All roads lead to Dante.
History, Philosophy, Science, and Theology unite to make this piece and then it tangles its way into the the rest of Western literature - from Umberto Eco to Charles Williams. When you read Dante, you find him everywhere. In an odd twist he becomes your Virgil leading you to God through Hell. I expect to discuss him everywhere else, but he is hard to write about here because there is so much worth saying.
Say all or say nothing.
I will stick to a few impressions.
I’m comfortable in Inferno. I’ve read it several times. I read Purgatory for the first time last year and it opened my eyes to the long work of sanctification - the next time I read it I want to discus it as a gift modern Christians avoid because they are scared of his imagination.
Paradiso. Paradiso is like a rosy summer breeze. You find yourself unexpectedly smiling over something you have only grasped a small piece of.
On Translation
I read the Musa translation for the majority of the Comedy, but my husband let me finish with his copy - Sayers/Reynolds - because the closer you get to the central all encompassing point, the more allegorical and incomprehensible the imagery becomes. You need notes and not just signposts. Sayers translates the languages, explains the allegory and the story, holds you in that point and addresses the historical and mythical references in the canto. She is a wonder. God bless her.
On the Work:
Providence, the movement of God through his understanding and predestination, is brought to its wild glory when Dante explains the man in Africa who never heard God’s name and the entire spiritual realm as existing to support that. His argument was so clear by the time I arrived at it that I could express it before reading and it deals with Lewis’s Emith in the Last Battle. Lewis takes the argument a bit further, instead of having an ignorant man you have one trained towards spiritual belligerence, but that is nothing in the face of the symphony of the cosmos.
Every person is a unique creation with the image of God in them reflecting a unique facet of God’s totality. And these facets are not scattered at random, but placed intentionally throughout time and space to be in the location where they can best lift to God the creational glory He has placed for them to reflect. Because of the fall, they lack the ability to reflect initially (outside of baptism) and also are capable of completely refusing to - but a man can hear the creational glory intended for him and reflect it appropriately without knowing the name - this is grace. We loved God, for He loved us first. His second grand overture (after making us and doing it in His image) is placing us so completely in the time ripe for us to reflect him.
There is only one way, through Christ, but there are a million ways to realize you are a fallen sinner in need of a savior and each person is uniquely placed to bring forth that understanding. Like Abraham they can put their hope in something the do not see. And like Pharaoh they can be hardened by God and have already chosen in their station to refuse to reflect God through them and instead try to be one.
The Heavens
Cosmology is a big buzzword right now in my circles. We are all awash in getting a good metaphysic and regaining a medieval cosmology. It is real great and I am so there.
First we had Michael Ward unlocking Narnia, then Jason Farley talking about singing stars and Roman farming to appease Mars, then Jason Baxter tracking down the Medieval Mind of CS Lewis. Even my great (18x) grandfather wrote a treatise of the astrolabe noting that no son of his should sight by Mars, Saturn, or the tail of the Dragon. I solemnly swear.
Dante has us beat. The seven heavens are the location of Paradise, moving through them and their spiritual and allegorical meaning brings us closer to the central point where God resides.
He discusses stars as shepherds moving times under their wings, trellises bringing along growth in the right directions, and the misattribution to false gods names which causes us to occult their meaning by our frail understanding. Each star has a place and calls a people through time (through the facet of God’s image placed in them) leading them to the right sphere for them where they can shine best in the color diffused from the central radiance of God. It makes you understand why Lewis cared more about his stars than his Myers Briggs.
To that end - I now know my planets and Dante’s framework is spot on. I definitely would not be sitting next to St Lucy and Mary. I like the idea of heavenly seating arrangements.
The Stars
The angelic spheres in all their array
are in their totality meant to overlay
all of the rest of the spheres,
fulfilling the role as a system of secondary causes working out and reflecting Providence.
There was one note in the Reynolds/ Sayers version on this
It works back throught the text where he looks and sees the stars, charting towards them. They surrounded him in the dark wood.
Music
Inferno was silent. It left you to hear the grind and crunch of every move, the shrieks and laughter. There was no gloss over every sound of pain or every trudging foot.
Purgatorio began with chanting and running over hills up the side of the mountain. There was hardship, but there was the glimmering reflection of the glory to come.
They chanted and sang and worked, but then like Vivaldi's Spring, the first tones spilled out and filled up the garden at the top of the mountain.
And Paradiso is full of the music of the spheres.
Everything else will probably come up in other books - from Leaf by Niggle to Foucault’s Pendulum.
Further up and Further in
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