Paradiso XXX — The River of Light

Before reading

The canto in which the pilgrim crosses into the Empyrean — the heaven beyond all heavens, the one that is not a moving sphere but the dwelling place of God. Everything from this canto onward happens outside space and time. The whole architecture of the universe the pilgrim has been climbing for twenty-nine cantos falls away, and what replaces it is the most concentrated single image of Paradiso: a river of light that turns, before the pilgrim's eyes, into an immense white rose, at the centre of which Mary sits, with the saints arrayed around her as her petals. Read this canto slowly. It is the moment for which the entire Commedia has been preparing.

Where the canto sits

We have left the Primum Mobile. The cosmos with its nine concentric heavens is now below us, behind us, and no longer relevant. The Empyrean is not above the Primum Mobile in any spatial sense; it is beyond it in a sense that medieval theology had to invent new categories to describe. Pure light. Light intellectual, replete with love. Love of true good, replete with ecstasy. Ecstasy that transcends every sweetness. Beatrice's announcement of arrival is itself a tercet that walks up four rungs of a ladder that no longer corresponds to physical motion.

What it helps to know

The Empyrean in medieval cosmology was the immobile outermost place — outside the moving heavens, beyond space, beyond time. It was God's dwelling and the dwelling of the redeemed. It had no diameter, no circumference, no centre that could be located physically. Dante's representation of it as a white rose with the saints in its petals is his own invention — there is no medieval precedent. The rose is one of the most original cosmological images in Western literature.

The river of light the pilgrim sees first is a vision adapted to his still-limited sight. Beatrice will tell him so: the river and the topazes / going in and out, and the laughing of the herbage, / are of their truth foreshadowing prefaces. He must drink from the river before he can see the river as it really is — and then the river is no longer a river but the rose. This metamorphosis is the canto's structural climax. The river is the still-bodily way of seeing; the rose is the way of seeing with one's eyes fortified.

The canto contains one of Dante's clearest political prophecies. Near the end, Beatrice points to an empty throne in the white rose and names its future occupant: the soul of noble Henry. This is Henry VII of Luxembourg, the Holy Roman Emperor whose 1310–1313 expedition into Italy had been Dante's last political hope for the restoration of imperial order. Henry died in August 1313, near Siena, before completing the conquest, and his death was the practical end of Dante's hopes for a return to Florence under an imperial restoration. Dante writes the dead Emperor into the white rose by name, with an empty throne reserved for him.

The canto ends with a savage curse on Pope Clement V, the Gascon Pope who had initially supported Henry and then betrayed him. Clement, says Beatrice, will be sent to the simoniac pit of Inferno XIX, where Boniface had already been placed in advance — and Clement's arrival will push the earlier Boniface (him of Alagna) deeper down. Hell has a pecking order; the Avignonese will displace the Roman.

What to read for

Read the opening twelve lines as a slow withdrawal. The whole cosmos the pilgrim has been ascending now fades from his vision. Watch the verbs: vanished, enclosed by what itself encloses, faded. Paradiso XXIII showed Christ withdrawing; now the entire cosmos withdraws. What remains is the woman who has guided him.

Notice the pilgrim's vision of Beatrice. He has spent the journey looking at her. For the first time, the poem refuses to describe her face. If what has hitherto been said of her / were all concluded in a single praise, / scant would it be to serve the present turn. The most lyrical poet of donna mia in any language declares his subject unsayable. Hold the moment.

Notice how the river of light becomes the rose. The pilgrim drinks; the river transforms to round; the flowerets and the sparks become the two courts of Heaven. The transformation is given as the action of drinking and seeing. Vision is participation.

The canto closes on a curse and a vacancy. The empty throne is the political; the curse is the personal. Both are addressed before the pilgrim sees the rose proper. Even at the gate of the Empyrean, the Commedia refuses to let history go.

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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.

