Dante's Divine Comedy: Paradiso
Canto II
Dante stops to warn the shallow reader to turn back because from now on his journey will take him through unfamiliar territory. He fixes his eyes on Beatrice and together they rise up beyond the sphere of fire into the First Heaven, the sphere of the Moon, the one furthest away from the Empyrean and thus the most unstable, at a speed approaching that of light. They penetrate its substance as light through water, as God incarnated himself in man or as a saved soul enters God. Beatrice explains that the markings on the lunar surface are due to the varying densities of energy of the celestial beings who are rotating the various spheres.
O Ye, who in some pretty little boat,
Eager to listen, have been following
Behind my ship, that singing sails along,
Turn back to look again upon your shores;
Do not put out to sea, lest peradventure,
In losing me, you might yourselves be lost.
The sea I sail has never yet been passed;
Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo,
And Muses nine point out to me the Bears.[1]
Ye other few who have the neck uplifted
Betimes to th' bread of Angels upon which
One liveth here and grows not sated by it,
Well may you launch upon the deep salt-sea
Your vessel, keeping still my wake before you
Upon the water that grows smooth again.
Those glorious ones who unto Colchos passed
Were not so wonder-struck as you shall be,
When Jason they beheld a ploughman made![2]
The con-created and perpetual thirst
For the realm deiform did bear us on,
As swift almost as ye the heavens behold.
Upward gazed Beatrice, and I at her;
And in such space perchance as strikes a bolt
And flies, and from the notch unlocks itself,
Arrived I saw me where a wondrous thing
Drew to itself my sight; and therefore she
From whom no care of mine could be concealed,
Towards me turning, blithe as beautiful,
Said unto me: "Fix gratefully thy mind
On God, who unto the first star has brought us."
It seemed to me a cloud encompassed us,
Luminous, dense, consolidate and bright
As adamant on which the sun is striking.[3]
Into itself did the eternal pearl
Receive us, even as water doth receive
A ray of light, remaining still unbroken.
If I was body, (and we here conceive not
How one dimension tolerates another,
Which needs must be if body enter body,)
More the desire should be enkindled in us
That essence to behold, wherein is seen
How God and our own nature were united.
There will be seen what we receive by faith,
Not demonstrated, but self-evident
In guise of the first truth that man believes.
I made reply: "Madonna, as devoutly
As most I can do I give thanks to Him
Who has removed me from the mortal world.
But tell me what the dusky spots may be
Upon this body, which below on Earth
Make people tell that fabulous tale of Cain?"[4]
Somewhat she smiled; and then, "If the opinion
Of mortals be erroneous," she said,
"Where'er the key of sense doth not unlock,
Certes, the shafts of wonder should not pierce thee
Now, forasmuch as, following the senses,
Thou seest that the reason has short wings.[5]
But tell me what thou think'st of it thyself."
And I: "What seems to us up here diverse,
Is caused, I think, by bodies rare and dense."
And she: "Right truly shalt thou see immersed
In error thy belief, if well thou hearest
The argument that I shall make against it.
Lights many the eighth sphere displays to you
Which in their quality and quantity
May noted be of aspects different.
If this were caused by rare and dense alone,
One only virtue would there be in all
Or more or less diffused, or equally.
Virtues diverse must be perforce the fruits
Of formal principles; and these, save one,
Of course would by thy reasoning be destroyed.
Besides, if rarity were of this dimness
The cause thou askest, either through and through
This planet thus attenuate were of matter,
Or else, as in a body is apportioned
The fat and lean, so in like manner this
Would in its volume interchange the leaves.
Were it the former, in the sun's eclipse
It would be manifest by the shining through
Of light, as through aught tenuous interfused.
This is not so; hence we must scan the other,
And if it chance the other I demolish,
Then falsified will thy opinion be.
But if this rarity go not through and through,
There needs must be a limit, beyond which
Its contrary prevents the further passing,
And thence the foreign radiance is reflected,
Even as a colour cometh back from glass,
The which behind itself concealeth lead.
Now thou wilt say the sunbeam shows itself
More dimly there than in the other parts,
By being there reflected farther back.
From this reply experiment will free thee
If e'er thou try it, which is wont to be
The fountain to the rivers of your arts.
Three mirrors shalt thou take, and two remove
Alike from thee, the other more remote
Between the former two shall meet thine eyes.[6]
Turned towards these, cause that behind thy back
Be placed a light, illuming the three mirrors
And coming back to thee by all reflected.
Though in its quantity be not so ample
The image most remote, there shalt thou see
How it perforce is equally resplendent.
Now, as beneath the touches of warm rays
Naked the subject of the snow remains
Both of its former colour and its cold,
Thee thus remaining in thy intellect,
Will I inform with such a living light,
That it shall tremble in its aspect to thee.
Within the heaven of the divine repose
Revolves a body, in whose virtue lies
The being of whatever it contains.
The following heaven, that has so many eyes,
Divides this being by essences diverse,
Distinguished from it, and by it contained.
The other spheres, by various differences,
All the distinctions which they have within them
Dispose unto their ends and their effects.
