Dante: Paradiso XXXIII

Dante Alighieri
(1265-1321)

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321):
Paradiso, XXXIII.85-93, 121-145

I was introduced to Dante's Commedia by three wonderful Dante scholars— Etienne Gilson, Charles Singleton, and John Freccero at Dante's 700th Birthday Symposium at Cornell University. Singleton's image of Dante's Commedia as a work of reflective symmetry, a crystalline snowflake has remained with me all these years that I approach Dante with much awe and humility. When I took Professor Freccero's class on Dante's Paradiso at Stanford in Spring 2001, I did this web site on Dante at Wisdom Portal. Some of the essays written are: Dante's Paradiso VI: Romeo of Villeneuve, Dante & Beatrice, Dante & Marilyn, and Dante's 55 & The Platonic Lambda. For this Poetry Anthology, I'm including Dante's cosmic vision at the end of Paradiso. Dante's poem has been "the bread of angels" (Paradiso, II.11) to me during my research on predicting protein structures as the language of life, and now in writing poetry, the language of the human heart. Dante's "scattered leaves of all the universe" may refer to leaves of all the trees, or to leaves in the Sibyl's Book of past & future events, or to the tiers of universes envisioned by Hua-Yen Buddhist masters, or to the multi-verses of modern astrophysicists and cosmologists. I thought Dante was four centuries ahead of Newton when Beatrice taught him about gravitation in his ascent through the planetary spheres. Prof. Freccero referred me to Mark Peterson's paper "Dante and the 3-sphere" (American Journal of Physics, Vol. 47, 1031-1035 (1979), which correlated Dante's vision with Einsteinian relativity. Remarkable indeed! (Peter Y. Chou)

Dante's Cosmic Vision in Paradise

Within a single volume, bounded by love
I saw the scattered leaves of all the universe—
Substance and accidents, and their relations,
As though together fused in such a way
That what I speak of is a single light.
The universal form of this commingling
I think I saw, for when I tell of it
My heart rejoice so much the more...

How powerless is speech— how weak, compared
To my conception, which itself is trifling
Beside the mighty vision that I saw!
O Light Eternal, in Thyself contained!
Thou only know Thyself, and in Thyself
Both known and knowing, smile on Thyself!
That very circle which appeared in Thee,
Conceived as but reflection of a light,
When I had gazed on it awhile, now seemed
To bear the image of a human face
Within itself, of its own coloring—
Wherefore my sight was wholly fixed on it.
Like a geometer, who will attempt
With all his power and mind to square the circle
Yet cannot find the principle he needs:
Just so was I, at that phenomenon.
I wished to see how image joined to ring,
And how the one found place within the other.
Too feeble for such flights were my own wings;
But by a lightning flash my mind was struck—
And thus came the fulfilment of my wish.
My power now failed that phantasy sublime;
My will and my desire were both revolved,
As in a wheel in even motion driven,
By Love, which moves the sun and other stars.

— Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
   Paradiso, XXXIII.85-93, 121-145 (1321)
   Verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum
   Divine Comedy of Dante: Paradiso
   Bantam Books, New York, 1986, p. 303

• Dante at Wisdom Portal
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• Dante Resources on the Web
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• Dante Alighieri (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
   (Life, Poetry, Philosophical Training, Convivio, Monarchia, Commedia)
• Digital Dantei (Columbia University)
   (Dante in Italian with translations by Longfellow and Allen Mandelbaum)