SOURCE: Saly, John. “The Eternal Now: Union with Being” and “Dante, Poet of the Future.” In Dante's Paradiso: The Flowering of the Self: An Interpretation of the Anagogical Meaning, pp. 175-99. New York: Pace University Press, 1989.

[In the following excerpt, Saly explores the third level of meaning of Paradiso, which Dante calls “anagogical” and which theologians, as Saly explains, define as mystical or spiritual.]

The Eternal Now: Union with Being

Dentro all' ampiezza di questo reame
casual punto non puote aver sito,
se non come tristizia, o sete, o fame;
chè per eterna legge è stabilito
quantunque vedi, sì che giustamente
ci si risponde dall' anello al dito.

[XXXII. 52-57]

(In all the breadth of this kingdom nothing of chance can find a place any more than sorrow or thirst or hunger, for all thou seest is ordained by eternal law, so that here the ring exactly fits the finger.)

Canto XXX

As we contemplate the great paradox that being unites the supremely individual with the supremely universal, we are overtaken by the dawn of ultimate reality. We have so far been looking for being itself in entities which derived the light of their existence from it. We were gazing at the starry sky which reflected the light of the sun,¹ but now the sun itself is rising and the shadow of the earth must leave the sky. Being will no longer appear to us as reflected in its creations; we will stand in the direct light [XXX. 109].

Our vision of the exulting play that constitutes the pure activity of free energy fades away gradually [XXX. 10-13]. When vision leaves us we turn again to our guide, the revelation of the love given to us early in life. As we leave the ninth state of paradise, she appears more harmonious than ever before on our journey. We realize here that we can never grasp the full beauty of the experience which overpowered us so long ago. Only He Who created the beloved and Whose power shines out in every such experience can know its fullness [XXX. 13-21]. But here we see as much of the splendor of our love as the finiteness of our own being permits. Once this love was our only token of the existence of some reality beyond the reach of the senses [XXX. 28]; now total actuality opens up before us with the blinding realization of what our love really is:

Dal primo giorno ch' io vidi il suo viso
in questa vita, infino a questa vista,
non m' è il seguire al mio cantar preciso;
ma or convien che mio seguir desista
più retro a sua bellezza, poetando,
come all' ultimo suo ciascuno artista.

[XXX. 28-33]

(From the first day I saw her face in this life until this sight the pursuit in my song has not been cut off; but now must my pursuit cease from following longer after her beauty in my verse, as with every artist who has reached his limit.)

When we return to our everyday life we will not be able to remember the full meaning of this experience [XXX. 25-27]. But now the voice of love within continues to guide us and, after our amazement has subsided, tells us where we have arrived [XXX. 37-38].

The last eternal state through which the pilgrims of paradise pass in time has now been left behind [XXX. 39]. We are in the eternal present, in the full light of being; the radiance is complete understanding, the heat the energy of love. Whoever is touched by this light lives in unceasing joy [XXX. 40-42].

For further progress our capacity of vision must be strengthened again by the living light which now surrounds us on every side. But to sharpen our sight we must first lose it; this has happened again and again in paradise. In every new state whose light overpowers our inward eye we have to first accept our inadequacy, admit our blindness. Only when we have consented to lose our sight in order to gain it is our power of vision restored and intensified. This, too, is a general law. No creative vision is possible without a humble acceptance of one's real shortcomings [XXX. 46-51].

Here it is not enough to have keen inward sight; we must go beyond understanding and make ourselves ready to burn with the flame of love, for in this eternal present all entities become eternal candles ceaselessly burning and never consumed [XXX. 52-54]. As we hear this truth revealed to us we surpass our proper powers and our last and deepest inward vision opens within us. A new sight has been kindled in us, strong enough to support the intensest light that reveals whatever truly is [XXX. 55-60].

Our first vision here shows us the nature of the overpowering light itself. This light is a river of illuminative power which increases our understanding continually. Now we see sparks rising from the river of light and entering, like bees, the eternal ruby-red flowers on the banks. Then sated with odors, they plunge back into the river again [XXX. 61-69].

By the free flow of illumination, in response to our desire for enlightenment, we were lifted up from state to state in paradise. Now we desire to understand more than ever [XXX. 70-72]. We have to drink of illuminative grace to comprehend the meaning of a vision, to penetrate behind the last symbol-mask that hides the final truth [XXX. 73-78].² In spite of our new vision we still see “through a glass, darkly,” for we cannot penetrate through the symbols into what they symbolize [XXX. 79-81]. But we follow the motherly command of the voice of love and bathe our eyes in the river of grace with greater eagerness than any child who, awaking late, rushes to his mother's breast for milk [XXX. 82-87].³

The last symbol-mask of reality falls off and we become aware of an even greater joy than what the symbols promised [XXX. 91-95]. As grace is added to our already perfected visionary power, we understand the perfection of grace itself [XXX. 88-90]. We see all that truly is in the light of illuminating grace, which, as we now see, is none other than the manifest splendor of being itself.⁴ To those who come to realize that they can find no rest and fulfillment except in the contemplation of being, this light makes visible being itself [XXX. 96-102]. Though the light of being is intellectual light because it reveals to our understanding whatever truly exists, we cannot identify it with human reason. It encompasses reason but extends far beyond it on every side [XXX. 103-105]. The life and power of the whole created universe comes from this light [XXX. 107-108], which reveals to us the world of the eternal now. Such complete awareness is the actuality underlying all the states of development which we have traversed on our journey so far. Like the sun that calls forth the plant from the seed, it draws and raises the soul from the moment of awakening through all the stages of inner growth.

This eternal present is reflected on the outermost layer of all existence that is still bound in its movement to a determined course.⁵ What we see in this reflection is the free order of being and, within it, all those beings who, having once been estranged from being itself, have found their way back to their true home:

E come clivo in acqua di suo imo
si specchia, quasi per vedersi adorno,
quando è nell' erbe e nei fioretti opimo,
sì soprastando al lume intorno intorno
vidi specchiarsi in più di mille soglie,
quanto di noi lassù fatto ha ritorno.(6)

[XXX. 109-114]

(and as a hillside is mirrored in water at its foot as if to see itself adorned when it is rich with grass and flowers, I saw, rising above the light all round in more than a thousand tiers, as many of us as have returned there above.)

As in the chalice of a white rose of innumerable petals, we see perfect order and beauty unfold before us. Our vision can now take it all in without failing. Nothing stands here between the light of being and our intellectual eye; the supreme reality is open to our fully developed understanding, for here no distance is interposed between desire and fulfillment [XXX. 118-123].

