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Modern Italy
Journal of Modern Italian Studies
RIVISTA DI STUDI ITALIANI
Anno XXII , n° 1, Giugno 2004 ( Contributi ) pag. 1-24
LIKE WATER ON PARCHMENT: DANTE'S ESTHETIC OF
RECONCILIATION AND MONSTROSITY IN THE PARADISO
JAMES T. CHIAMPI
University of California at Irvine,
Irvine, California
In his erudite and perceptive article, "The Celebration of Order: Paradiso X", Kenelm Foster O.P. remarked on the diversity among the sages Dante the Pilgrim meets in the Heaven of the Sun: "The strangest thing, of course is [Siger's] position in the circle of sapientes, by the
side of St. Thomas, his adversary on earth now singing his praises in heaven. What does this signify? In the first place, surely, a conviction on Dante's part similar to his conviction touching the divided Orders of the Friars, that what divided the contestants in each case was less important than something else that united them"1. What was that something else? "I am persuaded that Etienne Gilson is right and that Dante intended his twenty-four sages to represent a harmony, not of doctrinal agreement, but of diverse aspects and functions reflecting the various ways in which mankind may participate in one divine Wisdom" (p. 135). My intent in citing Foster is to situate the harmony he noted somewhat
differently by suggesting that the harmony he finds in Canto Ten and elsewhere in the Paradiso has its matrix in the New Testamentary notion of the reconciliation of the Word, as it was adumbrated in the Old Testament and presented in the Letters of Paul, with special focus on the Letter to the
Colossians. Moreover, I believe that Dante elaborates what I would call an esthetic of reconciliation throughout the Paradiso, and, in so doing, actively carries on with the aid of grace his own reconciliation. It is thus paradoxical
that this esthetic should be the source of poetic techniques whose monstrosity no less a dantista than Erich Auerbach could only justify by historicizing2. It
is appropriate that the theme of reconciliation should appear here in the Heaven of the Sun, for, as Foster notes, it is the "special province of that Hierarchy [of angels] which has a special relationship with God the Son, the Word or Logos" (p. 121). This new beginning represented by the Heaven of
the Sun would accordingly have much in common with other new beginnings such as Canto Nine Inferno, the entry into the City of Dis, and Canto Ten Purgatorio, the entry into Purgatory proper. Dante's astronomy has a moral
dimension as well: entering the Heaven of the Sun, the Pilgrim has passed beyond the Heaven of Venus, hence out from under the shadow of the earth and beyond the saeculum.
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