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The Final Image: Paradiso XXXIII, 144 Author(s): John Freccero Reviewed work(s): Source: MLN, Vol.

79, No. 1, Italian Issue (Jan., 1964), pp. 14-27 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3042718 . Accessed: 03/05/2012 22:17
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THE FINAL IMAGE: PARADISO XXXIII, 144

JOHN

FRECCERO

At the end of the poem, when the pilgrim'svision is complete, by the hand of God: his powersfail him and he is toucheddirectly A l'alta fantasiaqui manc6 possa; ma git volgeva il mio disio e il velle, si come rota ch'igualmente& mossa, l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle. (Par. XXXIII, 142-45.) failed him then,beforethe pilgrimbecame the poet High fantasy whose account we have just finishedreading. Now, however,he to approximatethat momentin his verses. His has a responsibility incommuniultimately-remains experience-perhapsall experience, a poet who would bear witnessof the Light cable. Nevertheless, must make his peace with the limitationsof the flesh. The final simile is Dante's compromise,here and now, the closest his art can come to what for us is out of reach. To refuseto examine that simile too closelyon the ratherfacile is to confusethe now our understanding groundsthat it transcends of the poet with the then of his persona. If, as Natalino Sapegno the failureof fantasia1 coincideswith the failureof poetic suggests, then it is no longer possible to distinguishthe representation, intricacyof the simile fromthe ineffablequality of the vision it seeks to approximate. But the failure here is ours, not Dante's, for while the final simile is profound,it is totally coherent; the
ILa Divina commedia, edited by N. Sapegno (La letteratura italiana, storia e testi, IV; Milan, 1957), p. 1197.

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mysticalfervorit recalls remains a memory, indelible, to be sure, but not so overwhelming thatthe poet can forget eitherhis learning or his art as he seeks to recaptureit. Until the last stages of the pilgrim's journey, his was a faith seeking understanding;fides quaerens intellectum.Now that he has attained all thathe sought, we must take the poetic fact on faith and seek an understanding of our own-which is to say that although we cannot follow the pilgrimto the heights, we can at least rise to the poet's compromise. To fall short is merelyto approximate what is already an approximation. For all its poetic immediacy, the finalimage makes considerable demands upon our learning. In the first place, although the vision itselftranscended all human understanding, Dante does not hesitate to use a technicalscholastic term,velle, as he describesits effect. There can be nothingvague about the word, for it is used in conjunction with disio, so close to it in meaning that unless we define both precisely,velle seems redundant and its use here pedantic. Secondly, although no image will suffice to recall that intensely personal experience,the poet nevertheless turnsto a commonplace mysticaltheme,the circular turningof the stars,to describe the final integration. Moreover, because he has also used the word stelle at the close of both of the precedingcantiche,it seems clear thathe has transformed the commonplaceinto a structural element of some importance in the poem and has therefore made of it somethingprofoundlyhis own. Finally, the comparison of the wheel needs some clarification.The syntaxof the precedingverse sets up a barrier to our visualization of it, for it is one image standing for two movements. The Love that moves the sun and the otherstarsturnedtwo powers,disio and velle, as a singlewheel is moved. Either the finalmovement is not so simple as it appears to be, or disio and velle are not so distinctas poetic precisionwould seem to require. There is more at stake here,in the precise understanding of the simile,than merelya formalprinciple. If, along with the majority of critics,2we take the final image to be that of a circle moving around a divine point, which is at once the source of the soul's motion and its most intimate possession,a point with which the
2 For a summaryof critical opinion, see Siro A. Chimenz, 11 canto XXXIII del "Paradiso" (Nuova "Lectura Dantis "; Rome, 1956), esp. p. 33.

