Paradiso

Canto XXX

The Tenth Heaven, or Empyrean—The River of Light—The Two Courts of Heaven—The White Rose of Paradise.

Perchance six thousand miles remote from us¹Is glowing the sixth hour, and now this world²Inclines its shadow almost to a level,When the mid-heaven begins to make itselfSo deep to us, that here and there a starCeases to shine so far down as this depth,And as advances bright exceedinglyThe handmaid of the sun, the heaven is closedLight after light to the most beautiful;Not otherwise the Triumph, which forever³Plays round about the point that vanquished me,Seeming enclosed by what itself encloses,Little by little from my vision faded;Whereat to turn mine eyes on BeatriceMy seeing nothing and my love constrained me.If what has hitherto been said of herWere all concluded in a single praise,Scant would it be to serve the present turn.Not only does the beauty I beheldTranscend ourselves, but truly I believeIts Maker only may enjoy it all.Vanquished do I confess me by this passageMore than by problem of his theme was everO’ercome the comic or the tragic poet;For as the sun the sight that trembles most,Even so the memory of that sweet smileMy mind depriveth of its very self.From the first day that I beheld her faceIn this life, to the moment of this look,The sequence of my song has ne’er been severed;But now perforce this sequence must desistFrom following her beauty with my verse,As every artist at his uttermost.Such as I leave her to a greater fameThan any of my trumpet, which is bringingIts arduous matter to a final close,With voice and gesture of a perfect leaderShe recommenced: “We from the greatest body⁴Have issued to the heaven that is pure light;Light intellectual replete with love,Love of true good replete with ecstasy,Ecstasy that transcendeth every sweetness.⁵Here shalt thou see the one host and the other⁶Of Paradise, and one in the same aspectsWhich at the final judgment thou shalt see.”⁷Even as a sudden lightning that dispersesThe visual spirits, so that it deprivesThe eye of impress from the strongest objects,Thus round about me flashed a living light,And left me swathed around with such a veilOf its effulgence, that I nothing saw.“Ever the Love which quieteth this heavenWelcomes into itself with such salute,To make the candle ready for its flame.”No sooner had within me these brief wordsAn entrance found, than I perceived myselfTo be uplifted over my own power,And I with vision new rekindled me,Such that no light whatever is so pureBut that mine eyes were fortified against it.And light I saw in fashion of a river⁸Fulvid with its effulgence, ’twixt two banksDepicted with an admirable Spring.Out of this river issued living sparks,⁹And on all sides sank down into the flowers,Like unto rubies that are set in gold;¹⁰And then, as if inebriate with the odors,They plunged again into the wondrous torrent,And as one entered issued forth another.“The high desire, that now inflames and moves theeTo have intelligence of what thou seest,Pleaseth me all the more, the more it swells.But of this water it behoves thee drinkBefore so great a thirst in thee be slaked.”Thus said to me the sunshine of mine eyes;And added: “The river and the topazes¹¹Going in and out, and the laughing of the herbage,Are of their truth foreshadowing prefaces;Not that these things are difficult in themselves,But the deficiency is on thy side,For yet thou hast not vision so exalted.”There is no babe that leaps so suddenlyWith face towards the milk, if he awakeMuch later than his usual custom is,As I did, that I might make better mirrorsStill of mine eyes, down stooping to the waveWhich flows that we therein be better made.And even as the penthouse of mine eyelidsDrank of it, it forthwith appeared to meOut of its length to be transformed to round.¹²Then as a folk who have been under masksSeem other than before, if they divestThe semblance not their own they disappeared in,Thus into greater pomp were changed for meThe flowerets and the sparks, so that I sawBoth of the Courts of Heaven made manifest.O splendor of God! by means of which I sawThe lofty triumph of the realm veracious,Give me the power to say how it I saw!