Piccarda Donati's Apotheosis of the Will: PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 58 - 87

Piccarda has confessed to her more humble place in the heavens. Our pilgrim Dante then wants to know if she wants more.

Her answer leads her to an apotheosis of the will. Everything in the universe is in harmony; all dissonances are put aside.

It also leads her to a similar spot that Francesca comes to in INFERNO V: a riff off a quotation from St. Augustine's CONFESSIONS.

How does the universe reconcile its differences?

The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:04] My English translation of PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 58 - 87. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me through a dropped comment, scroll down this page.

[03:35] Dante's position in this passage: (1) the pilgrim's smaller question gets a bigger, cosmological answer; and (2) the poet's desire for a greater position may lie under the pilgrim's question.

[08:39] Movement in the passage: (1) from not knowing to living the best life, (2) from individuality to unity, and (3) from created to creator.

[15:41] Metamorphosis in the passage: (1) their aspects, (2) Piccarda's desire, (3) their wills, and (4) possibly God's.

[20:57] Piccarda's use of Latin: the sweet new style gets elevated.

[23:49] Francesca and Piccarda: Augustine's students!

[28:11] Rereading the passage: PARADISO, Canto III, lines 58 - 87.

My English translation of PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 58 - 87:

Then I [said] to her: “From within all your marvelous aspects

Radiates what I don’t know of the divine.

It transforms you all from my initial conceptions.

“That’s why I wasn’t quick to remember.

But now the things you’ve said have helped me

And I more easily recall your features.

“But tell me: You who are happy here,

Do you desire a higher location

Where you might see more and share more love?”

At first, she smiled a little with those other shades,

Then she answered me so full of happiness

That she seemed to burn with love’s primal fire:

“Brother, our wills are quieted

By the power of love so that we are made to want

Only what we have and are not made to thirst for anything more.

“If we desired to be higher up,

Our desires would be discordant

With the will that appoints us here.

“That, you’ll see, wouldn’t be fitting for these circles,

Since to be in love is here necesse

And since you should truly take into account [love’s] nature.

“No, it’s at the core of the blessed esse

To be held in the divine will

So that our wills together make one [will].

“And how we’re placed from level to level

Through this realm pleases all the realm

As it does for the king who wills us to his will.

“And our peace is in his will.

It is to that sea that all things move,

Both what his will creates and what nature makes.”