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Dante's idea of and therefore falsify, soul coincides,we simplify, to God. The finalmovementof the the soul's ultimaterelationship soul is not simplythe privatefruitionof a personal possession. In Dante's view, which is not the view of a solipsist,the complete fulfillment of the soul's desiresis at the same time an integration with the restof creation. The circularturningof the sout does not shut out external realitybut ratherjoins with it in the majestic sweep of the finalverse. If thiswere a purelysubjectivefulfillment, a romanticapotheosisof the selfto the exclusionof all others,there would be little need of a complex approximation-a closed circle or a Mallarmean page blanche would have done equally well. But was at the same time an because that personal fulfillment precisely to the cosmic order, it entailed a responsiobjective commitment of the Light,as do thesun and theotherstarsbilityto bear witness thereinlies its complexity. The final simile, then, is not only a but also public testimost intimate expressionof self-fulfillment, mony of God's grace: " l'essemplo basti/ a cui esperienza grazia serba" (Par. I, 71-72). It is to the final essemplo that we must now turn. Dante could hardly have been more explicit. The last image is not of a circle,but of a wheel: " si come rota ch'igualmentee of the comparison, mossa." Yet, in spite of the apparent simplicity or perhaps because of it, it does not seem to have evoked any Benecoherentimage in the minds of its numerouscommentators. detto Croce,3forexample, called into question the poetic worthof on the groundsthat Dante had surrendered the last canto precisely poetic vision to abstractthought;and, while many have quarreled with the verdict,4 few have debated the evidence. No one, so far I between the bothered to consider the difference as know, has and that embodies object the concrete abstraction, circle,a geometric so accustomed We are understand. easy to is it. Such an oversight to the symbol of the circle in the mysticaltradition and in the works of Dante himselfthat we read it here, into the word rota, and explain the verbal discrepancywith more scholarship,this time of the exegeticvariety:given a contextsuch as this,a scholar might be reminded of the famous vision of another prophetEzekiel-and of the wheels he saw.5 Because Biblical exegetesoften
4 See S. A. Chimenz, op. cit., pp. 1 ff. 5Ezek. 1:16 and 10:2.

8 " L'ultimo canto della Commedia," in Poesia antica e moderns (Bari, 1943).

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glossed the vision of the prophet in anagogic terms,6it seems wheels here, logical enough to referto Ezekiel's winged and fiery our learning rota where in orderto explain the presenceof theword had led us to expect a circle,pure and simple. If this were some other poet, such a referencewould perhaps of be enough. The static allegory of this for that, characteristic the mainstreamof medieval exegesis, ordinarilydoes quite well for the extractionof general meaning from particular statement, althoughin the processit usually reducesdialectic to juxtaposition and poetic experienceto banality. For Dante, however,it will not do. The poet who soughtto give dynamicincarnationto his experience began from the image and communicatedmeaning in it as well as through it. He could scarcely have been content with withan image of Biblical tradition pointingvaguelyin the direction that meant nothing in itself. It is with the image that we must therefore begin, and it is with the image that Ezekiel's text helps us not at all. The Biblical wheel, we are told, is, among other things,a wheel within a wheel, rota in medio rotae, a mysterious descriptionthat was taken by various exegetes to mean anything hubcaps.7 To explain Dante's wheel fromcelestial colures to fiery is to beg the question and to enter by means of Ezekiel's,therefore, upon a logical circle of our own. The text of Ezekiel providesus withonly the Biblical resonanceof Dante's verse. For the substance, however,we shall have to leave static allegory and turn to the dynamicsof ChristianNeoplatonism. The problem of understandingDante's image of the wheel is probablyidentical with the problem of visualizing Ezekiel's wheel as Dante visualized it. The solution of both problems,I believe, begins to become apparent from a closer reading of a text that Dante scholarshave known about for a long time. Bruno Nardi 8 of Pseudo-Dionysiuson the has suggested that the commentary wheels of Ezekiel was of some importancefor the introductionof of beatitude. DionyNeoplatonic ideas into the scholasticdoctrines sius applies the figureof the wheel to the angels and attemptsan anagogic readingof Ezek. 1:16 and 10:2:
d For a convenient resume of the history of exegetic opinion, see Cornelius a Lapide, Commentaria in quatuor prophetas maiores (Antwerp, 1703), pp. 944-45 and 960-64. 7Ibid., p. 944: " Erant ergo hae quatuor currus Dei rotae quasi quatuor coluri . . ."; or " erat modiolus, qui solet esse in rotis." 8Nel mondo di Dante (Rome, 1944), pp. 339 ff.

