er of new trees
That are renewed with a new foliage,
Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars."
(Purg., XXXIII, 136.)

DANTE'S PARADISO

DANTE'S PARADISO

Of Dante's trilogy the Paradiso is truly his "medieval miracle of song,"
the supreme achievement of his genius. Here the poetry of the sublime
reaches its highest point--the summit on which Dante is a lonely and
unchallenged figure. "No uninspired hand," says Cardinal Manning, "has
ever written thoughts so high in words, so resplendent, as the last
stanza of the Divina Commedia." It was said of St. Thomas: "_Post Summam
Thomae nihil restat nisi lumen gloriae_." It may be said of Dante: "_Post
Dantis Paradisum nihil restat nisi visio Dei._" ("After Dante's Paradiso
nothing remains but the vision of God.")

Shelley's tribute to the supremacy of Dante's Heaven is no less
beautiful: "Dante's apotheosis of Beatrice and the gradations of his own
love and her loveliness by which, as by steps, he feigns himself to have
ascended to the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most glorious
imagination of modern poetry."

Ruskin says: "Every line of the Paradiso is full of the most exquisite
and spiritual expressions of Christian truths and the poem is only less
read than the Inferno because it requires far greater attention and
perhaps, for its full enjoyment, a holier heart."

That Dante's Inferno is more popular reading than his Paradiso is due to
the fact that evil and its consequences offer to the artist richer
material for dramatic fascination and to the reader more lively interest
in characters intensely human, than does the less sensational story of
the Elects finding peace and happiness in a realm transcending the
experiences of human nature. Dante's Purgatorio also finds a wider
circle of readers because his penitents, suffering, struggling and
aspiring, like people upon earth, have more human traits and exhibit
more human interest than the saints confirmed in grace against human
weakness.

Another reason for lesser interest manifested in this part of the Divina
Commedia is the difficulty and obscurity of the Paradiso. It is not easy
reading, because it requires study, repetition, concentration,
meditation, qualities absent from the art of reading as it prevails
today. If we ever have time to look at a book, the habit of skimming
with inattentive rapidity so urges us onward that we find ourselves
flitting from page to page, from chapt