![]() ![]() Dante doesn’t even have to ask, because everyone in Paradise can read his mind. Bernard, and more) explain to Dante the nature and purpose of God’s creation, from the dark spots on the moon to questions of salvation. Thomas Aquinas, the emperor Justinian, Charles Martel, St. Beatrice and a host of sometimes literal luminaries (St. What can happen in Heaven? Dante can have the secrets of the universe revealed to him. At one point when Dante seems to feel fear, Beatrice rebukes him and reminds him that nothing bad can happen in Heaven. ![]() I will, eventually, but for now let’s give the devil his due: Dante’s Beatrice-guided tour of Paradise is depressingly devoid of drama. ![]() Here is what you’ve heard about the Divine Comedy: the Inferno, with its poignantly vivid tortures and its cacophony of wicked voices, is the most entertaining canticle, beloved of various and sundry the Purgatorio, with its wistful focus on the lives and ambitions of poets and its chastened mundanity, is of special interest to writers and artists and the Paradiso, with its saints in chorus, its mystical refusals of imagery, and its long disquisitions on Scholastic philosophy, is appreciated exclusively by the faithful, and even they might nod off.īeing a contrarian by nature and a producer of “fresh content” by mission, I am supposed to tell you that everything you know is wrong. ![]()
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