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withoutswerving, As forthewingedwheelsthatadvance unerringly line, ahead, in a straight the power to advance straight theysignify thanksto a perfect on the straight way unerringly, rotation,which wheels,whichreceivethe divine is not of thisworld.... These fiery because theymove form,have the power to turn upon themselves perpetuallyaround the highestgood.9 Nardi's intention in his justly famous article was to trace the struggleof the Schoolmen to reconcile the Aristotelianidea of beatitude as eternal rest with the Platonic idea of eternal circulato them throughDionysius tion, an idea which was transmitted one the as just quoted. The relevance the Areopagitein textssuch of the discussion for the historicaland philosophical background of Dante's verse was considerable,although it contributedlittle to our literal understandingof the verse itself. It might have contributedmore, however,had the learned Dantist noticed that the passage from the Areopagite describes not only circulation,but in the abstractand motion as well: a circle turnsendlessly forward describesa single simple motion, and is for that very reason the traditional symbol of perfectionor eternity. But when a wheel turns,it goes somewhere. So Dionysius mentions " perfectrotation," wheels turning " upon themselves,"their perpetual movement " around the highestGood "; but at the same time he adds that the wheels "advance . . . straightahead, in a straightline, on the straightway." Thus, the product of angelic rotation is a motion. A wheel is moved by its center,as is the circle of forward the mystics; however,the wheel's point of tangency simultaneously, with the ground gives it rectilinearthrust,and it moves forward as well as around. Like the movementof the pilgrim,the motion of the wheel itselfis uniform (igualmentemossa) and yet logically twofold. The distinction betweenthe movement of a wheel and the moveas it ment of a circle was as obvious to Dante's contemporaries for unlike most commentators example, is to us. Thomas Aquinas, on the Divine Comedy, takes pains not to confuse the two. His on Aristotle'sdefinitionof circulatio as the first and commentary in an unexpected mostperfect of motionsintroducesthe distinction
9De caelesti hierarchia XV, 9 [my translation]. Because Professor Nardi's essay studies the subsequent history of this passage in scholastic thought, I have not thought it necessaryto repeat the surveyhere.

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can qualify as simple context. His point is that not all circularity motion: Dicit ergo primo quod " circulatio,"idest motus circularis,dicitur circa mundi medium: " qui est circa medium." Et est intelligendum rota enim, quae moveturcirca medium sui, non moveturproprie circulariter;sed motus eius est compositus ex elevatione et depressione.10 The example of the turningwheel serveshere as an illustration of circularmotion that is not simple, but compound: a terrestrial wheel turnsaround its own centerin a circle,but with respectto fashion. So, in the passage from the earth it moves in a rectilinear the angelic wheels rotate,but at the same time Pseudo-Dionysius, ascend to heaven. Similarly,Dante's celestial wheel moves in two directions,and thus he calls it a wheel and not a circle. His is representedby a perfectrotation around personal fulfillment God, upon whom he is centered. At the same time, however, because he movesin harmonywith the restof creation,represented by the heavenly bodies, the forwardmotion is along the circular track that surrounds God. The pilgrim's motion is not only a rotationaround the interiorobject of his desire,but also, because the contact with reality is never lost, a revolution around the spiritual centerof the universe. The same revolutioncarrieswith the of the spheres;theyin turntransmit it the angelic Intelligences motivepower of Primal Love to the sun and the otherstars. All of thisis implicitin the literal image. In order to understand we mustturnnow to examine implicationsmorefully, its tropologic the source of the image of the wheel, common both to Dionysius thatif the wheel and to Dante. Withoutmuch doubt,we can affirm of beatitudeis Ezekiel's,it is also Plato's. Here again, as throughout the poem, it was to the traditionof the Timaeus that Dante turned in order to finda poetic representation of a spiritualdevelopment. For Plato, paideia was not simplya goal, but was rathera development,a shaping or evolution of the human personality. In order to capture its dynamism,however, and to translate into static conceptswhat he believed to be spiritual becoming,he needed a
10 Opera omnia (Commentaria in libros Arist. de Caelo et mundo . . .; Rome, 1886), III, p. 11 (I, 2, lect. 3, n. 27). [Italics added.] The passage is quoted and brieflydiscussed in Thomas Litt, Les corps celestes dans l'univers de saint Thomas d'Aquin (Philosophes medievaux VII; Louvain and Paris, 1963), p. 342.