Thus do these organs of the world proceed,
As thou perceivest now, from grade to grade;
Since from above they take, and act beneath.
Observe me well, how through this place I come
Unto the truth thou wishest, that hereafter
Thou mayst alone know how to keep the ford
The power and motion of the holy spheres,
As from the artisan the hammer's craft,
Forth from the blessed motors must proceed.
The heaven, which lights so manifold make fair,
From the Intelligence profound, which turns it,
The image takes, and makes of it a seal.
And even as the soul within your dust
Through members different and accommodated
To faculties diverse expands itself,
So likewise this Intelligence diffuses
Its virtue multiplied among the stars.
Itself revolving on its unity.
Virtue diverse doth a diverse alloyage
Make with the precious body that it quickens,
In which, as life in you, it is combined.
From the glad nature whence it is derived,
The mingled virtue through the body shines,
Even as gladness through the living pupil.
From this proceeds whate'er from light to light
Appeareth different, not from dense and rare:
This is the formal principle that produces,
According to its goodness, dark and bright."
Footnotes
1. Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom, justice, law, victory, and the sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. She is also a goddess of warfare, though with a focus on strategic warfare, rather than the violence of gods such as Mars. Beginning in the second c entury BC, the Romans equated her with the Greek goddess Athena. Minerva is one of the three Roman deities in the Capitoline Triad, along with Jupiter and Juno.
Table of Muses and Heavens
| No | Muse | Association |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Clio | Luna (Moon) |
| 2 | Calliope | Mercurius |
| 3 | Terpsichore | Venus |
| 4 | Melpomene | Sol (Sun) |
| 5 | Eratho | Mars |
| 6 | Euterpe | Jupiter |
| 7 | Polyhymnia | Saturnus |
| 8 | Urania | Celum Stellatus (Stars) |
| 9 | Container | Primum Mobile |
| 10 | Apollo, Muses | Empyrean, God, Beatrice |
Table of Graces (Daughters of Zeus)
| No | Daughters | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thalia | Comedy |
| 2 | Euphrosine | Joy |
| 3 | Aglaia | Splendor |
Table of Theological Virtues
| No | Virtue |
|---|---|
| 1 | Faith |
| 2 | Hope |
| 3 | Charity (Love) |
Table of Cardinal Virtues
| No | Virtue |
|---|---|
| 1 | Prudence |
| 2 | Justice |
| 3 | Fortitude |
| 4 | Temperance |
2. Colchis was a region in the Southern Caucasus that appeared in the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, in Greek mythology. It was on the area where modern-day Georgia is now located.
In the myth of the Argonauts, Jason was told to retrieve the Golden Fleece from Colchis by the king of Iolcus, Pelias, who had usurped the throne from his brother Aeson, who was Jason's father. Jason organised the expedition, and along with his shipmates, t he Argonauts, set sail for Colchis. There, he told King Aeetes that he wanted to take the Golden Fleece, and the king accepted to help him if he passed a number of trials. Jason eventually succeeded to pass the trials and kill the never-sleeping dragon that guarded the fleece, and retrieved it. He then set sail for Greece, followed by Aeetes' daughter, Medea.
3. Dante warns his readers of the challenging territory that lies ahead. They will be "wonder-struck," he says, by the sights and sounds he is about to relate. Rising through the heavens as swiftly as an arrow, he and Beatrice arrive at the moon, which Dante i magines as a "cloud ... shining and solid, dense and burnished clean."
Enveloped in this cloud, Dante asks Beatrice why the moon appears to have dark spots when viewed from Earth. He has heard various explanations, some of them based on folklore and others on medieval astronomy. One explanation attributes the spots to variatio ns in the density of the matter that makes up the moon: where the moon matter is "rarer" (i.e., less dense), the dark spots appear.
Dante's ideas about the moon reflect the contrast, sometimes subtle and sometimes glaring, between medieval and modern views of the cosmos. Both his hypothesis of varying densities and Beatrice's hypothesis of different materials were current in 14th-centur y Europe. At the time tools for learning about the moon's surface were quite limited; even rudimentary telescopes were not available until three centuries after Dante's death.
4. There are various explanations for how the Man in the Moon came to be.
A longstanding European tradition holds that the man was banished to the Moon for some crime. Jewish lore says that the image of Jacob is engraved on the Moon. Another held that he is the man caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath and sentenced by God to de ath by stoning in the Book of Numbers XV.32–36. There is a Roman legend that he is a sheep-thief.
One medieval Christian tradition claims that he is Cain (who killed Abel), the Wanderer, forever doomed to circle the Earth. (See Inferno, Canto 20, lines 126-127.
5. Certes is an adverb meaning "certainly" or "in truth." It is an archaic term that has its origins in Middle English and Latin.
6. This, says Beatrice, is inaccurate. If the moon varied in density throughout, she explains, the sun would shine through the less dense regions during an eclipse. Or, if only a portion of the moon varied in density, the dense portion would reflect the sunlig ht back uniformly, just as mirrors at various distances reflect a flame with equal clarity. Instead, Beatrice describes the uneven appearance of the moon as a reflection of the variety with which God has endowed the physical universe.
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