Notes.
8 Minerva is the goddess of wisdom.
9 The Bears are the constellations of the Big
and Little Dippers; the second contains the North Star by which sailors navigate.
16 The Argonauts accompanied Jason to Colchis
to capture the Golden Fleece: to obtain it, Jason had to plow and sow a field with
dragon’s teeth which sprang up as armed warriors (Metamorphoses VII, 100-122).
30 The moon is here called a star. Dante and
Beatrice now enter the moon, the sphere of inconstant souls.
51 Cain, murderer of his brother Abel, was
said to have been banished to the moon where he can be seen carrying a bundle of thorns to
sacrifice.
59 Dante attempts to explain the spots on the
moon, as he did in the Convivio (II 14), by different densities of matter. Beatrice
refutes this idea by arguing that such differences would he substantial and would either
allow light to penetrate the surface or would not be visible at all (ll. 67-105). She
proposes that the differences are due to the nature of heavenly bodies themselves which
reflect light to the degree of their inherent "virtue" or power to absorb and to
release their "influence" or luminosity. Light pours down, therefore, from the
Light of God, by way of the Prime Mover through all the remaining eight spheres (ll.
112-123). Each sphere is controlled by an angelic Intelligence corresponding with the nine
orders of angels (ll. 127-138). |
|
- O you
who are seated in your little skiffs,
-
Zealous to listen, following in the wake
-
Behind my ship that singing plows her way,
-
- Turn
back to look again on your own shores:
- 5
Don’t put out on the high seas, for, perhaps,
- In
losing me you may run far adrift!
-
- The
flood I take was never coursed before.
-
Minerva blows, Apollo pilots me,
- And
the nine Muses point me out the Bears.
-
- 10
You other few who stretched your necks on high
- In
time to taste the bread of angels which
-
People here feed on, but never have their fill,
-
- You
well may put your boat out on the deep
- By
staying in the furrow of my wake
- 15
Before the water flows back smooth again.
-
- Those
glorious men who sailed the sea to Colchis,
- When
they saw Jason turned into a plowman,
- Were
not as thunderstruck as you shall be.
-
- The
inborn, boundless thirst for that kingdom
- 20
Created in God’s image swept us onward
-
Almost as swiftly as the skies you see.
-
-
Beatrice gazed upward and I gazed on her;
- And
in the time perhaps it takes an arrow
- To
strike the bull’s-eye, fly, and leave the bow,
-
- 25
I saw myself arrived at a thing of wonder
- Which
drew my sight to it, and therefore she
- From
whom my close concerns could not be hidden
-
-
Turned toward me, as glad as she was lovely,
- And
said, "Direct your mind with thanks to God
- 30
Who here has made us one with the first star."
-
- I
thought we were enveloped in a cloud,
-
Shining, solid, dense, and highly polished
- As a
diamond struck by the sun would be.
-
- The
timeless pearl took us inside itself
- 35
In the same way that water can receive
- A ray
of light while it remains intact.
-
- If I
was body (and here we can’t conceive
- How
one dimension can contain another,
- Which
has to be when body enters body),
-
- 40
All the more should longing then inflame us
- To
see that Essence in which we may see
- How
our own nature and God join in one.
-
- There
shall be seen what we now hold by faith:
- Not
proven to us, but known on its own,
- 45
Like the first truths believed by human beings.
-
- I
answered, "My lady, with the best devotion
- That
I can summon, I here give thanks to Him
- Who
has raised me up out of the mortal world.
-
-
"But tell me what those dark traces are
- 50
Upon this body, which down there on earth
- Cause
people to tell stories about Cain?"
-
- She
smiled a little, and then said to me,
-
"If the opinion of men errs in matters
- Which
the key of our senses won’t unlock,
-
- 55
"Surely wonder’s arrows should not pierce you
- From
this point on, since even when you follow
- The
senses, you see that reason’s wings fall short.
-
-
"But tell me what you think to be the cause?"
