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from the tree’s two strange attributes alone, you would have recognized its moral sense, and seen God’s justice in the interdict.
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But since I see your mind has turned to stone and, like a stone, is dark and, being dark, cannot endure the clear light of my words,
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it is my wish you carry back with you if not my words themselves, at least some trace, as pilgrims bring their staves back wreathed with palm. ”
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And I to her: “As wax stamped by the seal will never lose the outline of the print, so, your seal is imprinted on my mind.
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But your desired words, why do they fly so high above my mind? The more I try to follow them, the more they soar from sight. ”
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68, The Elsa is a river that flows into the Arno between Florence and Pisa; at certain locations (especially near Colle) it had the property of “petrifying” objects immersed and left in its waters.
She said: “Why do they? So that you may come truly to know that school which you have followed, and see how well its doctrine follows mine—
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also, that you may see that mankind’s ways are just as far away from those divine as earth is from the highest spinning sphere. ”
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To that I answered: “I cannot recall ever having estranged myself from you: I have no guilty conscience on that score. ”
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“You say that you do not remember it?” smiling, she said. “But, surely, you recall drinking of Lethe’s waters just today;
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and even as fire can be inferred from smoke, your lack of memory is patent proof that your estrangement from me was a sin.
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But from now on, I promise you, my words will be as plain as they will have to be for your uneducated mind to grasp. ”
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And blazing brighter, moving slower now, the sun was riding its meridian ring, whose point in space depends upon the viewer,
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when—just as someone who escorts a group stops short if something very strange appears in front of him—those seven ladies stopped
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as they approached the margin of a shade, pale as a mountain’s shadow on cool streams flowing beneath green foliage and dark boughs.
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Ahead of them I saw spring from one source what might have been the Tigris and Euphrates! Then, like close friends, they slowly drew apart.
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103-105. It is now noon in Purgatory, and at noontime the sun appears to be moving slower.
“O light, O glory of the human race, what is this water pouring from one source, and then dividing self from self?” I asked.
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She answered: “Ask Matelda to explain. ” And then the lovely lady spoke, as though she felt she had to free herself from blame:
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“I have already made this clear to him, this and much more; and Lethe, I am sure, could not have washed away the memory. ”
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Then Beatrice: “A more important thing, perhaps, weighs on his mind, depriving him of memory and clouding his mind’s eye.
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But here before us is the stream Eunoë: now, lead him there and, as it is your wont, revive his weakened powers in its flow. ”
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Then, gracious as she was, without demur, submitting her own will to another’s will, once this was made apparent by a sign,
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the lovely lady took me by the hand, and said to Statius as she moved ahead with queenly modesty: “And you come too. ”
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Reader, if I had space to write more words, I’d sing, at least in part, of that sweet draught which never could have satisfied my thirst;
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115. The Pilgrim addresses Beatrice in her allegorical role of Wisdom.
118. Matelda, the “lovely lady” who brought the Pilgrim across the river to Beatrice, is at last named.
129. By drinking of the waters of Eunoë, the memory of good deeds done in the past is restored.
but now I have completed every page planned for my poem’s second canticle— I am checked by the bridle of my art!
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From those holiest waters I returned to her reborn, a tree renewed, in bloom with newborn foliage, immaculate,
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eager to rise, now ready for the stars.
THE DIVINE COMEDY:
PARADISE
CANTO I
AFTER STATING THAT God’s glory shines throughout the universe, Dante informs us that he has been to Paradise, and has seen things so extraordinary that he cannot possibly hope to tell about them. Nevertheless, he determines to make this final song his crowning achievement as a poet, and he calls on both the Muses and Apollo for inspiration as he focuses on his journey heavenward. At noon on the spring equinox, Dante, still in the Earthly Paradise, sees Beatrice gazing into the sun, and he imitates her gaze. In so doing, he becomes aware of an extraordinary brightness, as though God had placed in the heavens a second sun, and feels himself being “transhumanized” in preparation for his experience of Paradise. He then finds himself soaring heavenward through God’s grace, although he is uncertain whether it is his soul or his corporeal self that rises. As Dante and Beatrice pass out of the earth’s atmosphere into the sphere of fire that lies above it, Dante hears the music of the spheres. This music fills him with wonderment and perplexity, but before he can question Beatrice about it, she explains to him the teleological order of the universe, and how it is only natural that, having been purified, he should now rise heavenward.
The glory of the One Who moves all things penetrates all the universe, reflecting in one part more and in another less.
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I have been in His brightest shining heaven and seen such things that no man, once returned from there, has wit or skill to tell about;
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for when our intellect draws near its goal and fathoms to the depths of its desire, the memory is powerless to follow;
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2-3. The light of God shines more in one part and less in another according to the greater or lesser capacity of each thing to contain it.
