Paradiso: Canto XXI -- Ascent to Saturn

Just as there was an evil upon which man cannot look and survive, which we found in Medusa at the gates of Dis, there appears to be a beauty upon which man cannot look and survive. To maintain his equilibrium, Dante has to avoid exposure to the fullness of Beatrice's beauty, but his moderation can lean toward what Beatrice is shielding him from rather than remain in between two destructive extremes, for he is developing a greater capacity for her radiance and has shifted the mean in the same way one would shift the a balance sheet after a healthy deposit. That Beatrice is sincere in her understanding that her beauty is beyond mortal comprehension and the full display of it would turn men to ash is likely not an idle boast of pride considering how close she is to God when she makes that declaration, and we've seen her grow more beautiful the closer she gets to her natural sphere, so we can take this at face value and grin at Dante that had he written just those three tercets at the canto's beginning and not a line more of the other 99, then he would have honoured his lady's memory beyond anything Petrarch would later do for Laura.



The sphere we've entered, of course, is that of the contemplatives, and our last planetary sphere, though the first of the final third. In this translation to the seventh heaven, we discover that it is not only Dante's sight that could destroy him, but also his hearing. He is at the point where his audio/visual powers have reached their nexus, and those of you long wondering what happens to acoustic and visual consciousnesses once they merge may find the answer in the way analog goes digital. Peter Damiano, in response to Dante's question on why he was chosen over anyone else (and this question does not come out of air but from the fact that in the previous sphere an eagle's choir spoke with one voice -- and it doesn't make sense that a single man would now speak), says that no one knows but God. Far from being a politic answer, the truth is found in his statement that he feels "the ray of God's light focused on me./ It strikes down through the ray in which I hide" (83-4). The careful reader will see a fiber optic light fixture, the point of each thread ending in a splay of illumination, and realize that Damiano is a direct extension of God's light -- consequently a direct extension of God, and that solves the greater mystery about which man must not attempt to ponder, for the predestined soul is that extension of God in the world.

S.