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Symbol

The three circles and the wheel

What It Is

The three circles and the wheel are the two images with which the poem closes. The three circles appear in the deep and clear substance of the high light, of three colors and of one measure: one reflected from the other like a rainbow of a rainbow, and the third, fire breathed by the other two equally. It is the Trinity. One of the circles, looked at more closely, seemed to Dante painted with our image, the human figure within the divine circle. The pilgrim tries to understand how the image fits the circle and how it lodges there, like the geometer who strives to measure the circle and does not find the principle he needs, and the attempt fails, because his wings are not enough. The wheel is the image of the last tercet: the desire and the will of the pilgrim were already turning, like a wheel moved equally, by the love that moves the sun and the other stars. Between the two images lie the volume in which the universe is gathered by love and the confession that speech is short and weak for what has been conceived.

Where It Appears

The volume comes before the circles, in Canto XXXIII:

Nel suo profondo vidi che s’interna, / legato con amore in un volume, / ciò che per l’universo si squaderna: / sustanze e accidenti e lor costume / quasi conflati insieme, per tal modo / che ciò ch’i’ dico è un semplice lume, in its depth I saw what is bound by love in one volume, what scatters through the universe: substances and accidents and their modes, as if fused together, in such a way that what I say is one simple light.
Cantos XXIX to XXXIII: The Empyrean

The three circles:

The three circles, before the failure that becomes vision. Ne la profonda e chiara sussistenza / de l’alto lume parvermi tre giri / di tre colori e d’una contenenza; In the deep and clear substance of the high light there seem to him three circles, of three colors and of one size, the trinitarian image that precedes the final instant. One of the circles, looked at more closely, mi parve pinta de la nostra effige, seemed to him painted with our own human image, and it is before this enigma, the human figure within the divine circle, that Dante tries to understand and fails.
Paradise

The comparison with the geometer:

tal era io a quella vista nova: / veder voleva come si convenne / l’imago al cerchio e come vi s’indova; / ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne: / se non che la mia mente fu percossa / da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne, such was I before that new sight: I wished to see how the image had to fit the circle and how it is lodged there; but my own wings were not enough for this, except that my mind was struck by a flash in which its will came.
Cantos XXIX to XXXIII: The Empyrean

The wheel is the final tercet:

The same tercet in the original, which closes the whole poem. A l’alta fantasia qui mancò possa; / ma già volgeva il mio disio e ’l velle, / sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa, / l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. Here the power of the high fantasy failed; yet already my desire and my will were turning, like a wheel moved equally throughout, by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.
Paradise

Carpeaux isolates the verse of love:

Amor che muove il sole e l'altre stelle
Carpeaux, History of Western Literature

And the poem records that the three canticles end with the same word:

The three canticles of the Comedy end with the same word, stelle, stars: in Inferno, to see the stars again; in Purgatory, to climb to the stars; and in Paradise, the love that moves the sun and the other stars.
Cantos XXIX to XXXIII: The Empyrean

What It Means

The three circles are the limit of what the poem can see and say: the vision is of a simple light, and what is said is what emotion has kept. The enigma of the human image within the divine circle is the question the poem does not resolve. The wheel is the opposite, an answer in motion. The poem does not end with a thesis, it ends with a rotation, and the imperfect tense of the verb keeps the movement going. The verb that closes, to move, already opened the canticle.

The text supports two readings. On the first, the final vision is an honorable failure of the intellect, and what remains is the moved will. On the second, the moved will is the understanding that the intellect does not reach: Dante understands through love what he does not understand through concept. The poem suggests both without choosing.

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