Dec 3, 2006

Dante's Divine Comedy...

A poet i am not, and even less so a connoisseur of Medieval literature, but I just finished reading exerpts of Dante's Divine Comedy for my Christian Thought and Culture class. While I have to admit I was drowning in the allegory for 95% of my journey with Dante, I was struck by a few lines at the end of Canto XXXIII when Dante, after journeying through Hell and Purgatory is in Heaven and sees God face to face. (I apologize in advance to all you poets, because I'm just typing it all in one big long line... i know, it's probably like nails on a chalkboard to the poetic...)

In the deep and bright essence of that exalted Light, three circles appeared to me; they had three different colors, but all of them were of the same dimension; one circle seemed reflected by the second, as rainbow is by rainbow, and the third seemed fire breathed equally by those two circles. How incomplete is speech, how weak, when set against my thought!
...
That circle-- which, begotten so, appeared in You as light reflected-- when my eyes had watched it with attention for some time, within itself and colored like itself, to me seemed painted with our effigy, so that my sight was set on it completely.
As the geometer intently seeks to square the circle, but he cannot reach, through thought on thought, the principle he needs, so i searched that strange sight: i wished to see the way in which our human effigy suited the circle and found place in it-- and my own wings were far too weak for that.
But then my mind was struck by light that flashed and, with this light, received what it had asked.

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