John T. Slattery - Dante: The Central Man of All the World

J >> John T. Slattery >> Dante: The Central Man of All the World

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In the Heaven of Saturn, Beatrice tells the poet that she does not smile
out of regard for his human vision not powerful enough to sustain her
excess of beauty. The lovely symphonies of Paradise are also silent for
the same reason. This in effect is a poetical way of saying that the
bliss and glory in Saturn are greater than any beatitude in the lower
spheres.

This seventh Heaven is the Heaven where appear saints distinguished for
contemplation, the principle representatives being St. Peter Damian and
St. Benedict. The latter wrote a treatise in which he likened the rule
of his order to a ladder having twelve rungs by means of which the
mystic might mount to Heaven. The second rung in that ladder is silence.
If Dante was familiar with the Benedictine treatise, the significance of
silence in Saturn is at once suggested. The figure of a ladder is a very
common one in mystical theology, which borrows the conception from the
experience of Jacob (Gen. XXVIII, 12). "And he saw in his sleep a ladder
standing upon the earth and the top thereof touching heaven, the angels
also of God ascending and descending." To symbolize the truth that
Heaven is to be reached through the Church by means of the contemplation
of eternal things Dante now shows us the Golden Ladder, down which gleam
so many radiant spirits that it seems as if all the stars of Heaven are
approaching.

"Colored like gold, on which the sunshine gleams,
A stairway I beheld to such a height
Uplifted, that mine eye pursued it not.
Likewise beheld I down the steps descending
So many splendors, that I thought each light
That in the heaven appears was there diffused."
(XXI, 28.)

In the Heaven of the Fixed Stars the triumph of Christ gladdens the
wondering eyes of the poet:

"Behold the hosts of Christ's triumphal march and all the fruit
harvested by the rolling of these spheres."

At these words of Beatrice Dante turns and beholds all the saints seen
in the other spheres and many other spirits gathered round the God-man
to praise Him for the Redemption and Atonement. Christ here reveals
Himself in the form of a gorgeous Sun surrounded by those countless
spirits, appearing as lights or flowers. Apparently the poet gets just
a momentary glimpse of the glorified humanity of the Saviour. The direct
rays of the divine splendor cannot long be endured, so, in condescension
to Dante's weakness of vision, a cloudy screen permits the poet to
sustain the Vision now irradiating its light on the living, spiritual
flowers.

"Saw I, above the myriad of lamps,
A sun that one and all of them enkindled,
E'en as our own doth the supernal sights,
And through the living light transparent shone
The lucent substance so intensely clear
Into my sight, that I sustained it not.
'O Beatrice, thou gentle guide and dear!'
To me she said: 'What overmasters thee
A virtue is from which naught shields itself.
There are the wisdom and the omnipotence
That ope the thoroughfares 'twixt heaven and earth
For which there erst had been so long a yearning.'"
(XXIII, 28.)

After Christ withdraws to the Empyrean the poet finds that he has been
so much strengthened and enlightened by the Vision that increased power
of sight is given to him again to behold the smile of his guide. She
says to him:

"Open thine eyes and look at what I am
Thou has beheld such things, that strong enough
Hast thou become to tolerate my smile."
(XXIII, 46.)

He continues in ecstasy to gaze upon her surpassing beauty until she
bids him look upon the "meadow of flowers," the angels and saints:

"Why doth my face so much enamor thee,
That to the garden fair thou turnest not,
Which under the rays of Christ is blossoming?
There is the Rose in which the Word Divine
Became incarnate; there the lilies are
By whose perfume the good way was discovered."
(XXIII, 70.)

The lilies are the apostles, the Rose the Blessed Virgin Mary. "Mary,"
says Cardinal Newman, "is the most beautiful flower that ever was seen
in the spiritual world. She is the Queen of spiritual flowers and
therefore she is called Rose, for the rose is fitly called of all
flowers that most beautiful." Dante says: "The name of the fair flower
that I e'er invoke morning and night utterly enthralled my soul to gaze
upon the greater fire." Now with joy the poet sees the coronation by the
spirits of Mary, Mystical Rose, and then his eyes follow her as she
mounts to the Empyrean in the wake of her divine Son while the gleaming
saints sing her praises in the _Regina Coeli_.

