Paradiso (143 page)

93.
   See
Paradiso
XXVII.136 for a similar description of a thing changed into its opposite, in that case, innocence into sinfulness.
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94–96.
   God’s miracles (Joshua 3:14–17), Jordan turned back and (Exodus 14:21–29) the crossing of the Red Sea (both remembered in Psalm 113:3 [114:5]), will have accustomed the eventual witnesses of His vengeance against these prelates to see that such relatively minor miracles are also signs of His power.
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97–99.
   The departure of Benedict and his fellow monastics, headed back “home,” to the Empyrean at the upper end of Jacob’s Ladder, where, we may assume, they will no longer think of the world’s many corruptions, is accompanied by a whirlwind, sign of God’s power and of His love for these saints.
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100–111.
   In their wake, Beatrice leads Dante up the “ladder,” but not yet to Benedict’s companions’ goal, the Empyrean, but to the eighth of the nine heavenly spheres, that of the Fixed Stars. The ascent is brief and briefly described, but the point of arrival will be treated at greater length.
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102.
   Andreoli (comm. to this verse) paraphrases as follows: “the natural gravity of my body.” Is this an admission that Dante indeed visited the heavens in the body? However, it could suggest that the protagonist thinks of himself in corporeal terms out of habit. But see the note to
Paradiso
I.73.
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106–111.
   
Dante apostrophizes us (for the distribution of the addresses to the reader throughout the poem, see the note to
Inf.
VIII.94–96) for the final time in the poem (as Tommaseo noted). Are we to think it a coincidence that this last occurrence falls just before the first of the final triad of invocations, now to higher powers directly (God’s creative powers in the stars and then the Deity Itself in
Par.
XXX and XXXIII)? It is as though the poet is underlining the distance between human and divine experience by leaving us behind. After Dante looks down through the planets, the next sight he will see is the Church Triumphant, which we will see again in the penultimate canto of the poem. For all of the next canto, for the last third of the thirtieth, and for all the final three we are seeing “face-to-face.”

As the space travelers near their eventual goal, the time taken for the ascent from sphere to sphere decreases, since the “gravitational pull” of the Empyrean naturally increases as one nears it.
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109–111.
   The poet allows us to learn, inferentially, where his visit to the Starry Sphere has been situated by Providence, in “the sign following the Bull” (Taurus), and thus in Gemini, the sign under which, in 1265, he was born and which shaped whatever genius he possesses. With Gemini the Sun rose and set the day Dante was born in Tuscany; and now he comes to this heaven in this constellation. (Singleton [comm. to vv. 127–154] cites an interesting observation of Grandgent’s: “Thus, in a spiritual sense, [Dante] returns, like Plato’s departed, to his native star: cf.
Par.
IV.52–57.”) From the stars of Gemini the poet invokes aid in acquiring the necessary capacity to tell of the final things of Heaven, beginning in the next canto with the appearance of the “hosts of Christ’s triumph” (
Par.
XXIII.20–21).
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109–110.
   The by-now fairly familiar trope
hysteron proteron
is used to describe the speed of their upward movement and attainment of the next sphere. See the note to
Paradiso
I.23–26.
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112–123.
   Adding to the reader’s sense of the poet’s self-consciousness at this moment in his creation, this seventh invocation also underlines the importance of the visit to the stars that shaped his human abilities. In
Inferno
II.7, when Dante invoked
alto ingegno
for aid, it is at least possible that he was invoking God’s power to help him make his poem (see the notes to
Inf.
II.7–9 and
Par.
XXV.2). Here, especially in light of the equation between God’s powers and that of the heavenly spheres suggested by
Paradiso
II.9, Dante would seem to be aligning his own powers as a poet with those specifically allotted him by God through the agency of the alignment of the stars at his birth, when the Sun (“he who is father to all mortal life”) was under the sign of Gemini.
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121–123.
   The actual invocation occurs only now, as the first three tercets of the passage define the power of these stars and give the nature and history of Dante’s relationship with them. What is the specific “daunting task” for which the poet seeks heavenly aid? Most commentators are content to see this as a general appeal, called for by the heightening of the poem’s subject, rising above the realms in which Dante and we are allowed to see the temporarily present souls of saved mortals and looking forward to the final vision in the poem’s final canto. This seems a sensible view. (For a review of the varied [and rather vague or general] interpretations offered through the nineteenth century, see Scartazzini [comm. to vv. 122–123].) Del Lungo (comm. to this tercet) offers a stronger reading, arguing that the specific appeal is made for a specific reason: Dante in the next canto must describe the triumph presided over by Christ and Mary. Indeed, in Canto XXIII the protagonist will be seeing “face-to-face.” And what he will see is the ultimate destination of the justified portion of our race, the Church Triumphant, which will descend from the Empyrean in order to make itself visible to a mortal (for the first [and only!] time in human history, we may embarrassedly consider). And thus this invocation is “special” for that reason. Having made it, the poet reports first on his downward glance, as he readies himself to see better things; the passage describing that vision will complete this canto. In the next, the intricate opening simile leads directly into the vision of the Church Triumphant, the first thing above him that Dante will describe after the invocation (see
Par.
XXIII. 19–21, Beatrice’s words, “Now look upon the hosts / of Christ in triumph, all the fruit / gathered from the wheeling of these spheres!”). It is with this immediate destination in mind that one might want to understand the “clue” to such an understanding found in Beatrice’s earlier statement, a few lines farther on in this canto, at verse 124 (“You are so near the final blessedness”), as a reference
not
to his eventual destination in the Empyrean, as most imagine it to be, but in fact to this immediately proximate vision of the citizenry of that place in the next canto. In fact, the vast majority of commentators believe the passage looks forward only to the last canto, drawn by the phrase
ultima salute
, for God, in
Paradiso
XXXIII.27. Only Trucchi (comm. to vv. 124–126) resists this “easy” solution, seeing that the presence of Christ in the next one is what is at stake.

