"Love follows knowledge."
"Beauty above all beauty!"
– St. Catherine of Siena

Friday, May 24, 2019

Comments to Dante’s Paradiso, Cantos XXIII thru XXVI

Canto XXIII may be the most beautiful canto in the entire Commedia, and that’s saying a lot.  It’s worth looking at it in a close reading.  It’s a canto known for its seven similes, two simple comparisons, and I’ve noticed a metaphor or two as well.  First let me highlight a few of the narrative details and then I’ll look at each of the seven similes. 

We start the canto with Beatrice suspended in the sky and looking heavenward.  She points to Christ above who is in a triumph.  A triumph is a specific ancient Roman victory celebration where the victorious general is given a public commemoration.  As part of the ceremony, the man of honor was given a laurel for his head, and, dressed in a golden toga, took a victory lap in a chariot.  That is how to picture Christ’s triumph.  It is a triumphant ride across the sky, and it also represents the Church Triumphant.  This is one of the three Church aspects, Militant (in its role to combat sin and heresy), Penitent (in its role to forgive sins), and Triumphant (in its role to celebrate salvation).  Both Church Militant and Penitent are roles the Church has on earth; Triumphant is a role in heaven.  The closing quatrain of the canto summarizes this.

Beneath the exalted Son of God and Mary,
up there he triumphs in his victory,
with souls of the covenants old and new,
the one who holds the keys to such great glory.  (XXIII.136-139)

Christ, in the triumph, is portrayed as bright as the sun.  Dante (the character) looking at the intense brightness goes momentarily blind.  This is the first of the several instances of Dante going blind in this group of cantos.  I’ll have more to say on the various times he goes blind when I comment on the other cantos, but here the intensity of Christ’s light is emphasized.  It is notable that it is Christ’s light that illuminates the other souls, just as the sun illuminates the world. 

Beatrice implores Dante to open his eyes and see her fully.  “The things that you have witnessed,” she says, “have given you strength to bear my smile!”  So since he couldn’t see her smile a few cantos back or he would burnt up, here Dante has graduated to a greater ability to withstand God’s intensity.  He too has been increasing in grace.

Beatrice then points to a rose in the heavens, which is the Blessed Virgin.  Associated with the rose because of the flower’s beauty and complexity, the Holy Queen is sometimes called the Mystic Rose.  When the archangel Gabriel comes down as a lit torch and circles the head of the Blessed Mother, we have the enactment of her coronation.  Is this a dramatization for Dante’s sake or is this a constant, eternal drama?  It doesn’t say, but now every time I get to the fifth mystery of the Glorious Mysteries of the rosary, I will forever have this image in mind.

The drama in this canto is stunning, but let’s look at the poetry through the seven similes.  The first is right at the opening of the canto describing Beatrice staring at the sky.

As the bird among the leafy branches that she loves,
perched on the nest with her sweet brood
all through the night, which keeps things veiled from us,

who in her longing to look upon their eyes and beaks
and to find the food to nourish them --
a task, though difficult, that gives her joy –

now, on an open bough, anticipates that time
and, in her ardent expectation of the sun,
watches intently for the dawn to break,

so was my lady, erect and vigilant,
seeking out the region of the sky
in which the sun reveals less haste. (1-12)

Now that is a Homeric type of simile, one sentence of one hundred words (in English) spanning four tercets.  Dante does not typically write long sentences.  Here we have the bird imagery, which has been a frequent motif throughout the Commedia, with Beatrice compared to a mother bird—perhaps foreshadowing the Blessed Mother who will shortly appear—looking for the sun, which becomes associated with Christ.  The mother bird is looking to nourish her chicks, and Dante is her chick that needs spiritual nourishment.

The second simile describes how Christ brightens all around him.

As, on clear nights when the moon is full,
Trivia smiles among the eternal nymphs
that deck the sky through all its depths,

I saw, above the many thousand lamps,
a Sun that kindled each and every one
as ours lights up the sights we see above us,

and through that living light poured down
a shining substance.  (25-32)

In what should be dark night, the sun reflects across to the moon and lights her up, so Christ lights up all that is around him.  Trivia is an ancient Roman goddess, but I have to admit I don’t get the allusion and Hollander doesn’t explain it.

The third simile compares a thought in his mind to a flash of lightning (lines 40-45).  The fourth simile compares Dante’s inability to fully poetically represent Paradise and so requiring a leap like man walking and needing to leap over an obstruction (61-63).  The fifth simile describes how the throng of souls are lit up like the sun lights up a field of flowers (79-84).

The sixth simile describes the transcendent beauty of the heavenly music.  During the Coronation, heavenly music is heard and Dante (the author) describes it in an inverse way.