While total reality opens up in all its perfection, the voice of love within us points out how leadership is exalted here. All true leadership in history is an attempt to mold the world of temporal human existence into a likeness of this eternal order. But such attempts are foiled by man's greed. By clinging to their greed, people in the temporal world are fighting against their own salvation. Thus our revelation warns us for the last time against greed, the urge to possess illusory goods for ourselves alone. This is the basic error which even those dedicated to the service of the eternal order commit. Insisting on separateness and material possessions, they fall willing victims to illusion and are estranged from the splendor of reality.

Canto XXXI

Having understood the nature of the light which reveals everything as it truly is, our vision now takes in the forces that work within total reality [XXXI. 4-15]. Between the source of the light and the beings who are, like flowers, brought into existence and nourished by the light, there is a constant stream of messengers hurrying to and fro. But such a multitude of intermediaries cannot obscure being from the vision of men because the light reaches all who are ready to receive it [XXXI. 19-24]. These messengers of being offer peace and burning energy together, for the two by no means exclude each other here. Both peace and ardor come from free activity [XXXI. 16-18] which is no toil but pure delight [XXXI. 9].

All entities who have attained the ultimate goal turn toward being itself and are secure and joyful in their vision [XXXI. 25-27]. As we stand here at the end of our pilgrimage in silent contemplation, our inquiring intellect is stilled for a while [XXXI. 43-48]. In every face we see charity and joy, in every gesture the full dignity of complete existence [XXXI. 49-51].

When our will turns again to questioning, we can no longer receive enlightenment from the revelation of our personal experience of love. That experience reaches its full stature here in the eternal present and, having become one part of the total vision, it can no longer give us more than itself. It cannot take us to the comprehension of the whole. Therefore from the motherly care of our personal revelation—which was, after all, something given from without—we pass under the fatherly guidance of direct intuition [XXXI. 55-63].⁷ The guide to the final union with being is therefore the authority that resides in our own heart; but to discover this authority we had to pass through the fearful way of self-knowledge (Inferno) and the painful path of purification (Purgatorio); we had to ascend the ladder of development led by a revelation given to us through another person. Yet now all that has come from without must take its place where it truly belongs [XXXI. 65-69]. However high above us she may be on the scale of closeness to being, we now see clearly the person through whom this revelation had come to us and turn to her for the last time with gratitude. Before we found the way that has led us so far, it was the thought of our experience of love which kept our hope alive and prevented us from becoming utterly enmeshed in the forest of confusion and ignorance. That spark of light burning in our darkness was a promise that we may yet come to stand in the light of what truly is. The greatness and excellence of the love kindled in us by another has enabled us to see with the inward eye of vision and recognize the nourishing and sustaining power in all that we saw on our journey [XXXI. 73-84]. Precisely because ours was a personal revelation, it could guide us into full freedom from the bondage of illusion by ways and means most suited to our individual needs [XXXI. 85-87]. Our guide has made our soul whole and we ask her help now to preserve that wholeness in the future [XXXI. 88-90].

Intuition urges us now to think of the short stretch of our path [cammino, XXXI. 95] that still lies ahead. To ascend through the light of being, our eye should first get accustomed to the eternal now [XXXI. 94-99]. In the voice of intuition we recognize the voice of the human incarnation of being itself [XXXI. 103-108] and know that intuition leads us both to active love and contemplative peace [XXXI. 109-111].

We also understand intuitively that we will not come to know fully this joyous existence [XXXI. 112] if we restrict our vision to what is on our own level. Spiritual reality must be explored fully, to the highest reaches, where we discover what is closest to being. Where the light is most intense, on the uppermost boundary of created reality, we see the peaceful glow [XXXI. 127] of beauty itself [XXXI. 134], the feminine principle, without whose help we can never attain the final union with being [XXXI. 112-135]. We can unite with being only if we become both active and peaceful, if we are in motion and in rest simultaneously, in other words if we recognize and accept the feminine part within us as well as the active, masculine tendency. By completing our own being in this way we may become more like being itself and advance to the final union.

Fully developed spirits serve beauty by creative activity that unites the freedom of play with the harmony of music. As we look on the beauty that is a source of heat as well as of light, of energy as well as of understanding [XXXI. 140], our intuition infuses passionate love into our gaze [XXXI. 130-142].

Canto XXXII

With our love fixed on the beauty of the Eternal Feminine, we take in the vision of total reality. The first truth we understand here is the role the principle of beauty played in our fall and redemption. As it was the cause of our estrangement from being, it was also instrumental in the closing of the wound of our separateness [XXXII. 1-6]. Without her we could neither feel our separateness and estrangement in this world nor could we find our way back, enriched by experience, to the unity we have lost.

The ultimate reality of all Creation—the chalice of the rose—appears to us in two equal halves. These show that one may reach union with being by following the eternal law in hope or by living in the freedom of perfect love, according to one or the other aspect of the faith [XXXII. 38]. We also recognize the equality of the female and the male aspect of the total being; women who have followed the way of the law [XXXII. 7-18] take their places next to those whose life was love, whereas men who followed love are next to the people of the law [XXXII. 31-36]. Their position symbolizes the truth that although total reality is reached by individual paths, these paths have to unite somehow the two basic principles of love and the law as well as the male and female aspects of the soul [XXXII. 38-39].

We wonder next at the presence of beings who, though fallen, apparently had no opportunity to walk the paths that would lead them back to being. If they did not choose freely to return to eternity, how can they be part of it now? This seems far too difficult a question for our intellect [XXXII. 40-51]. But the infallible voice of intuition assures us that chance has no place to operate in ultimate reality. Perfect justice creates a perfect order within which all find their proper place, although we sometimes fail to understand how. The truth is that nothing happens without sufficient cause [XXXII. 52-60]. Here we behold the effect and this must suffice. For all beings fulfill the eternal plan in their diversity and all contribute to the love, the pleasure, and the peace that make ultimate reality into what it must be [XXXII. 61-66]. Those not elected to walk their own way toward being in a series of free choices will take their places (i.e., their appearance within ultimate reality is a direct manifestation of their being) according to their “primal keenness,” i.e., the power of vision proper to them from the beginning [XXXII. 73-75]. (The allocation of “places” in the ultimate vision of what is remains a mystery; we can never fully understand why the reality of one person is different from that of another. We have touched here again [see XXI. 91-96] upon the mystery of individuality and thus upon the essence of being which we can never penetrate with our intellect, for the intellect itself is already a differentiated part of this essence and the part can never comprehend the whole. But one thing is certain: the real differences between beings are not measured in superiority and inferiority, strength and weakness. These measurements belong to the world of illusion, not to the full reality of the spirit.)