4. “His brightest shining heaven” is the Empyrean, the uppermost sphere and the abode of God and all the Blest.
but still, as much of Heaven’s holy realm as I could store and treasure in my mind shall now become the subject of my song.
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O great Apollo, for this final task, make me a vessel worthy to receive your genius and the longed-for laurel crown.
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Thus far I have addressed my prayers to one peak of Parnassus; now I need them both to move into this heavenly arena.
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Enter my breast, breathe into me as high a strain as that which vanquished Marsyas the time you drew him from his body’s sheath.
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O Power Divine, but lend me of yourself so much as will make clear at least the shadow of that high realm imprinted on my mind,
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and you shall see me at your chosen tree, crowning myself with those green leaves of which my theme and you yourself will make me worthy.
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So seldom, Father, are they plucked to crown the triumph of a Caesar or a Poet (the shame, the fault of mortal man’s desires!)
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that when a man yearns to achieve that goal, then the Peneian frond should surely breed a new joy in the joyous Delphic god.
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From one small spark can come a mighty blaze: so after me, perhaps, a better voice may rise in prayer and win Cyrrha’s response.
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The lamp that lights the world rises for man at different points, but from the place which joins four circles with three crosses, it ascends
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upon a happier course with happier stars conjoined, and in this way it warms and seals the earthly wax clo
ser to its own likeness.
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This glad union had made it morning there and evening here: our hemisphere was dark, while all the mountain bathed in white, when I
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saw Beatrice turned round, facing left, her eyes raised to the sun—no eagle ever could stare so fixed and straight into such light!
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As one descending ray of light will cause a second one to rise back up again, just as a pilgrim yearns to go back home,
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so, like a ray, her act poured through my eyes into my mind and gave rise to my own: I stared straight at the sun as no man could.
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In that place first created for mankind much more is granted to the human senses than ever was allowed them here on earth.
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I could not look for long, but my eyes saw the sun enclosed in blazing sparks of light like molten iron as it pours from the fire.
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And suddenly it was as if one day shone on the next—as if the One Who Could had decked the heavens with a second sun.
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And Beatrice stood there, her eyes fixed on the eternal spheres, entranced, and now my eyes, withdrawn from high, were fixed on her.
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43-44. “Evening here” refers to the hemisphere of land, the place to which the Poet has returned following his journey to Paradise—it is the place of ignorance, sin, and worldly cares from which he now writes. The Pilgrim’s journey through Hell begins in the evening, while that of Purgatory takes place at dawn. Now we know that the journey through Paradise will start at high noon.
Gazing at her, I felt myself becoming what Glaucus had become tasting the herb that made him like the other sea-gods there.
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“Transhumanize”—it cannot be explained per verba, so let this example serve until God’s grace grants the experience.
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Whether it was the last created part of me alone that rose, O Sovereign Love, You know Whose light it was that lifted me.
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When the great sphere that spins, yearning for You eternally, captured my mind with strains of harmony tempered and tuned by You,
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I saw a great expanse of heaven ablaze with the sun’s flames: not all the rains and rivers on earth could ever make a lake so wide.
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The revelation of this light, this sound, inflamed me with such eagerness to learn their cause, as I had never felt before;
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and she who saw me as I saw myself, ready to calm my agitated mind, began to speak before I asked my question:
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“You have yourself to blame for burdening your mind with misconceptions that prevent from seeing clearly what you might have seen.
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67-69. Glaucus, a fisherman, noticed that his catch revived and jumped back into the sea after being placed upon a certain herb. He ate some of the herb and was transformed into a sea-god, as Ovid relates (Metamorphoses XIII, 898-968). The Pilgrim is being compared to Glaucus, for, as he looks at Beatrice, who still gazes toward the sun, he too begins to undergo a transformation—the miraculous inner transformation that will prepare him to approach Paradise.
70. Dante the Pilgrim becomes “transhumanized” and enters a state beyond mortal explication, a state that cannot be explained with words (per verba).
76-78. The “great sphere” here is the Primum Mobile, the outermost and swiftest of all the revolving heavens and boundary of the material universe.
You may think you are still on earth, but lightning never sped downward from its home as quick as you are now ascending to your own. ”
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As easily did these few and smiling words release me from my first perplexity than was my mind ensnared by yet another,
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and I said: “Though I rest content concerning one great wonder of mine, I wonder now how I can rise through these light bodies here. ”
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She sighed with pity when she heard my question and looked at me the way a mother might hearing her child in his delirium:
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“Among all things, however disparate, there reigns an order, and this gives the form that makes the universe resemble God, ”
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she said; “therein God’s higher creatures see the imprint of Eternal Excellence— that goal for which the system is created,
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and in this order all created things, according to their bent, maintain their place, disposed in proper distance from their Source;
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therefore, they move, all to a different port, across the vast ocean of being, and each endowed with its own instinct as its guide.