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poetic language that would capture both the immutable truthof the goal and the vitality of the process. He chose a corporeal of education. analogyin orderto give poetic substanceto his theory modes of knowledge,for example, he establisheda To distinguish symbolicdichotomybetween the eye of the body and the eye of the soul, while the dynamic itselfwas translatedinto its physical system analogues: the journeyor the flight.It was the Pythagorean substance both the poetic that inserted however, of the Timaeus, cosmology and the dynamicof the Platonic allegoryinto a symbolic at the same in the universe and that gave to man a central place a which is universe moral, of that time gave to the physicallaws to say a human, dimension. WernerJaeger11has shown that when the human the morphosisof Plato changed its name to deificatio, anabasis became divine, and Plato's paideia was transmittedto in a new form,as imitatioChristi. posterity This amalgam of Platonic imageryand Christian doctrine was to whichDante turnedin orderto express the compromise precisely his vision. In a seriesof previousstudiesI have attemptedto show dependent, how severalthemesin the Divine Comedyare ultimately What concerns ifnot on Plato's text,thenat least on his influence.12 as Plato us now is the finalscene of the drama of human perfection stages it, for it is against that Platonic background that Dante's finalversesare to be understood. Because of the analogyestablished by Plato between physical movementand spiritual development, in the Timaeus by in the spiritualorder was symbolized perfection motion in the universe: the diurnal movementof the fixed perfect in the stars,and it is to the stars. The soul began its pre-existence " circlings " soul will return, when the perfect starsthat the perfect of its mind will exactly match the circlingsof the universe. The circlingof all first movementof the heavens,the twenty-four-hour of the perfectintelligenceof heavenly bodies, is a manifestation the anima mundi, which carriesaround with it all the world-soul, themselves.In this Platonic version includingthe star-souls things, analogy, the Demiurge created the of the microcosm-macrocosm accordingto the same patternand with the same material star-souls that he used for the world-soul,so that each individual soul also
"1 Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Cambridge, Mass., 1961). According to Jaeger,it was Gregoryof Nyssa who was primarilyresponsible for the Christian adaptation of these themes. 12 See esp. " Dante's Pilgrim in a Gyre," PMLA, LXXVI (June, 1961).

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accordingto what Plato called " the motion movesas theworld-soul, of the same and uniform." As the world-soulrotatesendlesslyin circle (i. e., the diurnal turningof the heavens), so each a perfect individual soul rotates upon its own center. But the individual movement of the worldsouls are also carriedaround by the perfect harmonia, that reigns soul because of the universal symphony, throughoutthe cosmos. Thus, the souls move with two motions, of thosesouls,rotateas the movement whichmanifest and the stars, well as revolve. In the following passage, Plato explains the meaning of the two motionsthat the Demiurge gives to the stellar gods: And he assigned to each two motions: one uniformin the same place, as each always thinks the same thoughtsabout the same things; the other a forwardmotion, as each is subjected to the revolutionof the same and uniform[i. e., the diurnal motion].... For this reason came into being all the unwanderingstars,living which abide for ever revolvingunibeings divine and everlasting, upon themselves.13 formly By assumingthatthe fixedstarsnot onlyrevolvearound the heavens but also rotate on their own axes, Plato provided himselfwith a perfect analogue of the twinaspectof intellectualperfection: perfect of knowledge and purpose, as circlingwithin,because of a fixity well as perfectcircling without,because of a perfectintegration of twofold into a harmoniouscosmicorder. It is thisrepresentation that is the ancestorof Dante's celestial wheel. For conperfection of what at this point seems only likely,we have merely firmation to turn to the Latin translationof this passage by Chalcidius. he says: Describingthe two movements, alterumcircumse perque eandem orbitamsemperobeuntemeademalterumvero que semperdeliberantemac de isdem ratiocinantem, talem, qui semperultra procederegestienseiusdem atque inmutabilis naturaecoercitioneintraobiectumeius rotabundusteneretur.14 The unusual adjective rotabundus,which does not appear in Latin movement beforeChalcidius so faras I know,associatesthe twofold
13 Timaeus 40A-B, trans. by F. M. Cornford in Plato's Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato (The Library of Liberal Arts; New York, 1957; reprintedfrom original ed., Cambridge, 1937), p. 118. I' Platonis Timaeus interprete Chalcidio, edited by J. Wrobel (Leipzig, 1876), pp. 40-41. [Italics added.]

