Paradiso
Dante Alighieri (Modern Library, 2004; trans. Anthony Esolen)

537 pp. Third reading.
Posted 26 September 2006.

If Inferno is a poem of sorrow and the macabre, and Purgatorio a poem of friendship and hope, Paradiso is a poem of glory and wonder. It is the poem in which the spiritual grandeur of Catholicism, filtered through the sensibilities of the Middle Ages, takes literary wing to an unsurpassed degree. It is a great-souled poem; there is no room in the Paradiso for complacency -- acedia, remember, was purged on the fourth terrace of the seven storey mountain. There is no room for suspicion of the glad tidings of humanity's high calling, nor drowsy wishes to be left alone, nor any of the other failings that cripple souls. It is a poem of intellectual love, a paean to the beauty of virtue and of human life fully alive, a confident song of thanks, animated throughout by faith in the capacity of humanity to touch the highest things.

Guided by Beatrice, Dante ascends through the nine celestial spheres. Each sphere is populated by souls whose character reflects that which the medieval imagination ascribed to the respective planets. In the sphere of the moon, then, the sole celestial body to be afflicted by the changeableness of earthly things, we meet those who were unfaithful to their vows; in the sphere of Mercury are those, like the Emporer Justinian, who sought earthly honour; those who loved the love of the flesh inhabit the Venusian sphere. Here Dante converses with Charles Martel, though this is the Charles Martel of the thirteenth century, not the Charles Martel, grandfather of Charlemagne, who defeated the advancing Islamic forces in the eighth century at the Battle of Tours, thus preventing European civilization from being entirely overrun. That Charles Martel, we might imagine, is in the sphere of Mars, where we meet those, like Charlemagne himself and even the fictional Roland, who fought to defend Christ and the Church.

Before reaching Mars, however, Dante and Beatrice pass through the sphere of the Sun, the sphere of the wise. It is a charming section of the poem, as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure emerge from dancing garlands of celestial light to engage in a genial contest of one-up-man-ship, praising one another's wisdom and sanctity. Ascending through the martial sphere, where the souls form the shape of a mighty cross, we enter the sphere of Jupiter, the sphere of the just, dominated by the form of a great eagle. The inscrutability of divine justice is emphasized here by the surprising presence of Trajan and Ripheus, both pagans. In the sphere of Saturn, the highest of the planetary spheres, we encounter the contemplatives led by St. Benedict, and Dante beholds a vision of souls ascending a great ladder into the highest heaven. With Beatrice he rises further still, into the stellatum, where he has a vision of the victory of Christ and the coronation of Mary.

At this point Dante is approached and examined by the greatest of the Apostles: St. Peter examines him on faith, St. James on hope, and St. John -- at whose appeareance Dante is temporarily struck blind -- on love. Answering to their satisfaction, Dante and Beatrice ascend into the ninth and final cosmic sphere, the Primum Mobile. Here Dante has a celebrated vision of the cosmos, a vision that reveals the logical structure of the universe through which he has just passed. Surprisingly, perhaps, the cosmos he sees has turned the physical cosmos inside out: rather than a cold, powerless earth at its center, this universe is centered on a brilliant point of light, about which the spheres of the angelic hierarchies spin with joy.

Yet even now his journey continues, for he passes beyond the boundaries of the physical world and into Heaven itself, and finds himself


Washing his eyes in a great river of light, he sees that he stands in the center of an immense celestial rose, the petals of which are covered with the souls of the saints, rising up and away for as far as the eye can see. It is perhaps the most beautiful and striking image in the entire Comedy. Beatrice leaves him to take her place among the blessed, and he is joined instead by the Cistercian mystic St. Bernard of Clairvaux, his third and final guide. With St. Bernard at his side he calls upon Our Lady's prayers, and his eyes are opened: he beholds, with love but not understanding, visions of the mysteries of the Creation, the Trinity, and the Incarnation. It is the summit of his -- and every -- journey.


Paradiso is full of beauties. It is a poem to be lingered over by anyone who loves the Church in her saints. It is all confidence, thanks, and love, of lights in the heavens and of Beatrice's eyes.

[Praise of the Virgin Mary]
Virgin Mother, daugher of your Son,
   humbler and loftier past creation's measure,
   the fulcrum of the everlasting plan,
You are she who ennobled human nature
   so highly, that its Maker did not scorn
   to make Himself a Creature of His creature.
In your womb was the flame of love reborn,
   in the eternal peace of whose warm ray
   this flower has sprung and is so richly grown.
For us you are the torch of the noonday
   of charity; below, you are the spring
   of ever-living hope for men that die.
Lady, so great you are, such strength you bring,
   who does not run to you and looks for grace,
   his wish would seek to fly without a wing.
                -33.1-15.

[The difficulty of writing this poem]
Yet as a man who finds his path is cut,
   so must the sacred poem overleap
   in finding signs to render Paradise.
But if my shoulders tremble, they that keep
   the ponderous theme and my mortality
   in mind will never blame me for the slip;
Nor for a little raft, this stretch of sea
   my bold prow furrows, nor for pilots of
   weak heart, who spare themselves.
                23.61-9

[Last words to Beatrice]
"Lady in whom my hope is green anew,
   who suffered for my healing, and who deigned
   to leave your footprints in the land below,
It was your power and excellence that sustained
   my pilgrimage to see all I have seen;
   to you I owe the grace and strength I've gained.
I was a slave; you brought me liberty,
   through every road I walked, my every means
   you had within your power to succor me.
Preserve in me your work's magnificence
   so that my soul, which you have healed, one day
   will please you when it slips the body's bands."
                31.79-90

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