Dante’s Road Trip: Paradise

After the brilliant and rather visceral discussions in the first two parts of The Divine Comedy, the reader eagerly anticipates what Date will do with heaven. But then, in yet another sign of Dante’s genius, Paradiso starts by basically saying if you don’t follow Dante in this journey, you have no hope. That is a really audacious claim, to put it mildly.

Then, just as the reader decides to take up Dante’s challenge and follow in his path through Heaven, the story launches into a discussion about the physical nature of outer space, which is not even remotely what anyone would expect. Dante told us this part was different, we don’t believe him, so he goes out of his way to prove his point. He is setting us up for all the philosophical and theological discussions which follow. It is almost like he is saying, “If you can make it through Canto 2, then maybe you can read this book.”

So much of the start here seems like a very deliberate attempt to leave the reader feeling disoriented and uncertain. As Dante keeps reminding us, words are literally incapable of describing what Dante has seen in heaven. 

Cantos 3-5 give us the first glimpse of the levels of heaven. Here we get those who broke vows. But, unlike the discussion in the Inferno and Purgatorio, the discussion is not about the people in the circle and what they did. The discussion is a theological discussion of the nature of breaking vows. Is choosing life over martyrdom acceptable? No. If fear causes a weakening of our will are we to blame? Yes. Can we break vows? No. Can we modify the vows? Depends on whether we are modifying the thing that was promised or the form of the promise; only the first can be modified, and only by increasing the thing (by 50%, whatever that means). But then, some vows are so absurd, they should be broken—Agamemnon (not surprising) and Jephthah (really surprising).

What fascinates me about all this is not the details, but the fact that Dante is doing this in the first place. He is wading into theological debates and just casually relating the answers—and his answers must be the right ones because they come straight from Heaven itself! If we assume this is not a true story, then Dante is here asserting that he is the greatest theologian of all time, settling theological matters in a poem about a trip through heaven. Repeatedly through this work, Dante really is trying to put the scholastic theologians out of work.

The structure of Paradise is ascending upwards through space. Souls, which we discover all reside in the highest level with God, are reflected on the lower levels, which gives Dane the opportunely to engage is assorted theological discussions before arriving at the place where God Himself is.

I really like the Sun cantos. It fascinates me that Dante has Thomas, a Dominican, tell the story of the founder of the Franciscan order, and Bonaventure, a Franciscan, tell the story of the founder of the Dominican order. Thus, Dante works into a small space commentaries of four of the major theologians who immediately precede him, and in doing so, unites them all into one glorious whole. Then, of course, Dante has to go one step even further—Thomas, who hated metaphor, simile and any other poetic device, speaks in metaphors, similes and poetry that sound a whole lot like the way Dante writes—apparently Thomas realized that Dante was right about how to express philosophical truth. Thomas rambling on in Canto XIII is pretty funny. It reads a lot like Thomas Aquinas wrote…endless splitting of hairs, all presented like it is totally obvious when it is anything but obvious.

Then after getting to the starry spheres in Canto 22, Dante looks back at the path he has come along and realizes how small and unimportant the earth is compared to the place he is about to enter. In Canto 22 of the third part, Dante is saying, “nothing that came before is of interest.”

What matters? In canto 23, Dante is questioned in a manner resembling a catechism. It has nothing in it about Dante’s life on earth. After all the discussions along the way about the activities on earth, Peter just grills Dante (7 questions, of course) about the nature of faith. Then in the following cantos, Dante explains hope and love… straight out of 1 Corinthians: but now abide these three, Faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. Before ascending, Dante must show his understanding of these things.

In the midst of this catechism, Dante is blinded (with a clear reference to Paul being blinded). Why does he become blind when he does? Hebrews defines faith as the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Dante describes faith and then hope and then can no longer see. It is only when he defines love that his sight is returned. And suddenly he can see Adam, the person created in the image of God, and thus created before sin entered the world. This is the closest any human has ever been to being like God (Eve was created from Adam). Thus faith, hope and love defined, sight is returned, and Dante can see God more clearly.

The last cantos are among the most amazing and beautiful things ever written. I don’t know how they can be read without longing for having the same experience that Dante describes. It is incredible how the excitement slowly builds as he lifts his eyes up higher and higher until he hits the vision which no words can explain. The end is absolutely brilliant. Any lesser writer would have included the journey back to earth and a promise to amend his ways or something; Dante ends on the highest imaginable point.

The absence of an explicit description of the appearance of God is also really amazing. There is a bit in Exodus, where God tells Moses, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” So, there is no description of God. Isaiah sees a vision of God and immediately exclaims, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” but he does not provide a description. In John’s vision, he says, “The One who sat on the throne looked like precious stones, like jasper and carnelian. All around the throne was a rainbow the color of an emerald.” That’s it. So, interestingly, Dante provides a more detailed description of God, but still leaves it totally incomplete from our perspective—as if to say, you just have to go see it yourself.

That perfectly captures what it is that I find so achingly beautiful about the whole work. It is obviously a work of fiction, but Dante sure seems to be trying to say something very real using the artifice of this journey. It’s like he is playing deeper game than the other Great Books writers—they write books to illustrate this or that aspect of life. Dante is trying to provide the most accurate explanation imaginable of that thing that animates and explains life, that thing that hovers just beyond human comprehension, by using a fictional journey to describe something which is both real and beyond words. There is nothing else like this, nothing really to which it can even be compared.

And perhaps not coincidentally, it is a work that no matter how many times I read it, I think I am still just scratching the surface of what it is saying.

Related Posts
Alighieri, Dante Inferno “Dante’s Road Trip: Inferno”
Alighieri, Dante Purgatorio, “Dante’s Road Trip: Purgatory”