Paradiso (The Divine Comedy series Book 3)

by Dante

  49–51. See the note to vv. 40–42. [return to English / Italian]

  52–57. In marked contrast to Thomas, who only rarely sounds “poetic” (but see the note to Par. XI.19–21), Solomon here is granted one of the few similes allowed a speaker in the poem (we have not encountered a simile since the one on Iris in Par. XII.10–21). This further identifies him with Dante and the world of poetry, eclipsing Thomas at least a little. This is not to say that Dante does not value Thomas; he values hardly anyone more. But it is also time for taking some good-natured revenge on the man who labored to belittle poetry and poets.

  There are some 628 verses in the heaven of the Sun, nearly half of them (287) spoken by Thomas, poetry’s confirmed enemy. Further, Dante is silent in all of this heaven, as though to match Thomas by opposition, switching roles with him. This is the only “zone” of the entire poem in which the protagonist does not say a single word. [return to English / Italian]

  58–60. Solomon concludes by responding to Beatrice’s representation of Dante’s second question (see vv. 16–18). The glorified body will not be too strongly bright for the eyes of the saved, perhaps because their own resurrected bodies will possess capacities their earthly ones did not, in this case superhuman eyesight. Dante’s question was based solely on a normal human understanding of immortality, that is, on ignorance. [return to English / Italian]

  61–66. The twenty-four souls in the first two circles, moved by Solomon’s words, show their desire to put on their resurrected flesh, and perhaps for the same result for all those other saved souls whom they love.

  The reader who believes that Dante is not sympathetic to our physical selves will have to acknowledge that this passage establishes his credibility as a human being who, like Solomon, accepts the fact of our corporeal existence and finds it good. For Dante’s view of the resurrected body, see Jacoff (Jaco.2000.1). See also Bynum (Bynu.1995.1), pp. 291–305. And see Picone (Pico.2002.4), pp. 212–13, n. 21, for a bibliography of some European contributions on this subject. [return to English / Italian]

  62. The Hebrew word “amen” is given here in its Tuscan form, amme, as part of Dante’s program of expressing sacred truth in the low vernacular. See the note to verse 64. [return to English / Italian]

  64. The use of the word mamme, although forced by rhyme, is nonetheless striking. Such usage of the low-vernacular “mommies” is at one with the context, a soft-hued family portrait of saved humanity, as it were. Our translation deploys the less disturbing “mothers” because of its pairing with padri (rather than babbi, “daddies”). See the notes to Inferno XXXII.1–9 and Purgatorio XXI.97–99. [return to English / Italian]

  67–78. This supercharged passage has begun to be understood only in the past 101 years. An undergraduate student, Randy Mamiaro (Princeton ’80), caused a stir in class when (in December 1979) he suggested that this third circle, tacitly parallel in number with the first two, contained the twelve apostles, who manifested themselves here as a sign of their approval of Solomon’s words. Were not the apostles closely associated with the Holy Spirit, referred to in verse 76, represented as descending on them with the gift of tongues (Acts 2:3–4)? And would not they represent a fitting final group of twelve to accompany the first two that have come forward? Mamiaro’s might still be a promising hypothesis, had not Peter Dronke in an article (Dron.1975.2, esp. pp. 10–16) shown convincingly that what Dante has built into his poem is a highly structured reference to Joachim of Flora’s “Third Age,” “the Age of the [Holy] Spirit,” when the Church shall be taken up and each Christian living in the Spirit will be his or her own priest (and thus the numerically unspecified multitude of these many souls [a problem not well dealt with by Mamiaro’s hypothesis]). Consequently, the first two circles in the Sun probably are related to Joachim’s Age of the Father and Age of the Son, respectively. Dronke’s thesis should have found more favor than it has. But see Picone (Pico.2002.4), p. 211, and Merlante and Prandi (Merl.2005.1), in notes to vv. 28 and 76–78, acknowledging his contribution. How often in Dante studies can one say that a new reading has completely altered our sense not only of the meaning of a text, but of its intellectual provenance as well? However, Dronke’s discovery (he gives credit, for a first effort in this direction, to Leone Tondelli [Tond.1940.1, pp. 260–62]), had in fact been made by another, some three score and ten years earlier, John S. Carroll (comm. to these verses). (And Carroll, as far as one can see, has been omitted from the post-Dronke discussion.) In a long gloss, a portion of which follows, Carroll makes his case: “Now, it seems to me clear that Dante in this third circle wished to show how far his sympathy with these Joachimite views went. In general, he accepts the doctrine of a third era of the Holy Spirit. If we take the three circles to correspond to the Trinity, we may say that the first, the Dominican, represents the Father, the reign of law and fear; and the second, the Franciscan, the Son, the favour of the grace of Christ, whose image St. Francis bore. But Dante believes that these two types do not exhaust the possibilities of Theology. Joachim and his followers were not mistaken in their hope of a third era worthy to be called, in comparison with the others, the ‘true sparkling of the Holy Spirit,’ far wider in its range, far more brilliant in its shining. Dante cannot describe it definitely; it lies far off on the dim horizon of the future. It has the mystery of the evening when the stars are scarcely seen, for it is the passing away of one era. It has the mystery of the morning when the dawn whitens, for it is the beginning of a new day of the Spirit—perhaps the eternal day itself.” John Saly (Saly.1989.1), pp. 14–15, also sees this third circle of souls as signifying Joachim’s Third Age, but seems unaware of his precursors in this belief.