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of the heavens with the word rota, so that the phrase motus rotabundus mightwell be translatedinto Italian by the words " come rota ch'igualmentee mossa." In a contextsuch as this,combining a sophistiwith astronomicalimagery, a twofoldhuman perfection of Dante would not have failed to associate cated contemporary the two expressions. Because Plato's assertionthat the starsrotate on their own axes was based upon an a priori metaphysicalassumptionrather than upon a desire to account for appearances,it was rejected by Arisby most of his followers. It totle in the De caelo, and therefore neverthelessremained as one of the alternative answers to an empiricallyinsoluble question concerningthe motus proprius of the fixed stars.15Of more interestto us than the historyof the purely scientificquestion, however, is the survival of the metato which Plato hoped to respond with his stellar physicalexigency, Accordingto Plato, a starwas a being with a soul, which theory.16 It therefore had to principle: apx- KLVfucus. is to say, a self-moving independentof, but in harmony have a movementproper to itself, of the same and uniform. Moreover,so perfect with,the movement was such a soul that the movementit caused had to be the most which could be only a rotation movement, of all, a selfsame perfect in the same place. Thus, while the starrevolvesaround the heaven with the diurnal motion because of its perfectsubjugation to the it also rotateswith a uniformcircular dominion of the world-soul, motion because of its individual perfection. Aristotledid not share Plato's theoryof the soul and therefore had to account for celestial movementin termsof his own theory for Plato's starof motion.17He accomplishedthis by substituting souls the Intelligencesof the spheres,which the Christianswere much later to adopt into their own cosmologies by identifying
16 See, for instance, Pseudo-Honorius (William of Conches?), De philosophia mundi II, 7, entitled " De infixisstellis utrum moveantur,"where the following statement is rejected: " Alii dicunt eas etiam proprio motu moveri, quia igneae sunt naturae, nec aliquid in aethere vel in aere sine motu possit sustineri sed semper in eodem loco et circum se moveri" (PL 172:59). 1" The following resume is taken from A. E. Taylor, Commentaryon Plato's Timaeus (Oxford, 1928), p. 225. For the dissenting view of the Timaeus and a general view of motion in the dialogue (apart from that of Cornford, op. cit.), see J. B. Skemp, The Theory of Motion in Plato's Later Dialogues (Cambridge, 1942), esp. pp. 81, 83, 101. 17 See the resum& of Aristotle's doctrine in B. Nardi, op. cit., pp. 344 ff.

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them with the angels of revelation.1sThe symbolicmechanicsof Plato's Timaeus was not, however,neglectedby Christianthinkers; of Pseudo-Dionysius, it enteredinto the angelologyand mysticism who used the patterns of motion contained in the Timaeus to Nardi 20 describe the spiritualmovementof the angels.19Professor that Dante presenteda reconciliationof Platonic has demonstrated and Aristoteliantheoriesof motion when he staged the circular dance of the movers of the spheres around God-derived from of the spheresaround Dionysius-in order to explain the movement the earth,accordingto the theoriesof Aristotle. It should also be noted that, thanks to the analogy between the human and the angelic or stellarsoul, a key part of the doctrineof both Dionysius of the human soul, in this case and Plato, the symbolicmovements of the pilgrim,are also analogous to the movementof the heavens, throughoutthe poem, but especially here at the final moment.21 The angels are the analogical link between the perfectmotion of the pilgrimand the motion of the stars. This explains the associawith the movementof " il sole e l'altre tion of human perfection stelle." We may expect that a closer look at Dante's angelology light on the specificmeaning of the image will shed some further of the wheel. canto of the Paradiso, Dante explains that In the twenty-eighth the angels move like circles of fire around God, the point from which all light radiates. They are moved by the desire to " somigliarsi al punto quanto ponno; /e posson quanto a veder son sublimi" (Par. XXVIII, 100-102) . The same is trueof the pilgrim's finalmovement:he is moved by Love to whirl around the Divine Essence,but his ability to do so is governedby his ability to see of his that essence. His final blinding vision is the fulfillment intellectual desire by the grace of God, to which his will subsequentlyrespondswith the revolutionof Love. The precedenceof vision over action, or of intellectover will,
18 Ibid.; see also Pierre Duhem, Le systemedu monde (Paris, 1916), IV, pp. 422-559. 19 J. Freccero,art. cit. (n. 12), pp. 174-76.

See, for example, Averro&s'resume of the theme of the Timaeus: " idest quod actiones celi sunt eedem cum actionibus anime " [Averrois Cordubensis commentarium magnum in Aristotelis de anima libros, edited by F. Stuart Crawford (Corpus commentariorumAverrois in AristotelemVI, 1; Cambridge, Mass., 1953), p. 63].
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20 op.

cit.,pp. 347-48.

