God that are lesser? Are they so far removed from God, even in Heaven, that they are at all unhappy? This is dealt with instantly in Canto 3. It is an objection that has to be resolved to avoid problems or possible complaints from the Blessed Souls, such as “I only made it to the moon” or “The amount of grace in my soul only got me to the first sphere of Heaven” or “I know for a fact there are souls higher up in the ninth sphere.” He resolves this by introducing to us to a young woman named Piccarda. This is the third time the Poet has met a young woman early in each part of the poem: it was Francesca in the Inferno and La Pia in the Purgatorio.
Piccarda explains what happened to her. Those on the moon are the breakers of vows. These are souls who made vows but did not keep them. Each of the spheres in heaven also has an angelic order overseeing it. Here, the breakers of vows are overseen by the angels. It is thus an angelic sphere. Piccarda admits that she was in the convent. But she was stolen out of the convent:
and in her habit’s rule I closed myself,
and pledged to always follow in her practice.
took me by force away from that sweet fold,
and God, alone, knows what my life became!
She explains that later in life she could have gone back, but she did not. She stayed in the world. Nevertheless, her soul was in the state of grace. God knows how it happened to her. But she is on the first sphere. Dante asks openly:
do you yearn for a higher post in Heaven,
to see more, to become more loved by Him?
Basically, he is saying: “Yes, you’re in Heaven, but you’re at the very bottom. Wouldn’t you like to be higher?” Please remember that this is the Pilgrim speaking, still possessed of enough worldliness and a hint of pride. He is certainly not making the gross mistakes he made in the Inferno. But the Pilgrim obviously still has more to learn.
then came her words so full of happiness,
she seemed to glow with the first fire of love:
than what we have—we thirst for this alone.
then our desires would not be in accord
with His will Who assigns us to this sphere;
such discord has no place within these rounds,
since to be here is to exist in Love.
is to dwell here within His holy will,
so that there is no will but one with His;
throughout this realm is pleasing to the realm,
as to that King Who will us to His will.”
The very next passage is what many believe to be the key to the whole Divine Comedy.
in which all things are drawn that it itself
creates or which the work of Nature makes.”
The whole function or purpose of our being is to place our will in accord with God’s will and thus find peace. “In His will is our peace.” It is a glorious moment; the question is gently answered. The Pilgrim learns he is going to be soaring upward, meeting various souls in various spheres and they will all be happy, content and joyful. Remember that in one sense they are all perpetually around God in the unfolding rose. Dante is just seeing them in terms of the amount of grace God has chosen to give them.
Here is something interesting: there is very clearly presented in the Paradiso a sense of predestination. If, throughout the Inferno and the Purgatorio, we have seen free will in operation, what we see in the Paradiso is the mystery which we cannot understand on earth–free will and predestination both exist. There is a dividing line somewhere and Dante seems to find this as we soar upwards through Paradise. Once we hit Paradise, these souls have been given grace by God to get them where they are. They have all been given a specific amount of grace. That grace increases as we move up through the nine spheres. There is a varying capacity among the blessed souls for taking in that grace. God also, however, bestows this grace in different degrees. There is a kind of perfection of order here also.
Let us take a look at the structure of the entire Paradiso before going further. There are three sections. The first is the lower heavens, made up of the first three spheres: the moon, Mercury, and Venus. On the moon reside the breakers of vows, those who led good lives, who died in the state of grace, but at some point had broken a vow. On the second sphere, Mercury, reside the lovers of glory. We will meet some of them and see a hint of pride, but it is no longer sinful pride; that has been washed away. Of course, Venus, the third sphere, is for lovers, those who were filled with love on earth. The three orders of angels overseeing them are the Angels for the moon, the Archangels for Mercury, and the Principalities for Venus. What these three spheres have in common comes through the angels. Those angels are constantly singing the praises of God in the person of the Holy Spirit. In a sense, these three spheres of the lower heavens are bound together insofar as these angels sing the praises of the Holy Spirit.
The next section is the middle heavens. The fourth sphere is the sun itself, and here we find the theologians. The angels overseeing them here are the Powers. The fifth sphere is Mars, where we find the martyrs and the crusaders. Here the Virtues oversee them. The sixth sphere, Jupiter, is inhabited by the righteous rulers, overseen by the Dominions. These sets of angels, overseeing the middle heavens, are constantly singing the praises of God the Son.
