The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  And if so vast a nimbus can be bound within its lowest tier, what then must be the measure of this rose at its topmost round?

  Nor were my eyes confounded by that sea and altitude of space, but took in all, both number and quality, of that ecstasy.

  There, far and near cause neither loss nor gain, for where God rules directly, without agents, the laws that govern nature do not pertain.

  Into the gold of the rose that blooms eternal, rank on rank, in incenses of praise it sends up to the Sun forever vernal—

  I, yearning to speak and silent—Beatrice drew me, and said: “Now see how many are in the convent of the white robes. Behold our far-flung city.

  And see the benches—every one a throne—how every rank of them is filled so full that few are wanted before all is done.

  That great throne with the crown already set above it draws your eyes. To it shall come—before your own call to this nuptial banquet— the soul, already anointed, of Henry the Great, who will come to Italy to bring law and order before the time is ripe to set things straight.

  Tranced in blind greed, your ever deepening curse, you have become as mindless as an infant who screams with hunger, yet pushes away his nurse.

  The prefect of the holy court will be a man who will profess his cause in public while working to defeat it secretly.

  But after that God will not long permit his simony, he shall be stuffed away where Simon Magus, headfirst in the pit,

  pays for his guilt. There, paying for his own, he shall force the guilt of Alagna further down.”

  NOTES

  1-15. ASCENT TO THE EMPYREAN. Heretofore the glories of the heavens have shone like stars in glorious night. In the Empyrean, God (the Sun) shines forever in the fullness of His glorious day, obscuring all other heavenly bodies except as they reflect His light. The ascent into the Empyrean, therefore, is a dawning, and Dante’s figure for it is based on an earthly dawn.

  When the Sun is at its noon height over India (about 6000 miles away) dawn is just beginning in Italy and the Earth’s shadow is almost a level line (level bed) out into space (i.e., nearly perpendicular to a line dropped from the zenith). Then the stars directly overhead begin to fade, the dimmest first, then the brighter. Then as dawn (Aurora, the serving maid of Apollo, the Sun) draws nearer, all the stars go out, even the loveliest and brightest.

  Just so nine rings of the three trinities of Angelic beings fade as Dante and Beatrice ascend into the first dawning of the direct vision of God. Obviously the dimmer outer rings would fade first, then the others in order.

  12. embraced by what Itself embraces: The Angel Rings seem to contain God within their rounds, whereas it is God who contains them and all else.

  22-33. THE BEAUTY OF BEATRICE. As Dante ascended each new heaven and became more able to perceive, Beatrice grew more beautiful (was able to reveal more of herself to his senses). Now fully disclosed in the direct light of the Empyrean she surpasses conception: only God can realize her full beauty.

  On another level it is only natural that Dante stand inarticulate before the full beauty of Divine Revelation. What religious man could think himself equal to describing the entire beauty of Revelation? (Such inarticulateness is all the more effective when it overtakes a man who boasted of his powers in Inferno, IV, 100-102, XXV, 91-99, XXXII, 7-9, and in Paradiso, II, 1-18.)

  35-36. to a clarion of greater note than mine: Does Dante mean that a greater poet will follow to sing the full beauty of Beatrice? He has just said that only God can fully realize her beauty.

  I think it is no accident that Dante says “clarion” rather than “lyre.” The Day of Judgment will be announced by a clarion call, and on that day the souls of all mortals may look upon Beatrice in her full beauty. Dante’s “clarion” must occupy itself with drawing its long and arduous theme to a conclusion.

  39. the greatest sphere: The Primum Mobile. heaven of pure light: The Empyrean.

  43. both hosts of Paradise: The Angels and the Blessed.

  44. one of them: The Blessed. Those who once wore mortal bodies which shall be returned to them on Judgment Day. Within the Mystic Rose Dante does see the radiances of the Blessed with their lineaments etched upon them. He is offered this sight as a special dispensation in a climactic act of caritas.

  47. visual spirits: See XXVI, 70-72.

  52. The Love: God. that keeps this Heaven ever the same: All the other heavens rotate in constant change. The Empyrean, reflecting God’s unchanging and unchangeable perfection, is always the same.

  54. and thus prepares the candle for His flame: Dante has several times been blinded by the light that prepared him for better vision. Here the candle of his soul is put out by the splendor of the Empyrean to be relit by the light of God Himself.

  60-66. As Dante makes clear in line 95 below, the sparks are Angels and the flowers, the Blessed. The river may be taken as the endless flowing of God’s grace. Some religious commentators suggest that the two banks represent the Church. As verified by lines 76-78 below, the rubies of line 66 should be taken to be Angels and the bands of gold as the Blessed.

  76. jewels: Dante says “topazes” and the topaz was believed to have the power of reflecting things without distortion, certainly a relevant suggestion in context, though “topazes” here does not accord with “rubies” in line 66.

  82 ff. no babe in arms: “Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew, xviii, 3).

  87. better mirrors: The better to reflect God.