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is a rationalisticprinciple derived fromAristotleto which Dante In his fallen state,accordingto Dante, alwaysremained faithful.22 man's abilityto understandexceeds his abilityto will, while in the son pennuti in ali " " voglia e argomento... diversamente faithful, (Par. XV, 79-81), because, while the will approaches perfection grace,the reason is still dependentupon faith thanksto sanctifying and must go on, quaerens intellectum. But in the souls of the blessed,as the pilgrimsays to Beatrice, ... L'affetto e '1 senno, come la prima equalita v'apparse, d'un peso per ciascun di voi si fenno; pero che '1 sol che v'allumo e arse col caldo e con la luce, b si iguali, che tuttesimiglianzesono scarse. (Par. XV, 73-78.) The souls who have seen God enjoy a perfectequality of powers, perfection for the twin powers of the soul reach theirown specific when the soul beholds la prima equalita in His essence. The inbecause to know,is at last satisfied, whichdesiresunceasingly tellect, in knowingGod it knows all that it possiblycan know. The will, of which is to love, celebratesthe Primal Love in an the perfection eternal fruition.23 speaking, But the objects of these two powers are not, strictly the Good is the same, for,as Aristotlesays in the Metaphysics,24 exteriorto us (in rebus), while the True, on the other something hand, is always within (in mente). Therefore, the will, whose object is the Good, always tends towardwhat is exteriorto it and is contentedonly when it encirclesits object in eternal fruition, while the Intellect, whose object is the True, is contented only when it possessesthe Truth at the verycenter of its being, by a
22 See, among others,B. Nardi, op. cit., pp. 295 ff. For man in his fallen state, cf. Thomas Aquinas, In quat. sent. d. XVII, q. I, a. 3, sol. 3, and esp. his citation of Augustine: " Praecedit intellectus,sequitur tardus aut nullus affectus." 28 For Thomas's doctrine of the will's fruition,see Summa theol. I-II, q. 11: "De fruitione,quae est actus voluntatis." 24 V, c. 4, n. 1 (1027b 25) . Thomas uses the distinction to show that in itself the intellect is a higher power than the will. When, however, " res in qua est bonum est nobilior ipsa anima, in qua est ratio intellecta . . . voluntas est altior intellectu." In the poem, the blinding vision " equalizes " the two powers, so that intellect and will are equally matched.

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which is a mirrorimage of what it sees.25 In the connaturality beatificvision, when the soul stands in the presence of the One, True, and Good, the First Equality is somehow both the center of an action, outside, and the centerof a vision within. It is one both from within and point, which moves the soul uniformly, and without,like a wheel whose forwardrevolutionis constantly motion.26 exactlyproportionalto its rotationbecause of its uniform If it is true that the reason and the will are logically distinct, it is also true that they are ontologicallyone, just as their object is ontologicallyOne. The rotatingand revolvingwheel therefore of motion perfectly and its uniformity symbolizesthem perfectly, the exact proportionthatexistsbetweenthe two spiritual represents reflectedin motions of the soul. The Divine Point is perfectly the mind and coincides with the soul-but the forceof the possessive pronoun in Dante's verse (il mio disio) is directed against into that identity.The intellect the total absorptionof personality most perfectly reaches its most profound desire and is therefore when it coincides with God. Dante's itself,in all its individuality, doctrine concerningthe mind's desire for God and the ultimate satisfaction of that desire is expressedin the fourthcanto of the Paradiso (124-29) : Io veggioben che gia' mai non si sazia nostro intelletto,se '1 ver non lo illustra di fuordal qual nessunvero si spazia. Posasi in esso come fera in lustra, tostoche giunto l'ha; e guignerpuollo: se non, ciascun disio sarebbe frustra.
25 The famous lines of the ninth meter of Book III of the Consolation of Philosophy are interpretedin this epistemologicalsense by Erigena (?). Of the lines, " In semet reditura meat mentemque profundam/ Circuit et simili convertit imagine caelum," he says, ". . . melius est in hoc loco animam humanam intelligamus." Thus the germ of Dante's interpretationof the Timaeus analogy is already contained in Erigena [Saeculi nonis auctoris in Boetii Con. philos. comm., edited by E. T. Silk (Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome; Rome, 1935), p. 186]. 28 B. Nardi (op. cit., pp. 349-50) effectively refuted previous attempts to interpret the word igualmente in terms of some other unspecified wheel. He suggested that the word aequaliter in scholastic texts simply means "uniform." But because the intellect is brought to superhuman vision at this point, it is also true to say that the soul is equally moved by its now equal intellect and will. The motion of the soul is uniform precisely because of the exact correspondenceof the poet's vision and fruition.