To achieve the final unification of our own divided being which is the end of life, men have to recognize and contemplate the feminine principle.⁸ Only if our vision has wholly grasped the splendor of that aspect of being [XXXII. 93] of which women are the living representatives on earth, are we ready to look upon the perfect embodiment of being itself [XXXII. 85-87]. The feminine aspect of being is full of the vision-nourishing light which is the source of serenity. As we contemplate her we also understand the true relationship of the male principle to the female. We “see” how the male, driven by burning love [XXXII. 105], gazes with delight into the female mirror of being [XXXII. 94-105]. Intuition, which is directly connected with the feminine principle, drawing the beauty of its truths from her, also enlightens us about the characteristics of the male principle. It has vigor, energy above all, but manifested with gracefulness [leggiadria, XXXII. 109], not brute force [XXXII. 106-111]. Perfection of being—as exemplified by Christ—comes from the cooperation of these two principles without which no creation can take place [XXXII. 112-114].

Having understood these essential truths, we now turn to the contemplation of the individuals who make up total reality. Each of them is the type of a path to being. The man who fell, though he issued out into life with greater powers and greater freedom than any man after him, has finally come home and so has another who was born in infirmity, but enlightened and redeemed by the perfection of being in Christ. We have them both in ourselves; they are the beginnings of paradise [XXXII. 118-126]. The visionary poet belongs here, too, and also the leader of men who works for the realization of an eternal purpose in history. The world disregards the revelations of the first and is ungrateful to the second, but here they come into their own [XXXII. 127-132]. (If one of these paths is allotted to us we must remember their example and not seek the world's praise.)

Here is the woman who is so content to gaze at the perfect form of the feminine principle which she herself has brought into the world that she refuses any activity which might interrupt contemplation.⁹ Another type of womanly perfection is she who brings illumination to men when they fix their eyes on the earth to avoid vision and rush into their destruction [XXXII. 133-138]. She has also saved us repeatedly when we have lost our way.

Now intuition urges us to enter the final stretch of our pilgrimage and approach with our visionary eye being itself. To penetrate as much as we can into the truth, into the unveiled reality of being,¹⁰ we must here ask for more illuminative power. Without it all our efforts would only thrust us backward into ignorance instead of carrying us to the final union. It is from the Eternal Feminine, the most perfect mirror of being, that we receive the aid which increases our power of vision.¹¹ To obtain this grace we must follow our intuition most scrupulously, not only with our mind but also with our heart [XXXII. 139-150].

Canto XXXIII

Our intuition now turns to the Eternal Feminine who unites in her relationship to being the three essential roles of woman, that of mother, wife, and daughter. She ennobles human nature so that the union of being and man can take place at last. Because in the perfection of womanhood the concern for the self ceases altogether (no man can be as self-forgetting as a mother) she is, in her humility, more exalted than any created being [XXXIII. 1-6]. In this total reality she is an ever-burning torch of love while in time-bound existence she is the source of man's hope. Through her the illuminative power comes to men; it is his love for woman that nourishes man's vision [XXXIII. 10-15]. Her kindness does not wait for men's asking; she takes them toward their fulfillment even before they pray. She overflows with compassion, piety, generosity, uniting all the goodness of created beings within herself [XXXIII. 19-21].

The inward eye of those who, like ourselves, have toiled upwards from the deepest abyss of self-knowledge, understanding all the states of the human being's development until they could behold the fullness of reality, must be strengthened by her for the last time. She has to remove the last veil of illusion and error from our eyes so that we may lift them to the saving and liberating truth as it unfolds itself to fill us with unsurpassable pleasure [XXXIII. 22-33]. We depend upon her even after our direct vision of being; she must then help us to keep our affections whole, our lives in harmony, for the overpowering experience might disrupt the balance of our weak humanity [XXXIII. 34-39].¹² Not only intuition prompts us to turn to the feminine principle for help but our revelation, too, [XXXIII. 38] though she no longer guides us here.

Now our vision is fully intent on the eyes of the Eternal Feminine which sink into the light of being more deeply and clearly than the eyes of any other creature. And, following her eyes, we arrive at the end of our journey: we gaze at the source of the light and approach union with being through direct vision. The burning intellectual desire for understanding that has brought us so far is now stilled [XXXIII. 40-48]. We not only follow intuition, but, as intuition would have us be, we become one with intuition as our completely cleansed sight penetrates into the full light of truth [XXXIII. 49-54]. The greatness of our vision then transcends absolutely the powers of speech and memory.¹³ What remains is the sweetness of an emotion only, at the deepest core of the heart:

Qual è colui che somniando vede,
chè dopo il sogno il passione impressa
rimane, e l' altro alla mente non riede;
cotal son io, chè quasi tutta cessa
mia visione, ed ancor mi distilla
nel cor lo dolce che nacque da essa.(14)

[XXXIII. 58-63]

(Like him that sees in a dream and after the dream the passion wrought by it remains and the rest returns not to his mind, such am I; for my vision almost wholly fades, and still there drops within my heart the sweetness that was born of it.)

But while we are looking into the living light [XXXIII. 77] it holds our vision with such brilliance that we cannot turn away; if we did, we would be lost in dazed darkness. Immersed completely in the abounding stream of light, our sight attains at last the ultimate good, being itself, from which everything that is derives its worth [XXXIII. 76-84]. Here we find all the signatures of being collected in one, all that exists in separation throughout the universe fused together by the burning of infinite love into one simple flame [XXXIII. 85-90]. We arrive at an understanding of all that is by grasping the final principle or form, but when the vision leaves us no rational proof remains to testify to the truth of what we saw. All that is left is an emotion of joy [XXXIII. 91-93]. Even one single moment of time carries us almost infinitely far from this vision which can be attained only in timelessness. Yet we can recall how our mind, fixed in this intellectual vision of the truth, was totally absorbed in being, and our will would not turn away from all goodness gathered into unity.¹⁵ For whatever the will desires can be found in its perfection only in being; if we seek it outside of being we will possess it only in imperfection [XXXIII. 94-105].