  88-89. my eyes’ eaves: His eyelashes. Dante has, of course, plunged his face into the river. It may seem odd to say that he drank with his eyes, but note that this is a river of light, and that it is to wash the last mortal weakness from his eyes that Dante is drinking. See also the common idiom: “My eyes drank in the sight of it.”

  95-97-99. I saw: Now and then in the Paradiso Dante says “I saw.” More often he uses some such phrase as “there appeared to me” or “it manifested itself.” Such phrasing is deliberate. “I saw” implies an action of the speaker’s own powers. Heaven, however, is a gift of grace: Dante does not see it through his own powers; rather it manifests itself to him as an act of love, and does so not in its true essence but in manifestations graspable by Dante’s mortal mind.

  Here, however, Dante uses “I saw” as one of his rare triple rhymings on the same word. In Dante an unusual device always indicates unusual stress. It occurs, moreover, at one of the great climaxes of the poem.

  For Dante has just experienced the first direct revelation of God. Until he drank from the stream he could not see things with the spontaneous intuition of heavenly souls, who partake directly of the mind of God. Now he, too, has achieved the beginnings of Paradisal power. This is the true rebirth, the spiritual enlargement to which the entire journey has been directed. And soon now, as Virgil left him below, Beatrice will leave him to take her throne among the hosts of the Blessed, though in a larger sense she will be with him forever, both her soul and Dante’s being contained in God.

  108. power: Virtue. The ability to influence what lies below it. motion: Its own rapid revolution.

  112 ff. THE MYSTIC ROSE. As ever in Paradise, the heavenly beings manifest themselves to Dante at the highest level he is capable of grasping at each point of his development. At every stage they have sent their manifestations down to him as an act of love. They themselves remain forever in the direct presence of God.

  Now, his vision at last approaching perfection, Dante sees them in their supreme heavenly state, ranked tier on tier in a huge stadium that gives forth the appearance of an enormous white rose basking in the eternal springtime of the direct light of God. Note, however, that he sees the rose not directly (even at this point he is not yet ready) but as a vision reflected in the sea of God’s light.

  For purposes of placing Dante in relation to it, the Rose may be thought of as an immense, truncated, inverted, floating cone marked off in many tiers. The tier f
irst reflected to Dante from that sea of light is the bottom one, the upper tiers being only partially visible at this point. The nimbus of the bottom tier (lines 115-116) is far greater than the circumference of the Sun (lines 104-105).

  114. those who had won return: The loyal angels, having never left, would not have won return.

  116-117. what then must be the measure: There are more than a thousand tiers. If the lowest is greater by far than the circumference of the Sun, what must be the dimensions of its upper ring, a thousand steps up from such magnitude?

  118-123. On earth we see near things in detail and far things indistinctly. The laws of nature, however, are God’s agencies and have no force where God rules without intermediaries. So, despite the galactic dimensions of the rose, Dante sees all in minute detail, not only each being in that multitude, but the quality of each one’s ecstasy.

  124 ff. Into the gold of the rose: The central corona of the Rose, from which the petals grow, is always golden, or so it was in Dante’s time, though some modern hybrids no longer have a golden center. Beatrice drew me: If the Mystic Rose is conceived as a vast circular stadium Dante and Beatrice are now in the center of the arena looking up at the tiers.

  132. few are wanted before all is done: As with so many other revelationists, Dante believes God will not long endure the evils of mankind and that the trump of Judgment will soon sound.

  136. already anointed: As Holy Roman Emperor.

  136. Henry: Henry VII of Luxemburg, Emperor 1308-1313. He was not, strictly speaking, referred to as Henry the Great, but I have been forced to call him that for purposes of rhyme. See Purgatorio, VII, 96, note, and for the background of Henry’s attempt at order in Italy see Purgatorio, VI, 100, note. In the Purgatorio Dante says Henry came too late. Here he says he came before the time was ripe. In either case the result was the same and Dante attributes Henry’s failure to the evil designs of the bad Popes Beatrice now goes on to denounce before the full court of Heaven. It is certainly relevant, here, to note that Dante placed his one hope of returning to Florence on the outcome of Henry’s efforts to settle the hatreds of Italian politics.

  140. you: You Italians.

  142. The prefect: The Pope. The holy court: Rome, the Vatican. Here Dante intends Clement V, who worked to defeat Henry’s policy, though he professed to support it.

  143-144. I have found it necessary to translate the intent rather than the phrasing of Dante’s lines here. Literally rendered, they would read: “Who will not walk with him the same road openly and covertly,” a strange figure that has Clement walking beside Henry on two separate roads at the same time.

  145. God will not long permit: Clement died eight months after Henry, on April 20, 1314.

  147. where Simon Magus, headfirst in the pit: With the Simoniacs in the Third Bolgia of the Eighth Circle (Inferno, XIX). There the sinners are stuffed head-first into a tubelike baptismal font, their feet kicking the air, their soles aflame. As each replaces his successor in selling holy office, the earlier tenant is shoved down into some undescribed lower pit, sealed from the eyes of all.

