Civilization #29: Dante's Divine Comedy and the Liberation of the Human Imagination

Dante really is the height of civilization; it does not get better than Dante. What's amazing about the Divine Comedy is that all students love it, but also each time I teach it, I'm able to discover new insights that I didn't realize before. My theory is that Dante is someone you can spend your entire life studying and you will never truly understand his power, his truth, his beauty.

Dante is extremely complicated, but I want to give you a glimpse into how wonderful he is.

An Introduction to the Commedia

His book of poetry is called the Commedia, or The Comedy. It's not called The Divine Comedy; that is something that we called it later on. He first referred to it as the Commedia. Why is it called The Comedy? In writing epics, there are two styles: there's the tragic or high, and there's the comic or low. Tragic high means that it usually deals with gods and kings and is written in an extremely sophisticated style. Comic low means that it deals with ordinary people and is written in a common vernacular.

At this period in European history—this is the year 1308 to 1321, the 13 years that he spends writing the Comedy, and he will die after he finishes it—the high language is Latin. What Dante does, which is very interesting, is he chooses to write it in Tuscan. This is, of course, the local language of Florence where he is from. Because the Commedia is so wonderfully produced, Tuscan will become the official language of the Italian Peninsula. Today in Italy, they speak the Tuscan dialect of the language.

The Divine Comedy is an epic divided into three structures. Dante goes on a spiritual journey into the cosmos in order to seek truth, to seek God. He starts off with a midlife crisis, and so he has a guide named Virgil who takes him through Inferno (hell). Then they go to Purgatory, and then he goes to Paradise (heaven). Purgatory is the mountain in between the infernal and Paradise.

Today we will look at the very ending of the Divine Comedy, Canto 33, but I want to set up the poem and give you some context and background.

Dante is in the Empyrean, and he's trying to figure out the spiritual truth underlying the universe. As he goes on this journey, he concludes it by meeting God. But the problem with God is no one knows what God is. It's a mystery—the biggest mystery in the universe. God is right there, but no one knows what it is. God is surrounded by a Heavenly Host, angels that have proved themselves worthy to be around God. These include people like Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as Rachel and Leah, who we learned about when we did the Hebrew Bible. And they have absolutely no idea who God is either.

Dante is being guided by a man named Bernard, an angel, St. Bernard. To the left is God, this pristine ball of light. No one knows what it is, not even God knows what it is. And over here is the host, and at the very center is Mary.

What is amazing about the Divine Comedy is how Dante restructures Christian theology. Remember, in Christian theology, Jesus is the epicenter. But in Dante's rendering of Christian theology, Mary is at the center. The reason why is this: ask yourself this question. Is it a greater miracle that a God could come to Earth and die for our sins, or is it a greater miracle that a mortal woman is able to give birth to a God? This is something that if you think about it, it's kind of shocking, and that's what happens during The Divine Comedy.

There are two literary devices that Dante will use throughout the Divine Comedy. The first is the idea of paradox. Think of paradox as a puzzle. What is the sound of one hand clapping? A paradox is a truth that seems like a contradiction. He will use this all the time. The other is structure. The Divine Comedy is mathematically precise; it is brilliant. It is 100 Cantos, and there is so much mathematics within it.

To use a metaphor, you can see the Divine Comedy as almost an intellectual jigsaw puzzle. The human mind does not like contradictions; the human mind does not like paradoxes. So what happens is this: if you are to engage with the Divine Comedy, you become infatuated with it, you become obsessed with it. And then what happens is your mind will slowly, over time, all by itself—you actually don't have to do anything—your mind will start to unravel these paradoxes and create a new truth of the universe.

We are talking about the creation, through the Divine Comedy, of a new mind for humanity. If Homer was the father of Greek civilization, then Dante is the father of modern European civilization. The reason why is because the Divine Comedy is a jigsaw puzzle that will unravel the truths of the universe. It becomes an intellectual blueprint for three major movements in Europe:

• The Renaissance (remember the Renaissance starts in Florence)
• The Protestant Reformation, a religious revolution against the Catholic Church
• The Scientific Revolution

I will show you today why that's the case—how implanted or imprinted in the poetry are the seeds of these three major revolutions.