  The only problem inherent in the Carroll/Dronke hypothesis is that, while the souls in the first two circles have all finished their lives on earth and assumed their seats in the Empyrean, those in Joachim’s prophetic text have not. On the other hand, there is no reason to believe that Dante thought Joachim’s Third Age had begun yet. Thus his text, like Joachim’s, is prophetic, and Joachim is not the only presence in the poem “di spirito profetico dotato” (endowed with the spirit of prophecy—Par. XII.141). Further, the imprecise nature of their number and the fact that they are not recognizable to Dante accords with their status as the unnumbered and unnamed ranks of a Joachite New Age. Singleton (comm. to vv. 74–76) correctly notes that “the context and simile clearly suggest that they are a multitude and not merely twelve lights.” [return to English / Italian]

  67. Bosco/Reggio point out (comm. to this verse) that, as usual, the phrasing “Ed ecco” (And lo) alerts the reader to a change in focus. We might expect, as a result, a change of venue, that is, the ascent to a higher sphere. But this is rather a totally new experience contained within the current heaven, one that is marked off as being exceptional in every way. [return to English / Italian]

  68. The word lustro (the noun “shining”) occurs only one other time in the poem (Purg. XXIX.16). There it describes the brightness of the Church Triumphant in procession as Matelda and Dante first behold that pageant. [return to English / Italian]

  70–75. This simile, matching in its sweet tones and glowing, soft colors the tranquility of verses 61–66, misled Vellutello (comm. to vv. 70–78) into thinking the novelle sussistenze were angels (as they were in Par. XIII.59) rather than souls, and Lombardi (comm. to vv. 70–75) into believing this circle is the first thing seen in the sphere of Mars rather than the last in the Sun. [return to English / Italian]

  73. The word sussistenza (see the note to Par. XIII.59) is here used, by the consent of most discussants, to refer not to angelic substances but to saved souls. Tommaseo is quite sure, however, that even that last use of the word refers to angels. Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 70–75) was perhaps the first reader to identify the sussistenze as “the blessed souls in this third circle.” [return to English / Italian]

  76–81. If Dante is unable to look upon the working of the Holy Spirit, evident in the movements of this circle, he
can fix his eyes on Beatrice’s smile—if he cannot bring that back to mind, for her increased beauty is beyond the capacity of his memory.

