I’ve been thinking about parts of the Divine Comedy recently. My brain circles past various topics over time, checking in and moving on.

Without going back to read it, I started thinking about Dante’s picture of Paradise. He begins with a scientific discussion about the composition of the moon. (This was a hot topic in my family for years, because of my NASA father.) He moves on to a discussion of the perfect ruler, and then considers the lives and contributions of some great philosophers. Cruising past Solomon, the lover, Dante finds his own ancestor, plus encouragement to lead a life of truth-telling. Then he discusses justice, aces an exam on his faith, and starts up the ladder of love. Heaven becomes a dizzying whirl of saints and angels. Mary is shown at this slightly lower level of Paradise, with a constant reminder of the moment of the Annunciation — the moment of the Incarnation.

At the very top of Heaven where all the saints surround God, Dante meets Saint Bernard who sings a hymn to Mary, now seated at the heights, begging her intercession. Then Dante is granted the Beatific Vision, and sees that Love rules the world.

This is a extraordinarily active Paradise. I went looking for pictures of Heaven, and realized that a single picture, often worth a thousand words, is no use here. A picture is too static to convey the intense activity that is being carried out in this imaginary description of Paradise. Even within his poem, Dante’s ability to see what he is being shown requires retooling his vision more than once, as he reaches the highest parts of Paradise.

One of my New Year’s ideas is to go back and read parts of Dante. I think I’ll buy another version of Paradiso (Esolen?) and read it again.

The header picture is “The Plains of Heaven” by Charles Mottram, 1857. Though beautiful, it is totally not Dante’s vision. It’s more like the Valley of the Kings in Purgatory.