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After reading

What the canto did

The canto crossed the only threshold left in the cosmos. The Primum Mobile faded behind the pilgrim; the heaven of pure light, light intellectual replete with love opened before him; and the first thing he saw there was not the true form of the Empyrean but a vision adapted to his still-limited sight — a river of light flowing between two banks of flowers, with sparks rising from the river and plunging back into it. He drank. The vision transformed to round. The river became the great white rose of the redeemed, with all the saints arrayed as petals around a small bright central core. Beatrice then named an empty throne — the throne of Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg, Dante's last political hope, dead by 1313 — and pronounced a curse on the Pope who betrayed him. The canto's structure is three large gestures: the withdrawal of the cosmos, the transformation of the river into the rose, and the naming of the unfilled political seat. The whole poem's politics, theology, and metaphysics arrive at the Empyrean at the same moment.

The cosmos withdraws

The opening twelve lines stage one of the Commedia's most beautiful structural withdrawals. The Triumph, which for ever / plays round about the point that vanquished me, / seeming enclosed by what itself encloses, / little by little from my vision faded. The nine concentric heavens, the angelic rings, the whole architecture of the ascent — all of it disappears. What had been the substance of the journey for twenty-nine cantos becomes the receding scenery of one tercet. The reader is being told, by structural means: the whole cosmology has been a ladder, and ladders are dropped at the top.

The unsayability of Beatrice

In the same opening passage, Dante does something he has never quite done before. He looks at Beatrice and refuses to describe what he sees. If what has hitherto been said of her / were all concluded in a single praise, / scant would it be to serve the present turn. The greatest lyric poet of la donna mia in any language declares his subject unsayable — and then keeps writing. The whole passage is the Commedia's clearest single statement that praise reaches a point where it must yield. Hold this against canto XXIII's sacred poem must perforce leap over. Both passages enact the same structural refusal: the poem says less when it knows it cannot say more.

The river that is the rose

The transformation of the river into the rose is the structural climax of Paradiso. The pilgrim sees a river; Beatrice tells him to drink; he drinks; the river changes shape into the great circular rose. The meaning of the metamorphosis is one of the Commedia's most original images of what reality is. The river is the truth seen by an unfortified eye — the linear, the flowing, the perspectival. The rose is the truth seen by an eye fortified by the act of drinking — the static, the gathered, the radial. The two images are not in contradiction; they are the same eternal reality seen by two different powers of vision. The poet is showing the reader that the way we see depends on what we have already participated in. The drinking is what changes the seeing. The whole rose is already there before the river dissolves; the pilgrim simply becomes capable of seeing it as it is.

The white rose and its three orders

The rose's architecture, briefly named here, will be elaborated in cantos XXXI and XXXII. The petals are the saints, ranged in tiers. The two great divisions are: those who believed in Christ to come (the Old Testament saints) and those who believed in Christ already come (the New Testament saints and after). The lower rows are reserved for infants who died too young to have made a personal choice but were saved by the faith of their parents or by baptism. Mary sits at the rose's centre-top. Eve sits below her. The canto here gives only the outline; the canto-and-a-half ahead gives the seating chart.

The empty throne of Henry VII

The political climax of the canto, given as a quiet aside in the middle of a vision: there is an empty throne in the rose, for the crown's sake already placed upon it, reserved for the soul of noble Henry. This is Henry VII of Luxembourg, elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1308, who descended into Italy in 1310 in what Dante had hoped would be the great imperial restoration of Italian peace. Dante wrote an extraordinary letter to the Florentine Black Guelphs urging submission; he wrote another to Henry himself; he wrote a third to all the kings and princes of Italy. None of it worked. Henry died near Siena in August 1313, possibly from poison, possibly from malaria. With his death, Dante's last hope for political restoration ended. Here in the rose, Dante writes the dead Emperor into the highest seat of the redeemed, with a vacant throne reserved against the day of his arrival. The reservation is a private elegy disguised as a vision.

The curse on Clement V

In the same passage, Beatrice curses Clement V, the Avignon Pope whose initial support of Henry had turned to betrayal in 1312–1313. Clement, says Beatrice, will be sent to the simoniac pit of Inferno XIX — and his arrival will push down his predecessor Boniface VIII (him of Alagna, the village of Boniface's birth). The simoniac pit punishes the popes upside down in a stone hole, fire burning their feet, each new pope pushing the previous one further into the rock. The vision in the rose ends with a sketch of the next pope to be jammed head-first into the bottom of Hell. The contrast is the canto's last great structural gesture: the redeemed in the rose, the simoniac popes head-down in stone. The same canto contains the highest seat in Heaven and the lowest seat in Hell.

