Go Home: PARADISO, Canto II, Lines 1 - 18

Our poet steps out of the shadows with an important message: "Go home."

Because PARADISO is hard. Because we might get lost. Because we're not prepared.

The stark address to all readers--or perhaps to a much more limited set of specialty readers--that opens Canto II is one of the most unusual moments in COMEDY. When does an author ever warn his readers to stay away?

Let’s find a way survive with the other Argonauts as our Jason begins to plow his own field.

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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:04] My English translation of PARADISO, Canto II, lines 1 - 18. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment about this episode, scroll down this page.

[02:41] Introductory remarks: Don't skip this canto but don't be too optimistic.

[05:10] The rhetoric of the new: PARADISO is not Virgil, not Statius, not the Apocalypse of St John, not PURGATORIO, not INFERNO, and not the CONVIVIO.

[10:08] The bread of angels: the Eucharist, theological study, or something less well defined?

[12:11] Jason, the Argonauts, and the rewriting of Ovid's METAMORPHOSIS.

[15:25] An address to any reader or an address to a more limited audience, like fellow poets?

[19:41] The grace of partial understanding with metonymies.

[23:19] Rereading the passage: PARADISO, Canto II, lines 1 - 18.

My English translation of PARADISO, Canto II, Lines 1 - 18:

Oh you who are in your little boats,

Desiring to listen, following

Behind my ship that travels while singing,

Turn back to see your shores again.

Don’t set out on the deep, because

If you lose me, you’ll perhaps be lost.

I undertake waters that have never been crossed.

Minerva breathes [my way], Apollo leads me,

And the nine muses show me the She-bears.

You other few who stretched your necks

At the right time for the angels’ bread—it

Gives life here but doesn’t bring satiety—

You can certainly set your [sturdier] ships

Out on the salty deep, keeping to my wake,

Before the sea gets calm again.

Those renowned men who went to Colchis,

When they saw Jason had become a plowman,

Were not as amazed as you will be.