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This is what carries fire toward the moon, this is the moving force in mortal hearts, this is what binds the earth and makes it one.
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Not only living creatures void of reason prove the impelling strength of instinct’s bow, but also those with intellect and love.
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106. “Therein” refers to being within “the form” (104) that is the governing principle “that makes the universe resemble God” (105). “God’s higher creatures” are all those rational and intellectual beings, including mankind, the angels, and the spirits of the Blest.
109. Even inanimate things are included in the system, not only men and angels.
The Providence that regulates the whole becalms forever with its radiance the heaven wherein revolves the swiftest sphere;
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to there, to that predestined place, we soar, propelled there by the power of that bow which always shoots straight to its Happy Mark.
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But, it is true that just as form sometimes may not reflect the artist’s true intent, the matter being deaf to the appeal,
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just so, God’s creature, even though impelled toward the true goal, having the power to swerve, may sometimes go astray along his course;
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and just as fire can be seen as falling down from a cloud, so too man’s primal drive, twisted by false desire, may bring him down.
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You should, in all truth, be no more amazed at your flight up than at the sight of water that rushes down a mountain to its base.
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If you, free as you are of every weight, had stayed below, then that would be as strange as living flame on earth remaining still.
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And then she turned her gaze up toward the heavens.
CANTO II
NOW ON THE threshold of the first heavenly sphere, that of the moon, Dante warns all those who have followed him as far as this stage in his account of the eternal realms that they must either be prepared, spiritually and intellectually, to learn of the delights of Paradise, or they should turn back. Having invoked Minerva, Apollo, and the nine Muses, and having begun to prepare himself for anticipated wonders, Dante ascends with Beatrice toward Paradise. When they reach the first of the heavenly bodies, the sphere of the moon, and are “taken” into it, Dante asks Beatrice what causes the markings on the moon that are visible from earth. After asking Dante to tell what he believes to be the cause of the spots on the moon, and then demonstrating the errors in his reasoning, Beatrice finally explains the true cause to him, and in doing so illuminates the nature of Divine Power, and of the heavens.
123. The Primum Mobile is the heavenly sphere that spins the fastest and gives the other spheres contained within it their respective motions.
All you who in your wish to hear my words have followed thus far in your little boat behind my ship that singing sails these waters,
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go back now while you still can see your shores; do not attempt the deep: it well could be that losing me, you would be lost yourselves.
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I set my course for waters never travelled; Minerva fills my sails, Apollo steers, and all nine Muses point the Bears to me.
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Those few of you who from your youth have raised your eager mouths in search of angels’ bread on which man feeds here, always hungering,
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you may, indeed, allow your boat to sail the high seas in the furrow of my wake ahead of parted waters that flow back.
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Those heroes who once crossed the deep to Colchis, and saw their Jason put behind a plow, were not amazed as much as you will be.
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8-9. Dante is guided by Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, Apollo, God of Poetry, and all nine Muses. The Bears are the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor (the Big Bear and the Little Bear) by which sailors steered.
11. The bread of angels is the knowledge of God, or wisdom.
16-18. The heroes are the Argonauts, who journeyed with Jason, their leader, to obtain the Golden Fleece from King of Colchis.
By that innate and never-ending thirst for God’s own realm we sped up just as fast as human eyes can rise to meet the skies.
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My gaze on Beatrice, hers on Heaven, in less time than an arrow strikes the mark, flies through the air, loosed from its catch, I found
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myself in some place where a wondrous thing absorbed all of my mind, and then my lady, from whom I could not keep my thirst to know,
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turned toward me as joyful as her beauty: “Direct your mind and gratitude, ” she said, “to God, who raised us up to His first star. ”
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We seemed to be enveloped in a cloud as brilliant, hard, and polished as a diamond struck by a ray of sunlight. That eternal,
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celestial pearl took us into itself, receiving us as water takes in light, its indivisibility intact.
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If I was body (on earth we cannot think, in terms of solid form within a solid, as we must here, since body enters body),
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then so much more should longing burn in us to see that Being in Whom we can behold the union of God’s nature with our own.
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Once there we shall behold what we hold true through faith, not proven but self-evident: a primal truth, incontrovertible.
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1 said, “My lady, all my adoration, all my humility is gratitude to Him Who raised me from the mortal world.