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Paradise · Cantos XXIX to XXXIII

The Empyrean

LoveLanguage and NarrationGod and the DivineKnowledge and Wisdom

Summary of the cantos

These five cantos carry the weight of an ending. Beatrice speaks for the last time, of the creation of the angels and the pride of Lucifer, of the preachers and of the rose, and then falls silent: in Canto XXX the poet gives up describing her, in Canto XXXI she takes leave with a smile, and from then on the speaker is Bernard. The space changes as well: the swiftest sphere gives way, the Empyrean enters, which is light, and the light opens into a rose, with saints on one side and the other, angels rising and descending like bees, children seated by the merit of others, and an empty throne for the emperor who did not come. The question that runs through the five cantos is what is asked and of whom. Bernard asks Mary that the pilgrim be allowed to see, Mary answers with her eyes, and the vision that follows is described above all by what is missing: memory, language, and the power of imagination. The poem does not conclude with a thesis but with a movement.

Canto XXIX: The Creation of the Angels and the Preachers

LoveGod and the Divine

Summary of the canto

Beatrice falls silent for as long as the Sun and the Moon, children of Latona, one beneath Aries and the other beneath Libra, take to change hemispheres after balancing on the horizon: the instant of a scale. With her face painted with laughter, she gazes fixedly at the point of light that overcame Dante, and speaks without waiting for the question, because she has already seen it in the point toward which every where and every when are directed:

Analysis

Non per aver a sé di bene acquisto, / ch’esser non può, ma perché suo splendore / potesse, risplendendo, dir “Subsisto”, / in sua etternità di tempo fore, / fuor d’ogne altro comprender, come i piacque, / s’aperse in nuovi amor l’etterno amore, not to gain for himself any increase of good, which cannot be, but so that his splendor, shining forth, might be able to say "I subsist," in his eternity, outside of time, beyond all other comprehension, as it pleased him, the eternal love opened into new loves.

Beatrice rules out at once the reason one would expect: God does not create because something is lacking to him, but so that a splendor may say "I subsist," a scholastic term for existing by oneself. The other is born as new love, not as a servant. The idea is of a love that gives itself without gaining anything, spoken with the smile of one who has already seen the answer in the point.

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Canto XXX: The Pure Light and the Rose

LoveLanguage and NarrationGod and the Divine

Summary of the canto

About six thousand miles from there, noon is at its height, and the sky closes up star by star, as when the clearest handmaid of the sun comes, the most beautiful of all. So the triumph of the angels, which plays around the point that overcame Dante, fades little by little from his sight, and the not-seeing and love oblige him to turn his eyes to Beatrice. If all that has been said of her so far could fit in a single praise, it would be too little for this time:

Analysis

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Canto XXXI: Bernard replaces Beatrice

Home, Exile, and Return

Summary of the canto

The holy militia shows itself to Dante in the form of a rose, and the other, that of the angels, goes and comes:

Analysis

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Canto XXXII: The Rose and the Children

Faith

Summary of the canto

Saint Bernard, who had been contemplating in rapture, freely takes up the office of teacher and begins to speak, showing who sits where in the rose, from Eve at the feet of Mary to the Hebrew women who divide the flower into tiers:

Analysis

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Canto XXXIII: The final vision

LoveLanguage and NarrationGod and the DivineKnowledge and Wisdom

Summary of the canto

Saint Bernard begins the prayer to the Virgin, the last step before the vision, in which he asks for the grace to lift Dante's eyes up to the supreme pleasure, and opens with a sequence of paradoxes:

Analysis

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Reading of the block of cantos

Analysis

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