Paradiso · Canto XXVI ·
Paradiso XXVI — The Cure of Sight
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 93 of 100 · Paradiso, Canto XXVI
Before reading
The third and final apostolic examination, this one on Love, and then — without warning — a fourth light appears, and Dante is brought face to face with Adam: the father of the human race, the first speaker of language, the man whose Fall began the long story that the entire Commedia exists to redeem. The canto is built in two halves: a viva and a séance. Read it as if attending both.
Where the canto sits
The canto opens with the pilgrim still blinded from the end of canto XXV, when he had looked too hard at John. The first action of the canto is the slow return of his sight under John's questioning. By the time he can see again, he has answered the examination on Love so completely that the entire heaven sings Holy, holy, holy. Beatrice then clears the last mote from his recovered vision — and he sees a fourth light near him that he has not seen before. It is Adam. Adam will answer four of Dante's unspoken questions in a single speech: how long ago he was placed in Eden, how long he was there, what was the proper cause of the great disdain, and what language he spoke. The canto holds the entire prehistory of the human race in its second half.
What it helps to know
The examiner on Love is John the Apostle — the Eagle of Christ, the author of the Gospel that says God is love. He is the same John who appeared at the end of canto XXV and who corrected the legend of his own bodily assumption. The examination on Love follows the procedure of the previous two: definition, source, proof. But the content is different from Faith and Hope: every soul in Heaven knows Love by direct possession. The viva is therefore brief and almost ceremonial.
Adam in Dante's scheme is one of the souls Christ harrowed from Limbo at the moment of the descent into Hell (cf. Inferno IV). He has been in Heaven for 1266 years at the moment of the poem's setting — a number Dante will give precisely. Before that he was in Limbo for over 4000 years; before that, for six hours on the mountain of Eden in his unfallen state. The poem will give these numbers as exact arithmetic, the way a chronicler gives reign lengths.
The question Dante most wants to ask Adam is the one about language: what was the first speech humans used? Dante's own treatise De vulgari eloquentia had argued that the first language was Hebrew, spoken in Eden and surviving through the line of Sem to the time of Babel. In this canto he changes his mind in his own poem. Adam will tell him that the first language was extinct before Babel, that all human languages are mutable, and that even the name of God has been called by different syllables over time. The correction is one of the small great moments of medieval intellectual history: Dante repudiating his own earlier book, in his own poetry, on the authority of the man who first spoke.
What to read for
Read the opening as a healing scene. The blind pilgrim of canto XXV is given his sight back by speech. John tells him to talk — while thou recoverest the sense of seeing… 'tis well that speaking thou shouldst compensate it. The cure for blindness in Paradiso is conversation.
Notice how Dante's credo of love in the middle of the canto is built upward by grades: he loves God because God is the Good itself, and he loves all created things in the measure of the good God has placed in them. The whole metaphysics of love-as-participation-in-goodness is compressed into half a dozen tercets.
Notice the small miracle of Adam's appearance. He is identified, in three words, as the first soul. No name. He will then speak first, before Dante can ask his questions — I behold it in the truthful mirror, that of Himself all things parhelion makes. The Father of humanity sees the son's questions before they are spoken.
From here on: illustrations and analysis. The three images below are scenes from the canto, and after them comes the close reading — famous lines quoted in full, paradoxes explained, political and theological freight unpacked. If you have not yet read the canto, stop here — read it, then come back.
After reading
What the canto did
The canto closed the apostolic viva by examining the pilgrim on Love — and then, in a single startling pivot, introduced Adam, the first soul, who answered four of Dante's unspoken questions in a single speech. The structure is unique in Paradiso: the canto holds two complete actions, one doctrinal and one prehistorical. The viva on Love is fast — Love, unlike Faith and Hope, is something every soul in Heaven possesses by direct knowledge, so the questions are quick and the answers come out as a credo built upward by grades. The Adam scene is slow and strange: the first man, the originator of every speaker, gives an extraordinary act of testimony in which he corrects medieval orthodoxy on the duration of Eden, on the cause of the Fall, and — most extraordinary of all — on the language he spoke. Dante uses Adam to repudiate Dante's own earlier book, De vulgari eloquentia. The poet revises himself in his own poem, on the authority of the man who first spoke.