Strengthened by its immersion into the living light which is forever unchanging, our sight discerns the appearance of threefold nature within the “profound and shining being of the deep light.” This being is forever itself but we cannot comprehend it as such. Only through appearances (which, however, do not obscure but reveal and manifest being) can we come closer to the ever unreachable core. And as our power of vision grows, as we change ourselves, so we discern new appearances changing in the living light of being. The three natures which we now behold are all perfect, all aspects of the same being and manifest by their continual interplay; they are the light of power, of wisdom, and of love [XXXIII. 109-120]. The eternal light which is being abides in itself alone; it understands itself, wills itself, and loves itself rejoicing. (Thus being manifests the supreme integration of those forces which we call reason, will, and emotion. The perfection of these is the unified, unceasing activity of being [XXXIII. 124-126].)

With a last effort at understanding we glimpse in the threefold appearance the unity of man with being [XXXIII. 127-131]. We are being; but we cannot grasp with the intellect this truth of the coincidence of a finite being with infinite Being; it cannot be expressed in thought-symbols just as the circumference of the circle—an infinite number—cannot be given exactly in the terms of its radius that is finite. The wings of understanding that carried us through paradise were not made to lift us into this truth [XXXIII. 133-139]. But the vision's final purpose is—as always—by understanding to awaken the will to love. In a lightning flash we find our own will and find that our desire and will have entered the fullness of existence moved in perfect accord by the love that rules all that is [XXXIII. 140-145].

Images

                    vidi che s' interna,
legato con amore in un volume,
ciò che per l' universo si squaderna;

[XXXIII. 85-87]

(I saw that it contained, bound by love in one volume, that which is scattered in leaves through the universe.)

In the last three cantos the recurring images and image-themes of the Paradiso are all “gathered in one volume” and several of them come to a splendid climax in the great similes of the Empyrean. This integration of the imagery embodies the anagogical meaning of the highest heaven; humanity's latent powers which Dante saw gradually unfolding in heaven after heaven are all gathered together here in the fullness of existence given by the direct vision of being.

The diction also indicates the anagogical meaning at many points. I take only two outstanding examples. The threefold repetition of vidi in XXX. 95, 97, 99 marks the coming of the most penetrating sight to the pilgrim as the last symbol-veil of reality is withdrawn. In the same canto the words riflesso, si specchia, and specchiarsi occur in rhythmical repetition in lines 107, 110, and 113. This emphasis on reflection or mirroring warns the reader that the ultimate reality of Creation as it opens up in the white rose of the Empyrean is only the reflected light of being and not being itself. Even Beatrice, as she leaves Dante and takes her place in the rose, does not radiate light, only reflects the eternal beams:

e vidi lei che si facea corona,
riflettendo da sè gli eterni rai.

[XXXI. 71-72]

(and saw her where she made for herself a crown, reflecting from her the eternal beams.)

What are the image-themes which have accompanied us through the Paradiso and are recapitulated here, as if the partial reality of all that we have seen in the individual heavens were now collected in the total reality of whatever truly is? Some of these themes have been leitmotifs of the whole Comedy: the theme of pilgrimage comes to a climax in the pilgrim's arrival to the shrine of his vow:

E quasi peregrin, che si ricrea
nel tempio del suo voto riguardando,
e spera già ridir com' ello stea,
sì per la viva luce passeggiando,
menava io gli occhi per li gradi,
mo su, mo giù, e mo ricirculando.

[XXXI. 43-48]

(And like a pilgrim who is refreshed in the temple of his vow as he looks round it and hopes some time to tell of it again, so, taking my way up through the living light, I carried my eyes through the ranks, now up, now down, and now looking round again.)

In another simile the end of a concrete earthly pilgrimage is described [XXXI. 103-108].

The theme of dreaming, awaking, and recollecting the vanished vision is recapitulated in XXXIII. 58-63. Dante, as so often in the Comedy, again likens himself to a child in XXX. 82-85, 139-140, and XXXIII. 107-108. After seeing so many imprints of perfect forms in imperfect matter, the last imprint is finally blotted out by the sun of being as if it had been stamped on snow:

Così la neve il sol si disigilla,

[XXXIII. 64]

(Thus the snow loses its imprint in the sun).

From the city of Florence and the City of Dis the way was long to the eternal city [XXX. 130]. But Florence, though only in retrospect, haunts Dante even here [XXXI. 39]. And we remind ourselves that all the astronomy and star-imagery of the Comedy culminates in the last line, where love is said to move “the sun and the other stars.”

Taking now certain recurrent images of the Paradiso only, we see how light and fire are everywhere in the last three cantos. The whole Empyrean is bathed in the “living light” which unites in itself heat and brilliance, love and intellect. The geography of the earth appears once more in XXXI. 31-36 and 103, the cloudy sky in XXXI. 73, the sea in XXXI. 75. A suggestion of the element of flight in XXXII. 146 and XXXIII. 139 brings to a close the imagery of air and of birds.

The eternal garden of the Empyrean [XXXI. 97; XXXII. 39] brings forth plants, flowers, and fruit.

All the circling harmonies of paradise point to the final vision of the three reflecting circles in XXXIII. 116. At the end of the poem Dante himself is caught up in the circular dance which he had observed in the lower heavens.

Similes taken from geometry culminate in the image of the insufficiency of the geometer to measure the final mystery of man's union with God [XXXIII. 133-135].

The theme of warfare against the “erring world” echoes again in the “soldiery of paradise” [XXX. 43-44] and in “holy soldiery” [XXXI. 2].

Even one of those similes Dante takes from the common life of trades appears in the highest heaven when St. Bernard says to him:

Ma perchè il tempo fugge, che t' assonna,
qui farem punto, come buon sartore
che, com' egli ha del panno, fa la gonna;

[XXXII. 139-140]

(But since the time flies that holds thee sleeping we shall stop here, like a good tailor that cuts his coat according to his cloth).

Heeding St. Bernard's words, I, too, feel that it is time to end the recapitulation of image themes and turn to the great images themselves that overarch, in these last cantos, the entire structure of the Paradiso. Here we see the imagery of paradise not only juxtaposed but organically integrated. Two of these complex images describe total reality. One shows the last symbolic disguise:

E vidi lume in forma di riviera
fulvido di fulgore, intra due rive
dipinte di mirabil primavera.
Di tal fiumana uscian faville vive,
e d' ogni parte si mettean nei fiori,
quasi rubin che oro circonscrive.
Poi, come inebriate dagli odori,
riprofondavan sè nel miro gurge,
e, s' una entrava, un' altra n' uscia fuori.