The sweetest melody, heard here below,
that most attracts our souls,
would seem a burst of cloud-torn thunder

compared with the reverberation of that lyre
with which the lovely sapphire that so ensapphires
the brightest heaven was encrowned.  (97-102)

So the sweetest melody heard on earth would sound like a thunder clap compared to the beauty of the Paradisic melody.  Notice Dante also adds a metaphor as an extension to the simile.  That heavenly hymn is a sapphire which encrowns heaven.  The hymn which is a sapphire which is a crown connects with the crown which circles the Blessed Mother.

Finally the seventh simile describes the apostles reaching out to Mother Mary as infants reaching for their mother.

And, like a baby reaching out its arms
to mamma after it has drunk her milk,
its inner impulse kindled into outward flame,

all these white splendors were reaching upward
with their fiery tips, so that their deep affection
for Mary was made clear to me. (121-126)

The fiery tips of the splendors, which are souls, are like the arms of a babe reaching for its mother.  Dante brings mother down to the colloquial, “mamma.”  And what began the canto as a mother bird awaiting to nourish her brood, it ends with a mother having nourished her babe. 

Truly, what beauty.

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Here are some thoughts and comments on the cantos concerning the Starry Sphere.

The oral examination under which Dante (the character) is subjected is a brilliant narrative innovation.  I can't recall any other writer writing before Dante to have used it.  First off, it captures the university experience of the medieval world.  Next, it captures the flow of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theolgiae in which the Commedia owes much philosophically.  Here it reproduces it narratively.  Also think of the far reaching influence of this narrative technique.  We see such interrogative dramatizations all the time, most noticeably in crime dramas and legal suspense stories. 

The oral examination captures the mediaeval university experience so well that it makes me wonder if Dante (the author) actually attended a university.  No such event is recorded.  Presumably then Dante had access to many university texts, especially that of Thomas Aquinas. 

The oral exam also brings one of the ongoing motifs to a conclusion.  Throughout the Commedia, Dante (the character) has been learning.  He is on a journey to acquire knowledge, and before he can complete the journey we see what he has learned put to the test.  When lost in the woods of life as seen way back before he entered the underworld, Dante (the character) was in a spiritual crises, and what we have seen is that despite having gain great knowledge of all sorts of things, when Beatrice died he lost his understanding of the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity.  Through his journey he has seen what the three virtues mean, either because they are absent in some (Inferno), struggling to regain in others (Purgatorio), or celebrated in still others (Paradiso).

The spirits that test Dante are the three apostles of Christ's inner circle, saints Peter, James, and John.  Dante appropriately picks the apostle who in some way was associated with the virtue they question Dante on.  Peter, who famously denied Christ but had faith enough to walk on water, at least momentarily, wrote a magnificent letter (First Epistle) on the perseverance of faith under suffering.  St. James, on whose burial place in Compostella pilgrims go to pray with petitions, examines Dante on hope, which is what prayer expresses.  And St. John the Evangelist wrote several letters on the virtue of love.

It is interesting how Beatrice interacts within all three of Dante’s examinations.  In her exchange with Peter, she acknowledges that Peter already knows Dante’s knowledge on faith, hope, and love, but he should be made to articulate it for God’s glory:

And she: 'O everlasting light of that great man
with whom our Lord did leave the keys,
which He brought down from this astounding joy,

'test this man as you see fit on points,
both minor and essential, about the faith
by which you walked upon the sea.

'Whether his love is just, and just his hope and faith,
is not concealed from you because your sight
can reach the place where all things are revealed.

'But since this realm elects its citizens
by measure of true faith, it surely is his lot
to speak of it, that he may praise its glory.' (XXIV.34-45)

Peter’s questioning is capped off with a mini credo at the end of the canto (XXIV.130-147), but the last two tercets capture Dante’s exam answers in two wonderful metaphors.

The profound truth of God's own state of which I speak
is many times imprinted in my mind
by the true instructions of the Gospel.

'This is the beginning, this the living spark
that swells into a living flame
and shines within me like a star in heaven.' (142-147)

God is imprinted in his mind through the Gospels, and from that little spark his faith grows into a flame which shines within him like a star in heaven.  Beautiful.

The canto where Dante (the character) is quizzed on hope, Dante (the author), intruding into the narrative, begins with an earthly hope.

Should it ever come to pass that this sacred poem,
to which both Heaven and earth have set their hand
so that it has made me lean for many years,

should overcome the cruelty that locks me out
of the fair sheepfold where I slept as a lamb,
foe of the wolves at war with it,

with another voice then, with another fleece,
shall I return a poet and, at the font
where I was baptized, take the laurel crown. (XXV.1-9)

He hopes that the beauty of this poem, the Divine Comedy, will someday allow Florence to renounce his exile and allow him back to receive a laurel crown as poet.  This can be seen in at least two ways.  First, it foreshadows and echoes the canto’s theme of things hoped for, but it also contrasts his earthly hope with the spiritual hope of salvation.  In fact, it makes the earthly hope appear so much less in comparison.  When Dante is writing these lines, it is well into his exile and toward the end of his life.  He probably realized that such a hope would never materialize, and so in a way he is belittling his pride that he would have such a hope when the hope of eternal salvation is at hand.  Heavenly glory is by far more important than this earthly glory.

