David's Inferno (33 page)

A
T THE BEGINNING OF
P
ARADISE
, D
ANTE DOES SOMETHING
few other authors have ever done: he urges anyone who's managed to follow him this far to stop reading. Because he's going places no one's ever gone before, and if they can't keep up, they'll probably end up lost in a bewildering maze. (Maze, not labyrinth.)

Certainly, there are practical reasons for him to do this. Copies of
Inferno
and
Purgatory
are starting to circulate, and he's wary of criticism. (You don't like it? That's 'cause you don't get it.) It's also a shot across the bow at all those powerful people who won't be exactly pleased when they find out where he's placed them. Well, they better think twice before seeking revenge, because Dante's about to experience Divine Grace, and he's taking no prisoners.

But his warning is also a colossal act of arrogance that's perfectly in keeping with his own custom blend of wisdom, pride, and stubbornness. He wants this to be a book unlike any written before. And it is. He wants it to be one that the multitudes will acclaim. And it will be.

Unfortunately, in the centuries that follow, fewer people will read
Paradise
than Dante's other two books. And fewer, still, will understand it. His goal is nothing less than rapturous consummation with All That Is, but he makes it perfectly clear that he is the
only
living human who'll get to do so. Everyone else will have to get the word secondhand. From him. After years of railing against his exile, he essentially exiles himself.

Paradise
is, indeed, where Dante pulls out all the stops—mentally, creatively, and spiritually. He can't worry anymore about whether anybody else can connect the dots. He'll have enough trouble connecting them himself. So, having warned his readers of the dangers that lie ahead, he blasts off into and beyond Ptolemy's nine spheres
of heaven. Along the way, he's questioned and lectured on the four theological and three cardinal virtues by a pantheon of historical all-stars—pagan and Christian alike: Saints Thomas, Peter, Francis, Bonaventure, and Augustine; King Solomon; Emperors Trajan, Justinian and Henry VIII (whom he hoped would take over Italy); several nuns, his own great-grandfather, Adam, Eve, the Virgin Mary, and God Himself, who appears in a flash of LOVE and LIGHT.

The result is a conglomeration of Medieval, Greco-Roman, and Egyptian cosmology, philosophy, and morality, grounded, with some poetic license, in traditional Christian theology. A vision of the righteous hierarchy of all things that has the trappings of a full-blown episode of mania. Sometimes the book reads like a doctoral dissertation, albeit one written on peyote: The thesis is magnificent, the insights are truly radical, and the language is so transcendent that, when necessary, it can easily overwhelm mere logic or common sense.

I see why he warned us to turn back. I'm exhausted just writing about it.

The problem is that, although many serious literary critics—and Dante himself—consider
Paradise
his greatest achievement, far more people still think his trilogy is called “Dante's Inferno.” (A convention I followed in naming this one.) In other words, most of us
do
turn back. But not because the seas are so treacherous—from my perspective, it's
way
harder to read about what happens to people in hell—no, we turn back because
the story is over
.

Until now, behind the often-didactic morality tale, lies an epic myth: Man has mid-life crisis. Man reluctantly begins quest for meaning. Man meets old wise man who says he has been sent by man's one true love to show him a way out of this vale of tears. Driven by a combination of desperation, chivalry, and desire, man follows old wise man through realms of confusion, sorrow, and toil … literally hellfire and damnation. Finally, man reaches the Garden of Eden and sees girl of his dreams. In this case, her name is Beatrice … a woman he's been obsessed with ever since he met her at a neighborhood party one evening in 1274. Back then, he was only nine. She, eight. But, for him, that one glance triggered a lifelong
yearning for beauty, light, transcendence, and, undoubtedly, some far-more-carnal desires.

If
The Divine Comedy
were a traditional novel, this would be the climax. After 40+ years of dreaming of this woman—not to mention the ultimate two-day walkabout on the wild side—Dante is surely more than willing to call it a day … or preferably, a night. Who can blame him? If he followed a classic storyline, he and Beatrice could now “live happily ever after”—unless, unfortunately, he arrives only to learn she's already married somebody else, or he shows up breathlessly as she breathes her last. The moral would be: “it's worth sacrificing everything for what you love,” or “timing is everything,” or “you better hope love is immortal because, otherwise, you missed your big chance.”

Instead, the story is only two-thirds over. Beatrice remains very much “alive,” but still divinely out of reach.

This
is where Dante is
really
sailing on waters that have never been sailed on before. Having completed a remarkable picaresque novel, he starts writing a textbook.
About a place where everyone's happy all the time and nothing really happens
. Oh, there's some celestial singing, of course, and a lot of convoluted discoursing on transcendental matters, but the souls in Paradise really don't do anything. They're all perfectly content with being totally aligned for all eternity with God's will and living in exactly the place that He intended. Nobody is the least bit upwardly mobile. To be so would, well, defeat the whole purpose. Although, if it makes them feel any better, according to Beatrice, they
are
closer to Him, they just
appear
not to be to Dante. Huh? Don't ask … it gets worse.

From our earthly point of view, there's something immensely unsatisfying about Paradise. There's no dramatic tension. Nobody even learns anything except Dante.
He
has to take a crash course in all of creation. Beatrice and the other inhabitants spend countless cantos deconstructing—with a tinge of Zen-masterly impatience—virtually everything he knew before, and then reconstructing—with a tinge of professorial long-sufferance—a world view that reconciles contradictions that no living rational mind would dare try to reconcile. Most of these discourses come down to explaining
why if God is perfect, everything else isn't. (Although, of course, it is.) Explanations that, for the most part, would truly only make sense in a late-night college “bull session.”

As they arrive at the Empyrean (the highest level of Paradise) Beatrice drifts away to return to her rightful place in the Celestial Rose. The great contemplative St. Bernard then takes over and directs Dante's gaze to the Virgin Mary herself who is at the pinnacle of the Rose, surrounded by thousands of angels. Bernard beseeches her to let Dante look directly into the Light. The thousands of angels join in his prayer. Mary grants his wish.

And what is that wish? Nothing less than being allowed to use this precious, once-in
-anyone's
-lifetime opportunity to understand the scheme of all things and where he fits in it. This is a question we
all
struggle with and he's going to get to ask it. Of God Himself! Maybe there is a climax to this story after all!

Sure enough! God answers his question … in a bolt of lightning, no less!

Unfortunately, at that moment, Dante is abandoned by memory and words themselves. For a writer, the ultimate exile.

After experiencing all he can possibly experience, and learning all he can possibly learn, and meeting thousands of spirits who know and accept exactly where God has placed them, we're still left to wonder, what is
Dante's
place? And more important: what's ours?

Suddenly I understand that I am happy
.

For months this feeling

has been coming closer, stopping

for short visits, like a timid suitor
.

—J
ANE
K
ENYON

Pharmaceutical wonders are at work

but I believe only in this moment

of well-being
.

—J
ANE
K
ENYON