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and of the intellectis satisfied It is in the last canto that the thirst the pilgrim'sdisio fulfilled. As Dante uses the word disio in the verseswe have just quoted, it can referonly to intellectualdesire, as it does most of the time in the poem.27To understandwhy the word has this anagogic connotation,we have only to turn to the firstwords of the Philosopher in his First Philosophy: " omnes in hominesnatura sciredesiderant." Dante in turnquotes Aristotle " philosophy, and so begins line of the Convivio,his " first the first the quest which will take him beyond philosophy to the vision of God.28 The centerof the intellectualcircle of the soul is the point that of another circle, with a much in turn traces the circumference wider sweep. This is the circle of velle, of the will, properly speaking. It symbolizesthe perfectact of fruition,which is the and natural end of the will. The word velle here denotes, necessary as it does forThomas Aquinas,29the unshakable adherence of the will to its natural end, which it loves in itself. As the angels whirl around God in the circulartrackthat is moved by Love, the velle of the pilgrimjoins them and the rest of creation in a dance of as is theirs, of his orbit is governed, glory. The rate and proximity by the intensityof his vision at the center of his being, which, because of the mechanismof intellect,is both God and himself (Fig. 1) .30 thatin the finalcantosof Dante's GeorgesPoulet 31 has suggested
27 E.g., Purg. V, 85; Par. II, 40; XXVIII, 52; XXX, 70; etc. My friend and teacher Charles Singleton has already discussed in his lectures at the Gauss seminars (Princeton, 1961) the importance of these two words here and in Canto V of the Inferno, where Dante describes a movement antithetical to this. It is because I am convinced that when these studies are published they will constitutea definitive of the closing of the Commedia literaryinterpretation that I have confined my effortsprimarily to describing the literal image of v. 144. 28 See B. Nardi's remarkson the passage, op. cit., pp. 43-46. 29 For the senses of velle in Thomas Aquinas, see W. R. O'Connor, The Eternal Quest (New York, 1947), pp. 121-25. My reading of the literal image may help somewhat in the understanding of what has always seemed to me the cryptic interpretationofferedby Pietro di Dante: " unde ejus desiderium ex parte objecti, et ejus velle ex parte sui, volvebatur in non plus velle" [Petri Allegherii commentarium, edited by V. Nannucci (Florence, 1845), III, p. 739]. The object here can only mean God, at the center of the soul, whereas velle signifiesthe wheel itself. The singular verb denotes the essential unity of the two powers of the soul. 80I am indebted to my colleague David I. Grossvogel of Cornell University for the illustration in Figure 1. 81Les metamorphosesdu cercle (Paris, 1961), p. xv.

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of God are in a sense shared by the pilgrim, poem, the attributes inasmuch as the pilgrim's soul is a center which contains the infinitesphere of divinity. The movement by which the soul " that is approaches God is thus a movementof " concentration pilgrim's if the But itself. soul of the depths the in accomplished applies also of God definition the mystical then God, resembles soul vision, in beatific Even center.32 well a as as to it: a circumference

1..~~~~~~~'
0 IOSMO

/~~~~~~~~O;cE

FIG.

1. Motus rotabundus. (Sketch by D. 1. Grossvogel.)

when God becomes the soul's mostintimatepossession,the external world of suns and starsnever ceases to exist. The dialecticbetween the human soul and God was for Dante never to be dissolvedinto its two polarities,as it was later in the Renaissance. Just as indiso God could vidualitycould not be totallyabsorbed into divinity, not be completelyreduced to the proportionsof the human soul. the Incarnation, The dialectic was maintained by its synthesis, which is to say that the final image maintains its coherenceonly by the grace of the vision that precedesit.
Cornell University
82 The phrase whose history ProfessorPoulet has traced, "Deus est sphaera cujus centrum ubique, circumferentianusquam," is quoted by Cornelius a Lapide (who attributes it to Parmenides) in his remarks on the wheel of Ezekiel (loc. cit.).

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