The Transcendent as the Foundation

The Transcendent and Spiritual has to be the overall picture and foundation, to create a balanced, True and harmonious Cosmology, is Dante’s claim in Canto IV of Paradiso.

After Beatrice’s long speech on the Pilgrim’s two doubts, he responds with a very high praise of her words and Divine Wisdom. The speech has lasted for exactly 33 tercets, very likely a symbolic number for what in some ways is a Holy Speech of Revelation, prompted by the tercet likening Beatrice to the Prophet Daniel in the Biblical Stories. And the Pilgrim uses a very lofty language here:

«O amanza del primo amante, o diva»,
diss’io appresso, «il cui parlar m’inonda
e scalda sì, che più e più m’avviva,
Meaning: “O Lover of the First Love, O Goddess, said I thereafter, that of what you speak overflows me and warms me thus, that it more and more me revivifies”. So Dante is communicating several things here at once, first by elevating Beatrice into Divine Speech, and thus indicating that what we have just heard and read, in some ways is the speech of G-d itself, channeled through her. It is direct Divine Wisdom that has been uncovered, and it warms and overflows the Pilgrim with new spiritual life, more and more.

Dante then goes on to making a much deeper claim; that our intellect will never be at rest without the illumination of Divine Wisdom, which gives us the Truth that nothing outside of it can provide in the same fulfilling way. This echoes from St. Augustine’s “My heart will not rest until it rests in thee”, but it also makes an argument that in the long term we need to build our cosmological foundation in the Transcendent, to have both the necessary illumation, and the necessary stability, for a complete cosmology and apprehension of Being. And he further states that we have the capacity and are able to reach this foundation of Divine Truth, and if we choose not to, every desire will be “frustrated” in perpetuity (ciascun disio sarebbe frustra).

He further states that once we start building a new foundation in the Mystery and the “Beyond”, there will be little “buds” of doubts, growing at the root of the Truth. And these buds are what will bring us and push us up higher, as part of the larger ascent. The doubts will bring us up to the highest top eventually, after bringing us from “peak to peak”, or “al sommo pinge noi di collo in collo”.

So with this groundbreaking idea of where to build your foundation and overall cosmology, not in the scientific or materialistic world view, but indeed in the Transcendent and the Divine Mystery, the Pilgrim then has more questions he would like to ask. And now knowing that they are exactly the keys and the path to higher understanding.

The Pilgrim asks about the possibility for mitigating a broken vow with other means, and the response from Beatrice is intensely beautiful and her eyes are so full of burning sparks of Divine Love, that the Pilgrim’s eyes are almost blinded and he almost faints. Which in some ways could be read as his inner Spiritual Life now have become much richer and more glowing of Divine Wisdom, after Beatrice’s holy speech of 33 tercets, and his new understanding of where to put his “heavy” foot in the understanding of Being.

So in short, the Pilgrim is slowly finding the “foothold” in the Divine Realm, acknowledges that Beatrice’s speech is far beyond his own capabilities, and understands that questions are the path to further ascent and Divine Illimunation.

At the same time, he also realizes that these energies are tremendously powerful, and is reminded to be patient, as he now almost fainted and lost his eyesight from the new insights, into the wisdom and beauty of the Heavens.

Date: 2024-02-01 11:40:31 - Views: 63

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