[XXX. 61-69]

(And I saw light in the form of a river pouring its splendour between two banks painted with marvellous spring. From that torrent came forth living sparks and they settled on the flowers on either side, like rubies set in gold; then, as if intoxicated with the odours, they plunged again into the wondrous flood, and as one entered another came forth.)

Light, fire, water, blossoming nature, gems, and the artefacts of jewelry are the integral parts of this symbolic landscape. The other complex image is, of course, the picture of undisguised eternity, the rose of the redeemed which rises up in the shape of an immense amphitheatre from the pool of reflected light on the top of the Primum Mobile [XXX. 106-117]. The rose itself is the crowning image of all the images that suggest perfection: of the garlands, reels, and circles of paradise. It is also the emblem of emblems and sums up within itself the triple ring of the Sun, the cross of Mars, the eagle of Jupiter, and the ladder of Saturn.

The great simile of sunrise in XXXI. 118-129 fuses earth, sky, and fire with the mythological allusion to Phaeton and with the oriflamme, the battle standard of the ancient kings of France.

All three complex images span several terzinas like immense arches, opening vistas into final reality. Then vision ceases while the pilgrim gathers strength for the final plunge into the Source. Canto XXXII is scarce of images and has no great similes to be compared to those we have already mentioned or those that are to come. It is a final respite for the reader before the last burst of a superhuman imagination.

From line 58 of Canto XXXIII to the end of the poem an uninterrupted flight of the highest poetry conveys something of the ecstasy that the direct vision of being is. Images follow one another as in the Greek choral odes, with a dithyrambic fervor. Like the Sybil's leaves, they are carried higher and higher in the wind of inspiration which invisibly links them together. They rise up rhythmically, as if the feverish mind shot them out with volcanic violence, between two prayers.

The vision of the ineffable can be conveyed only gropingly: one dreams and wakes, the sun melts all shapes from the surface of the snow, the leaves of the Sybil—all fragmentary human wisdom—are lost in the wind. The interval of prayer is bridged by the memory of leaves flying in the storm—and of those human souls on the banks of Acheron falling like autumn leaves—leaves which are found again and bound into one volume where all may read them who come to look upon being. All that is, the entire complex, incomprehensible fabric of reality, fuses into one simple flame. And with this most daring exploit the boldest enterprise of the human intellect is over; Argo reaches the fabulous shore and Neptune, deep in his green water-world, gazes at man's triumph. The ship we have followed right through paradise has arrived at last. Another long-drawn breath follows, while imagination gathers strength to advance yet deeper into the center. But this interval is also spanned by a mysterious kinship between the image of a god looking on human handiwork and the second circle of the last vision where man's image is painted upon the Form of God. Then imagination falls back, as the geometrician draws circles and is vainly trying to measure them:

All' alta fantasia qui mancò possa;

[XXXIII. 142]

(Here power failed the high fantasy).

But with the last effort imagination has reached beyond itself: it has become a will and a desire, a whole. And now, after our ascent through mountain steeps and heavenly spheres, we, integrated into the whole human race as it existed from the beginning, are swept along by love in unimpeded movement with the sun and the stars.

Dante, Poet of the Future

The theological formulation of the truths and laws toward which the Paradiso is leading us is well documented but is in the deepest sense meaningless to many of us today. I have tried to give them another formulation in my interpretation of the poem and would now like to indicate, very sketchily and provisionally, some implications of this approach. For truth is like an object in space: one can walk around it and look at it from all angles, and the more one has seen of it the better one knows it.

The structure of meaning in the poem can be described in various ways; we talked of it as an approach to union with being, and, since this also means a union with our selves, as integration. Thus the gradual ascent through the heavens is also an inward journey from our periphery to our center.

If we think about the Paradiso as a “journey to the interior,” a new light is thrown on those truths which we understand through the anagogical interpretation. In hell and purgatory Dante had to learn how to shed the many layers of illusion which covered his real personality. In hell he saw the reality of what had appeared desirable to his perverted will. In purgatory he understood how one suffers by having to follow the habits that slavery to illusion implants in the soul, long after one has recognized the original error, for purgatorial suffering lasts until the will is completely liberated from bondage to a self-centered view of reality. When on the top of Mount Purgatory Beatrice calls the poet by his name [Purg. XXX. 55 and 62-63], the necessity of registering the word Dante for the first and last time in the Comedy is a deeper necessity than would first appear. For at this point he has again become the real Dante whom Beatrice had known and is no longer the man wandering lost in the forest of error. Thus here Dante recovers his real personality which a life, in the world and of the world, had covered over with layers of falsehood.

But the true journey to the interior starts only from this point. Leaving the earth is the true beginning of the voyage of self-discovery, for it represents the turning of attention from the outward to the inward, from illusions and encrustations to the substance. Immersion in the water-world of the moon sphere is the penetration into the secret world of the self, the unconscious. What comes after the meeting with one's “shadow”—which may perhaps be equated with the self-knowledge given by the Inferno—is, Jung says, “the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins. … ‘Lost in oneself’ is a good way of describing this state. But this self is the world if only consciousness could see it.”¹⁶ Whether we call this boundless and floating world into which we have plunged here the collective unconscious as Jung does, or an inner, spiritual reality where our psyches interconnect, depends largely on our choice of terminology.

In the sphere of Venus inward progress is marked by the knowledge of the real self in others and, consequently, an increased knowledge of our own real self. In Mars, the meeting with Cacciaguida suggests the finding within ourselves of a self deeper, nobler than we had hitherto suspected. The ascent into the natal constellation in the Heaven of the Fixed Stars marks the point in the inward journey where one begins to feel one's identity with what one might call an eternal or higher self. Yet development does not stop here; the meeting with Christ symbolizes the moment when the divine part begins to live and work within us. The final union is the arrival at the center and true home, where one always is but does not know it, where one is not separate and yet is most one's self.

Thus, as we have said before, all the figures Dante meets in paradise are but reflections of his own yet unrecognized potentialities, and in seeing them he increases the knowledge of his own self.

Progress in paradise is not linear but has its own oscillating rhythm. … First of all, the method of advance, as Dante outlines it, consists always of the same steps, which are the application of spiritual understanding to the process of self-development. …

• (1) awareness of what one sees
• (2) desire to understand it completely
• (3) precise formulation of one's doubts
• (4) enlightenment coming from revelation or intuition
• (5) increased vision as a result of intellectual enlightenment

—and then the whole process is repeated on the next level. But in addition to the rhythm of intellectual advance, the structure of the successive states—or heavens—shows a larger and more complex oscillation which one might call psychological.