  While one can understand the theological reasons that make it imperative to realize that Beatrice becomes more beautiful both as she gets closer to God and as Dante’s capacity to perceive her true nature improves, had the poet stinted on the number of occasions he informs us of their reciprocal progress, the likelihood is that few of us would have complained. [return to English / Italian]

  82–87. The ascent to Mars is accomplished with relatively little fanfare and as little poetic space as all but one ascent to a higher sphere (Venus, at Par. VIII.13–15) before it. Compare Paradiso I.61–81; V.88–99; X.28–39. [return to English / Italian]

  83. This is Dante’s only use in his poem of the Latinism translato (in this context, literally “carried up to”). See Sowell (Sowe.1995.1), p. 201, for the recognition of a biblical precursor. Paul speaks of God’s having snatched us from the power of darkness and translated us to His Son’s kingdom, where we will dwell in light (Colossians 1:13). But see as well the only other presence of transferre in the New Testament, also Pauline (as far as Dante knew, Paul was the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews): Hebrews 11:5. [return to English / Italian]

  86–87. That Mars is the “red planet” is an ancient tradition. That it becomes more red as a sign of welcome to Beatrice echoes the sign made in response to her arrival in the planet Mercury (Par. V.96). [return to English / Italian]

  88–96. If the ascent to Mars is not particularly noteworthy, the description of Dante’s prayer of thanksgiving most certainly is. There are nine occurrences of hapax in these nine verses (olocausto, essausto, litare, accetto, fausto, lucore, robbi, Elïòs, addobbi), a sure sign of heightened emotion. And the passage concludes with Dante’s first spoken words since Canto X (verse 81), as Barolini (Baro.1992.1), p. 334, n. 8, has observed. Language, as we shall see, is a continuing concern as we move through this entire sphere. Those who like to find Dante’s identification of the seven liberal arts with the planets in the Convivio (II.xiii.8–30) at work in Paradiso must here justify the prior identification of Mars with music (Conv. II.xiii.20), a relationship in Paradiso perhaps more plausibly adduced from the sphere of the Sun. [return to English / Italian]

  88. Portirelli (comm. to vv. 88–96) interprets the phrase “that tongue which is the same for all” as meaning “the inner feelings of the mind, the same in all languages,” a view that had been widely embraced as early as the fourteenth century. Dante is evidently referring to mental constructions, preverbal thoughts, which match one another perfectly until they are put into expression in various languages, when they may have small resemblance to one another. See John of Serravalle (comm. to vv. 88–90): “Conceptus mentis sunt idem in omnibus hominibus, loquela vero non sic” (Mental constructs are identical in all humans, but not the words [that are used to express them]). Dante is perhaps suggesting that there exists an ideal universal vernacular innate in all of us. See the note to Paradiso XV.39. [return to English / Italian]

  89. The word olocausto means, literally, “burnt offering,” as verse 92 makes plain. For such sacrifice recorded in the Old Testament, most memorably in Abraham’s eventually jettisoned intention to make a burnt offering of his son Isaac, see Genesis 22:2, 22:7, 22:8, 22:13. See the prior reference in Paradiso V.29.

  Jacopo della Lana (comm. to vv. 88–90), the Ottimo (comm. to vv. 88–89), and Pietro Alighieri (comm. to vv. 85–90) all say that “olocausto” involves sacrifice of the whole object, while “sacrificio” involves only a part of it. [return to English / Italian]

  94. The redness of Mars is insisted on once again, this time increasing in its glow in response to Dante’s offering of his gratitude. [return to English / Italian]

  95. The two beams, as we shall see, in fact constitute the cross of Mars. [return to English / Italian]

  96. For the meaning of Elïòs, Torraca (comm. to vv. 94–96) may have been the first to cite Toynbee (Toyn.1902.1), p. 112, for Dante’s dependence on Uguccione da Pisa: “Ab ely, quod est deus, dictus est sol elyos, quod pro deo olim reputabatur” (From ely, which means “God,” the sun, which once was considered God, is called elyos). The protagonist may here be presented as speaking in tongues, or at least a mixture of two biblical languages. His first word in particular, the name of God, reflects Hebrew (Eli [see Purg. XXIII.74]) and Greek (Helios).

