PARADISO XXXI, 108

Diodorus Siculus narrates the story of a dismembered and sundered god, who, as he walks in the twilight or traces a date in his past, never senses that something infinite has been lost.

Mankind has lost a face, an irretrievable face, and everyone would like to be that pilgrim (dreamed of in the empyrean, under the Rose) who sees Veronica's handkerchief in Rome and murmurs with faith: Jesus Christ, My Lord, True God, this, then, was Your Face?

There is a stone face on a certain road and an inscription which reads: The true Portrait of the Holy Face of the God of Jaén. If we really knew the likeness, we would have the key to the parables and would know if the son of the carpenter was also the Son of God.

Paul saw it in the guise of a light which hurled him to the ground; John, as the sun shining in full force; Teresa of Jesus, oftentimes, as if bathed in a tranquil light, but she was never able to specify the color of the eyes.

We lost those features, in the way a magical number may be lost, a number made up of customary figures; in the same way as an image in a kaleidoscope is lost forever. We may see them, and not know it. The profile of a Jew in the subway may be that of Christ; the hands which give us some coins at a change-window may recall those which some soldiers once nailed to the Cross.

Perhaps some feature of the Crucified Face lurks in every mirror; perhaps the Face died, was effaced, so that God might become everyone.

Who knows whether we may not see it tonight in the labyrinths of dreams and remember nothing tomorrow.

—Translated by ANTHONY KERRIGAN