Famous and meaningful passages

The withdrawal of the cosmos.

Not otherwise the Triumph, which for ever Plays round about the point that vanquished me, Seeming enclosed by what itself encloses, Little by little from my vision faded; (Par. XXX.10–13)

The whole climbed cosmology disappears. Seeming enclosed by what itself encloses — the inversion of canto XXVIII, where the inner had been the centre.

The unsayable beloved.

Not only does the beauty I beheld Transcend ourselves, but truly I believe Its Maker only may enjoy it all. (Par. XXX.19–21)

The poet refuses the description. Even Beatrice's Maker alone can fully enjoy the sight.

The four-step announcement of the Empyrean.

We from the greatest body Have issued to the heaven that is pure light; Light intellectual replete with love, Love of true good replete with ecstasy, Ecstasy that transcendeth every sweetness. (Par. XXX.38–42)

Beatrice's announcement of arrival, ascending one rung at each comma. Luce intellettüal, piena d'amore — one of the most quoted compound phrases in Italian.

The first vision.

And light I saw in fashion of a river Fulvid with its effulgence, 'twixt two banks Depicted with an admirable Spring. Out of this river issued living sparks, And on all sides sank down into the flowers, Like unto rubies that are set in gold; (Par. XXX.61–66)

The river of light. Fulvid — tawny gold. The sparks are rubies in a gold setting.

The drinking and the transformation.

There is no babe that leaps so suddenly With face towards the milk, if he awake Much later than his usual custom is, As I did, that I might make better mirrors Still of mine eyes, down stooping to the wave Which flows that we therein be better made. And even as the penthouse of mine eyelids Drank of it, it forthwith appeared to me Out of its length to be transformed to round. (Par. XXX.82–90)

The infant-at-the-breast simile that opened Paradiso XXIII returns. The drinking makes mirrors of the eyes. The river transforms to round.

The rose.

Mirrored I saw in more ranks than a thousand All who above there have from us returned. And if the lowest row collect within it So great a light, how vast the amplitude Is of this Rose in its extremest leaves! (Par. XXX.115–117, 116–117)

The rose first named. In più di mille soglie — in more than a thousand thresholds. Amplitude and leaves: the cosmological flower at its first appearance.

The empty throne.

On that great throne whereon thine eyes are fixed For the crown's sake already placed upon it, Before thou suppest at this wedding feast Shall sit the soul (that is to be Augustus On earth) of noble Henry, who shall come To redress Italy ere she be ready. (Par. XXX.133–138)

The throne of Henry VII. Augusto in terra — the imperial title. The whole of Dante's political hope condensed into one half-tercet, given as a future that will not come.

The blind covetousness.

Blind covetousness, that casts its spell upon you, Has made you like unto the little child, Who dies of hunger and drives off the nurse. (Par. XXX.139–141)

The reason the imperial restoration failed: Italian cupidigia — the same Covetousness denounced by Beatrice in canto XXVII. The infant who dies of hunger after driving off the nurse is medieval Italy.

The closing curse on Clement.

But long of God he will not be endured In holy office; he shall be thrust down Where Simon Magus is for his deserts, And make him of Alagna lower go! (Par. XXX.145–148)

Clement to be sent to the simoniac pit; Boniface (him of Alagna) pushed deeper. The canto's last image is of two popes head-down in stone.

What to watch for

Watch the white rose. The next two cantos will be its anatomy. Bernard will replace Beatrice as Dante's guide; Bernard will name the saints in their seats; Bernard will turn the pilgrim toward Mary.

Watch the fortification of sight. Every canto from here forward will strengthen Dante's eyes a further notch. The Beatific Vision will arrive in canto XXXIII as the culmination of this slow ophthalmic preparation that began with Beatrice's eyes in canto II of Inferno.

Watch Beatrice. She is about to return to her seat. The canto that opens with her woman-beyond-description will close, in the next canto's first scene, with her returning to the rose and a different guide arriving to take her place. The most lyrically loved figure in any medieval poetry exits Paradiso quietly, by going home.

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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.