The cure of sight
The canto opens with a small precise structural inversion. Canto XXV ended with the pilgrim blinded; canto XXVI begins with John commanding him to speak while his sight returns. The cure of blindness is speech. The doctrine being enacted is that the credo of Love is itself the discipline that restores vision — the very thing the canto is about to define is the thing that defines the pilgrim's recovery. Beatrice will finish the cure later in the canto, chasing every mote from his eyes with her own radiance, and the pilgrim will see better after than before. The canto on Love is bracketed by an entire arc of sight lost and sight returned through love.
The credo of love, built upward by grades
Dante's answer to John builds an ordered metaphysics in six tercets. Good, so far as good, when comprehended / doth straight enkindle love. The argument is Platonic and Augustinian at once: the will is moved by what is recognised as good; the more good a thing has, the more it moves the will; therefore God, the primal love of all sempiternal substances, is necessarily the highest object of love. Dante then expands the credo downward: he loves God supremely, and he loves the creatures as much as he has granted them of good. The whole love-doctrine of the Empyrean is set out: every love that finds itself drawn to a created good is participating in the love that is drawn to God, because every good in the creature is a ray of the same primary light. Francesca's tercet in Inferno V (Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize) is being corrected from the inside, at the highest level of the cosmos, ninety cantos later.
The bite of the teeth
John, having heard the definition, asks Dante to say with how many teeth this love is biting thee — that is, which particular goods have drawn him toward the supreme Good. Dante's answer is biographical: he names the existence of the world, his own existence, the death of Christ that allowed him to live, and the resurrection promised to all the faithful. The teeth of love are gratitude for a chain of gifts. Notice the small dignity of the third item: the death which He endured that I may live. Dante does not say that we may live; he says that I may live. The cosmic and the personal are fused in a first-person singular.
Adam, and the four questions answered before they are asked
When Beatrice finishes clearing Dante's sight, he sees a fourth light, and Beatrice identifies it as the first soul / that ever the first virtue did create. No name. Dante's instinct on seeing Adam is correct and worth dwelling on: he does not ask. He prepares the questions internally — you see my wish — and Adam, who behold[s] it in the truthful mirror, answers all four before they are spoken. The mirror is God; everything is reflected there; the first father reads his son's mind by reading the same mirror. The four answers are then given as a small chronology of the human race:
First, the proper cause of the Fall was not the tasting of the tree but the o'erstepping of the bounds — the transgression of an explicit limit. Dante is correcting the popular emphasis: it was not the apple, it was the disobedience.
Second, the time he spent in Eden was six hours — from the first hour to that which is the second / as the sun changes quadrant. The first man's unfallen life lasted approximately one quarter of a single day. The brevity is the canto's silent comment on the fragility of Edenic perfection.
Third, the time between his creation and his being summoned out of Limbo was 4302 solar years (his desire for the Council — the harrowing of Hell — lasted that many years), plus another 930 years he had spent alive on earth. The arithmetic is sober and exact.
Fourth, and most strikingly, the language he spoke was extinct before the tower of Babel. Ere I descended to the infernal anguish, / 'El' was on earth the name of the Chief Good; / 'Eli' he then was called. Even the name of God has changed by a syllable. The first language was not Hebrew preserved in unbroken transmission, as Dante's own De vulgari eloquentia had argued. All human language, including the first, is mutable. The leaf falls and another comes.