Finally, there are the upper heavens. The seventh sphere is Saturn, where the contemplatives dwell. Saturn is overseen by the Thrones. The eighth sphere is the fixed stars, the unmoving stars, which is the sphere of the triumph of Christ. The Cherubim oversee this. The ninth and final sphere is the Primum Mobile. This encircles all and makes all move. This is where the nine orders of angels themselves reside, the angelic sphere, the perfect sphere. The Seraphim here rule. The angels of the upper heavens are all united in singing the praises of God the Father. Now, these are in reality more united than separate, certainly more so than the other realms. There is union and perfection here.
After these spheres, but before we get to the vision of God Himself, in the Empyrean we see the unfolding rose. This is just outside the ninth sphere in the realm of God Himself.
Let us look at some of these spheres in depth. But let us first look at one other passage that is often considered to be an explanation of the whole idea behind the poem. Canto 1 begins with praise of “the glory of the One who moves all things.” The first nine cantos take us through the lower heavens. At the opening of Canto 10, we are about to reach the Sun and the middle heavens. The Pilgrim is not even aware that he has been rising, but, as he moves, he begins to think about the Sun. Canto 10 begins:
which each of them breathes forth eternally,
that uncreated, ineffable first One,
in such sublime proportions that no one
can see it and not feel His Presence there.
ook straight to that point of the lofty wheels
where the one motion and the other cross,
of that great Artist who so loves His art,
His gaze is fixed on it perpetually.
This is the vision of God the Creator looking at His work. But, of course, He first looks upon His Son Himself. He has fashioned all that moves, and loves it. We go from the Creator, through the Son, the Word, from which all creation proceeded, and then we are suddenly there. Everything is in such sublime proportion, and makes such sense that the Poet says no one seeing clearly can deny the presence of the Creator. Thus the call: “Look up, Reader!”
It is a medieval vision, but it is part and parcel of the greatness of the medieval mind. To the medievals, everything speaks of God. Everything that surrounds us speaks of Him. And if we cannot see it, or do not recognize it, the inadequacy is in us. The problem is ours.
All throughout the Paradiso that order which was often disguised in the other realms is made clear. It is an order of great beauty. As we come to the Sun, we meet the theologians who dwell there, the souls of the wise and learned. Suddenly, Dante and Beatrice are surrounded by circles of lights spinning around them. It is a growing problem for Dante because, as he goes higher, he has greater difficulty seeing. The light is intensifying and growing brighter as he goes higher in the realms; his sight is failing because his eyes are simply unable to take it all in. Finally, when he hits the top, he will be so dazzled that he cannot see without great difficulty. There is an image of light being reflected in mirrors: the orders of the angels are depicted as mirrors that reflect God’s light. But, just as if you filled a room with mirrors and then added floodlights, the result is unbearable. It is just too intense. Some of you might have the experience of walking outside on a sunny, snow-covered winter day. The brilliance forces you to close your eyes for a moment. As Dante is surrounded by twelve lights, he is almost blinded, yet the lights do not even stand still. They keep whirling around.
In Canto 11, St. Thomas himself speaks. Thomas is one of these whirling lights. At this moment, St. Thomas, the Dominican, tells the life story of St. Francis. In Canto 12, St. Bonaventure, the Franciscan, tells the life story of St. Dominic. This is a wonderful example of unity. It is a complement that, having gotten to Heaven, the Dominican understands perfectly the glory of St. Francis and vice versa. Let us briefly look at this beautiful scene.
In Canto 11, we get a sense of the glory of created nature. St. Thomas places St. Francis in a beautiful earthly landscape:
a sun rose to the world as radiantly
as this sun here does sometimes from the Ganges;
Ascesi, for the word would not suffice–
much more precise a word is Orient.
St. Thomas himself finds human language inadequate to tell this story, down to the naming of towns. “Orient” also contains the notion of a pearl, something precious and beautiful, something white and circular.
did his invigorating powers begin
to penetrate the earth with a new strength.
He is describing St. Francis as a sun. All of these things become interchangeable as the image of Francis as sun is used by St. Thomas, the whirling light. This is a scene where one recognizes the power of the imagination. This poem is sometimes too much to take in. It is much more complicated than souls in a river of blood trying to come to the top while centaurs keep them from doing so. That is a quick, understandable image. In the Paradiso, there are too many levels for the mind to absorb it all. It is why poets love this final third of the poem the most. Dante’s imagination is most evident here. It is something exceptional.
because he loved a lady to whom all
would bar their door as if to death itself.
This weird description seems first to refer to a love affair. It is bewildering for Pilgrim and reader both. We are getting love, the love that fills the heavens. And only pure love fills the heavens.
he took this lady as his lawful wife;
from day to day he loved her more and more.
she waited eleven hundred years and more,
living without a lover till he came,
The confusion seems to grow even greater. St. Francis seems to have married a very old lady. Of course, the Pilgrim is listening with human ears and we are listening with human intelligence. We are again confronted with failure. The sense of inadequacy returns, even greater.
with Amyclas secure against the voice
which had the power to terrify the world;
that time she climbed the cross to be
with Christ, while Mary stayed below alone.