The psychological law of progress in the Paradiso appears to be an oscillation between introspection and outward turning, between a penetration in depth—into another's self as well as into one's own—and an expansion of energies on a wide surface. The expansion of energies is at the same time a gathering of strength for the next thrust into the unknown. The last advance into the source of eternal light absolves Dante from this fluctuation; nourished by the final vision his energies expand and, simultaneously, he gains ever-renewed insight into the inexhaustible depths of the divine.

But would not such a psychologizing approach make the Paradiso into an imitation of the Poimandres of Hermes Trismegistus? Would this not be altogether false to the spirit of the poem? After all, the Comedy is usually thought of as embodying Thomist philosophy, and nothing can be further from Thomism than the doctrines of the Poimandres. The point is worth examining.

Though Dante quotes freely from Aristotle and from St. Thomas Aquinas, the philosophy embodied in the Comedy could not be called either Thomist or Aristotelian. It has become almost a commonplace to say that, in spite of his calling Aristotle Il Filosofo, Dante's way of thinking has really much more in common with Plato. The work of Bruno Nardi has made it abundantly clear that the Paradiso is thoroughly imbued not so much with the spirit of Plato as with Neoplatonism. The return of man to the One through intellectual knowledge in which light and love are inseparably fused, is the way of the Paradiso, and it is a distinctly Plotinian idea. The great passage on the creation and emanation of all that exists by the divine idea, breathes the pure spirit of Neoplatonism, in spite of the words being spoken by Aquinas.

Ciò che non more e ciò che può morire
non è se non splendor di quella idea
che partorisce, amando, il nostro sire;
chè quella viva luce che sì mea
dal suo lucente, che non si disuna
da lui, nè dall' amor che a lor s' intrea,
per sua bontate il suo raggiare aduna,
quasi specchiato, in nove sussistenze,
eternalmente rimanendosi una.
Quindi discende all' ultime potenze
giù d' atto in atto tanto divenendo,
che più non fa che brevi contingenze;
e queste contingenze essere intendo
le cose generate, che produce
con seme e senza seme il ciel movendo.
La cera di costoro, e chi la duce,
non sta d' un modo, e però sotto il segno
ideale poi più e men traluce:
ond' egli avvien ch' un medesimo legno,
secondo specie, meglio e peggio frutta;
e voi nascete con diverso ingegno.
Se fosse a punto la cera dedutta,
e fosse il cielo in sua virtù suprema,
la luce del suggel parrebbe tutta;
ma la natura la dà sempre scema,
similemente operando all' artista,
ch' ha l' abito dell' arte e man che trema.
Però se il caldo amor, la chiara vista
della prima virtù dispone e segna,
tutta la perfezion quivi s' acquista.

[XIII. 52-81]

(That which does not die and that which is capable of dying is nothing else but the reflected splendor of the idea which our Father in loving begets, and this living light pours from its shining source so that it is not divided from him nor from the love that makes three-in-one of them, does out of its goodness unite its radiance in nine existences as if it were being mirrored back, while eternally abiding as one.

From thence it descends down to the lowest lying potencies becoming such from act to act so that it now makes only short-lived contingencies by which I mean the generated things produced by the moving heavens from seed and without seed.

The wax of these ephemeral beings and that which molds them do not always stay in the same condition and therefore the wax under the ideal stamp becomes now more, now less, transparent: from which it comes that the same tree bears better and worse fruit according to its kind, and that you are born with different talents.

If the wax were prepared perfectly for the stamping, and the heaven [that imprints the stamp] would be at the perfection of its power, the image of the signet would be all shining clear; but nature [the operation of the heavens] is always faulty in the execution like the artist who is well-versed in his art but has a trembling hand.¹⁷

Therefore, if the warm Love, the clear Vision of the Primal Power prepares and stamps [the wax] all perfection is acquired there.)

Before I would try to indicate in a few words the general tradition which I think includes the Paradiso, I wish to make one thing clear. I do not believe that a great poet has to take all his ideas from other thinkers; more often than not great poets find the truth in their own hearts. Therefore in what follows I do not wish to imply that Dante has actually read all the authors and consciously incorporated their ideas into his opus; but I would like to make the point that there is a religious and philosophical tradition which was partly known to Dante and to which the Paradiso naturally belongs.

First of all, the writings of Aristotle reached Dante not only through St. Thomas but also through Arab translators and commentators. Now the Arab philosophers and their translators in Spain who transmitted the writings of Aristotle to the Western world were often unable to distinguish the works of the Philosopher from the later works of neoplatonists. An instance of this is the Liber de Causis often quoted by Dante, which was for a time attributed to Aristotle, but was later discovered to have been largely the work of Proclus. Or, to take another instance of neoplatonic influence through the Arabs, we see Dante adopting the doctrine on the movement of the spheres from Alpetragius [Conv. III, Cap.2]. This theory, as Nardi has pointed out,¹⁸ is of neoplatonic origin, deriving multiplicity from the One. The great Arab philosophers Alfarabi, Avicenna, Algazel and Averroes were all profoundly influenced by Neoplatonism. Ibn Arabi of Murcia, mystic and poet-philosopher, whether Dante had read him or not,¹⁹ expressed this Arab Neoplatonism succinctly: “The aim of the soul, from the day on which the Creator unites it with the body, is to acquire the knowledge of its principle, God.”

But apart from the influence of writings which Dante might have thought Aristotelian and which in reality were neoplatonic, many other links can be found between the Paradiso and what might loosely be called the neoplatonic tradition. The figure of Dante's last guide, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, is perhaps the strongest of these links. He knew and used the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite (or the unknown author whom the Middle Ages knew under this name) who, in turn, “often resorts to the terminology of Plotinus and Proclus.”²⁰ One might almost say that it was the strong neoplatonic strain in his mystical theology that had made him fit to stand as the figure of intuition, Dante's guide to the direct vision of God. But Dante himself knew the Corpus Dionysiacum either directly or through the works of St. Thomas and Albertus Magnus. His doctrine of emanations [Par. XIII. 52-78] derives either from Dionysius himself or from his follower and translator, the Christian neoplatonist Johannes Scotus Erigena. Another link is Boethius, one of Dante's favorite authors, who believed in the platonic and neoplatonic doctrine of pre-existence. It was Boethius who inspired Dante with his first passion for philosophy. The abbot Joachim of Fiore (“di spirito profetico dotato” [Par. XII. 141]) has also held doctrines akin to those of Plotinus and Proclus, especially about the role of understanding (intellectus), which the neoplatonists would call [noēsis]