The Tradition of Apocalyptic Literature

The first thing to know about the Divine Comedy is that it is part of a literary genre called apocalyptic literature. Apocalyptic literature just means God reveals the truth to us through a prophet or a poet. This is from Ezekiel, which is one of the earliest books of the Hebrew Bible, and this really starts the tradition. What happens is Ezekiel, an Israelite prophet, goes to heaven where he meets all these monsters and demons and angels, and he meets God himself. Then God gives him a scroll, puts it in his mouth, says "eat it," and he eats it and returns to Earth to tell the Israelites the words of God. This starts the idea that a prophet is someone who speaks the word of God.

He said to me, “Mortal, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.” So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. He said to me, “Mortal, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.” Then I ate it; and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey.

This is the idea of the apocalyptic tradition. What Dante will do is completely overturn this tradition.

The Augustinian Mindset of the Dark Ages

Before we look at the Divine Comedy, let's review Augustine, because as we discussed previously, Augustine's The City of God is what starts the Dark Ages, because of the way that the world is presented. Let's look at a few quotes from The City of God to remind ourselves of what the mentality of the Dark Ages was.

First:

When, then, a man lives according to the standard of truth, he lives not according to his own standard, but according to God’s. For God is the one who has said, ‘I am the truth.’ When, on the other hand, he lives according to his own standard, that is, according to man’s, not according to God’s, then without doubt he lives according to the standard of falsehood.

The idea here is that the devil is within us. We must constantly fight against our own nature if we are to be with God.

Second:

Now, could anything but pride have been the start of the evil will?

The idea here is if left to our own devices, we will strive to be like God. Pride, in The City of God, is used almost synonymously with the word ego. Basically, we humans are born proud and will strive for godhood if we are allowed to.

Third, he's talking about the story of Adam and Eve:

His was a venial transgression, we are told, because he fell into it not through a craving for the forbidden food, but by the kindly feeling of a friend, when he refused to desert his partner in her sin.

Eve was clearly the disobedient one, but Adam ate the fruit because he didn't want to abandon Eve. Therefore, love is sin. If you love, you will commit sin. You cannot trust love. It is because Adam loved Eve that he ate the fruit and condemned humanity.

Fourth:

Although the will derives its existence as a nature from its creation by God, its falling away from its true being is due to its creation out of nothing.

The question then is, if God created us, why are we so bad? And the answer is because God created us out of dust; he created us out of nothing. That's why we are so flawed. Again, we are a failed science experiment.

Fifth:

We see then that the two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God, the heavenly city by the love of God reaching the point of contempt for self.

When we love ourselves, we create evil. When we love God, we do good.

And the last one:

In the Heavenly City, then, there will be freedom of will, one will, common to all and indivisible in each, a will freed from all evil and filled with all good, enjoying unfailingly the delight of eternal joys, oblivious of all faults, forgetful of all punishments.

This is a hard idea to understand. What does it mean to have freedom of will in the city of Heaven? It means that in heaven, we will discard our bodies and only our souls will remain. The body is flawed because it's created out of dust, out of nothing. But the soul is perfect because it was breathed into by God. Once we are freed of our bodies, we have no more desire. We don't want to have sex, we don't want to eat, we don't want to fight. Our passions will all be dissipated. Therefore, we will be perfect. What will be left is to enjoy unfailingly the light of eternal joys. We will be one with God and we will know an eternal bliss. That's what we're striving towards: salvation. Everything on Earth does not matter.

It is a negation of human will. It is a contempt for human love. It is a distrust of all human agency. And these ideas are what will lead to the Dark Ages. Dante is trying to rebut Augustine and free us from the Dark Ages. So let's go to Dante and remember, Dante will be a rebuttal to all these ideas.

The Final Vision: Canto 33 of Paradiso

This is the Empyrean, the final level in the structure of the Divine Comedy. Dante has a mission: to meet God and tell us who God is, because God doesn't know, and neither do all the other angels around him. The reason why is if God is omniscient and omnipresent—if he knows everything and he is everywhere—then God, by definition, lacks imagination. This is hard to understand, but I'll explain it. God does not know who he is because he lacks an imagination.