St. Thomas must see the puzzlement on the face of the Pilgrim, for he says:
take Francis, now, and Poverty to be
the lovers in the story I have told.
the love, the mystery, their tender looks
gave rise in others’ hearts to holy thoughts.
The union of St. Francis with Lady Poverty is discussed further. There is a sense, as we soar upward, that the saints themselves become symbols of large ideas. Individual lived lives are important but, once they are in Heaven, the vision is greater: what is to be learned from their lives? The life of the saint becomes representative of something much greater.
After the story of St. Francis, something curious happens. St. Thomas turns back to the Dominicans for a moment and begins criticizing:
his fellow helmsmen on Saint Peter’s boat,
keeping it straight on course in the high sea–
and those who follow his command will see
the richness of the cargo in their hold.
The Patriarch is St. Dominic, the founder of their ship, their order.
for richer food, and in their hungry search
they stray to alien pastures carelessly;
from him in all directions, the less milk
they bring back when they come back to the fold.
close to their shepherd, but so few are these
it would not take much cloth to make their cowls.
and if you have been listening carefully,
and if you will recall my former words,
for you will have seen how the tree is chipped
and why I made the qualifying statement:
Here again there is the sense of inadequacy: Thomas lays a heavy obligation on the Pilgrim to understand, listen, and remember, and even then, “your wish will have been satisfied in part.” St. Thomas’s critique of his own order is not fully understandable to the Pilgrim.
Let us leap forward to the end of Canto 12. Near the end, there is something very similar. St. Bonaventure has given us the life of St. Dominic, but, near the end of the Canto, he criticizes the Franciscans. It should be mentioned that St. Bonaventure is not one of the original twelve lights; he is part of a second group of twelve that comes later. So we have the Pilgrim and Beatrice in the middle, surrounded by two groups of twelve lights, whirling in opposite directions. St. Bonaventure is speaking from the outer circle of whirling lights:
page after page you might find one that reads:
‘I still am now what I have always been,’
In other words, you might still find a dedicated Franciscan.
from Acquasparta or Casal and read
our rule too loosely or too narrowly.
There are too many Franciscans not faithfully following the Rule. This is a theme running throughout the entire Paradiso: the sense of failure. These great saints, members of the famous religious orders, look down and see failure and collapse on earth. Once again, the poem presents a sense of inadequacy. Part of this is Dante’s own social criticism. He does this throughout the poem. But as we rise through the heavenly spheres towards the vision of God Himself, as the pilgrimage ends, the poem and the Poet and those saints he meets become obsessed with beginnings.
There is a seeming contradiction here. But it is also logical if you look at the principal poetic images that underlie the poem. From the beginning, we had the vision of the divine light coming from the source of light, permeating everything in all creation. This phrase from the first canto, “penetrates all the universe, reflecting” is crucial: penetra e risplende. Translation is always tricky. Risplende does mean “reflecting” but, more literally, it means “to glow again” or “to offer new splendor.” The vision is one of divine light going from the Creator to all creation. Then, if the creation fulfills its purpose, if its will is God’s will, that light will come back to heaven, glowing more intently. Hence, it is the very light returning which should draw all things to God. So the divine light pours into the multiplicity of creation, seeking to return the creature to its Creator.
This is why there is an obsession with beginnings and endings in this poem. The beginning and source of the light is God Himself. But the creature grasps this reality and seeks to return to its Creator. This is why the theologians discuss the founding of their orders and the lives of St. Francis and St. Dominic. The recognition is that, from these glorious starting points, great souls returned to God in splendor since their will was His will; but there has been deterioration over time. What is there now? Whatever it is now, it is not as great. Now we have compromise, failures, inadequacy and human error. We get both social criticism and the recognition of the inadequacy of man who will settle and who is not willing to return to his Creator. It is interesting and appropriate that, whereas St. Thomas tells the tale of St. Francis, he criticizes the Dominicans. On the other hand, St. Bonaventure criticizes the Franciscans. Later in the poem, St. Peter looks down in Rome and we have a similar situation.
It is more than mere social criticism. It has to do with the struggle by which our will becomes His will. Being human, our tendency is to turn away from the light. We do not understand the source of the light. We usually do not allow this light in us to “re-glow” back toward the Creator, as it is supposed to, and as it has in the great saints the Pilgrim meets as he rises, sphere by sphere, through these orders.
(To be continued.)
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