The ascent toward union with God through the successive celestial spheres is used in the Poimandres. Macrobius in his commentary on the Somnium Scipionis applies the principle in the opposite direction. According to him souls who fall from the One into bodies acquire in each of the heavenly spheres the powers which they will exercise in their bodies. It is quite likely that Dante knew some of the Hermetic writings through Albertus Magnus who often quotes Hermes Trismegistus. Macrobius' commentary was also widely known in the Middle Ages. Some passages of the Paradiso recall another neoplatonic work, the commentary on Plato's Timaeus by Chalcidius. I am thinking here in particular of Par. XXIX. 22-36, especially in its treatment of matter as pure potentiality and of the corporeal heavens as the union of pure form to pure matter. Since the spirit of the Timaeus itself is Pythagorean, it might well be that through Chalcidius Dante obtained an indirect glimpse of Pythagoreanism which must have been quite congenial to his mind. A passage like Par. XV. 55-57 can certainly be clarified by remembering the Pythagorean concept of the monad.

I do not wish to insist that Dante drew on all these sources, though he almost certainly drew on some of them. Nor are all the similarities between some ideas in the Paradiso and the ideas of Plotinus and Proclus in any way conclusive. Yet the use of the circle as a symbol for God certainly occurs in Plotinus [Enn. VI. viii. 18] and Dante's constant use of the number three, his unceasing reminders of the doctrine of the Trinity recall Proclus' obsession with triads. Plotinus' [noēsis] which unites subject and object into one is the kind of knowledge which Dante teaches in the Paradiso, where the pilgrim has to be united to a sphere in order to comprehend it [Par. II. 29-30]. “I rejoice to hear that your soul has set sail, like the returning Ulysses, for its native land—that glorious, that only real country—the world of unseen truth,” writes Plotinus to Flaccus. He uses the same metaphor to describe a spiritual voyage of discovery which Dante uses persistently in the Paradiso: the metaphor of the ship and the soul.

Later neoplatonists, especially those who gathered around Lorenzo de' Medici in what came to be known as the Medici circle, recognized in Dante a kindred spirit. Their master, Marsilio Ficino, born a little more than a century after Dante's death, attempted to bring together ancient Neoplatonism and the Christian religion in his Theologia Platonica, a philosophical work to which, in Ficino's opinion, the Comedy supplied the poetical equivalent. One of the members of this circle, Cristoforo Landino, wrote the most popular and extensive commentary on the Comedy, which set the direction for many commentaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.²¹ Neoplatonist poets in the same circle, like Matteo Palmieri, Giovanni Nesi, and Ugolino Verino attempted to combine the manner of Dante with the exposition of neoplatonic doctrines.²²

Insofar as Dante's way is intellectual and spiritual, a way of the understanding, he is in the neoplatonic tradition in the Paradiso, and, to a lesser degree, in the entire Comedy. This comes into particular focus when we follow the anagogy where the goal is to understand the Divine Principle which permeates the universe as the first terzina of the Paradiso clearly says. Plotinus called it the Good or the One; “It is by the One that all beings are beings,” he said.

It has, I think, become evident to the reader in my explication of the anagogical sense of the third cantica that, in my opinion, Dante believes understanding—not merely rational but also spiritual—is the key to the soul's growth. Or, to put it differently, it is through the workings of the spiritual intellect that the divine aspect within the human being comes to fruition. This approach to God is Neoplatonism pure and simple. It resembles the Plotinian intellectual pilgrimage that ends in the flight of the alone to the Alone. Especially as the teacher of the way of understanding through an introspective approach that poses questions and then waits patiently for the moment of revelation when the knower and the known become one, Dante is Plotinus' pupil.

This “dialectic of the way” however, is only one half of his method. The other is his figural symbolism that presents the reader with flesh and blood characters, each of whom embodies a certain state of soul concretely. When he is more of a poet than a philosophic teacher, he is not looking for the universal vital principle as much as for the personal aspect of God, toward Whom all the people he encounters in paradise rise up on tier upon tier of the heavenly rose. The God of the Judeo-Christian religion to whom we relate personally as children to their father has an equally real existence for Dante as the Divine Principle. How God can be both principle and person as intimated in his final vision of a human face in the three interlocking circles throws him into the despair of the geometrician trying vainly to square the circle. But in that moment of perplexity Dante's mind is struck by a lightning-like illumination that persuades his desire and will to unite with the Love that moves the whole Creation.

His journey then should be looked upon not only as a philanthropic venture in understanding, but also as the path of one living in the world whose way of self-finding is through relationships with others, cooperating with and helping them as well as receiving from them support and enlightenment.

That the combination of these two approaches makes the Comedy particularly relevant to our time appears most clearly in the anagogy. More and more individuals who are relatively free of the pressure of material needs choose some form of self-actualizing, self-developing activity through which they hope to acquire an enlarged sense of self, first perhaps more on the material level and later psychologically and spiritually. Depth psychology and spirituality are not separate realms: they touch and intermingle. There is a steady movement away from some traditional attitudes and beliefs which are felt increasingly as constricting and limiting; much of this endeavor is about getting to know and fulfill one's potentials. When this movement becomes more balanced by a growth of interest in, and love and compassion for, fellow humans, it begins to resemble Dante's journey through paradise. Then will the Paradiso be seen for what Dante intended it to be: a prophetic book about the future of humanity.

Notes

1. Dante shared the medieval belief that all stars receive their light from the sun.

2. Though Dante does not interpret these images which he calls the “shadowy prefaces” of the truth, we can meditate upon their significance. They obviously represent life in ultimate reality and therefore I would suggest that the sparks arising from and plunging into the river of light are created entities who are absorbed in their contemplation of being itself and emerge from this state only to spend the love they gained through their vision upon other created beings. When they have expressed in loving acts the understanding which they gained in contemplation, they are absorbed once more in their vision. To suggest time sequence in this process is, of course, very much out of place; but our language to which we are necessarily restricted is itself only a very “shadowy preface” of the things of eternity.

3. Cf. “As newborn babes desire the rational milk without guile, that thereby you may grow unto salvation.” I. Peter, II. 2. Dante's simile throws an interesting light upon this somewhat obscure passage.

4. [doxa theou]—Gloria Dei.