So what's happening is this: Bernard and Dante are together, and they're staring at Mary because Bernard will invoke the love of Mary to empower Dante to see God. He's trying to channel Mary's energy to empower Dante. And not only is Bernard doing this, but everyone—the entire Heaven—is praying to Mary to empower Dante.

“Virgin mother, daughter of your son,
more humble and sublime than any creature,
fixed goal decreed from all eternity,
you are the one who gave to human nature
so much nobility that its Creator
did not disdain His being made its creature.

Right away, what you will see in the Divine Comedy is paradox after paradox. Virgin mother is a paradox: a mother who gives birth without having sex. Daughter of your son is a paradox. A creature from its creator is also a paradox. You'll see this in the Divine Comedy all the time.

Then, this is the paradox:

you are the one who gave to human nature
so much nobility that its Creator
did not disdain His being made its creature.

If we agree with Augustine and believe that everyone is born in sin and we are incapable of redeeming ourselves from our sin, then how do we explain Mary? Mary gave birth to Jesus. If Mary had sin, then God had sin in him. How do you explain that? Well, the only explanation is Mary gave birth without sin. Therefore, she cleansed herself of her sin before giving birth to Jesus. And how did she do that? A mother's love for her child.

This is what Dante is saying: love is about love. Love cannot have sin. Now, you hear this and you're like, "No, that doesn't make sense." Let's just say that I love this woman. She's beautiful, and I say to her, "I love you, will you marry me?" And then she says to me, "I will, but I want $10 million." So I go and I rob a bank. That's love, right? What Dante is saying is that's not love. That is not love.

Ask yourself this question: if your mother and your child says to you, "Mother, I only love you if you let me eat chocolate every day," is that love? As a mother, you will say back to him, "I love you, therefore I will not allow you chocolate every day. I care about your health, I care about your happiness. That's what I care about. I don't want to degrade you." That's what Dante is saying here. Love is the ultimate power. And because she cleansed herself, she has so much nobility that she was able to give birth to God. That's where nobility is. Nobility is not in being free of sin, but redeeming yourself from sin through sheer willpower, through love.

Let's continue.

“This man”—this is Dante, of course—“who from the deepest hollow in the universe”—he came from hell—“up to this height, has seen the lives of spirits, one by one,
now pleads with you, through grace, to grant him so much virtue that he may lift his vision higher still—may lift it toward the ultimate salvation.

The ultimate salvation is God, right? But look at this phrase: vision higher still. What does it mean? It means you cannot see God; you have to imagine God. God is something that you do not see. God is something that you imagine through your will.

“And I, who never burned for my own vision
more than I burn for his, do offer you
all of my prayers—and pray that they may not
fall short—that, with your prayers, you may disperse
all of the clouds of his mortality
so that the highest joy be his to see.

This is radical. This is Bernard. He is the highest of the angels, and he says, "his vision, I burn for his vision. I want to know the truth, and only this man, Dante, can give us the truth." Even though we are angels, only Dante, a mortal man, has access to truth. We angels do not have access to truth. This is radical and revolutionary. Honestly, if the Catholic Church actually could understand any of this, then Dante's manuscript would have been burned. This is a revolutionary idea.

“This, too, o Queen, who can do what you would,
I ask of you: that after such a vision,
his sentiments preserve their perseverance.”

"Preserve their perseverance" just means he's able to remember what he saw. So imagination is one thing; you can imagine God. But then you must turn this imagination into a memory. What is radical about this is that our most advanced neuroscience, our most advanced scientists who understand how the brain works, they will tell you this is exactly how the brain works. You imagine the world, and then over time, you turn the world into a story, and the story becomes your memory. So 800 years before, Dante knew our neuroscience, how our brain actually works.

And I, who was now nearing Him who is
the end of all desires, as I ought,
lived my longing to its ardent limit.
Bernard was signaling—he smiled—to me
to turn my eyes on high; but I already
was doing what he wanted me to do,
because my sight, becoming pure, was able
to penetrate the ray of light more deeply—
that light sublime which in itself is true.
From that point on, what I could see was greater
than speech can show: at such a sight, it fails—
and memory fails when faced with such excess.

