(Paradiso 21–29)
Thinking and Doing
In the modern world we tend to imagine a radical opposition between people who do and people who think: there are those who get stuff done (leaders, businesspeople, executives) and those, like professors at liberal arts colleges, who don’t. Too often, doers have contempt for thinkers, while thinkers have disdain for those who participate in the active life. As we have begun to see, Dante works hard to explode such simplistic categories. In the heaven of the sun, we saw that Dominic was called a “great athlete,” a man who vigorously campaigned to destroy the church’s opposition—clearly a doer. But Dante, through the mouth of Bonaventure, adds that Dominic did so through teaching and learning, and for this reason Dante says that he went forth “with doctrine and with zeal together” (Par. 12.97). Dominic could not have arrived at his successful activity if it were not for his learning.
Most of us can comprehend that some intellectual training is needed to be successful in a practical sphere of life, but Dante, as he always does, takes the next step and, by doing so, reveals one of the blind spots in modern culture. For Dante, it is not just that intellectual work is necessary for shaping successful activity, but also that thinking can actually be productive; thinking can be something, even when it is not primarily directed at solving a problem or building a bridge. Under the right conditions, contemplation is an activity that is valuable, productive, and moving. These ideas on active contemplation are present in the heaven of Saturn, the heaven of the stars, and the crystalline sphere.
The Thinking of Angels
According to Dante’s cosmology, there is a heavenly sphere, called the “primum mobile” or “crystalline sphere,” that encompasses even the sphere of the stars. It is the most vital, dynamic, energetic thing in the whole universe: it moves faster than anything on earth, bounding forward without ever slowing. It is the chief driveshaft that turns the spheres, allowing energy from heaven to slowly trickle down, from sphere to sphere, until it reaches earth. Or to use an organic metaphor, as Beatrice does, the world is like an upside-down flowerpot, whose roots are in the highest heaven—that is, this crystalline sphere—and whose flowers and fruits show up, down below, on earth (Par. 27.106–20).
Dante means for this poetic vision of the crystalline sphere to strike us as dazzling, a kind of medieval equivalent to the images from the Hubble Space Telescope. As so often happens throughout the canti of Paradiso, this awe-inspiring view of heaven is so breathtaking that it leads to an outburst of anger. After contemplating this sight, Beatrice warmly abuses the blindness of humankind and our pathetic contentment with the mud and puddles of earth (Par. 27.121–26). Greed is the excess that causes the blooms of the flowers to spoil.
But what Dante sees in the midst of this great, rotating wheel is even more breathtaking. He sees a tiny point of light, smaller than any star seen from the earth, emitting a beam of blinding brilliance:
I saw a point that sent out a ray
of light so sharp that vision is burned by it and
must close against it because it is so strong. (Par. 28.16–18)
Around this point of light there are nine spinning rings (28.13–45); the closer to the point the ring stands, the faster it moves. As Beatrice explains, these are the nine choirs of angels. According to Dante’s source (Dionysius the Areopagite’s Celestial Hierarchy), the two highest ranks of the choirs of angels are made up of the seraphim and cherubim, who are able to look most deeply into the ocean of fire of God’s being (28.100–102). “Moved by flaming love,” they occupy themselves almost exclusively with that act of looking; however, something of the warmth of their vision spills over into the next lower tier of the hierarchy, the thrones. And in this way, affection cascades down from choir to choir: dominions, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels, and angels. The two lowest tiers of the hierarchy, the archangels and angels, are chiefly responsible for taking this vision out, communicating it to those on earth.
When we recall, though, that these rings of angels are found within the great turning circle of the crystalline sphere, then we realize that Dante understands this hierarchy of contemplation as responsible for generating the physical motion of the heavenly spheres. Quite literally, the looking of angels turns the wheeling of the heavens. Because the vision of God is so stirring, love is enkindled in the heart of the one who sees—the one who contemplates—and this energy is released as a kind of spiritual radioactivity, like the energy that irradiates from an atom when it is split. Thus, for Dante, love literally moves the world. Far from the worthless activity it is sometimes called, contemplation moves all other activities in the cosmos.
