The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (13 inch ebook reader .txt) 📕

ask,
Or seems but to deny, or in denying grants.”

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The Empyrean, within which the Primum Mobile revolves “with so great desire that its velocity is almost incomprehensible.” ↩

Convito, III 2:⁠—

“The human soul, ennobled by the highest power, that is by reason, partakes of the divine nature in the manner of an eternal Intelligence; because the soul is so ennobled by that sovereign power, and denuded of matter, that the divine light shines in it as in an angel; and there fore man has been called by the philosophers a divine animal.”

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The Heaven of the Moon, in are seen the spirits of those having taken monastic vows, were forced to violate them.

In Dante’s symbolism this heaven represents the first science of the Trivium. Convito, II 14:⁠—

“I say that the heaven of the Moon resembles Grammar; because it may be compared therewith; for if the Moon be well observed, two things are seen peculiar to it, which are not seen in the other stars. One is the shadow in it, which is nothing but the rarity of its body, in which the rays of the sun cannot terminate and be reflected as in the other parts. The other is the variation of its brightness, which now shines on one side, and now upon the other, according as the sun looks upon it. And Grammar has these two properties; since, on account of its infinity, the rays of reason do not terminate in it in any special part of its words; and it shines now on this side, and now on that, inasmuch as certain words, certain declinations, certain constructions, are in use which once were not, and many once were which will be again.”

For the influences of the Moon.

The introduction to this canto is at once a warning and an invitation. Balbi, Life and Times of Dante, II Ch. 15, Mrs. Bunbury’s Tr., says:⁠—

“The last part of the Commedia, which Dante finished about this time (1320),⁠ ⁠… is said to be the most difficult and obscure part of the whole poem. And it is so; and it would be in vain for us to attempt to awaken in the generality of readers that attention which Dante has not been able to obtain for himself. Readers in general will always be repulsed by the difficulties of its numerous allegories, by the series of heavens, arranged according to the now forgotten Ptolemaic system, and more than all by disquisitions on philosophy and theology which often degenerate into mere scholastic themes. With the exception of the three cantos relating to Cacciaguida, and a few other episodes which recall us to earth, as well as those verses in which frequently Dante’s love for Beatrice shines forth, the Paradiso must not be considered as pleasant reading for the general reader, but as an especial recreation for those who find there, expressed in sublime verse, those contemplations that have been the subjects of their philosophical and theological studies.⁠ ⁠… But few will always be the students of philosophy and theology, and much fewer those who look upon these sciences as almost one and the same thing, pursued by two different methods; these, if I am not mistaken, will find in Dante’s Paradiso a treasure of thought, and the loftiest and most soothing words of comfort, forerunners of the joys of Heaven itself. Above all, the Paradiso will delight those who find themselves, when they are reading it, in a somewhat similar disposition of mind to that of Dante when he was writing it; those in short who, after having in their youth lived in the world, and sought happiness in it, have now arrived at maturity, old age, or satiety, and seek by the means of philosophy and theology to know as far as possible of that other world on which their hopes now rest. Philosophy is the romance of the aged, and Religion the only future history for us all. Both these subjects of contemplation we find in Dante’s Paradise, and pursued with a rare modesty, not beyond the limits of our understanding, and with due submission to the Divine Law which placed these limits.”

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In the other parts of the poem “one summit of Parnassus” has sufficed; but in this Minerva, Apollo, and the nine Muses come to his aid, as wind, helmsman, and compass. ↩

The bread of the Angels is Knowledge or Science, which Dante calls the “ultimate perfection.” Convito, I 1:⁠—

“Everything, impelled by the providence of its own nature, in clines towards its own perfection; whence, inasmuch as knowledge is the ultimate perfection of our soul, wherein consists our ultimate felicity, we are all naturally subject to its desire.⁠ ⁠… O blessed those few who sit at the table where the bread of the Angels is eaten.”

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The Argonauts, when they saw their leader Jason ploughing with the wild bulls of Aeetes, and sowing the land with serpents teeth. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII, Tate’s Tr.:⁠—

“To unknown yokes their brawny necks they yield,
And, like tame oxen, plough the wondering field.
The Colchians stare; the Grecians shout, and raise
Their champion’s courage with inspiring praise.
Emboldened now, on fresh attempts he goes,
With serpent’s teeth the fertile furrows sows;
The glebe, fermenting with enchanted juice,
Makes the snake’s teeth a human crop produce.”

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This is generally interpreted as referring to the natural aspiration of the soul for higher things; characterized in Purgatorio XXI 1, as

“The natural thirst that ne’er is satisfied,
Excepting with the water for whose grace
The woman of Sarnaria besought.”

But Venturi says that it means the “being borne onward by the motion of the Primum Mobile, and swept round so as to find himself directly beneath the moon.” ↩

As if looking back upon his journey through the air, Dante thus rapidly describes it in an inverse order, the arrival, the