Of similar effect is Beatrice’s ensuing remark (vv. 131–132), encouraging Dante to look back to see how much heavenly territory he has already traversed, a journey that makes him ready to appear before “the triumphant throng / that comes rejoicing to this celestial sphere.” In light of such indications, it seems more than likely that the invocation is meant to be read as a preparation for that near-at-hand experience, not one some ten cantos distant.
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123.
   The phrase “passo forte” (daunting task) caught Benvenuto’s attention (comm. to vv. 121–123). Why is it so? “Because,” Benvenuto says, “here is that which all things strive toward. In what follows [Dante] describes God’s Church in its triumph, with all the celestial court, including God.”
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124–129.
   See Boyle (Boyl.2000.1), pp. 3–5, on Dante’s awareness of Thomas’s failure to complete his three-part
Summa
and consequent diminution in comparison with Dante’s tripartite poem. She continues by claiming that the
Comedy
uses both agricultural and navigational metaphors to demonstrate that poetry is more fitting than philosophy or theology to articulate “the ascent to divine contemplation.” While her sense of Dante’s hostility to Thomas is surely overblown, she is among those who realize that all is not peaches and cream in Dante’s presentation of his relations with Thomas.
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124–126.
   Beatrice is not so much admonishing Dante to prepare his eyes for such exalted vision as insisting that, trained as they have been, they are now necessarily ready for that vision, and will be so for the duration of his visit to the rest of the heavens and to the Empyrean. This is to agree with Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this tercet). For the sense in which Dante is at this moment near his “final blessedness,” see the note to vv. 121–123.
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127.
   Dante’s neologism here is close to untranslatable. The coinage is possibly to be taken as a verb of the first conjugation, “inleiarsi,” to “in-it oneself,” that is, to make oneself one with something external to one’s being.
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129.
   Beatrice’s reference to the great extent of the universe that Dante can now make out “beneath his feet” reminds us again that we are still not sure whether we are meant to understand that Dante is in
Paradiso
in the flesh. While something like certainty awaits us, as will be made clear in a few cantos, here we sense a certain coyness. Beatrice may be speaking figuratively,
meaning “Look down beneath you, where your feet would be if you were here in the flesh.” Or she may simply be saying, “Look beneath your feet,” feet that are really there, dangling beneath him in the heaven of the Fixed Stars.
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131–132.
   Once again Beatrice clearly alludes to what Dante will see next, in the verses early in the next canto (19ff.), the Church Triumphant, having left Heaven to appear to Dante in this heaven.
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132.
   The word
etera
, literally translated, means “(a)ether,” in Aristotle’s sense of the “fifth element,” as understood by Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 130–132), that which composes the “stuff” of which a celestial sphere consists and in which other bodies (e.g., the stars) are contained. It is thus differentiated from both stars (and what we refer to as planets) and nothingness (what we used to refer to as “space”).
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133–153.
   This remarkable passage is almost as interesting in its antecedence as in its immediate progeny. There are similar scenes in Boccaccio’s
Filostrato
and
Teseida
; Chaucer visits both of these, in the moment that is perhaps central to the understanding of his intentions for the ending of the
Troilus
; and both writers evidently pay close attention to Dante as well as to his and their classical precursors. While there continues to be debate about Dante’s firsthand knowledge of the portion of Cicero’s lost
De re publica
known as the “Dream of Scipio,” it really does seem to most that Dante knew this text (VI.xvi.16). On the other hand, there is and can be no debate about his knowledge of the similar passage in Boethius’s
De consolatione
(II.m7.1–6), if that seems less directly resemblant. (Singleton [comm. to vv. 127–154] presents both texts, with English translations.) In Cicero, Dante’s great Roman hero Scipio, appearing in a dream to his grandson after his death, speaks of this paltry world, seen from the heavens, in much the same tone as we find here; in Boethius, there is a vision of this narrow earth.
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134.
   Some readers may benefit from a reminder: For Dante the seven “planets” circling over our earth are Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. All the stars are contained in the next sphere, the heaven of the Fixed Stars, to which point the protagonist has just now risen (see vv. 100–111).
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139–150.
   Dante examines the planets beneath his feet; these are seen in a somewhat unusual order and are mainly named by their “parents”:
(1) Moon (daughter of Latona), (4) Sun (son of Hyperion), (2) Mercury (son of Maia), (3) Venus (daughter of Dïone), (6) Jupiter (son of Saturn), (7) Saturn (father of Jupiter), (5) Mars (son of Jupiter).

Carroll (comm. to these verses) makes a helpful distinction between St. Bernard’s terms
consideratio
and
contemplatio
: “St. Bernard
(
De Consideratione
[II.ii]) thus distinguishes: ‘
Contemplation
may be defined as the soul’s true unerring intuition, or as the unhesitating apprehension of truth. But
consideration
is thought (
cogitatio
) earnestly directed to research, or the application of the mind to the search for truth; though in practice the two terms are indifferently used for one another’ (Lewis’ transl.). Both words are believed to come from augurial rites: Contemplation, from
com
and
templum
, the marking out of a
templum
, or sacred space open to the sky; and consideration, from
com
and
sidus
(
sideris
) a star, or constellation, observation of the stars.” In Bernard’s language then, Dante is “considering” the stars; contemplation of God remains ahead of him.
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