¹³There is a light above, which visible¹⁴Makes the Creator unto every creature,Who only in beholding Him has peace,And it expands itself in circular formTo such extent, that its circumferenceWould be too large a girdle for the sun.The semblance of it is all made of raysReflected from the top of Primal Motion,Which takes therefrom vitality and power.And as a hill in water at its baseMirrors itself, as if to see its beautyWhen affluent most in verdure and in flowers,So, ranged aloft all round about the light,Mirrored I saw in more ranks than a thousandAll who above there have from us returned.And if the lowest row collect within itSo great a light, how vast the amplitudeIs of this Rose in its extremest leaves!My vision in the vastness and the heightLost not itself, but comprehended allThe quantity and quality of that gladness.There near and far nor add nor take away;For there where God immediately doth govern,The natural law in naught is relevant.Into the yellow of the Rose Eternal¹⁵That spreads, and multiplies, and breathes an odorOf praise unto the ever-vernal Sun,As one who silent is and fain would speak,Me Beatrice drew on, and said: “BeholdOf the white stoles how vast the convent is!¹⁶Behold how vast the circuit of our city!Behold our seats so filled to overflowing,That here henceforward are few people wanting!On that great throne whereon thine eyes are fixedFor the crown’s sake already placed upon it,Before thou suppest at this wedding feastShall sit the soul (that is to be Augustus¹⁷On earth) of noble Henry, who shall come¹⁸To redress Italy ere she be ready.Blind covetousness, that casts its spell upon you,Has made you like unto the little child,Who dies of hunger and drives off the nurse.And in the sacred forum then shall be¹⁹A Prefect such, that openly or covert²⁰On the same road he will not walk with him.But long of God he will not be enduredIn holy office; he shall be thrust downWhere Simon Magus is for his deserts,²¹And make him of Alagna lower go!”²²

The ascent to the Empyrean, the tenth and last Heaven. Of this Heaven, Dante, Convito, II 4, says:— “This is the sovereign edifice of the world, in which the whole world is included, and outside of which nothing is. And it is not in space, but was formed solely in the primal Mind, which the Greeks call Protonoe. This is that magnificence of which the Psalmist spake, when he says to God, ‘Thy magnificence is exalted above the heavens.’ ” Milton, Paradise Lost, III 56:— “Now had the Almighty Father from above, / From the pure empyrean where he sits / High throned above all highth, bent down his eye, / His own works and their works at once to view. / About him all the sanctities of heaven / Stood thick as stars, and from his sight received / Beatitude past utterance.” ↩
The sixth hour is noon, and when noon is some six thousand miles away from us, the dawn is approaching, the shadow of the earth lies almost on a plane with it, and gradually the stars disappear. ↩
The nine circles of Angels, described in Canto XXVIII. ↩
From the Crystalline Heaven to the Empyrean. Dante, Convito, II 15, makes the Empyrean the symbol of Theology, the Divine Science:— “The Empyrean Heaven, by its peace, resembles the Divine Science, which is full of all peace; and which suffers no strife of opinions or sophistical arguments, because of the exceeding certitude of its subject, which is God. And of this he says to his disciples, ‘My peace I give unto you; my peace I leave you’; giving and leaving them his doctrine, which is this science of which I speak. Of this Solomon says: ‘There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number; my dove, my undefiled, is but one.’ All sciences he calls queens and paramours and virgins; and this he calls a dove, because it is without blemish of strife; and this he calls perfect, because it makes us perfectly to see the truth in which our soul has rest.” ↩
Philippians 4:7:— “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding.” ↩
The Angels and the souls of the saints. ↩
The Angels will be seen in the same aspect after the last judgment as before; but the souls of the saints will wear “the twofold garments,” spoken of in Canto XXV 92, the spiritual body, and the glorified earthly body. ↩
Daniel 7:10:— “A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him.” And Revelation 22:1:— “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” ↩
The sparks are Angels, and the flowers the souls of the blessed. ↩
For the mystic virtues of the ruby, see note 658. ↩
For the mystic virtues of the topaz, see note 1584. ↩
“By the length,” says Venturi, “was represented the outpouring of God upon his creatures; by the roundness, the return of this outpouring to God, as to its first source and ultimate end.” ↩
Dante repeats the word vidi, I saw, three times, as a rhyme, to express the intenseness of his vision. ↩