Once, when I read these words to one of my students, he immediately responded, “That’s a beautiful idea, but how could human beings—with their finite intellects—ever participate in such a profound act of intellectual seeing?”1 His instinct was correct. One of the most striking features of Dante’s vision of heaven is his portrayal of human beings participating in this profound gaze of love—a gaze for which they don’t seem worthy. In the heaven of Saturn (Par. 21–22), the poet gives us a few hints about how this is at all possible.
Saturn and Contemplation
According to ancient and medieval astrological theory, Saturn could have a pernicious influence on people on earth: if you were born under the sign of Saturn, then you are melancholic, irritable, morose, and introverted. Poets and artists are born under the sign of Saturn, as Albrecht Dürer brilliantly captured in an engraving depicting melancholy.2 In Paradiso we find a rather more positive interpretation of what your Saturnine disposition would be like if perfected. That irritable tendency to withdraw, to be alone, that frustrated spirit about everyone’s faults, is revealed on Saturn for what it could be: a world of profound peace, a spiritual power to be attentive to and delight in the depths of truth. Throughout these canti Dante makes us feel the profound abyss of tranquility located within their souls.
Canto 20 opens in eerie stillness; there is no smiling, no singing, no sound. The pilgrim is perplexed. All he sees is a giant golden ladder, with thousands of sparks raining silently down (Par. 21.28–33). Soon, one of these splendors draws near to Dante: Peter Damian, a reforming Benedictine monk of the eleventh century. Dante’s first question to him is about this silence: “Tell me: why has it gone silent within this wheel? / What happened to the sweet symphony of Paradise, / which sounds so devoutly down below?” (21.58–60). Peter responds: “You have mortal hearing, just like your sight, . . . / thus here there is no singing / for the very reason Beatrice has not smiled” (21.61–63). This is not a silence due to inactivity, then; rather everyone is holding back. Earlier Beatrice had explained that if she smiled at the pilgrim, he
“would be Semele when she was reduced to ash.
“For my beauty . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .
“if it were not tempered, would shine so brilliantly
that your mortal power, in light of its splendor,
would be a leaf scorched by lightning.” (Par. 21.6–7, 10–12)
In other words, behind this veil of silence is a music and joy so powerful and profound that it would destroy a mind too feeble to encounter it. It is like a vast amount of water in a reservoir, which exerts so many tons of pressure that the walls of the dam have to be reinforced.
Throughout these canti, Dante cleverly weaves details in and out to give us glimpses of the spiritual energy that is being held back. When Peter Damian hears the pilgrim’s question, for example, he comes alive with an extraordinary force, whirling around “like a millstone” (Par. 21.81). And at the end of canto 21, Dante gets just a brief glimpse of what would happen if that pressure did break forth. There, Peter Damian, once a cardinal himself, grows angry and excoriates the greedy cardinals of Dante’s day. Their fur-lined mantles, he sarcastically grumbles, hang over their horses’ sides, so that both man and beast travel under one cloak (21.133–35). Then all of those justice-loving, melancholic souls on Saturn, listening keenly, affirm his words with a short, confident shout:
At his cry, I saw more flames
descend, step by step, and spin.
With every turn they were becoming more beautiful.
They moved around this flame and stopped,
and then came a shout of such loud sound
that nothing here could be likened to it:
nor could I comprehend it! A thunderbolt so overcame me. (Par. 21.136–42)
It’s almost humorous: the pilgrim is frightened, like a child startled by thunder. From our perspective, we realize that this brief outbreak of voices manifests how much they are holding back:
Struck down in a stupor, I turned to my guide,
like a little child who always runs back
to where he finds the most comfort.
And she, like a mother who immediately consoles
her son . . .
said: “Didn’t you know that you are in heaven?
And didn’t you know that heaven is entirely holy,
and thus that which is done arises from righteous zeal?
“How the song would have knocked you over!
