Beatrice and Dante encounter their first soul in Mercury. He speaks, then shines so bright that even his features disappear. Not so for the poetic craft in the passage which becomes more prominent, even self-conscious, as the poet is perhaps intent on fulfilling his vows to his readers.
Read MoreDante and Beatrice speed into the second realm of Paradise: the sphere of Mercury. They encounter a crowd of souls, first as metaphors, then as individuals, as the poetry in the canto becomes more self-conscious, possibly expressing the poet’s doubt or even changing the contract between him and his reader.
Read MoreBeatrice concludes her grand discourse on free will by offering a Biblical and a classical reference for taking (and keeping?) foolish vows. She then offers a series of exhortations that seem to have little do with vows and become almost uninterpretable.
Read MoreBeatrice finally answers the question of how you can make up for broken or unfulfilled vows. She offers an accounting scheme: one hundred and fifty per cent of what’s been vowed can be substituted. But what happens when you vow something that’s beyond any financial worth?
Read MoreBeatrice begins her final discourse on free will with her premise: free will is the greatest gift given to humans and angels. But even free will can will its own loss with a self-limiting vow, from which it’s hard to understand any notion of restitution.
Read MoreBeatrice begins to answer Dante’s question about making good on unfulfilled (or even broken) vows with a tightly-woven chain of ideas that leads to the generous and compassionate statement that all things have a vestige of the eternal light in them. But vows still need to be litigated if broken, including ones the poet himself may have made.
Read MoreBeatrice has concluded her answers to questions about the souls’ place in the heavens and (more importantly) about free will. Her answers may satisfy the pilgrim Dante intellectually as his understanding continues to scale the peaks but her answers have also prompted a more personal response from him: What about my own unfulfilled vows?
Read MoreBeatrice develops a sub-point on the concept of free will that proves—at least if you accept the reasoning from Aristotle and Aquinas—that Piccarda and Constance were indeed guilty of breaking their vows, even if they didn’t want to break them. Wanting doesn’t overcome their actions.
Read MoreBeatrice takes apart the pilgrim Dante’s second doubt: Is God unjust for relegating Piccarda and Constance to the lowest sphere of heaven? Beatrice launches into a hard, troubling argument about free will . . . and about how your actions are your fault, even when force is used to make you do something.
Read MoreBeatrice continues to demolish the pilgrim Dante’s doubts by turning to Plato’s TIMAEUS and using it as a turn from her notion that revelation requires accommodation to a much larger discussion of free will in the face of astral (or planetary) influences on human behavior.
Read MoreBeatrice begins answering the pilgrim Dante’s two doubts by starting with the one that has more poison in it and by telling him that he shouldn’t trust what he sees because revelation must always make accommodations for human senses.
Read MorePiccarda may have vanished, but the pilgrim still has his questions. Or are they doubts? He can’t voice them, so Beatrice steps up and articulates them, makes one very personal, and muddied the notion of a rational free will. He’s paralyzed . . . and maybe as frustrated as old King Nebuchadnezzar.
Read MoreDante is about to meet the first souls in heaven, the redeemed in the lush, sensual sphere of the moon. He sees what he believes is a reflection, then finds that he’s looking into the void, the same place his own thoughts are taking him. It’s not as bright as we might expect in the first rung of the heavens.
Read MoreBeatrice concludes her explanation for moon spots (or comes close to concluding it) by positing a vision of the rotating universe that involves blessed movers who may be the souls of the spheres they control (or impress with their minds), thereby moving her discourse close to heresy and close to a vision of a living universe.
Read MoreAt last, Beatrice begins to reveal the truth about moon spots: They can’t be understood with natural philosophy (or physics), but only with metaphysics. The universe rains being down onto itself, diversifying “what is” to hold the final unity of “to be” behind everything.
Read MoreBeatrice continues her discussion of moon spots by voicing (and fabricating) an objection Dante might have to her argument against rare and dense material: maybe the dense material is farther back in the moon and reflects dimmer light. To disprove this notion, she proposes an experiment . . . which just happens to support both the incarnation and the trinity from orthodox Christian theology.
Read MoreBeatrice begins her explanation for moon spots (and her destruction of Dante’s explanation) by lofting her vision to the top of the visible universe, then bringing it down to experimental (and experiential) knowledge and the dizzying vertigo of mixed metaphors, all to bring Dante toward the ultimate inexpressible nature of the heavens.
Read MoreOur smartypants pilgrim Dante thinks he has the answer to why the moon has spots. It’s not that shoddy folklore. It’s all about natural philosophy. Problem is, Virgil was all about the folkloric explanation. And Beatrice is having none of it since he’s clearly “submerged” in fallacy, about the way Virgil was.
Read MoreAfter a warning to his readers (or maybe just some of his readers) to go home, Dante ascends into the moon with Beatrice. They enter the diaphanous and aesthetic mystery of the universe standing in the pearl of the heavens . . . and thereby proving the incarnation of Christ (if you believe Dante’s journey really happened).
Read MoreIf Dante has a question about how his body can transit other bodies in the universe, Beatrice doesn’t answer it. Instead, she launches into a discussion of our natural instincts and how they lead us to our natural ends, unless we swerve from what’s intended for us or find our pleasure elsewhere.
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