#canto 31

[themitrich]

I wanted to make an Ultrakill fanart based on a painting Gustave Dore "Canto 31". Currently as a WIP sketch.

[nelmezzo]

Canto 31, Paradiso - To Terminate Your Desire

Imagine you’re in paradise, with a hot lady hanging off your arm, with waiters bringing you an endless supply of tropical drinks with those little paper umbrellas to shade your coconut milk and rum concoction from the brilliant rays of the most beautifully clear sun you have ever seen.  Now, imagine, you’re lounging by the pool and you turn your head to gaze longingly at your hot lady only to see a dour French monk named Bernie.

E “Ov’ è ella?” subitò diss’ io. / Ond’ elli: “A terminar lo tuo disiro / mosse Beatrice me del loco mio; / e se riguardi sù nel terzo giro / dal sommo grado, tu la rivedrai / nel trono che suoi merti le sortiro.”

And “Where is she?” suddenly said I. / Wherefore he: “To terminate your desire / moved Beatrice me from my place; / and if you regard above the third ring / from the highest grade, you will see her again / on the throne that her merits allotted her.”

Beatrice, like all the other souls in Heaven, has taken her proper place in the Empyrean, near to God in the manner most appropriate to her and her, presumably, contemplative nature.  From the title of this post, you can imagine which particular phrase I would like to focus on, but I’d like to begin with the pilgrim’s sudden anxiety, as evident in the rather clipped “where’s she?” in the first terza above.  In the previous post, I noted that Beatrice’s function as guide seemed to be as buttress, to be there should the pilgrim slip and gently nudge him back onto the “straight path,” rather than intercede on his behalf, so you can imagine how he might feel a shock to see that she is no longer there.  You can imagine…

Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Bernard (the dude, not the dog), is in much a similar position to Virgil, called by the lady to act as guide for the pilgrim, and it’s worth noting that while he addresses Beatrice with the more formal voi, he addresses both Virgil and Bernard with the more familiar tu.  The traditional explanation for the last minute transfer from Bice to Bernie is that the lady allegorically represents Wisdom and Theology, whereas Bernard is a more mystic religious figure and therefore more appropriate to a vision that is beyond the capacities of the mind.  That all makes sense, sure, but the peculiar phrasing of “to terminate your desire” bears thinking about at greater length.

To terminate (terminar[e]) could mean simply to bring to an end, a conclusion, a terminus.  We have arrived, so to speak, so there’s nothing untoward about characterizing these final cantos and final vision of the celestial rose as the last stop on the heavenly railroad.  Sorry, I seem to be channeling Miyazawa Kenji now… But “terminate” has the same euphemistic sense in Italian that it has in English: to kill, to cut off.  So, when Bernard says she moved him from his place in the Empyrean to “terminate” his desire, I cannot help but think that this must mean both to bring it to its ultimate end, God, and to kill it off.  This is Beatrice fulfilling her function as guide, standing down and thus standing out of the way of the pilgrim’s final vision.

This is Dante bringing a light touch to the way he has appropriated the erotic language of lyric and repurposed it to describe the “desire” one has for the divine.  However, in order to bring this appropriation to its logical conclusion, Dante has to cut if off from its source in the pilgrim’s erotic response to Bice’s beauty.

“Tu m’hai di servo tratto a libertate / per tutte quelle vie, per tutt’ i modi / che di ciò fare avei la potestate. / La tua magnificenza in me custodi, / sì che l’anima mia, che fatt’ hai sana, / piacente a te dal corpo si disnodi.” / Così orai; e quella, sì lontana / come parea, sorrise e riguardommi; / poi si tornò a l’etterna fontana.

“Thou hast drawn me from slavery into liberty / by all those paths, by all the modes / which thou hast the power to do here. / Thy magnificence in me watch over, / so that my soul, which thou hast made sound, / dislodge itself from the body pleasingly to thee.” / Thus I prayed; and she, so distant / as she seemed, smiled on and regarded me; / then turned herself to the eternal fountain.

I have generally avoided translating the informal tu in Italian with the informal thou in English, simply out of laziness.  There are a number of instances in the poem where the distinction between the formal and informal second person is more than relevant, but I have avoided it nonetheless.  Here, however, it speaks directly to the point I’m making, so it seems worthwhile, even if at this late date, to work it back in.  The “thou” is important, because it is not only the mode of intimate address one would expect from love lyric but is also the mode of intimate address one uses in praying to God (c.f. “Our Father, who art in Heaven…”).  By having the pilgrim pray to Beatrice, Dante brings to the fore the overlap of these two apostrophic modes.  Praying to Beatrice is akin to composing a love lyric to God (“Paging John Donne… paging John Donne…”), a show of absolute intimacy.

And if it ended there, I would have frightfully little to say, but as always, the imperative is to read further.  Beatrice’s response is simply to smile and direct her gaze again toward God.  What the pilgrim’s mode of lyric objectification never quite accounts for is how Bice is more than a mere object of desire, be it erotic or otherwise.  She is more than guide or perhaps, paradoxically, less.  She too is a simple soul, one of the celestial body, and if you don’t buy into all the salvation brouhaha, she is a reminder that the overwrought object of so many lofty verses, who seems to exist solely to be adored, is herself human just like the pilgrim, capable of her own beatific vision of the divine irrespective of some occasional poet ascending the heavens.

As the pilgrim’s desire is terminated, then, she is freed herself from the erotic impulses of the poem, to return to her own particular experience of salvation.

[Image - Gustave Dore]