He is being blinded. His mind is being blown apart. He does not know what he's seeing. It is so vast, it is so beautiful, it's so powerful that he's being blinded.

In its profound and clear subsistence I saw,
gathered and bound by love into one single volume,
what, in the universe, seems separate, scattered:
substances, accidents, and dispositions
as if conjoined in such a way that what
I tell is only rudimentary.

What he's seeing is this: he's seeing God as the universe before the Big Bang, when the universe was this pool of substances that was chaotic. And then the Big Bang released all of it into the universe, creating our universe. Dante is experiencing God as the universe before the Big Bang, and he's seeing how everything is connected. But he's mortal; he cannot connect all the pieces. He doesn't know what he's seeing. He just knows what he's seeing is so vast and interconnected.

So was my mind completely rapt, intent,
steadfast, and motionless, gazing; and it would
grow ever more enkindled as it watched.
Whoever sees that light is soon made such
that it would be impossible for him
to set that light aside for other sight;
because the good, the object of the will,
is fully gathered in that light; outside
that light, what there is perfect is defective.

God is good. The very goodness is in God. Think back to Plato: goodness is encapsulated, embodied in God. It is what is perfect and good.

What little I recall is to be told,
from this point on, in words more weak than those
of one whose infant tongue still bathes at the breast.

This is complicated. What he's saying is this is now 10 or 20 years after his experience of God. What he's doing is he's standing by himself trying to write down what he saw. He's spent the past 10 or 20 years writing the Divine Comedy to share with the world the truth of God. So it's not that experience that is now gone; it is now his imagination of that experience.

And not because more than one simple semblance
was in the living light at which I gazed—
for it is always what it was before—
but through my sight, which as I gazed grew stronger,
that sole appearance, even as I altered,
seemed to be changing in the deep and bright
essence of that exalted light, three circles
appeared to me; they had three different colors,
but all of them were of the same dimension.

He spent 20 years trying to figure out what he saw, and now he's able to slowly put the jigsaw puzzle together. What he sees are three circles, and this, of course, is the Holy Trinity. So he's figured it out. He's figured out that the very essence of the universe, the very foundation of the universe, is the Holy Trinity.

One circle seemed reflected by the second,
as rainbow is by rainbow, and the third
seemed fire breathed equally by those two circles.
How incomplete is speech, how weak, when set
against my thought! And this, to what I saw,
is such that to call it little is too much.

He's figured it out. But he keeps on looking. What does he see?

Eternal Light, you only dwell within
yourself, and only you know you; self-knowing,
self-known, you love and smile upon yourself!
That circle which, begotten so, appeared
in you as light reflected—when my eyes
had watched it with attention for some time,
within itself and colored like itself,
to me seemed painted with our effigy,
so that my sight was set on it completely.

There's a problem here. Effigy means a mirror image. What he's saying is this: within the Holy Trinity, there is an image of us. We are in God. We are at the very essence of God. We are within God. How is that possible? That should not be happening. This is the deepest, darkest secret of the universe. Now, how is it that a human is within God itself? That should not be possible. We are separate. God is good, we are evil, right? That's what Augustine told us.

As the geometer intently seeks
to square the circle, but he cannot reach,
through thought on thought, the principle he needs,
so I searched that strange sight: I wished to see
the way in which our human effigy
suited the circle and found place in it.

If you want to know where the phrase "square the circle" comes from, it comes from this. It's a paradox; he can't figure it out. This is the ultimate paradox. He cannot figure out what's going on. How is it we are in God? What is going on here?

and my own wings were far too weak for that.
But then my mind was struck by light that flashed
and, with this light, received what it had asked.

He's been trying for the past 20 years to figure out why this is the case. But then he has an inspiration. He now can imagine what God is. He now knows the answer. He knows the answer. He's figured out the universe. He's figured it out. And this is it:

Here force failed my high fantasy; but my
desire and will were moved already—like
a wheel revolving uniformly—by
the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

This is the ending. He doesn't tell us anything. He doesn't tell us what he saw. We spent years reaching this point, and Dante has figured it out, and he's not going to tell us. Why won't he tell us? Because it's a jigsaw puzzle, right? Because it's something that you have to figure out for yourself. This thing only works if you spend the time putting the pieces together. And it's a lifetime journey. Dante has spent 20 years doing this.