- And
I: "What differences here appear to us
- 60
I think result from rare and denser bodies."
-
- And
she: "Surely you’ll see that your thinking
- Is
sunk in falsehood, if you listen well
- To
the argument that I shall give against it.
-
-
"The eighth sphere shows to you a myriad
- 65
Of lights which by intensity and number
- Are
manifestly different in appearance.
-
-
"If ‘rare and dense’ alone could have caused
- All
this, one single power, more or less
-
Allotted equally, would be in all.
-
- 70
"These different powers have to be the fruits
- Of
formal principles which, with one exception,
- Would
by your way of thinking be destroyed.
-
-
"Again, were rarity the reason for
- The
dark you ask about, either this planet
- 75
Would lack material from place to place,
-
-
"Or else, just as the lean and fat are layered
-
Throughout the body, so its density
- Would
alternate like pages in a book.
-
-
"The first, if it were true, would be made plain
- 80
In the sun’s eclipse, by light shining through,
- As
when it strikes rare bodies of all sorts.
-
-
"This is not so: we must then view the other
-
Alternative, and if I prove that wrong,
- Your
theory will be shown to be untrue.
-
- 85
"For if rare matter does not riddle through,
- There
must be a limit where the opposite
-
Density prevents its passing farther;
-
-
"And so the sun’s rays would be reflected back,
- Just
as the color glances off the mirror
- 90
That has lead backing to seal it from behind.
-
-
"Now you will say that the ray shows up dimmer
- On
one place than on other areas
- Since
it’s reflected there from farther back.
-
-
"From this objection — should you care to try —
- 95
You can be set free by experiment
- Which
is the source for the rivers of your arts.
-
-
"Take up three mirrors, and set two of them
-
Equally far from you, and farther still
- Let
the third meet your eyes between the two.
-
- 100
"Facing toward them, have a light placed at
- Your
back, so that it shines in the three mirrors
- And
comes to you reflected in them all.
-
-
"Although the farther image may not look
- As
large to you, you will observe that there
- 105
It shines with equal brightness as the others.
-
-
"Now, as beneath the strokes of warming sunbeams
- The
undersurface of the snow lies bare
- Both
of its former color and its coldness,
-
-
"So, with your intellect swept bare,
- 110
I will inform you with light so alive
- That
it will shimmer as you look on it.
-
-
"Deep in the heaven of divine peace
- There
whirls a body in whose power rests
- The
being of all things that it contains.
-
- 115
"The heaven after it, with brilliant stars,
-
Distributes this being to different essences,
-
Distinct from it and yet contained within it.
-
-
"The other circles by various degrees
-
Dispose the separate powers in themselves
- 120
To their own proper ends and propagation.
-
-
"These organs of the universe proceed,
- As
you now see, from grade to grade, obtaining
- Their
power from above and acting downward.
-
-
"Pay close attention now to how I travel
- 125
Through this passage to the truth you long for,
- So
that you’ll learn to cross the ford alone.
-
-
"The motion and the power of sacred spheres
- Must
be inspired by angelic movers,
- Just
as the hammer’s art is by the smith.
-
- 130
"And that heaven which myriad lights make lovely
- Takes
its image from the deep Mind that turns it
- And
of that image makes itself the seal.
-
-
"And as the soul within this dust of yours
- Has
been diffused throughout the different members
- 135
To suit each one to some distinctive function,
-
-
"So the Intelligence deals out its goodness
- By
multiplying itself among the stars
- As it
revolves on its own unity.
-
-
"Varying power makes up various mixtures
- 140
With the precious bodies which it enlivens
- And
in which it is bound like life in you.
-
-
"Because of the glad nature from which it flows,
- This
mingled power shines out through the body
- As
gladness does in the eye’s lively pupil.
-
- 145
"From this power comes the apparent difference
-
Between light and light, not from dense and rare:
- This
is the formal principle which produces,
-
-
"In proportion to its goodness, the dark and bright."
|
return
to Paradiso I