Paradiso (81 page)
Authors: Dante
74.
For Dante’s phrasing describing God’s love as manifest in His creation, commentators beginning with Scartazzini (comm. to this verse) have suggested the resonance of Boethius (
Cons. Phil
. II.m8.15), “coelo imperitans amor” (love governing the heavens).
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75.
God is portrayed as drawing Dante upward through His beam of light; whether the protagonist possesses physical weight or not, it is a spiritual force that lifts him, not a physical one.
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76–81.
If God loved the universe in creating it, it loves him back. These two tercets create a picture of the totality of God’s spheres. Having created
them in time, He also made eternal (sempiternal, as Dante rightly says, i.e., having a beginning but not an end) their desire to reunite themselves with Him.
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78.
The reference is pretty clearly to the “music of the spheres,” that harmony created by the movement initiated by the love of the spheres themselves for God. As early as the Ottimo (1333; comm. to vv. 76–81), students of the poem attributed the notion of the harmony of the spheres (as do other early commentators) to Macrobius’s commentary to the Ciceronian
Somnium Scipionis
(for a brief overview of the vexed topic, the extent of Dante’s knowledge of this early-fifth-century neoplatonist, see Georg Rabuse, “Macrobio,”
ED
III [1971], pp. 757–59 [Rabuse enthusiastically supports the view that Dante knows both the
Somnium Scipionis
and the
Saturnalia
well]). Among the moderns, since Lombardi (1791 [comm. to vv. 76–78]), commentators have suggested the dependence here upon that concept, and, closer to our own time, Bosco/Reggio (comm. to vv. 76–77) point out that it is clear that Dante refers to the so-called “music of the spheres.” Such music is a pleasing notion, but all of Aristotle’s three greatest commentators—Averroës, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas—quash its possibility. Dante, as poet, seems to like the idea well enough that he is willing to be its sponsor despite such firm and authoritative opposition. Bosco/Reggio go on to point out that this reference to the music of the spheres is the only one found in
Paradiso
, where all later music will be in the form of the singing of the saved and of the angels—less suspect musical forms, we might conclude.
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79–81.
Perhaps because humans are accustomed to seeing no measurable space-consuming object more vast than a lake or a sea, the poet compares the extended fire he saw in the sky to a watery body. How we are to understand the exact nature of the phenomenon at which he gazed is not clear, although some believe (see the note to vv. 61–63) it is the fiery ring that surrounds the sphere of the Moon, a common fixture of medieval astronomy that would otherwise have remained unmentioned in the poem. But there is simply no certainty on this matter.
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82–84.
Both the beautiful sound (the music of the spheres? [see the note to verse 78]) and the brilliant and extended pool of light (the sphere of fire between the earth and Moon? [see the note to vv. 61–63]) increase Dante’s intense desire to know their realities. It will at least seem that Beatrice’s answer (vv. 88–93) does little to answer either of Dante’s questions in ways that we, earthlings like him, would consider satisfying. However, it
certainly does seem that the poet means us to be aware of our unslaked curiosity about the identity of these two heavenly phenomena. An attractive hypothesis is that he means us to draw exactly these conclusions without having left himself tainted by incredible claims (e.g., “I passed through the sphere of fire and listened to the music of the spheres”).
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85–87.
We learn definitively that Beatrice truly reads the protagonist’s mind, a capacity that Virgil at times claimed but was rarely, if ever, capable of demonstrating (see the notes to
Inf
. XVI.115–123; XXIII.25–30;
Purg
. XV.133–135). Her lips open in response before Dante’s question has been voiced.
The reason for the agitation experienced by the protagonist is explained by verses 82–84.
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88–90.
Beatrice avers that, were only Dante thinking in an otherwordly way, he would not have asked his two questions. He thinks of what his senses are experiencing as though it were sensed on earth. Her point is that it is precisely his earthly home that he has left behind and is indeed racing from as quickly as lightning flies. This response apparently does not satisfy readers’ inquisitiveness much better than it satisfies the protagonist’s. On the other hand, Benvenuto da Imola suggests (in his comm. to
Par
. I.91–93) that the sounds of celestial harmony could not be heard from earth (“audit sonum coeli, non quia sit ibi factus de novo, sed quia dum staret in terra non poterat ipsum audire”). Thus Beatrice is intrinsically answering Dante’s first question; his earthly ears confounded the reality (the music of the spheres) of what they heard. As for the second, commentators, beginning perhaps with Lombardi (1791 [to verse 92]), have understood that Dante’s allusion is to the sphere of fire that circled the earth above the other elements, near the Moon; in other words, that Beatrice’s words “lightning darting from its place” contain a specific reference to the sphere of fire, as is now recognized in most discussions of this tercet.
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91–93.