So I encourage you all to go on this journey. But this journey is way too long, so I'll give you my version of the jigsaw puzzle answer today. It may not be the best answer, it may not even be the right answer, but it is an answer to what Dante is saying. Remember, this is a mystery, this is a paradox, this is a puzzle. It's something that you will have to unravel for yourself. But I will tell you my understanding.

The Scientific Experiment in Heaven

Let's go back to the beginning of Paradiso. This is when Dante is with Beatrice. Who is Beatrice? Beatrice is someone that Dante has loved all his life. They met when they were 10 years old, and their families were friends. But unfortunately, Beatrice came from a very wealthy, high-status family, and Dante was wealthy, but not as wealthy as Beatrice's family. So Beatrice was betrothed to someone of her social status, and she died when she was 24 giving birth. Dante never forgot about her. He wrote poetry after poetry reminiscing about her, celebrating her. He wrote the Divine Comedy for her. And to basically pay him back, she invites him to visit her in heaven.

So now they're in heaven. And you would think, okay, they're in heaven, they love each other, they can do whatever they want. Maybe they don't have sex, maybe they'll just snuggle, maybe they'll eat chocolate together, who knows. But what they do is they start asking themselves questions about the universe. They're in heaven, and they want to know about the secrets of the universe. How do the stars work? How does the moon work?

This is what Beatrice says to Dante:“Direct your mind to God in gratefulness,
”she said, “He has brought us to the first star.”

The first star is the moon. In this cosmology, the first star is the moon.

I answered, “With the most devotion I
can summon, I thank Him who has brought me far
from the mortal world. But now tell me:
what are the dark marks on this planet’s body...

The first thing he does is ask a question: why are there dark marks on the moon?

They talk, and Beatrice says, "Your mortal mind can't possibly comprehend the truth, but try. Tell me what you think causes the dark spots on the moon." And Dante answers:

“What seems to us diverse up here is caused,
I think, by matter dense and rare.”

What does he mean by this? Let me explain. What he's saying is the moon has parts that are dense and rare. Dense just means there's lots of rocks. Rare means there's an opening, so light will pass through what is hollow and so it becomes dark. But light will hit dense parts, like mountains, and it'll be reflected back. And that's why there are dark spots on the moon. This is the generally accepted theory.

But Beatrice says, "No, no, no, you're wrong. You're absolutely wrong." There are two possible explanations for this. The first explanation is that some parts of the moon are completely hollow; light just passes completely through. But then ask yourself about a solar eclipse. In a solar eclipse, the moon is able to cover the sun completely. But in a solar eclipse, there should be some light—if there are some parts of the moon that are hollow, there should be some holes in the solar eclipse. And then she's like, "Okay, then your theory is there are some caverns in the moon that go deep." But I'm going to show you that's not the case either. In the spiritual universe—she's not talking about the physical universe, she's talking about the spiritual universe—all light reflects brightly, no matter where it is, because light comes from the essence of God.

Then she says this: "You don't believe me? So here's what you're going to do. We will do an experiment." Guys, they're in heaven, and they're doing an experiment. Why? Because Dante doesn't believe her. Dante thinks she's full of crap. So she says, "Let's do an experiment." This is revolutionary. If you don't believe someone, do an experiment. It's okay to doubt. Doubt is heavenly; it's divine.

“Yet an experiment, were you to try it,
could free you from your cavil, if the source
of your arts’ course springs from experiment.
“Taking three mirrors, place a pair of them
at equal distance from you; set the third
midway between those two, but farther back.
“Then, turning toward them, at your back have placed
a light that kindles those three mirrors and
returns to you, reflected by them all.
“Although the image in the farthest glass
will be of lesser size, there you will see
that it must match the brightness of the rest.”

Here's the experiment. There's a candle, and there are three mirrors. The third is the farthest. And you're holding the candle. Within the three mirrors are these images of you holding the candle. Now, in the third mirror, you'll be smaller. What Beatrice is saying is the candle will be just as bright. Is that true? Physically, it is true. You can actually do this at home.