5. Dante, in accordance with the Ptolemaic system, saw the limit of the determinism, that is an aspect of matter, in the Primum Mobile, the widest outer sphere of a universe of concentric spheres. Beyond that fastest circling sphere nothing was determined; the Empyrean was itself the perfect freedom of the spirit. The free “order” of the Empyrean reflected most in the swiftest and largest physical sphere on which it bordered. Going downward from sphere to sphere freedom grew less and less, until we reached Lucifer in the center of the determined world, frozen in ice, da tutti i pesi del mondo costretto. Today, speculating along similar lines, we might see the limit of determinism not in the largest but in the smallest unit of the physical world, where Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy begins to operate. There we seem to reach the realm of freedom which Dante and his contemporaries put beyond the most distant stars.

6. The use of the word ritorno is somewhat perplexing here if we recall the doctrine of the soul's creation in Purg. XXV. 67-75, which is in accordance with the teachings of the Church. The soul is created by God when the brain of the embryo is complete. Then:

   Lo motor primo a lui si volge lieto
   Sopra tanta arte di natura, e spira
   Spirito nuovo di virtù repleto

   [italics mine]

   Che ciò che trova attivo quivi tira
   in sua sustanzia, e fassi un alma sola,
   che vive e sente e sè in sè rigira.

   [70-75]

   (The First Mover turns him to it, rejoicing over such handiwork of nature, and breathes into it a new spirit with virtue filled, which draws into its substance that which it finds active there, and becomes one single soul, that lives, and feels, and turns round upon itself.)

   Dante here says that each individual's soul is created when he is born by a special act of God. In any case no soul can possibly return to heaven since it had never been there. We could, of course, say that when God creates the soul, the soul comes from Him and when it gains heaven it returns. But this is to equate God and heaven which Dante certainly does not do in his description of the Empyrean.

   Though our main concern is not to find out what Dante's own beliefs were, we might remember Bruno Nardi's conclusion about the role of the Empyrean in the Comedy. “L'Empireo, in Dante, coincide coll' anima del mondo dei neo-platonici, ed è anello di congiunzione fra Dio e il mondo sensibile.” Saggi di filosofia dantesca, Milano, 1930. p. 189.

7. How much we may accept the doctrine given in the Purgatorio as Dante's own belief is another question. The verses quoted above are spoken by Statius, newly liberated from purgatory (symbolizing perhaps Christian Reason against Virgil's unbaptized Reason) who has not yet reached paradise and obviously has much to learn.

8. A possible solution seems to be—if we must find a “source” or an “influence”—that we meet here a trace of the influence of Scotus Erigena, whose doctrine on the return of the soul to God might have made an impression on Dante.

9. St. Bernard of Clairvaux—the figure of intuition—was a speculative mystic who called God the causal being of all that is. He taught that man attains ultimate knowledge when in ecstasy his soul is united to God and enjoys deification. To reach this union man has to ascend the steps of humility and truth and unite his will with God's. See E. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. New York, 1955. pp. 164-167, and The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard, London, 1940.

10. Cf. these lines from the last scene of Goethe's Faust:

    Höchste Herrscherin der Welt,
    Lasse mich im blauen,
    Ausgespannten Himmelszelt
    Dein Geheimnis schauen!
    Billige, was des Mannes Brust
    Ernst und zart beweget
    Und mit heiliger Liebeslust
    Dir entgegenträget.

11. Rachel gazing into her mirror [Purg. XXVII. 104-108] typifies the same attitude beside representing allegorically the contemplative life. Though Dante does not describe the face of St. Anne, we know her expression from Leonardo's picture in the Louvre.

12. Truth in the literal sense of [alētheia].

13. Cf. the last lines in Goethe's Faust:

    Alles Vergängliche
    Ist nur ein Gleichnis;
    Das Unzulängliche,
    Hier wirds Ereignis;
    Das Unbeschreibliche,
    Hier ists getan;
    Das Ewig-Weibliche
    Zieht uns hinan.

14. Hölderlin, who of all modern minds was perhaps closest to being, lacked the saving influence of the Eternal Feminine after he had lost his Diotima. Without her to anchor his affections, Hölderlin was completely overpowered by being and never found his way back to the human world.

15. Vision is the full perception of reality which we, in our limited condition, cannot retain. Speech and memory are merely imperfect channels for Platonic recollection. Dante says here that our closest approximation to the vision is not in speech or memory, both of which are under the control of reason, but in feeling. Proust, with his method of evoking the essence of the past by feeling linked to sense experience, might agree.

16. Cf.

    Was it vision, or a waking dream?
    Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

    Keats: “Ode to A Nightingale.”

    But where Keats is unsure of the reality of his vision, Dante is supremely certain of his.

17. Cf. Proclus' saying that the movement of life is toward the good, of thought toward being. Dante says here that the ultimate aims of intellect and will are reached together in the union with being.

18. C. G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Bollingen Series, New York, 1959. pp. 21-22.

19. Nature here means the operation of the moving heavens which stamp human lives with their influences.

20. See Saggi di filosofia dantesca. Milano, 1930. pp. 155-185.

21. As M. Asin tries to prove without much success in his Islam and the Divine Comedy (trans. by H. Sunderland). London, 1926.

22. E. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. New York, 1955. p. 84.

23. Nesca A. Robb, Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance. London, 1935. pp. 135-141.

24. Robb, pp. 136-161.

Select Bibliography

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Fergusson, Francis. Dante's Drama of the Mind: A Modern Reading of the “Purgatorio.” Princeton, 1953.

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Flamini, Francesco. Introduction to the Study of the Divine Comedy, trans. Freeman M. Josselyn. Boston, 1910.

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———. History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. New York, 1955.

———. The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard. London, 1940.

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Robb, Nesca A. Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance. London, 1935.

Santayana, George. Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, Goethe. Garden City, N.Y., 1953. Originally published in 1910 by Harvard University Press.

Sayers, Dorothy L. Further Papers on Dante. London, 1957. Also, New York, 1957.

———. Introductory Papers on Dante. London, 1954. Also, New York, 1954.

Singleton, Charles. “Dante's Allegory.” Speculum XXV (1950).

———. “The Pattern of the Center” in Dante Studies I—Commedia: Elements of Structure. Cambridge, Mass., 1954.

Stambler, Bernard. Dante's Other World: The Purgatorio as Guide to the “Divine Comedy.” New York, 1957.

Tondelli, Leone. Da Gioachino a Dante. Torino, 1944.

———. Il libro delle figure dell Abate Gioachino da Fiore. Torino, 1953.

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