I Know a Lady (verse)
Wilson, Irene H.
J7 z THE COMMONWEAL March 3 o, x927 Euno/~: then, with Beatrice for guide, he stands ready to climb the ladder of stars into Paradise. One reason for Dante's consummate success through- out this...
...I Know a Lady I know a lady very, very old, Who is more beautiful than youth may be...
...But being a poet, and holding fast to what Patmore called the vital and mystical "corollaries of belief," Dante bequeathed us, not a catechism, but a work of art...
...and nowhere is this balance more rigorously maintained than in the Paradiso...
...Individuality, personality even, is never lost: but definite and dazzling as the poet's imagery is, he lets us understand that reality still escapes...
...J7 z THE COMMONWEAL March 3 o, x927 Euno/~: then, with Beatrice for guide, he stands ready to climb the ladder of stars into Paradise...
...Indeed, so profound are its disquisitions that in any language less incorrigibly musical than the Italian they could scarcely be claimed as poetry at all...
...But from this ultimate revelation he comes stunned and silent, like every other authentic seer...
...There was hardly a doctrine of Catholic Christianity as defined in his day which Dante did not embody in his work : God the First Cause and Final End of Creation our Redemption by Christ and its necessity--Free Will, Sin, and because of God's justice, Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven--the Church, with Prayer and Sacraments--Mary's power and loveliness...
...I~E~s H. WILSON...
...Writing in the "vulgar" tongue and choosing the fa- miliar title of "Comedy," Dante seems to have set out deliberately to popularize the teaching of saint and philospher and his own great dream...
...But she is frail as is some antique book Whose thin, browned pages reverently we touch, As breathing forth the fragrance of long years And ancient wisdom...
...In Mars of the Courageous, Dante confronts his ancestor Cacciaguido, who foretells his banishment and bids him never to conciliate men by tempering the truth of his vision...
...It is granted...
...Only Mary, joy of the angels, her face "most likened unto Christ's," may obtain for him the Beatific Vision of God...
...His faith was highly intel- ligent, even highly intellectualized...
...Quiet is her look, Like the dull reds and deepened blues and such Quaint, twisted letters as preserve the thoughts of seers...
...Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man...
...In the Seventh Heaven, Beatrice does not smile nor the Blessed any longer sing lest Dante be shattered by excess of joy...
...so that Pope Benedict XV, magnanimously passing over Dante's personal animosity toward earlier prelates, could de- clare his work the very "juice of Christian philosophy and theology...
...More and more, as they pass the realm of the Fixed Stars, through the Primum Mobile and into the divine quiet of the Empyrean, the spectral colors are focused into one blaze of perfect light...
...And just as his moral teaching avoids the noble but morbid reactions of untempered ascetic- ism, so his devotion avoids, or rather controls, the ex- cesses of untempered rapture...
...For youth is like new books that gleam with gold And colors traced on white leaves brilliantly...
...In his first initiation into the paradisal vision, the souls are sym-bolically manifested in the "many mansions" of their Father's House--the ascent from circle to circle being revealed by the increasing beauty of Beatrice's face...
...Only he knows that peace has come at last, and henceforth his will must roll around like a mighty wheel, "By the love impelled that moves the sun in heaven and all the stars...
...As celestial gravitation draws them upward, Dante is instructed by Beatrice and other saints upon diificult questions of faith, yet he is warned of truths that are not wholly to be com- passed save by those whose wit is "matured within love's flame...
...With sight miraculously unconsumed, Dante reads: "In one volume clasped of love, whate'er the universe enfolds," while by sublime intuition he appre- hends the mysteries of the Trinity and the Divine and Human Nature...
...It is perhaps the crucial test of his integrity in art and life, too, that he is more intent upon the truth as he conceives it than even upon the inebriating beauty of his subject...
...In the Heaven of the Moon are the happy souls whose earthly stain was inconstancy--particularly to a solemn vow: but questioning whether this lower state of bless- edness brings any'lessening of joy, Dante receives the immortal answer, "E la sua voluntate e nostra pace...
...That is the first and the last lesson Paradise has to teach--"In His will is our peace...
...And, who, in all the ages, has been more perfectly equipped to write the romance of the human soul in all the changes of the purgative, the unitive, and the il- luminative ways ? For Dante loved the beauty of holi- ness, and knew the price which in our bruised world must be paid for all beauty...
...Like our own contempor- ary Paul Claudel, the mediaeval Florentine had learned to fathom and to face a universe in which "love has ended in pain, but pain has ended in love...
...In the Heaven of the Pru- dent the singing, circling suns pause a moment while Thomas Aquinas rehearses the story of the Poverello --then, with reciprocal courtesy, Bonaventura comes to praise Dominic...
...Scaling with sure step the peaks of sublim- ity he does not forget that the purpose of the Comedy, as declared in his letter to Can Grande, is ethical rather than speculative...
...All these are the commonplaces (only never commonplace l) of his thought...
...One reason for Dante's consummate success through- out this supreme work is his balance of novelty and fa- miliarity, of imagination and intellect...
...Even Beatrice must leave him at last, returning to the mystical, luminous rose whose petals are the thrones of the saints...
...He finds it again in the Heaven of the Moon, which harbors those souls in whom human love too ardently contended with Love Divine: yet "Here we not repent but smile," for God is the eternal Lover and Artist, too, joying in each com- pleted phase of His work...
...Yet no one could pretend that it is or ever was easy reading...
...astronomy...
...Doctrinally, of course, he builds upon the Scriptures and the Summa--as setting he uses the admirably alle- gorical Ptolemaic system of...
Vol. 5 • March 1927 • No. 21
