Dante 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 MoreDante moves from his scholastic and even (medieval) scientific introduction to PARADISO and into an invocation . . . to Apollo? How is a pagan god the object of his prayers in this most Christian part of his poem, COMEDY? This passage is polyvocal, an uneasy alliance of Christian and classical texts, resulting in striking dissonances throughout.
Read MoreDante opens the third canticle of COMEDY by renegotiating some of the terms of the poem itself: He is indeed like St. Paul (maybe even more profound than the great saint) and memory isn’t able to carry the weight of the poem ahead, its flight to the unmoved mover in its ascent to the heaven that takes in more of the light of glory than any other.
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