Dante revising Dante
The repudiation of De vulgari eloquentia is one of the most quietly remarkable acts of intellectual honesty in medieval letters. Dante had built an entire treatise on the premise that Hebrew was the unfallen language. Here, in his own greatest poem, he writes the man who first spoke and has him correct the premise. There is no fuss; no apology; no defence of the earlier position. The error is simply replaced. The poet who in canto XXIII called his own poem sacred is the same poet who in canto XXVI is willing to set aside his own earlier scholarship on the authority of the character he has invented to deliver the correction. The Commedia contains the courage to overrule its own author.
Famous and meaningful passages
The cure by speech.
While thou recoverest the sense Of seeing which in me thou hast consumed, 'Tis well that speaking thou shouldst compensate it. (Par. XXVI.4–6)
The Eagle of Christ to the blinded man. The cure of blindness is speech.
The first principle.
The Good, that gives contentment to this Court, The Alpha and Omega is of all The writing that love reads me low or loud. (Par. XXVI.16–18)
Dante's first answer. Love reads its scripture in the Good. Alpha and Omega — the divine name from Revelation 1:8.
The credo of love.
For Good, so far as good, when comprehended Doth straight enkindle love, and so much greater As more of goodness in itself it holds; (Par. XXVI.28–30)
The opening axiom. The will is moved by the recognised good in proportion to how much good there is. Every love-tercet of the canto follows from this.
The leaves of the garden.
The leaves, wherewith embowered is all the garden Of the Eternal Gardener, do I love As much as he has granted them of good. (Par. XXVI.64–66)
The metaphysics of measured love. Every creature loved in proportion to the good in it. The white rose is being prepared, ten cantos in advance, as the garden whose leaves are the saints.
The first soul named.
There within those rays Gazes upon its Maker the first soul That ever the first virtue did create. (Par. XXVI.82–84)
Adam introduced without a name. The first virtue — the divine power — created him directly, without intermediary.
The Fall corrected.
Now, son of mine, the tasting of the tree Not in itself was cause of so great exile, But solely the o'erstepping of the bounds. (Par. XXVI.115–117)
Adam's correction. The apple is not the offence. The transgression is.
The extinct language.
The language that I spake was quite extinct Before that in the work interminable The people under Nimrod were employed; (Par. XXVI.124–126)
Before Babel, the first language had already disappeared. Dante's earlier book overruled by the speaker who knew best.
The leaf on the bough.
For nevermore result of reasoning (Because of human pleasure that doth change, Obedient to the heavens) was durable. A natural action is it that man speaks; But whether thus or thus, doth nature leave To your own art, as seemeth best to you. (Par. XXVI.127–132)
The natural in man is that he speaks; the how is contingent, conventional, mutable. One of the most lucid statements of historical linguistics in the medieval west.
The names of God.
Ere I descended to the infernal anguish, 'El' was on earth the name of the Chief Good, From whom comes all the joy that wraps me round 'Eli' he then was called, and that is proper, Because the use of men is like a leaf On bough, which goeth and another cometh. (Par. XXVI.133–138)
Even the name of God is like a leaf on bough. The most arresting small image of the canto: the names of God are themselves seasonal.
What to watch for
Watch what John did not receive that Peter received. Peter examined Dante and then encircled him three times in benediction. James and John give no such formal embrace. The viva on Love is left open at its end — because Love, in this poem, is not something one ever finishes being examined on.
Watch the mutability announced in this canto. The language is mutable; the names of God are mutable; the duration of Eden was mutable; every human institution is mutable. The next canto will turn this mutability into a political indictment: the Church, too, has mutated, and the mutation is the betrayal of its foundation. Peter is about to speak in his own voice.
Watch the garden. The poem has now twice in three cantos used garden and leaves as the figure for the redeemed. In canto XXX the figure will become the white rose. Every flower-image so far has been preparation.
This post is part of Reading Divine Comedy, a slow daily companion to Dante's Commedia in the Longfellow translation — read one canto at a time, with a short orientation before and a close reading after. From Inferno I to Paradiso XXXIII.