Summary
Dante is in awe, like a frightened child; Beatrice comforts him. She explains that even this anger is righteous and turns his attention towards the many lights now coming near him. One spirit explains that all of them were involved in contemplative, monastic lives. Dante asks to see the spirit “with [his] face unveiled,” and the spirit assures him that his “lofty wish/shall find fulfillment in the highest sphere,/where all desires are fulfilled, and mine as well.” He laments that no one attempts to climb the “rungs” of Jacob’s ladder anymore, criticizing again the state of the church. We learn that this is the soul of Benedict, who founded the Benedictine order of monks. Soon he and his fellow lights swirl back up the ladder, and Beatrice and Dante ascend swiftly to the next sphere, which is full of stars.
Dante apostrophizes the stars, praising them and their source in God. Beatrice tells him to look downwards at how far they have come, and seeing earth from above makes Dante realize the inconsequentiality of earthly things. Dante sees “The little patch of earth that makes us here so fierce” and then turns his attention, instead, to Beatrice’s eyes.
Dante opens canto twenty-three by likening Beatrice to a mother bird looking towards dawn. In her hope, he finds himself “longing” and strangely fulfilled by this longing. Soon “a shining substance” suffuses the sky; we learn that this is “the Wisdom and Power that repaired/the roads connect Heaven and the earth”—in other words, this is Christ. In response, Dante’s “mind, grown greater at that feast,/burst forth, transported from itself,/and now cannot recall what it became.” He can now see Beatrice in her true form, and because of his newly expanded capacity to see, he notes that “in representing Paradise,/the sacred poem must make its leap across,/as does a man who finds his path cut off.” To describe what he is experiencing requires that he leap into a wholly different degree of divinity.
Beatrice then turns Dante’s attention toward Mary and the Apostles, represented as a rose and lilies respectively. Dante praises God, and he states that even the “sweetest melody” would sound rough compared to the sounds of this heaven. A voice sings, stating “‘I am angelic love and I encircle/the exalted joy breathed from the womb/that was the dwelling place of our desire.” The apostles then reach towards Mary as a baby does their mother, and they sing Regina celi (Latin for “queen of heaven”).
Beatrice opens canto twenty-four by addressing the heavenly host, asking that they “heed [Dante’s] immeasurable craving” and “refresh him at the very source of all his thoughts.” They move like wheels in a clock, and Dante acknowledges that he does not “write” how one moved, “for our imagination is too crude, as is our speech,/to paint the subtler colors of the folds of bliss.” Beatrice tells the spirit, who we learn later is Peter, to interrogate Dante about his love, hope, and faith. Dante girds himself with arguments; Peter asks, simply, “What is faith?” Dante responds, “faith is the substance of things hoped for,/the evidence of things that are not seen.” Peter asks a few follow-up questions and at last commends Dante on his argumentation. Still, he states, “Now this coin’s alloy/and weight are well examined,//but tell me if you have it in your purse.” Dante responds affirmatively.
Next, Peter questions where and how Dante gained his faith. Dante responds that this syllogism has come from the “abundant rain of the Holy Ghost,/poured out onto the parchments old and new.” Peter asks where the proof of these things is, and Dante responds that it is through the miracles that followed. Peter asks how he knows these miracles occurred, and Dante quickly retorts that it would be a miracle enough if the world “turned to Christ” without miracles. Peter approves, and Dante vocalizes his beliefs in a long speech, “I believe” repeated throughout. The apostle circles Dante three times in joy.
At the beginning of canto twenty-five, Dante the poet considers the possibility of “this sacred poem” helping him to “overcome the cruelty” of his exile and allow him to take “the laurel crown” of the poet. Immediately, he describes how Peter “encircled” his brow. James appears as a burning light, almost blinding to Dante, and asks him what hope is “and how it blossoms” in him, as well as where it came from. Beatrice intercedes before he can speak, stating that Dante is the most filled with hope of all Christians. He himself answers James’s first and third questions: first, hope “is the certain expectation/of future glory”; second, King David was Dante’s first source of hope.
James then asks “what promise Hope holds out to you.” Dante responds by alluding to Isaiah, and the stars begin to sing “Sperent in te” or “Let them hope in You.” Suddenly, another light begins to shine brighter than the others. This is John, and Dante strains to make John out, but John accosts him, questioning: “Why do you blind your eyes/trying to behold what is not here to see?” His body, he explains, is below, in earth. Soon the dance of the lights stops, and Dante becomes troubled, unable to “see” Beatrice, despite being “so near to her and in that happy world!”
Analysis
In canto twenty-two, Benedict’s speech develops the theme of love in significant ways. Although we may typically think about desire as something separate from Dante’s notion of Divine Love, Benedict’s depiction of the “highest sphere” as a place “where all desires are fulfilled” suggests that heavenly perfection is, in part, a fulfillment of desire. And we should note, too, that Dante has Benedict add “and mine as well,” evoking personal desire even within the context of the divine. Perhaps we can then think about Dante’s desire for Beatrice as one that is at once personal and holy; it fuses both the collective desire embodied by Divine Love and the personal, earthly experience of desire embodied by Dante’s love for Beatrice.
During canto twenty-three, we find Dante joining a number of themes and motifs present throughout the Commedia: hope, navigation, music, and the limitations of language all work together at different points. But this canto may be especially significant in that we finally have Dante see Beatrice as she is in Paradise. This vision is accompanied by Dante’s mind being “transported from itself,” a notion that evokes the religious experience of “ecstasy.” Ecstasy is literally a “standing beside oneself,” and in the middle ages, it was associated with intense experiences of the divine. This canto’s highly poetic and intense register stretches the reader’s mind to evoke this experience of ecstasy and, at the same time, pushes them to recognize the inadequacy of this description due to Dante’s limited language and memory. Ecstatic beauty cannot be captured, even as Dante’s poem attempts to “make its leap across” and outside of himself.
We should also note that Dante uses the term cammin ("path"), which appears in the very first line of the Inferno. Thus Dante calls back to the beginning of the poem, when he had “lost his path,” to suggest that this ecstasy is a significant step in his allegorical journey.
Peter’s examination of Dante should receive significant attention, not merely as a chance for Dante to show his theological knowledge but as a sort of climax within the poem’s intellectual themes. As suggested earlier, much of the Paradiso is concerned with correcting Dante’s intellect. In this canto, Dante’s intellect is interrogated in the style of a baccalaureate examination (somewhat like a contemporary dissertation defense); in other words, Dante uses the tropes of the examination required to get a degree in theology to structure this interaction. But, beyond its structure, this examination shows the extent to which Dante’s intellect has been strengthened. Rather than have others explain theological concepts, he himself is now explaining them, and the canto ends with a powerful use of repetition. The repeated credo (“I believe”) creates a momentum that dramatizes Dante’s intellectual fortitude and fidelity, ultimately causing the apostles to rejoice.
Though it may not be totally explicit, Peter’s encircling of Dante’s brow in canto twenty-five suggests that Peter himself is crowning Dante in that moment, not with a laurel but with his holy light. That this is how Dante opens a stanza largely about hope is significant in that, though Dante’s hope of being able to “overcome” his exile may not be fulfilled, his place as the poet of Christian hope is certainly clear. More generally, Dante connects the capacity for poetry and song and the creation of hope in this stanza: King David was known as a singer and becomes Dante’s source of hope, the stars song is specifically about hope, and even Dante’s poem serves to solidify and articulate his own hope for “future glory.”