Now, what's really fun about this experiment is you can keep on going. This is a first layer, right? Let's do another layer: five mirrors, all back. Are they still as bright, the candle? The answer is yes. How about a third layer? Are they just as bright? The answer is yes. Let's go a million layers. Will they be just as bright as the first candle? The answer is yes. That's the experiment. It shows, it proves, that no matter how far the candle is, if it is reflected by the first candle, it will be just as bright as the other candles.

Now guys, let me ask you this question: what is this? Do you remember? It's the Godhead. It's what Dante saw when he experienced God. Remember, he saw three circles, and inside were three humans in effigy. This is the experiment.

He's telling us that God is that candle that burns in you and reflects the ultimate good. It reflects the good, and it burns in everyone, and it unifies everyone together. The more you love, the brighter the candle burns. And the brighter the candle burns, the closer you are to God. When you love, you experience God. That is why you are without sin when you love. This is the Godhead.

The Unifying Force of Love

Let's read the ending of the Divine Comedy again, now that we have this information.

Here force failed my high fantasy; but my
desire and will were moved already—like
a wheel revolving uniformly—by
the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

He tells us here: God is love. Love is God. Love is the force that binds everything together. It is the unifying force of the universe. It is the force that makes things move brightly. The problem is, before, we could only see. But now, we can imagine. You cannot see God; God is something that you must imagine.

Who Was Dante's Audience?

He's writing in Tuscan rather than Latin, and he calls it the Commedia. I think he's trying to avoid the Catholic Church, because at this time, the Catholic Church writes mainly in Latin. So he's trying to avoid the Catholic Church; that's his main enemy. Because if the Catholic Church actually understood what he was doing, they would have basically burned his manuscript.

So I know it sounds strange, but he's really writing for the universe, if that makes any sense. He's leaving it here as a secret box, and then someone in the future is going to come and they're going to read it, and it's going to entice them. They're curious as to what this is, and at first, they can't figure it out. But they stick at it, and over time, it begins to transform how they see the world. He's a prophet, he's a poet, and so he's not really writing it to make money or because he has to. He's writing because he has a moral mission to speak the truth. When you speak the truth, you're speaking to the universe, not to an individual.

At this time, remember, we said that all writing projects had to be sponsored by a patron. Before, it was kings. So he does have a patron; it's a count or something. And clearly, there are parts in the Divine Comedy which are appealing to his patron. But he's really using this as a pretext in order to speak the truth. He needs funding, he needs a patron, but what drives him is obviously not the money. What drives him is he believes God has spoken to him, and he believes that he knows God. He believes that in the Divine Comedy are the secrets of the universe. He himself probably doesn't know all the secrets, but he believes that they're all there if someone is willing to look hard enough.

Dante's Rebuttal to Augustine

Let's go back to Augustine.

• Augustine says, "When man lives by the standard of man, not by the standard of God, he is like the devil." Guys, we are in God because God is in us. God is the candle, the love that burns in us. If we love, the candle burns brighter. It brings us closer to God. This is how we know we're doing good, because we know. Our hearts will know, your faces will know, people will know. Everyone knows what good is.
• "Pride will be the start of the evil will." No, pride is who we are. We all strive to be better.
• "His was a venial transgression when he refused to desert his wife." Love is sin? No. Love is without sin. Love is the greatest force in the universe because it is God.
• "We're created out of nothing." No, we're created out of God. God is in us. God is with us.
• "The earthly city was created by self-love... the heavenly city by the love of God reaching the point of contempt for self." This is a really important idea, but the idea is this: love only exists between humans. It does not exist outside of humans. You cannot love money. You cannot love chocolate. You can only love each other because God is within us. If you love God, you don't love God because God is an idea. You have to love each other. You have to love Beatrice. You have to love your mother. You have to love your son.
• "In the Heavenly City, there will be freedom of will... enjoying unfailingly the delight of eternal joys." Sorry, guys. The Divine Comedy says this: there is no end to the universe. At no point will we know everything. We exist because we are continuing God's legacy. When we imagine things, we are engaged in the act of creation that is God. We are like God when we imagine, when we love. That is our ultimate mission in life: to love and to imagine, because then we create new worlds for God to celebrate.