Beyond the Moon is another atmosphere of fire. This sphere of fire was believed to cause lightning. (See also line 115, “the fire about the moon”.)

 

92. natural place: The Sphere of Fire. It summons all fire to itself. Conflicting forces of nature force the lightning downward, but the fiery elements dislocated under stress find their way back to their natural place. Dante still has not realized that he and Beatrice are soaring toward Heaven at an incalculable speed.

 

93. there: To the Sphere of Fire.

 

104. an inner order: In relation to one another, and each in its relation to the total and to its final end, as fire to fire (see line 115). The end of man is God; therefore, the purified soul ascends naturally and inevitably to Him.

 

106. the higher creatures: The rational beings of creation: angels, heavenly spirits, and men.

 

108. these norms: The mode and form of lines 103-104.

 

123-124. that heaven: The Empyrean. the fastest sphere: The Primum Mobile. The Empyrean does not move and it is beyond space. It is eternal and perfect Love (therefore unchangeable) and holds within its constancy all of space, including the outermost and greatest sphere, the Primum Mobile.

 

125. that bow: The innate impulse of all creatures to seek their place in God.

 

127-135. The free will of creatures allows them, despite the innate order of all things, to yield to false pleasures and so to resist God’s plan as the matter in which the artist works, being base and imperfect, may resist his intent to give it ideal form. One might argue against this figure that the artist in this case, being God, is omnipotent and could, at will, work in perfect matter. But to enter into such an argument would only be to bump heads on the question of fallible free will within an omnipotent creation—a question that has vexed Christian theology for millennia.

 

141. that would indeed have been... marvelous: Because then It would be going against the order of the universe. What is purified must ascend to God as inevitably as earthly waters must flow downhilL

CANTO II

ASCENT TO THE MOON

Warning to the Reader

 

THE FIRST SFHEHE: THE MOON

Beatrice Explains the
Markings on the Moon

 

DANTE AND BEATRICE are soaring to THE SPHERE OF THE MOON at a speed approaching that of light. Dante warns back the shallow reader: only those who have eaten of the knowledge of God may hope to follow him into the last reaches of his infinite voyage, for it will reveal such wonders as only faith can grasp.

His warning concluded, he and Beatrice enter the Sphere of the Moon and pass into the substances of the moon as light into water, as God incarnated himself into man, or as the saved soul reenters God, without disruption of the substance thus entered.

Still unenlightened by the ultimate revelation, Dante does not understand how there can appear on the diamond-mooth surface on the moon (as he conceived it) those markings we know as THE MAN IN THE MOON, and which the Italians knew as CAIN WITH HIS BUSH OF THORNS.

Beatrice asks for his explanation, refutes it, and proceeds to explain the truth of the moon’s markings.

 

O you who in your wish to hear these things
have followed thus far in your little skiffs
the wake of my great ship that sails and sings,

 

turn back and make your way to your own coast
Do not commit yourself to the main deep,
for, losing me, all may perhaps be lost.

 

My course is set for an uncharted sea.
Minerva fills my sail. Apollo steers.
And nine new Muses point the Pole for me.

 

You other few who have set yourselves to eat
the bread of angels, by which we live on earth,
but of which no man ever grew replete;

 

you may well trust your keel to the salt track
and follow in the furrow of my wake
ahead of the parted waters that close back.

 

Those heroes who sailed to Colchis, there to see
their glorious Jason turned into a plowman,
were not as filled with wonder as you will be.

 

The connate and perpetual thirst we feel
for the God-like realm, bore us almost as swiftly
as the sight soars to see the heavens wheel.

 

Beatrice was looking upward and I at her
when—in the time it takes a bolt to strike,
fly, and be resting in the bowstring’s blur—

 

I found myself in a place where a wondrous thing
drew my entire attention; whereat she
from whom I could not hide my mind’s least yearning

 

turned and said, as much in joy as beauty:
“To God, who has raised us now to the first star
direct your thoughts in glad and grateful duty.”

 

It seemed to me a cloud as luminous
and dense and smoothly polished as a diamond
struck by a ray of sun, enveloped us.

 

We were received into the elements
of the eternal pearl as water takes
light to itself, with no change in its substance.

 

If I was a body (nor need we in this case
conceive how one dimension can bear another,
which must be if two bodies fill one space)

 

the more should my desire bum like the sun
to see that Essence in which one may see
how human nature and God blend into one.

 

There we shall witness what we hold in faith,
not told by reason but self-evident;
as men perceive an axiom here on earth.

 

“My lady,” I replied, “in every way
my being can, I offer up my thanks
to Him who raised me from the world of clay.

 

But tell me what dark traces in the grain
of this bright body show themselves below
and cause men to tell fables about Cain?”

 

She smiled a moment and then answered me:
“If the reckoning of mortals fails to turn
the lock to which your senses hold no key,

 

the arrows of wonder should not run you through:
even when led by the evidence of the senses
the wings of reason often do not fly true.

 

But what do you believe the cause to be?”
And I: “That these variations we observe
are caused by bodies of varying density.”

 

And she: “You will certainly come to know your view
is steeped in falsehood. If you listen well
to the counter-arguments I shall offer you.

 

The eighth sphere shines with many lamps, and these
may be observed to shine with various aspects,
both in their qualities and quantities.

 

If rare or dense alone could have produced
all this, one power would have to be in all,
whether equally or variously diffused.

 

Diversity of powers can only spring
from formal principles, and all but one
would be excluded by your reasoning.

 

Now if rarity produced the marks you mention,
then the matter of this planet must be transparent
at certain points, due to its rarefaction;

 

or it must be arranged like fat and lean
within a body, as, so to speak, a book
alternates pages. But it may be seen

 

in an eclipse that the first cannot be true,
for then the sun’s light, as it does in striking
rare matter of any sort, would pass right through.

 

Since it does not, we may then pass along
to the second case, and if I prove it false,
I shall have shown that your whole thought is wrong.

 

If this rare matter is not spread throughout
the planet’s mass, then there must be a limit
at which the denser matter will turn about

 

the sun’s rays, which, not being allowed to pass,
will be reflected as light and color are
from the leaded back of a clear looking glass.

 

Now you may argue, in Avicenna’s track,
that the ray seems darker in one place than in others
since it is being reflected from further back.

 

From such an instance. (if you will do your part)
you may escape by experiment (that being
the spring that feeds the rivers of man’s art).

 

Take three clear mirrors. Let two be set out
at an equal distance from you, and a third
between them, but further back. Now turn about

 

to face them, and let someone set a light
behind your back so that it strikes all three
and is reflected from them to your sight.

 

Although the image from the greater distance
is smaller than the others, you must note
that all three shine back with an equal brilliance.

 

Now, as the power of the sun’s rays will strip
the wintry ground on which the snow has lain
of the cold and color that held it in their grip,

 

so you, with mind stripped clean, shall I delight
with such a radiance of the living truth
that it will leap and tremble in your sight.

 

Within the heaven of peace beyond the sky
there whirls a body from whose power arises
the being of all things that within it lie.

 

The next sphere, that which is so richly lit,
distributes this power to many essences
distinct from itself, yet all contained within it.

 

The other spheres, in various degrees,
dispose the special powers they have within
to their own causes and effects.