  149. the guilt of Alagna: Boniface VIII. He was born at Alagna (or, variantly, Anagna).

  Canto XXXI

  THE EMPYREAN

  The Mystic Rose

  The Angel Host

  Beatrice Leaves Dante

  St. Bernard

  THE SECOND SOLDIERY of the Church Triumphant is the ANGEL HOST and Dante now receives a vision of them as a SWARM OF BEES in eternal transit between God and the Rose.

  Dante turns from that rapturous vision to speak to Beatrice and finds in her place a reverend elder. It is ST. BERNARD, who will serve as Dante’s guide to the ultimate vision of God. Bernard shows Dante his LAST VISION OF BEATRICE, who has resumed her throne among the blessed. Across the vastness of Paradise, Dante sends his soul’s prayer of thanks to her. BEATRICE SMILES down at Dante a last time, then turns her eyes forever to the Eternal Fountain of God.

  Bernard, the most faithful of the worshippers of the Virgin, promises Dante the final vision of God through the Virgin’s intercession. Accordingly, he instructs Dante to raise his eyes to her throne. Dante obeys and burns with bliss at the vision of her splendor.

  Then, in the form of a white rose, the host of the sacred soldiery appeared to me, all those whom Christ in his own blood espoused.

  But the other host (who soar, singing and seeing His glory, who to will them to his love made them so many in such blissful being,

  like a swarm of bees who in one motion dive into the flowers, and in the next return the sweetness of their labors to the hive)

  flew ceaselessly to the many-petaled rose and ceaselessly returned into that light in which their ceaseless love has its repose.

  Like living flame their faces seemed to glow. Their wings were gold. And all their bodies shone more dazzling white than any earthly snow.

  On entering the great flower they spread about them, from tier to tier, the ardor and the peace they had acquired in flying close to Him.

  Nor did so great a multitude in flight between the white rose and what lies above it block in the least the glory of that light;

  for throughout all the universe God’s ray enters all things according to their merit, and nothing has the power to block its way.

  This realm of ancient bliss shone, soul on soul, with new and ancient beings, and every eye and every love was fixed upon one goal.

  O Threefold Light which, blazoned in one star, can so content their vision with your shining, look down upon us in the storm we are!

  If the barbarians (coming from that zone above which Helice travels every day wheeling in heaven with her beloved son)

  looking at Rome, were stupefied to see her works in those days when the Lateran outshone all else built by humanity;

  what did I feel on reaching such a goal from human to blest, from time to eternity, from Florence to a people just and whole—

  by what amazement was I overcome? Between my stupor and my new-found joy my bliss was to hear nothing and be dumb.

  And as a pilgrim at the shrine of his vow stares, feels himself reborn, and thinks already how he may later describe it—just so now

  I stood and let my eyes go wandering out into that radiance from rank to rank, now up, now down, now sweeping round about.

  I saw faces that compelled love’s charity lit by Another’s lamp and their own smiles, and gestures graced by every dignity.

  Without having fixed on any part, my eyes already had taken in and understood the form and general plan of Paradise:

  and—my desire rekindled—I wheeled about to question my sweet lady on certain matters concerning which my mind was still in doubt.

  One thing I expected; another greeted me: I thought to find Beatrice there; I found instead an elder in the robes of those in glory.

  His eyes and cheeks were bathed in the holy glow of loving bliss; his gestures, pious grace. He seemed a tender father standing so.

  “She—where is she?” I cried in sudden dread. “To lead you to the goal of all your wish Beatrice called me from my place,” he said;

  “And if you raise your eyes you still may find her in the third circle down from the highest rank upon the throne her merit has assigned her.”

  Without reply I looked up to that height and saw her draw an aureole round herself as she reflected the Eternal Light.

  No mortal eye, though plunged to the last bounds of the deepest sea, has ever been so far from the topmost heaven to which the thunder sounds

  as I was then from Beatrice; but there the distance did not matter, for her image reached me unblurred by any atmosphere.

  “O lady in whom my hope shall ever soar and who for my salvation suffered even to set your feet upon Hell’s broken floor;

  through your power and your excellence alone have I recognized the goodness and the grace inherent in the things I have been shown.

  You have led me from my bondage and set me free by all those roads, by all th
ose loving means that lay within your power and charity.

  Grant me your magnificence that my soul, which you have healed, may please you when it slips the bonds of flesh and rises to its goal.”

  Such was my prayer, and she—far up a mountain, as it appeared to me—looked down and smiled. Then she turned back to the Eternal Fountain.

  And the holy Elder said: “I have been sent by prayer and sacred love to help you reach the perfect consummation of your ascent.

  Look round this garden, therefore, that you may by gazing at its radiance, be prepared to lift your eyes up to the Trinal Ray.

  The Queen of Heaven, for whom in whole devotion I burn with love, will grant us every grace because I am Bernard, her faithful one.”