The Portable Dante (58 page)

The glory of the One Who moves all things penetrates all the universe, reflecting in one part more and in another less.

I have been in His brightest shining heaven and seen such things that no man, once returned from there, has wit or skill to tell about;

for when our intellect draws near its goal and fathoms to the depths of its desire, the memory is powerless to follow;

but still, as much of Heaven’s holy realm as I could store and treasure in my mind shall now become the subject of my song.

O great Apollo, for this final task, make me a vessel worthy to receive your genius and the longed-for laurel crown.

Thus far I have addressed my prayers to one peak of Parnassus; now I need them both to move into this heavenly arena.

Enter my breast, breathe into me as high a strain as that which vanquished Marsyas the time you drew him from his body’s sheath.

O Power Divine, but lend me of yourself so much as will make clear at least the shadow of that high realm imprinted on my mind,

and you shall see me at your chosen tree, crowning myself with those green leaves of which my theme and you yourself will make me worthy.

So seldom, Father, are they plucked to crown the triumph of a Caesar or a Poet (the shame, the fault of mortal man’s desires!)

that when a man yearns to achieve that goal, then the Peneian frond should surely breed a new joy in the joyous Delphic god.

From one small spark can come a mighty blaze: so after me, perhaps, a better voice may rise in prayer and win Cyrrha’s response.

The lamp that lights the world rises for man at different points, but from the place which joins four circles with three crosses, it ascends

upon a happier course with happier stars conjoined, and in this way it warms and seals the earthly wax closer to its own likeness.

This glad union had made it morning there and evening here: our hemisphere was dark, while all the mountain bathed in white, when I

saw Beatrice turned round, facing left, her eyes raised to the sun—no eagle ever could stare so fixed and straight into such light!

As one descending ray of light will cause a second one to rise back up again, just as a pilgrim yearns to go back home,

so, like a ray, her act poured through my eyes into my mind and gave rise to my own: I stared straight at the sun as no man could.

In that place first created for mankind much more is granted to the human senses than ever was allowed them here on earth.

I could not look for long, but my eyes saw the sun enclosed in blazing sparks of light like molten iron as it pours from the fire.

And suddenly it was as if one day shone on the next—as if the One Who Could had decked the heavens with a second sun.

And Beatrice stood there, her eyes fixed on the eternal spheres, entranced, and now my eyes, withdrawn from high, were fixed on her.

Gazing at her, I felt myself becoming what Glaucus had become tasting the herb that made him like the other sea-gods there.

“Transhumanize”—it cannot be explained
per verba,
so let this example serve until God’s grace grants the experience.

Whether it was the last created part of me alone that rose, O Sovereign Love, You know Whose light it was that lifted me.

When the great sphere that spins, yearning for You eternally, captured my mind with strains of harmony tempered and tuned by You,

I saw a great expanse of heaven ablaze with the sun’s flames: not all the rains and rivers on earth could ever make a lake so wide.

The revelation of this light, this sound, inflamed me with such eagerness to learn their cause, as I had never felt before;

and she who saw me as I saw myself, ready to calm my agitated mind, began to speak before I asked my question:

“You have yourself to blame for burdening your mind with misconceptions that prevent from seeing clearly what you might have seen.

You may think you are still on earth, but lightning never sped downward from its home as quick as you are now ascending to your own. ”

As easily did these few and smiling words release me from my first perplexity than was my mind ensnared by yet another,

and I said: “Though I rest content concerning one great wonder of mine, I wonder now how I can rise through these light bodies here. ”

She sighed with pity when she heard my question and looked at me the way a mother might hearing her child in his delirium:

“Among all things, however disparate, there reigns an order, and this gives the form that makes the universe resemble God, ”

she said; “therein God’s higher creatures see the imprint of Eternal Excellence— that goal for which the system is created,

and in this order all created things, according to their bent, maintain their place, disposed in proper distance from their Source;

therefore, they move, all to a different port, across the vast ocean of being, and each endowed with its own instinct as its guide.

This is what carries fire toward the moon, this is the moving force in mortal hearts, this is what binds the earth and makes it one.

Not only living creatures void of reason prove the impelling strength of instinct’s bow, but also those with intellect and love.

The Providence that regulates the whole becalms forever with its radiance the heaven wherein revolves the swiftest sphere;

to there, to that predestined place, we soar, propelled there by the power of that bow which always shoots straight to its Happy Mark.

But, it is true that just as form sometimes may not reflect the artist’s true intent, the matter being deaf to the appeal,

just so, God’s creature, even though impelled toward the true goal, having the power to swerve, may sometimes go astray along his course;

and just as fire can be seen as falling down from a cloud, so too man’s primal drive, twisted by false desire, may bring him down.

You should, in all truth, be no more amazed at your flight up than at the sight of water that rushes down a mountain to its base.

If you, free as you are of every weight, had stayed below, then that would be as strange as living flame on earth remaining still.

And then she turned her gaze up toward the heavens.

All you who in your wish to hear my words have followed thus far in your little boat behind my ship that singing sails these waters,

go back now while you still can see your shores; do not attempt the deep: it well could be that losing me, you would be lost yourselves.

I set my course for waters never travelled; Minerva fills my sails, Apollo steers, and all nine Muses point the Bears to me.

Those few of you who from your youth have raised your eager mouths in search of angels’ bread on which man feeds here, always hungering,

you may, indeed, allow your boat to sail the high seas in the furrow of my wake ahead of parted waters that flow back.

Those heroes who once crossed the deep to Colchis, and saw their Jason put behind a plow, were not amazed as much as you will be.

By that innate and never-ending thirst for God’s own realm we sped up just as fast as human eyes can rise to meet the skies.

My gaze on Beatrice, hers on Heaven, in less time than an arrow strikes the mark, flies through the air, loosed from its catch, I found

myself in some place where a wondrous thing absorbed all of my mind, and then my lady, from whom I could not keep my thirst to know,

turned toward me as joyful as her beauty: “Direct your mind and gratitude, ” she said, “to God, who raised us up to His first star. ”

We seemed to be enveloped in a cloud as brilliant, hard, and polished as a diamond struck by a ray of sunlight. That eternal,

celestial pearl took us into itself, receiving us as water takes in light, its indivisibility intact.

If I was body (on earth we cannot think, in terms of solid form within a solid, as we must here, since body enters body),

then so much more should longing burn in us to see that Being in Whom we can behold the union of God’s nature with our own.

Once there we shall behold what we hold true through faith, not proven but self-evident: a primal truth, incontrovertible.

1 said, “My lady, all my adoration, all my humility is gratitude to Him Who raised me from the mortal world.