And my smile! You can see this now,
given that their shout so shook you.” (Par. 22.1–5, 7–12)
Sacred Hunger and the Intellectual Life
But how is it that these contemplatives have reached a vision of such depth? How is it that they became capable of looking down into the abyss of truth, so much so that they are full of power? Dante makes it clear that his contemplatives only arrived at such a depth of spirit by practicing extraordinary spiritual discipline. In fact, the poet here refers to contemplatives as “athletes of God,” those who sacrifice everything in a spiritual training program. Thus, although it is true that their pure thinking produces a dynamic movement, it is also true that they had to discipline themselves to get to the point of being able to gaze with such profundity. For Dante, contemplatives are not just people who like to read and think in quiet, but also those with a kind of muscular devotion to the intellectual and moral life. Peter Damian sums up his life in this way:
“I made myself so firm in the service of God,
“that with simple foods of olive oil,
I heartily suffered the heats and frosts,
content in contemplative thoughts.” (Par. 21.114–17)
In order, that is, to find the liberty to dwell steadfastly in those contemplative thoughts, Peter first had to reach an impressive level of discipline, like that of a Division I athlete who gets up every morning at 5:00 a.m. to go to the gym and eats only what his trainer prescribes to him, whether he is hungry or not. The contemplative, then, is like an athlete with his mind, willing to submit to discipline.
In the next canto, Saint Benedict adds, “Peter began without gold and without silver / and I with prayer and with fasting” (Par. 22.88–89). This surprising connection between “fasting” and intellectual activity appears throughout the Comedy. In Paradiso 25, for example, Dante refers to his “sacred poem, / to which both heaven and earth have put forward a hand / so that it has made me, for many years, lean” (25.1–3). In other words, the very process of studying, reading, thinking, meditating, digesting, and carefully seeking the perfect word to express the conception is likened, by Dante, to a great intellectual fast, to a disciplined eating of words and books. In Paradiso 19, the pilgrim asks the Eagle a question, begging the Eagle to free him from his “great fast / that for so long now has kept me hungry / since I could not find any food for it on earth” (19.25–27). At the end of Purgatorio, Dante also begged for divine assistance, invoking similar terms: “O sacred Virgins, if fasting, cold, or sleepless nights / I’ve ever suffered for your sake, / necessity drives me to call for my reward” (Purg. 29.37–39, trans. Hollander). Consistently, then, throughout the Comedy Dante uses the metaphor of fasting, both because of the inherent property of “hunger”—that is, a longing for things that cannot be easily satisfied by ordinary fare—and on account of the discipline, control, and moderation needed for developing the ability to be nourished by only the best books and the richest ideas. As Paul Griffiths puts it in the opening to his Religious Reading, this mentality stands in stark contrast to our contemporary consumerist and entertainment-based approaches to information:
So far as I can recall, I have always been able to read, to make sense of and be excited by written things. I know, of course, that there was a time when I could not read; it’s just that I cannot remember it. But I was never taught, and have still not properly learned, how to read with careful, slow attentiveness; it is difficult for me to read with the goal of incorporating what I read, of writing it upon the pages of my memory; I find it hard to read as a lover, to caress, lick, smell, and savor the words on the page, and to return to them ever and again. I read, instead, mostly as a consumer, someone who wants to extract what is useful or exciting or entertaining from what is read, preferably with dispatch, and then to move on to something else. My habits of reading are mostly like my habits of purchasing: dazzled by the range of things I can buy, I spend all that I can as fast as I can, ecstatic at the excitement of contributing to the market economy and satisfied if I can assure myself of a place in that economy by continuing to produce and consume. I’m not alone in this condition. Most academic readers are consumerist in their reading habits, and this is because they, like me, have been taught to be so and rewarded for being so.3
Consumerism feeds you, anticipating any craving long before it arises, keeping you from ever experiencing any meaningful hunger. What a contrast to the slow, patient reading and rereading that leads to greater hunger, to an intellectual leanness, to an alert mind—to that kind of reading needed to absorb and slowly chew on a book like Dante’s!
At the end of canto 22, Dante leaves these deeply peaceful souls behind. He approaches the golden ladder of the contemplatives, and as soon as he just sets his foot on the first rung of this electrically charged ladder, he is transported instantly, violently, and swiftly thousands of miles up into the heaven of the stars, an extraordinary image for the act of contemplation. From this vista, Dante looks down and sees the heavens spread out beneath his feet:
And all seven planets were shown to me:
how large they are, and how swift, and
where they are in their distant homes.
And that little patch that makes us so ferocious! . . .
