We can see why reading the Paradiso felt, to the youthful Lewis, like joining in some “spacious gliding movement, like a slow dance, or like flying.” It was ethereal, but at the same time tactile and tangible and sensuous and palpable. Dante’s language constantly evokes ordinary, terrestrial events, daily crafts, and diurnal happenings—such as growth, and eating, and clothing. Dante uses concrete and humble things even when gesturing, in wonder, at that distant country of heaven. In other words, Lewis loved Dante because he made his heaven envelop, penetrate, invade, burn, and restlessly seek
...more