  The verb addobbare (a hapax in the poem, probably meaning “to adorn”) is generally understood to refer to the wearing of ornamental clothing, since it usually refers to a person as being adorned, with the range of the verb’s meaning here being extended to light. However, a persistent temptation in the commentaries is to see the verb as reflecting the French verb adober (English “dub”), as in striking a knight on the shoulder with a sword as part of the ceremony that reflects his worthiness. See Giacalone (comm. to verse 96). [return to English / Italian]

  97–102. The first simile in the heaven of Mars compares the small, nearly invisible stars that make up the Milky Way (la Galassia) to the souls who make up the cross of Mars (for Dante’s learned discussion of the conflicting theories accounting for the existence of this celestial phenomenon, see Convivio II.xiv.5–8). Again, those who want to argue for a correspondence between Convivio’s alignment of the human arts and sciences with the heavens of Paradiso face a large (insurmountable?) problem. In Convivio (II.xiv.5), Dante associates la Galassia with metaphysics. Here it is associated neither with the Sun (which may have created it) nor with the Fixed Stars (where Dante locates it in Convivio) but with Mars, associated with music in Convivio (see the end of the note to vv. 88–96). [return to English / Italian]

  101. Mars seems previously to have had both negative and positive associations for Dante (see Conv. II.xiii.20–24), if not the same positive ones that we find in the Commedia; in the earlier work Mars is associated with musical harmony as well as the destructiveness of war. In the Commedia, as the pagan god of war (e.g., Inf. XXIV.145; Inf. XXXI.51; Purg. XII.31), he is hardly praised. In his second aspect, he is sanitized (as he intrinsically is here) as the representative of the Christian warrior. C. S. Lewis (Lewi. 1964.1), p. 106, pegs Dante’s positive sense of the pagan god to the term martire (martyr), as derivative of “Mars.” [return to English / Italian]

  103–108. These tercets contain the second set (of four) triple identical rhymes on Cristo found in the poem (for the first, see Par. XII.71–75; also see the note to that passage).

  Beginning with the notice of the fact that the Cristo-rhymes in Cantos XIV and XIX of the Paradiso appear in exactly the same lines (104, 106, and 108), Thomas Hart performs a series of calculations to demonstrate that Dante had employed ratios used to calculate the circumference of a circle to predetermine the precise locations in the poem of all four of these rhymes; these ratios in turn suggest the quadrants of a circumscribed Greek cross (formed by two diameters at right angles to one another). For more on the question of Dante’s numerical composition, see Hart’s various studies, as referred to in what may serve as a sort of compendium of them (Hart.1995.1). [return to English / Italian]

  103. The ineffability of what the narrator has seen will become increasingly a theme of the poem as it nears its (ineffable) vision of God. His poetic ability (and here ingegno clearly refers to Dante’s art, not God’s [see the note to Inf. II.7–9]) is simply not able to represent adequately the amazing things that he is indeed capable of holding in mind. By the end of the poem he will not be able to do that, either. [return to English / Italian]

  106. Dante’s phrasing follows closely the words of Christ in Matthew 16:24: “Let him who wishes to follow me deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (see Jacopo della Lana [comm. to vv. 106–108] and many others). [return to English / Italian]

  108. See Bosco/Reggio (comm. to this verse) for a summary of the debate over this line. We have followed them in thinking the gerund vedendo describes Dante, and not the Christian sol
dier he is addressing indirectly. One of the main justifications for their argument is the fact that no soul on its way to God should come by this route (we are allowed to assume that all go directly to the Empyrean). Further, and perhaps more tellingly, this cross of Christian soldiers will no longer be here, since all who appear in all the spheres are there only temporarily, for the sake of Dante’s education. On the other hand, the passage does read more readily the “wrong” way. And it was only fairly recently that anyone objected to that understanding (e.g., Torraca [comm. to vv. 106–108]), if that objection is both well founded and fairly common, especially after Porena’s final note to this canto (found in the DDP at his comm. to vv. 106–108), entitled “una distrazione di Dante.” Is this another instance of the unfinished quality of Dante’s last cantica? See the notes to Paradiso III.29–30 and IX.119–123.

  For the verb balenare (to flash [said of lightning]), Carroll (comm. to vv. 103–108) points to Matthew 24:27: “As the lightning comes out of the east, and shines even unto the west, so shall also be the coming of the Son of Man.” Carroll goes on to say that this is the first of three visions of Christ in Paradiso, the second occurring in Canto XXIII.28–39, amidst the Church Triumphant. The final vision occurs, of course, in the concluding tercets of the poem. [return to English / Italian]