Il viaggio Heaven
«L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle»
Nine turning heavens and the still Empyrean beyond them. Dante strains Italian to its limits to say what cannot be said: abstract nouns, Latinisms, invented verbs. The highest register of the language.
Your guide: Beatrice, quella che ’mparadisa la mia mente
Annotated by hand: every word glossed, today’s Italian, grammar, living idioms, and a guardian to face.
The Ascent and the Order of the Universe
Noon on the mountaintop. Beatrice turns and looks straight into the sun as no eagle ever did, and you, looking at her, begin to change in a way that has no word, so Dante makes one: trasumanar. You are rising faster than lightning falls, and you do not even feel it. The whole sky is lit like a lake of fire.
La sfera del fuoco
The Prayer to the Virgin and the Vision of God
The Empyrean, outside space and time. Saint Bernard has finished his prayer to the Virgin; her eyes turn to the eternal light, and yours follow. What you see there, bound by love into one volume, is everything that lies scattered in pages through the universe. Then three circles, three colours, one size. Then a flash. Then the poem has to stop.
San Bernardo
si ascende · you rise
The climb begins at the foot of the page. Go to Canto I ↓