Paradiso (84 page)

64–148.
   See Russo (Russ.1971.1), pp. 103–58, 161–208, for an impassioned defense of the poetic qualities of such lengthy and ostensibly “scientific” or “philosophical” passages as this one, which he links with the only slightly shorter lesson in embryology offered up by Statius (
Purgatorio
XXV.37–108). For a careful study of the central theological and scientific
issues here and the history of their reception among Dante’s critics, see Vasoli (Vaso.1972.1). And for an immensely helpful basic bibliography on Dante in relation to the various sciences that make their presence felt in the poem, see the extended note by Simon Gilson (Gils.2001.2), pp. 58–65. For a useful review of some current writing on Dante’s knowledge and use of the sciences, with bibliography, see Ledda (Ledd.2001.1).
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

64–72.
   The first part of Beatrice’s discourse attacks the notion (introduced by Dante in verse 60) that various stars in the Starry Sphere shine brighter or less bright and, indeed, have other distinguishing characteristics (e.g., color, size, shape), simply because they are more or less dense. This would make the differentiating power single, and would be at odds with what we know of the variety of God’s formal principles. So much for the larger issue at stake here. For discussion of the passage, see Moore (Moor.1903.1), pp. 87–91.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

73–105.
   Turning to the phenomenon itself, Beatrice adduces two arguments to destroy Dante’s position, the first involving two points (vv. 73–82), the second, a single one (vv. 83–105), building on the second point in the first argument, an extended disproof by imagined experiment.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

73–82.
   If the dark spots on the Moon were the result of rarer matter, then matter rare and dense would be distributed either randomly or in strips, as meat and fat in creatures or pages in a book (for this second image, vv. 77–78, see Hatcher [Hatc.1971.1]). Were the first case true (i.e., were there “holes” without density in the Moon), we would verify that fact during eclipses of the Sun; and, since we cannot, Beatrice says, we must look to the second possible cause put forward by Dante.

For studies of the problem presented by the dark spots on the Moon, see Paget Toynbee, “Dante’s Theories as to the Spots on the Moon” (Toyn.1902.1), pp. 78–86 (for a discussion of possible sources and of some of the confusion caused by the passage). See also Manlio Pastore Stocchi (Past.1981.1). And see Nardi (Nard.1985.1), Stabile (Stab.1989.1), pp. 47–55 & nn., and Picone (Pico.2000.1), pp. 21–25.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

83–90.
   If then, Beatrice reasons, there are no “holes” for the Sun’s light to come through, we must hypothesize the presence of dense matter that will act as a mirror for whatever light has penetrated the rare matter beneath the Moon’s surface.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

91–93.
   
Dante will object, Beatrice says, that the farther reflection, because of its greater distance, will seem dimmer, a proposition that she will spend four tercets tearing down.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

94–105.
   In Aristotelian manner, Beatrice extols the virtue of experiment. In this “thought experiment” that she proposes for Dante to perform, the two equidistant mirrors (one of which is, strictly speaking, unnecessary) represent the surface of the Moon, while the one set farther back stands in for the indented portion, where the dense part begins. The three lights reflected in the mirror will show equal brightness, if not equal size. Thus, as Beatrice clearly means to instruct Dante, the quality of the light is not affected by distance; only the quantity is.

For a discussion of this passage and the significance of mirrors in
Paradiso
, see Miller (Mill.1977.1). See also Tate (Tate.1961.1), offering a first “Trinitarian” reading of the third experimentally unnecessary mirror. Boyde (Boyd.1995.1), pp. 14–16, actually performed a version of the experiment in order to test Dante’s method (it passed his test). Gilson (Gils.1997.1), pp. 204–6, discusses various other similar “experiments” described by earlier writers (Pseudo-Thomas on the
Meteorologica
, Chalcidius on the
Timaeus
, Roger Bacon, Albert the Great on the
De causis
), concluding that, while Albert’s is the closest to Dante’s, in this (as in so much else) Dante simply cannot be pinned down. And now see Turelli (Ture.2004.1), in polemic with Kleiner (Klei.1994.1), p. 104 (who believes that “dopo il dosso” means “directly behind your back,” thus making the experiment literally impossible). But see Landino’s gloss to vv. 100–108; he simply (and understandably) assumes that the light is
above
the experimenter’s head (“et sopra el capo tuo ti sia un lume”). In our own time, Turelli convincingly defends the experimental “correctness” of Beatrice’s verbal demonstration; Moevs (Moev.2005.1), p. 115, however, accepts Kleiner’s presupposition, arguing that in the thought experiment we must realize that Dante possesses—meaningfully, of course—a transparent body.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

106–111.
   Beatrice turns to simile (one of the fairly infrequent occasions on which the poet puts the simile-forging power into the hands of a character [but cf.
Inf
. XXVII.94–97]): As the Sun’s rays reduce snow to its underlying essence (water), stripping it of its accidental qualities (cold, whiteness), so Beatrice’s mind will rid Dante’s intellect of its improper qualities and return it to its original condition.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

112–114.
   Going back, in thought, to the Beginning, the Empyrean, Beatrice turns her attention to the Primum Mobile, the ninth sphere, where
nothing may be seen but where all the powers that course through the universe have their origins in space and time. See
Convivio
II.xiv.15: “For, as the Philosopher says in the fifth book of the Ethics, ‘legal justice disposes the sciences for our learning, and commands that they be learned and taught in order that they not be forsaken’; so with its movement
the aforesaid heaven governs the daily revolution of all the others
, by which every day they all receive and transmit here below the virtue of all their parts” (tr. R. Lansing, italics added).
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