For a study devoted to the paradoxes that flow from Dante’s combined corporeal heaviness and lightness, see Simon Gilson (Gils.2004.1), pp. 170–73: Beatrice’s words gather up and redeploy Aristotle’s statements concerning the rapid and violent movement of celestial bodies (
De caelo
II.2 and
Meteora
II.9), combining them with the views of St. Augustine (
Confessions
XIII.9) on the
pondus amoris
, the downward-tending direction of earthly affection and the liberating fire of love for God. (Both Sapegno [1955, comm. to vv. 124–126] and Singleton [1975, comm. to verse 116] cite this passage from the
Confessions
to make a similar point.) Dante’s
rational soul is returning to its “birthplace” in the heavens, where God breathed it into the being he was to become, his characteristics set by the Fixed Stars, as we learn, for instance at
Paradiso
VIII.94–114.
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94.
Dante has conflated his two previous questions as one, since they have both been answered in the same way.
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95.
Beatrice’s smiling words (
sorrise parolette
) here contain the first reference to smiles and smiling that run through this canticle. There are roughly twice as many references (two dozen) to smiling in
Paradiso
as there were in
Purgatorio
(see the note to
Purg
. II.83).
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96–99.
Dante’s new question probably does not refer to a concern that will arise later (if he is in the body, as he plainly seems to believe he is): How can he pass through the matter of the planetary spheres? See
Par
. II.37–45 and the accompanying note; rather, it more likely relates to his surprise that he in his bodied state can rise above not only land and water back on earth, but, far more puzzling to him, the lighter elements of air and fire. In the view of the author of the Codice Cassinese (comm. to verse 99), the reference is to two of the four elements: “scilicet. aerem et etherem, qui leves sunt respectu aliorum duorum corporum gravium ut est terra et aqua” (that is, air and fire, which are light in comparison to those other two bodies [elements] that are heavy, as are earth and water), a formulation that shows us a fourteenth-century commentator using the word
corpo
not to refer to the material heavenly spheres (as some modern commentators believe it must), but to the four elements. For the identity of
ether
and
ignis
, see Guido da Pisa (comm. to
Inf.
XIV.52–60).
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97.
While rhyme may have forced the Latin verb
requïevi
(I was content), Dante surely enjoyed Latinizing his own speech as a character in his own poem (for the first [and last] time since his first word in the poem [
Inf
. 1.65,
Miserere
]). He is, as his bibliography attests, a writer in vernacular
and
in Latin.
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100–102.
We have been made aware of the wonder of those in beatitude at the obtuseness of mortals at least since we first observed the angel finding the plight of Dante at the gates of Dis of absolutely no interest (
Inf
. IX.100–103).
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103–141.
Beatrice’s response fills the rest of the canto, with the exception of its final line of narrative. It is divided into three parts. In the first (vv.
100–126), she deals with Dante’s puzzlement as to his upward inclination, given his mortal condition; in the second (vv. 127–135), she admits that fallen human nature is prone to being drawn downward, away from this true inclination; in the third (vv. 136–141), she avers that Dante is now proof against such wrong directionality because he has been freed of sin.
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103–105.
While hardly answering Dante’s question directly (vv. 98–99: How can his heaviness pass through lighter zones in the atmosphere above the earth?), Beatrice begins her discourse on the nature of the universe, the formal disposition of which is ordered, in resemblance of its Creator.
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106–108.
In the structure of the created universe, where the divine form first became manifest, angels (and humans?) possess the capacity to understand that form. The Scholastic word “form” is akin to the Platonic term “idea,” a spiritual essence inhering in its physical manifestations.
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109–120.
Beatrice now presents the components of the universe’s order: All things in nature, whether nearer to God or farther, have a natural inclination toward the good. While their destinations differ, each responds to its own inborn impulse in finding its goal, whether fire (guided toward the lunar sphere), the sensitive soul in irrational creatures, the force of gravity in inanimate things—and not only irrational things (animals, inanimate nature), but angels and humans as well. Both these classes of being possess not only intellect, but love; the latter, as Bosco/Reggio point out (comm. to verse 120) in the sense of “capable of willing,” as in
Purgatorio
XVII.92–93 (“amore … d’animo” [
love
, whether natural or
of the mind
]).
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109–111.
For a possible poetic precursor to Dante’s formulation of the laws of gravity, see Ovid (
Metam
. I.29–30), as pointed out by Rossini (Ross.2000.1), p. 172. The passage was first noted by Daniello (comm. to this tercet): “Densior his tellus, elementaque grandia traxit et pressa est gravitate sua” (the earth was heavier than these [the elements of fire and air], and, drawing with it the grosser elements, sank to the bottom of its own weight [tr. F. J. Miller]). And see the note to vv. 91–93, above.
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112–117.
Reverting to nautical metaphor (see vv. 67–69) for the life-journeys of all created things, whether capable of willing or not, the poet equates the purposes of inanimate and one kind of animate life with voyages toward various ports, the ends for which God has ordained these of His creations. This impulse is exemplified in three kinds of being: a light
element (fire) with its inherent “desire” to rise to its own sphere (see the note to vv. 61–63); creatures possessed of an animal (but not a rational) soul; and a heavy element (earth) with its obedience to the law of gravity, expressed as a “desire” to become compacted (the opposite impulse from that of fire).
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118–120.
We now realize, if we did not at first, that “mortal hearts” did not refer to those of humans, in whom hearts are bound with immortal souls, guided by intellect and by choice in their loving (their will), but to the inclinations or instincts of animals, guiding their actions.
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