Paradiso 1: Ascent from the Earthly Paradise to Heaven

[[deleted user]]

Roger wrote: "Remember that Statius said that he was led to Christ by Virgil. Dante seems to think that pagan excellence points ultimately to God."

You know, the more times I read this comment, the more it resonates with me.

[[deleted user]]

Lily wrote: ""

LOL, Lily, and thanks.
I had tried to post the book link...
I was unsuccessful. Couldn't find it.
Ha ha. Spelling. But of course!

[Lily]

Adelle wrote: "Lily wrote: ""

LOL, Lily, and thanks.
I had tried to post the book link..."

I was curious about the book and went looking for it...Goodreads isn't as forgiving in its search engine as Amazon, to my frustration at times. (Try finding E.M. Forster's Selected Short Stories -- finally had to go get an ISBN number.) But, then, Goodreads isn't trying to make a sale.

[Wendel]

@Everyman #4: How does the universe resemble God?

It is my understanding that Dante imagines both God and the universe as perfect order (and sin as its violation). The scholastic mission is to explain this order, and Dante is working in that tradition.

However, this abstract conception makes it possible that he is at the same time – or at heart really – a mystic, seeking unification with God (the perfection of the love he first felt for Beatrice).

I expect that the scholastic approach from the Purgatorio will soon give way to a more visionary experience.

[Wendel]

Thomas #42: Would excluding all of classical literature and history make Dante more "Christian”?

I agree with your quote/unquote that it depends on one's definition of what constitutes a Christian. But one thing is sure, you can’t have Dante and leave the classics out!

Dante tried to pick the best from both traditions, and the classics certainly seemed superior in both art and science. So of course he invoked the help of Apollo to describe the marvels of the Christian heaven. Not as a god, but as a source of inspiration (whatever that is).

Anyway, for a fourteenth century Italian monotheism can not have been very absolute with all those saints (who, by the way, do not seem to occupy a large place in Dante's universe).

[Lily]

Wendelman wrote: "....So of course he invoked the help of Apollo to describe the marvels of the Christian heaven. Not as a god, but as a source of inspiration (whatever that is). ..."[Bold added.]

LOL! You intimate why I enjoy Wittgenstein, even when I don't understand. Sure, Dante invokes Apollo not as a god! Tell me another, and I may have a good poker hand?

I'm not convinced we escape the ambiguities that easily. Perhaps the challenge is simply to live into them?

(See also my msg 48. I rather suspect you are describing the situation as Dante might have seen it. Part of the problem is, once released, words "belong" not only to the author, but to the reader. Wrong as mine may be, my reading is not necessarily yours.)

[Laurel]

Wendelman wrote: "I expect that the scholastic approach from the Purgatorio will soon give way to a more visionary experience."

Interesting thought. Let's look for that.

[Laurel]

Wendelman wrote: "Dante tried to pick the best from both traditions, and the classics certainly seemed superior in both art and science. So of course he invoked the help of Apollo to describe the marvels of the Christian heaven. Not as a god, but as a source of inspiration (whatever that is)."

This works for me, and goes along with my idea of the pagan gods as fractured truth.

[Roger]

Laurele wrote: "Wendelman wrote: "Dante tried to pick the best from both traditions, and the classics certainly seemed superior in both art and science. So of course he invoked the help of Apollo to describe the m..."

In the Earthly Paradise on top of Mt. Purgatory (Canto 28), Mathilda says,

Those ancients who in poetry presented
the golden age, who sang its happy state,
perhaps, in their Parnassus, dreamt this place.

That's a sort of fractured truth in paganism.

[Laurel]

Roger wrote: "Laurele wrote: "Wendelman wrote: "Dante tried to pick the best from both traditions, and the classics certainly seemed superior in both art and science. So of course he invoked the help of Apollo t..."

Thanks, Roger!

[Laurel]

Here's what Hollander says about the Apollo/God equivalency:

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13–15. The invocation of God, even if as the “good Apollo,” is, once one considers the poetic moment, almost a necessity. (Paulinus of Nola apostrophizes Christ as follows: “Salve o Apollo vere” [Save us, O true Apollo—Carmina II.51], as noted by Kantorowicz [Kant.1951.1], p. 228, among a plethora of similar expressions found in Greek [and some Latin] syncretistic passages.) Who else but God Himself can serve as the ultimate “muse” for a poem about the ultimate mysteries of the Christian faith? If the first two of these three verses indirectly but clearly associate Apollo with God (the word valore in verse 14 is used at least thrice again undoubtedly to refer to the Power of God the Father [Par. I.107, X.3, and XXXIII.81]), while the second indirectly but clearly associates Dante with St. Paul (see Inf. II.28, “lo Vas d’elezïone” [the Chosen Vessel]), since Dante, likewise, will be made God’s chosen vessel (vaso). And what of the gift that this poet seeks? The “belovèd laurel,” in this exalted context, becomes more than poetic fame, but the true immortality of those who are blessed for eternity, another and better kind of immortality: the “laurel” granted by God to his immortal (i.e., saved) poet, rewarded, among other things, for having written, under His inspiration, of Him. In the Epistle to Cangrande, Dante offers the following explanation of the reason poets call on higher authority: “For they have need of invocation in a large measure, inasmuch as they have to petition the superior beings for something beyond the ordinary range of human powers, something almost in the nature of a divine gift” (tr. P. Toynbee—the last phrase reads quasi divinum quoddam munus, representing an only slightly veiled reference to the theologized nature of his “Apollo”). For Dante’s single use of the Latinism muno, based on munus, see Paradiso XIV.33. We should not forget, if we insist on the pagan valence of Apollo, that Dante has already twice “transvaluated” a pagan god into the Christian deity: See Inferno XXXI.92 and Purgatorio VI.118 for the expression sommo Giove (highest Jove). This is surely the same phenomenon that we witness here. Do these “transvaluations” of the more usual understandings of poetic inspiration and success entirely erase the traces of their original reference among poets and their audiences? We are, after all, reading a poem. And we should have no doubt but that its human agent was as interested in earthly success as any other poet (and perhaps more than most). However, the context makes a pagan understanding of these grand poetic gestures at the same time both impossible and desirable. We are almost forced to recognize the divine claims made by this very human agent, but we are allowed to understand them in completely human terms as well. We find ourselves in a usual dilemma: If we take the truth claims made by the poet on behalf of his poem seriously, we feel greatly troubled (mortal agents are not allowed such claims unless they are demonstrably chosen, as, to Christian believers, was Paul); on the other hand, if we insist that these claims are in fact not true, we sense that we have failed to deal with something that, if it makes us uncomfortable, nonetheless must be dealt with; other poets do not make such stringent demands upon our belief. In another way of phrasing this, we can only say No after we have said Yes, that is, by understanding Dante’s veiled claims, no matter what we eventually decide to think of them
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Hollander seems to think that Dante thinks he was inspired in writing his Commedia in the same way the Scripture writers were inspired. I don't know about that.

[Everyman]

Thomas wrote: "Everyman wrote: "I get the four circles. But I don't see where he gets three crosses.
."

Each of the three circles form a cross with the horizon. So four circles, but only three crosses."

But wouldn't each circle create two crosses with the horizon?