St. James quizzes Dante on hope.  The New Testament identifies three men as James.  There is James Zebedee, the brother of John, there is another apostle with the name James, and he is usually referred to as James the Lesser.  And in Acts there is James the head of the church in Jerusalem, who is referred to as James the Brother of Jesus.  James the Lesser and James the Brother of Jesus are to some considered the same person.  But nonetheless this James is not the brother of John.  The James here in the canto is identified as the one whose bones are in Compostella (18), which indicates that he is James Zebedee.  But when Beatrice addresses him, as the one “who wrote/of the abundant gifts of our heavenly court” (29-30), which indicates this is the James who wrote the New Testament Epistle under his name.  But the epistle was written by the other James if you count two or the Brother of Jesus if you count three.  So Dante is either ignorant of the distinction or has something in mind by conflating the two.  I fail to see any reason for the conflation, so I lean to a mistake.

Before Dante provides an answer on what rests his hope, Beatrice interjects that she knows no other person so filled with hope as Dante (52-54).  On what basis does she make this assertion?  Well, think about it.  Dante first fell in love with Beatrice when he was nine years old.  He has been hoping for the fulfillment of this love for many years and across earthly life and the afterlife.  Yes, he has certainly demonstrated such hope.

Throughout the questioning from St. John on love, Dante is unable to see.  This is the culmination of several instances of loss of sight while in the Starry Sphere.  The closer Dante journeys to God, the more intense the light.  Each time he loses his sight, when he regains it his eyes are stronger for the next vision.  Each instance is a strengthening, like an exercise. 

The first time he loses his sight in the Starry Sphere is in Canto XXIII when he looks up to see a vision of Christ triumphant.  When he regains that sight, his eyes are now strong enough to see Beatrice’s smile.  The second time is in Canto XXV when saints Peter and James stand together and their collective light overwhelms Dante.  James tells Dante to look up and take hope, and that restores his sight.  The third loss of sight in Starry Sphere is when John approaches and Dante tries to discern if John is in the glory of a body.  The blindness begins at the end of Canto XXV and stretches all the way through the middle of Canto XXVI when Dante completes his exam on love without being able to see.  It is through the power of Beatrice’s voice that Dante then regains his sight.

As soon as I was silent, the sweetest song
resounded through that heaven, and my lady
chanted with the others: 'Holy, holy, holy!'

As sleep is broken by a piercing light
when the spirit of sight runs to meet the brightness
that passes through its filmy membranes,

and the awakened man recoils from what he sees,
his senses stunned in that abrupt awakening
until his judgment rushes to his aid –

exactly thus did Beatrice drive away each mote
from my eyes with the radiance of her own,
which could be seen a thousand miles away,

so that I then saw better than I had before. (XXVI.67-79)

Upon completing his answer, the heavens sound with the Sanctus hymn, and Beatrice’s voice singing along stimulates his vision like a person being awakened.  The scene alludes to Saul’s transformation to Paul. Just as Ananias of Damascus was used to restore Saul’s sight (Acts 9:10-18), Beatrice is used to restore Dante’s sight, whereby now he can see “better” than ever.

The first thing he sees when he regains his sight is another spirit approaching, this time Adam.  It’s not clear why narratively Adam approaches now.  He seems out of place with the three apostles, but Dante makes thematic use of it.  The first thing Dante sees is the first human being, and so Dante (the author) gives us a breadth of scope from the beginning of all time to the present, from the first man to the current.  Now only is the timeline linear, but also circular.  Dante’s questions of Adam’s time seem to emphasize this. 

Dante’s question on the original language is certainly one that would concern a poet, especially a poet who is writing in the vernacular.  Apparently Dante had once believed that Hebrew was the original language spoken by Adam and Eve, but here we are now told differently.  That original language has gone extinct, and as Adam implies so does language.  This connects with Dante’s vernacular Italian being the outgrowth of its Latin roots.  Just as Adam is Dante’s “father” here, Adam’s language is ultimately progenitor to the contemporary languages.


Finally, Dante’s question of why Adam was expelled from heaven seems curious, since the Biblical story is well known, but Adam’s answer is even more peculiar.  Adam doesn’t say he was expelled for disobeying God or for eating the apple, which is what we would expect.  He says he was expelled for “trespassing” (XXVI.117).  In effect he trespassed on God’s prerogative.  This echoes back to Inferno where Ulysses sails beyond human boundaries to God’s ire.  Adam also refers to his time away from heaven as an “exile” (116).  This connects the two men in their dislocated histories.

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