The eight Heavens through which the poet has come, have been so many
stages of preparation for the final vision of Paradise. His eyes have
been gradually gaining strength by gazing upon miracles of light and
beauty and by seeing truth embodied in many representative forms to fit
him finally to see God in His Essence. Before that consummation,
however, one more preparatory vision is necessary. The poet must first
see the symbolic image of God. "What!" you may exclaim, "will Dante be
audacious enough to attempt to picture the Invisible Himself? Granted
that 'he is all wings and pure imagination' can he hope to image the
Incomprehensible Being 'who only hath immortality and inhabiteth light
inaccessible, whom no man hath seen nor can see?' (I Tim. VI, 16). Will
he not defeat his purpose by employing a symbol circumscribing Him who
is beyond circumscription?" But the genius of Dante does not fail him in
his daring undertaking, and this is the more remarkable because instead
of selecting as a symbol something infinitely large, he choses something
atomically small. In the ninth Heaven surrounded by the nine orders of
pure spirits God is represented "as an indivisible atomic Point
radiating light and symbolizing the unity of the Divinity as a fitting
prelude to the more intimate vision of the Blessed Trinity which will be
vouchsafed in the Empyrean." "A Point I saw that darted light so sharp
no lid unclosing may bear up against its keenness. On that Point depend
the heavens and the whole of nature" (XXXVIII, 16).

On the appropriateness of this symbol Ozanam makes this interesting
comment: "God reveals Himself as necessarily indivisible and
consequently incapable of having ascribed to Him the abstraction of
quantity and quality by which we know creatures: indefinable, because
every definition is an analysis which decomposes the subject defined;
incomparable because there are no terms to institute a comparison; so
that one may say, giving the words an oblique meaning, that He is
infinitely little, that He is nothing. But on the other hand, that which
is without extension, moves without resistance; that which is not to be
grasped, cannot be contained; that which can be enclosed within no
limits, either actual or logical is by that very fact limitless. The
infinitely little is then also the infinitely great and we may say that
it is all." The indivisible atomic Point of intensest light as a symbol
of God is indeed a sublime conception of faith and genius that appeals
equally to the child, the philosopher and the mystic.

The supreme thing still necessary for the consummation of Dante's
pilgrimage is the Beatific Vision of God. That occurs in the Empyrean
where symbol gives way to reality, where the Elect are seen no longer in
forms veiled in light but in the glorified semblance of their earthly
bodies, where contemplation gives direct vision of God in His essence.
How will the poet, while still in the flesh, endure this vision of the
Infinite, Incomprehensible Eternal God? Prepared as he has been by the
experiences of the nine Heavens, he has still further need of
supernatural assistance. That is now given to him by means of a flash
wrapping him in a garment of light, which blinds him and then
illuminates his sight and intellect and enables him to see a more
complete foreshadowing of truth dissolving into Divine Wisdom.

The spectacle he now beholds, perhaps suggested to the poet by the
passage from the Apocalypse (XXII, 1). "And he showed me a river of
water of life, clear as crystal proceeding from the throne of God and of
the Lamb,"--the spectacle which now presents itself is that of a river
of light flowing between two banks of flowers and vivid with darting
sparks. The river represents illuminating grace, the sparks angels, the
flowers saints. This river of light wherein are reflected the Elect, as
verdure and flowers on a hillside are mirrored in a limpid stream at
its foot, is poetically represented as having the effect of a
sacrament. It bestows grace and that grace called _lumen gloriae_, light
of glory, endowing the soul with a faculty beyond its natural needs or
merits, so disposes the soul that it becomes deiform and is rendered
capable of immediate intuition of the Divine Essence.

"There is a light above, which visible
Makes the Creator unto every creature
Who only in beholding Him, has peace."
(XXX, 100.)

Beatrice tells Dante that he must drink his fill of the stupendous
splendor by gazing intently on the river of pure light, so that he may
be able to contemplate the whole unveiled glory and then see God
directly.

As Dante gazes on the illuminating stream it undergoes a marvelous
transformation, taking the form of a Rose the center of which is a sea
of radiance.

"And even as the penthouse of mine eyelids
Drank of it, it forthwith appeared to me
Out of its length to be transformed to round.
Then as a folk who have been under masks
Seem other than before, if they divest
The semblance not their own they disappeared in,
Thus into greater pomp were changed for me
The flowerets and the sparks, so that I saw
Both of the Courts of Heaven made manifest."
(XXX, 87.)

The two courts of Heaven, angels and saints, are made manifest in the
Rose which spreads out like a vast amphitheatre the lowest circle of
which is wider than the circumference of the sun. Above the center of
the Rose as the Point of light, is God in all His glory and love, adored
in blissful raptures by the saints who form the petals of the heavenly
flower. Angels with faces aflame, in white garments and with golden
wings fly down to the petals as bees to flowers, bringing God's
blessings to the saints and fly back to God as bees to their hive,
carrying the adoration of the Elect.

Beatrice leads the poet into the center of the Heavenly Rose.

"Into the yellow of the Rose Eternal
That spreads, and multiplies, and breathes an odor
Of praise unto the ever-vernal Sun,
As one who silent is and fain would speak,
Me Beatrice drew on, and said: 'Behold
Of the white stoles how vast the convent is!
Behold how vast the circuit of our city!
Behold our seats so filled to overflowing,
That here henceforward are few people wanting!'"
(XXX, 124.)

