Q3B4: paradiso

For my final journal for this quarter, I cost to discuss an excerpt from the last canto of the last cantica of Divine Comedy, Paradiso. This is the end of Dante's journey, when he witnesses heaven and God in their full glory.

This excerpt is important because it round off Dante's journey through hell and purgatory to reach the end of everything that is God himself. The exultant way he describes the experience of the beam of high light shows how glorious he expects heaven to be. This contributes to his purpose for writing this piece, to narrate a journey to God and encourage a moral life on order to take this journey, by exalting the end of such a pious life.

The main device used in this passage is simile. He compares his fading, yet vivid in some parts, memory of the light of heaven and God to the memory of a dream after waking. Although the details fade as time passes and the vision of his memory is almost entirely gone, the passion he felt because of the brilliant light, coming through in "droplets of ... sweetness." He also compares the light of God to the sun and the passage of time. The sun shines brilliantly and gives life, but also melts away the beautiful snow just like the passage of time causes his memory of this beautiful moment to fade. It is similarly compared to the wind, blowing away the leaves of his memory.

This except has a different feel from the first cantica, Inferno. Dante is sad that he is starting to lose his memory of the events in Paradiso, but he wants to be able to forget the horrors he witnessed in Inferno. However, touring both hell and heaven is beneficial, so the memories of each are just important as the other. Dante wanted his readers to know the glory of God and how they must act to find it and not have to experience the infernal suffering of hell.