All of it was shown to me: from hills to mouths of streams. (Par. 22.148–51, 153)
Indeed, Dante describes his view from this vantage point: “I saw this globe of ours / and I smiled because it seemed so lowly. / I approve that judgment as best / that holds this earth as least” (22.134–37). From this height, Dante can prefer the depth of the gaze to the noisy chatter of earth.
The Test of Love
In canti 24, 25, and 26, just before the pilgrim ascends to the primum mobile, he is within the starry sphere, where the apostles Peter, James, and John test him to see if he possesses faith, hope, and charity. The poet models these examinations, somewhat humorously, on the medieval bachelor of arts exam (Par. 24.37–39). And so, while Peter is thinking about how to phrase his question, the pilgrim gets himself ready: “Just as the bachelor arms himself and does not speak / until the master proposes the question . . . / just so I was arming myself with every possible argument” (24.46–47, 49).
In heaven, though, Dante’s pesky professors are difficult to please: they keep prodding, asking him to go beyond the definition. For instance, Peter asks Dante, what is faith? The pilgrim dutifully provides his biblical and catechistic answer: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, / the evidence of things that are not seen” (Par. 24.64–65). But Peter begins to probe him on particular key words in that definition: And what is “substance”? However, as the examination continues, it starts to take on a peculiarly poetic tone: “Very well: the money has been well examined / now in terms of its mixture and weight, / but tell me if you have it in your purse” (24.83–85).
So, what kind of exam is this? What does Peter really want to know? It would seem, in the first place, that Peter wants to know not just that Dante holds the right opinion about faith but also that he possesses it as his own. The coin, as Dante puts it, is in his pocket. Furthermore, one of the characteristics of a virtue (and faith is a theological virtue) is that it is not just rectitude of opinion but also a power, an energy, a strength that brings about effects. For instance, at one point Dante affirms his faith by stating, “I believe in one God, / one and eternal, who moves all the heavens, / though not moved, with love and desire” (Par. 24.130–32). In other words, the pilgrim starts reciting the creed, but in a vernacular, poetic form. The creed is now translated into the rhythm and cadence of poetry! Thus, the real demonstration that Dante possesses the theological virtue is that he can move those around him. At the end of his oral exam, when Peter finally approves of his response, the pilgrim announces it by demonstrating that he has been literally moved:
As the lord who hears that which pleases him
and so embraces his servant, congratulating him
on the news, as soon as the messenger has become silent,
in the same way, while blessing me and singing,
as soon as I had gone silent, he encircled me three times,
that apostolic light, at whose command
I had spoken: I had pleased him so much in my speech! (Par. 24.148–54)
Thus, the true test has been whether the pilgrim can fit the raw matter of ideas into the shape and order of cosmic poetry. Peter doesn’t so much want a definition of faith as he wants the pilgrim to perform faith for him, to perform it within him. Peter wants Dante to describe it, poetically, so that he wants to have it, too. Just as the medieval love poet tries to make the beloved share in his love—to perform in you what is happening in me—so too does Peter want to see Dante’s faith working, acting, making new faith. There can’t be any parasites in heaven; to make it in, you have to be able to add to its love, not just suck up the love of others.
The culminating moment of Dante’s bachelor exam in poetic theology, though—his test of love—comes in Paradiso 26. In response to John’s question, how did you come to know love?—or to use John’s metaphor, with how many teeth does love bite?—Dante answers:
“All those bites
that can make the heart turn to God
have come together in my charity:
“the being of the world and my own life,
the death of the one he endured so that I live,
and that which every man of faith hopes for, as do I,
“along with the living knowledge I mentioned before,
have drawn me from the sea of twisted love
and have placed me on the right shore.
“I love the leaves with which the garden
of the eternal gardener enleaves itself,
as their good comes from him.” (Par. 26.55–66)
This, then, is the pilgrim’s breathless litany of the loves that are scattered throughout the universe; he looks at the world and sees his existence, the world’s being, Christ’s death, and eternal life. It’s a major moment, in which Dante recognizes love not just in a few people or in a few beloved places, but feels all creatures as somehow unveiling some aspect of the face of God. In light of this confession, we can think back to Paolo and Francesca yet one more time. We realize now how inhibited and confined their little love was. They had one little love that distracted them from an ocean of goodness.