115–117.
   The Sphere of the Fixed Stars is where the angelic powers, undifferentiated in the Primum Mobile, are differentiated among the stars. It is from here that they exercise their influence on earth.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

118–120.
   Perhaps it is best to follow Bosco/Reggio’s interpretation of this difficult tercet, which they understand in light of lines from
Purgatorio
XXX.109–110: “Not only by the working of the wheels above / that urge each seed to a certain end.…” They argue that this tercet then means that the seven lower heavens (after the Primum Mobile and the Starry Sphere) dispose in diverse ways the various essences or powers that they receive from the Starry Sphere, adapting them to their own precise purposes.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

121–123.
   These “organs” of the universe, resembling in their workings the effective parts of the human body, as Dante now understands, take their powers from the realms closest to God and disperse them below.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

124–126.
   Beatrice’s admonition prepares Dante to do his own reasoning (and do better than he has done so far). If he learns from this experience, he will not only understand the principle that explains the phenomenon of the moonspots, but other things as well.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

127–129.
   Only now does Beatrice turn her attention to the angels (“the blessèd movers”), the artisans of all creation. Up to now we have heard exclusively of the incorruptible material universe; now we find out what animates it.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

130–132.
   And the Starry Sphere, into the stars of which the powers are distributed, receives that imprinting from the Intelligences (angels) in the Primum Mobile. There is a possible ambiguity here, as Dante uses the singular (
mente profonda
) to indicate either the Cherubim (the angels of knowledge) or all nine angelic orders, as the context would seem to demand.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

133–138.
   
The “dust” that in Genesis (3:19 [“pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris”]) is our flesh is seen here as activated in its various members by the angelic intelligences—unless we are once again to take the singular (
intelligenza
—verse 136) at face value (see the note to vv. 130–132), in which case Beatrice is speaking only of the Cherubim, which seems unlikely.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

139–141.
   The undivided power of primal angelic intelligence (found in the ninth sphere), descending, makes a different union with each star that it animates, similar to the way in which it binds with human souls. For this notion, Pietrobono (comm. to this tercet) cites
Convivio
II.v.18: “These movers by their intellect alone produce the revolution in that proper subject which each one moves. The most noble form of heaven, which has in itself the principle of this passive nature, revolves at the touch of the motive power which understands it; and by touch I mean contact, though not in a bodily sense, with the virtue which is directed toward it” [tr. R. Lansing].

Fraccaroli (Frac.1906.1) offers these verses as an example of Dante’s frequent divergence from the text of Plato’s
Timaeus
when it counters the opinions of Aristotle (Fraccaroli is among those scholars who believe that Dante actually knew the text of that work in Chalcidius’s translation rather than from some other intermediary—see the note to
Par
. IV.24). In Plato the stars are self-propelled.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

142–144.
   The greater or lesser effulgence of a star results from the conjoined qualities that a particular star has in conjunction with the informing virtues, or powers, of its angelic informant. And this is the answer to Dante’s quandary. He had attempted to analyze the moonspots in physical terms; Beatrice has just accounted for them in metaphysical ones (notably poetic though these are, comparing the relative brightness of/in a heavenly body to the relative brightness in a joyful eye, an ocular smile, as it were).
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

145–148.
   The difference between light and dark in heavenly bodies is not to be accounted for quantitatively, in terms of density/rarity, but qualitatively, by the amount of angelic potency found in a given body.
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

1–3.
   If many readers have responded to the previous canto—for some the most labored and unwelcoming of the entire poem—with a certain impatience (e.g., if
Paradiso
is going to be like this, I’d prefer to spend my time in
Inferno
and/or
Purgatorio
), here they are placed on notice that, for Dante, Beatrice’s instruction in spiritual astronomy is more aesthetically pleasing than any possible worldly attraction. It is notable that each of the verses of this tercet contains words or phrases that are often associated with sensual or aesthetic pleasure (
amor, scaldò il petto, bella, dolce
), yet here conjoined with the language of Scholastic argumentation (see the note to vv. 2–3, below).
[return to
English
/
Italian
]

1.
   It is not surprising, given its Christian valence, that Dante should have used the Sun as metaphoric equivalent for Beatrice (it is a nice touch that the professor in the matter pertaining to, in the phrasing of St. Francis’s
Laudes creaturarum
, “Sister Moon” should be her “brother,” the Sun).

This evident recollection of the first significant events recorded in the second chapter of the
Vita nuova
, Beatrice’s appearance to the nearly nine-year-old Dante and his immediate
innamoramento
, sets the stage for the entrance of his newly reconstituted instructor and guide (“Bëatrice, dolce guida e cara!” [my sweet belovèd guide] of
Par
. XXIII.34) in the next twenty-eight cantos. She will illumine his intellect as she first stirred all his soul. (Or, as Benvenuto da Imola puts it, “idest que primo amoravit cor meum carnaliter, deinde mentaliter” [that is, who first set my heart in carnal affection, then in intellectual love]). It is not that she has changed in any way; what has changed is
his
ability to comprehend the deeper truths available from her. Such a transformation—from physical to intellectual love—has roots in Plato’s
Phaedrus
, surely unknown to Dante by direct encounter, but perhaps having some influence on him and on others in his time (those who wrote of the ennobling potential of carnal love) at least from its diffusion through a lengthy and various tradition (see Joseph A. Mazzeo, “Dante and the Phaedrus Tradition of Poetic Inspiration,” in Mazz.1958.1).
[return to
English
/
Italian
]