While Dante gazes on the supernatural spectacle Beatrice slips away to
take her place the third seat below the throne of the Blessed Virgin. As
his guide she has led him to the highest Heaven and has instructed him
in all that concerns God and His attributes. Her mission as Revelation
or Divine Science being finished, she withdraws and sends St. Bernard to
bring the poet into intimate union with the Godhead.

"The general form of Paradise already
My glance had comprehended as a whole,
In no part hitherto remaining fixed,
And round I turned me with rekindled wish
My lady to interrogate of things
Concerning which my mind was in suspense.
One thing I meant, another answered me;
I thought I should see Beatrice, and saw
An Old Man habited like the glorious people.
O'er flowing was he in his eyes and cheeks
With joy benign, in attitude of pity
As to a tender father is becoming.
And 'She, where is she?' instantly I said;
Whence he: 'To put an end to thy desire,
Me Beatrice hath sent from mine own place.
And if thou lookest up to the third round
Of the first rank, again shalt thou behold her
Upon the throne her merits have assigned her.'
Without reply I lifted up mine eyes,
And saw her, as she made herself a crown
Reflecting from herself the eternal rays.
Not from that region which the highest thunders
Is any mortal eye so far removed,
In whatsoever sea it deepest sinks,
As there from Beatrice my sight; but this
Was nothing unto me; because her image
Descended not to me by medium blurred."
(XXXI, 52.)

St. Bernard, the mystic, celebrating the Blessed Virgin's praises in a
marvelous outburst of song, unsurpassed for lyrical beauty, beseeches
her intercession that Dante may see God face to face.

"Now doth this man, who from the lowest depth
Of the universe as far as here has seen
One after one the spiritual lives,
Supplicate thee through grace for so much power
That with his eyes he may uplift himself
Higher towards the uttermost salvation.
And I, who never burned for my own seeing
More than I do for his, all of my prayers
Proffer to thee, and pray they come not short,
That thou wouldst scatter from him every cloud
Of his mortality so with thy prayers,
That the Chief Pleasure be to him displayed.
Still farther do I pray thee, Queen, who canst
Whate'er thou wilt, that sound thou mayst preserve
After so great a vision his affections.
Let thy protection conquer human movements;
See Beatrice and all the blessed ones
My prayers to second clasp their hands to thee!
The eyes beloved and revered of God,
Fastened upon the speaker, showed to us
How grateful unto her are prayers devout;
Then unto the Eternal Light they turned,
On which it is not credible could be
By any creature bent an eye so clear."
(XXXIII, 22.)

The prayer is granted. "My vision becoming undimmed, more and more
entered the beam of light which in itself is Truth." (XXXIII, 52.) The
veil is removed. He gazes into the limitless depths of the Divinity. He
enjoys the Beatific Vision.

First he sees by immediate intuition the Divine Essence in its creative
power, the examplar of all substances, modes and accidents united in
harmony and love; then he beholds the Creator Himself and all the
divine perfections and all the eternal plans of God. Clear to the poet
now is the truth of the mystery of the Blessed Trinity unveiled in
circles of light like rainbows of green, white and red of equal
circumference, the Second being as it were the splendor of the First and
the Third emanating from the two others. Unravelled also is the mystery
of the two natures human and divine, in the divine person of Christ seen
in human form in the second luminous circle. But the Vision is so far
above the poet's memory to retain or his speech to express that he
cannot find words to make intelligible the splendor he beholds or the
rapture he experiences.

"Oh grace abounding, wherein I presumed to fix my look on the eternal
light so long that I consumed my sight thereon! Within its depths I saw
ingathered, bound by love in one volume, the scattered leaves of all the
universe; substance and accidents and their relations, as though
together fused, after such fashion that what I tell of is one simple
flame.

"In the profound and shining being of the deep light appeared to me
three circles, of three colours and one magnitude; one by the second as
Iris by Iris seemed reflected, and the third seemed a fire breathed
equally from one and from the other. Oh, but how scant the utterance,
and how faint, to my conceit! and it, to what I saw, is such that it
sufficeth not to call it little. O light eternal who only in thyself
abidest, only thyself dost understand, and to thyself, self-understood,
self-understanding, turnest love and smiling! That circling which
appeared in thee to be conceived as a reflected light, by mine eyes
scanned some little, in itself, of its own colour, seemed to be painted
with our effigy, and thereat my sight was all committed to it.

"To the high fantasy here power failed; but already my desire and will
were rolled--even as a wheel that moveth equally--by the Love that moves
the sun and the other stars." (XXXIII, 82.)

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