Buti thinks that this light is the Holy Ghost; Philalethes, that it is the Logos, or second person of the Trinity; Tommaseo, that it is Illuminating Grace. ↩
Didron, Christian Iconography, I 234, says:— “It was in the centre, at the very heart of this luminous eternity, that the Deity shone forth. Dante no doubt wished to describe one of those roses with a thousand petals, which light the porches of our noblest cathedrals—the rose-windows, which were contemporaneous with the Florentine poet, and which he had no doubt seen in his travels in France. There in fact, in the very depth of the chalice of that rose of colored glass, the Divine Majesty shines out resplendently.” ↩
The word convent is here used in its original meaning of a coming together, or assembly. ↩
The name of Augustus is equivalent to Kaiser, Caesar, or Emperor. In Canto XXXII 119, the Virgin Mary is called Augusta, the Queen of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Empress of “the most just and merciful of empires.” ↩
This is Henry of Luxembourg, to whom in 1300 Dante was looking as the regenerator of Italy. He became Emperor in 1308, and died in 1311, ten years before Dante. See note 618, and note 1180. ↩
At the Curia Romana, or Papal court. ↩
Pope Clement V (1305–1314). See note 272. The allusion here is to his double dealing with Henry of Luxembourg. See note 1685. ↩
Among the Simoniacs in the third round of Malebolge. Of Simon Magus, Milman, History of Latin Christianity, II 97, writes thus:— “Unless Simon was in fact a personage of considerable importance during the early history of Christianity, it is difficult to account for his becoming, as he is called by Beausobre, the hero of the Romance of Heresy. If Simon was the same with that magician, a Cypriot by birth, who was employed by Felix as agent in his intrigue to detach Drusilla from her husband, this part of his character accords with the charge of licentiousness advanced both against his life and his doctrines by his Christian opponents. This is by no means improbable; and indeed, even if he was not a person thus politically prominent and influential, the early writers of Christianity would scarcely have concurred in representing him as a formidable and dangerous antagonist of the Faith as a kind of personal rival of St. Peter, without some other groundwork for the fiction besides the collision recorded in the Acts. The doctrines which are ascribed to him and to his followers, who continued to exist for several centuries, harmonize with the glimpse of his character and tenets in the writings of St. Luke. Simon probably was one of that class of adventurers which abounded at this period, or like Apollonius of Tyana, and others at a later time, with whom the opponents of Christianity attempted to confound Jesus and his Apostles. His doctrine was Oriental in its language and in its pretensions. He was the first Aeon or emanation, or rather perhaps the first manifestation of the primal Deity. He assumed not merely the title of the Great Power or Virtue of God, but all the other Appellations—the Word, the Perfection, the Paraclete, the Almighty, the whole combined attributes of the Deity. He had a companion, Helena, according to the statement of his enemies, a beautiful prostitute, whom he found at Tyre, who became in like manner the first conception (the Ennoea) of the Deity; but who, by her conjunction with matter, had been enslaved to its malignant influence, and, having fallen under the power of evil angels, had been in a constant state of transmigration, and, among other mortal bodies, had occupied that of the famous Helen of Troy. Beausobre, who elevates Simon into a Platonic philosopher, explains the Helena as a sublime allegory. She was the Psyche of his philosophic romance. The soul, by evil influences, had become imprisoned in matter. By her the Deity had created the angels: the angels, enamored of her, had inextricably entangled her in that polluting bondage, in order to prevent her return to heaven. To fly from their embraces she had passed from body to body. Connecting this fiction with the Grecian mythology, she was Minerva, or impersonated Wisdom; perhaps, also, Helena, or embodied Beauty.” ↩
Pope Boniface VIII, a native of Alagna, now Anagni. See note 270, and note 925. Dante has already his punishment prepared. He is to be thrust head downward into a narrow hole in the rock of Malebolge, and to be driven down still lower when Clement V shall follow him. ↩