Oculus Mundi

Dante's first heaven, that of the moon, touches on several features that recall the concerns of the petrose: the question, fundamental for the whole of the Paradiso, of heavenly influences (4.49–63—an explicitly

Platonic context) and the parallel between them and the work of human artists; the first comparisons of the heavens (or their inhabitants) to precious stones; and the first instances of optical effects and analogies. As we shall see, in the moon Dante establishes formal resemblances among the heavens, the human body, and the eye—as worked out in detail in "Amor, tu vedi ben" and predicated on the microcosmic poetics born in "Io son venuto." The status of the moon itself, in turn, as the focal point for the influence of all the heavens implies that the microcosmic poetics at work extends at least to all the parts of the Paradiso that take place in time and space.^[69]

"Amor, tu vedi ben," we have argued, is a gem—a crystal. The moon is referred to as a pearl ("margarita," Paradiso 2.34). Its reflectivity, however, is likened to that of adamant, a stone traditionally described as slightly darker than crystal.^[70] In the lapidary lore of the Paradiso, the relation of adamant to crystal is not accidental. Later in the Paradiso Dante refers to the heaven of Saturn as a crystal; and numerous details justify the pairing of the moon—the first planet—with the last, Saturn, whose importance for the horoscope of the petrose we discussed in Chapter 2. Like the moon, Saturn was thought to radiate cold and as such has usually been taken as the planet mentioned in "Io son venuto," 7.^[71] In the moon and Saturn, this cold, taken in bono, indicates the austerity and dedication of the contemplative life ("caldi e geli," 21.116). Accordingly, in both the moon and Saturn Dante speaks only to religious: nuns in the moon, monks in Saturn. As we shall see later, there are good reasons why Dante wishes to include reference to the outermost planet in his treatment of the innermost. And not only Saturn: Dante also recalls the moon in the heaven of the fixed stars by looking down to see it;^[72] and he remembers it also in the first heaven, the Primum Mobile ("qualunque cibo per qualunque luna," 28.132).^[73] These relations are founded in a common element: the moon, it was generally held, was made in part of elemental water;^[74] Dante's Saturn, because a cristallo (21.25), is therefore also a form of water (Rabuse 1976 20), while the Primum Mobile was "caelum aqueum vel crystallinum."^[75]

In "Amor, tu vedi ben," elemental water, the type of amorphousness, is juxtaposed to the rigidity of crystal, water frozen to lapidary hardness. The poem turns, as we have seen, around a center that represents the cycle of states of water.^[76] The moon also includes several states of water. The souls—nuns who have failed to maintain the rigid purity of their vows—appear as reflections in water (2.13–16) and disappear like

heavy objects sinking (2.123); the pilgrim's mistaken understanding of moonspots, dissolved by Beatrice's correction, is compared to melting snow. The pearl signifying the planet is a form of congealed water: in the lapidaries, pearls are attributed to dewdrops absorbed, hardened, and excreted by oysters.^[77] As in "Amor, tu vedi ben," moreover, the amorphousness of water is implicitly juxtaposed to the informing and unifying power of light: the entrance of the pilgrim and Beatrice into the sphere of the moon is compared to a ray of light entering water without dividing it, "com'acqua recepe / raggio di luce permanendo unita" (2.35–36).^[78]

The presence of cold, of water, of light, thus satisfies the requirements for the crystal ignited by fire that is the form of "Amor, tu vedi ben." Crystal, we have suggested, is already present by allusion in the reference to adamant. But it is also glanced at in the several references to mirrors: in the pilgrim's initial ascent, compared to a reflected ray of light (1.49–53); in the experimental mirror proposed by Beatrice (2.88–90);^[79] and in the simile describing the pilgrim's sight of the souls in the heaven, citing Ovid's Narcissus (3.10–18). As we saw in Chapter 4, crystals, mirrors, and the eye are closely related in Dante's thought.^[80] Thus, crystal is also implicitly present by virtue of the humor crystallinus of the eye, the image with which the canto closes and toward which it moves. The eye, too, is a crystal activated by light.

Cold ( freddo ), the states of water, the burning-glass and the eye, the language and metaphysics of light—these are the topics of "Amor, tu vedi ben." But Dante's central concern in the petrose is the specificity of poetic form. In "Amor, tu vedi ben," as we saw, that specificity—which gives the canzone its forma, its beauty—is in the system of rhyme-words that come to domination in the stanzas and that give the poem its shape as a model of the cosmos. It is this formal perfection and luminosity that justifies the nimia repercussio of the rhyme-words. And it is in the recurrence of such formal principles that the heaven of the moon most richly re-evokes the poetics—and beauty—of the petrose.

The presence of the petrose is especially conspicuous in Paradiso 2 in the use of lexical repetition.^[81] Thus, in the second part of Beatrice's explanation regarding moonspots (106–148) we find cielo (112) repeated at 115 and 130; fare (123) at 128, 130, and 132; terms related to girare (113) at 118, 127, and 138; variations on diverse (116, 135) at 117 (distratte ), 118 (differenze ), 119 (distinzion ), and 134 and 146 (differente ); and on formale

(147) at 110 (informare ), 134 (conformate ), and 148 (conforme ). The repetitions thus strike on the two fundamental principles Beatrice is trying to explain: that variation in the cosmos is the result of formal principles that are diverse. The last example recalls a key term in "Amor, tu vedi ben": forma. At the end of the canto, allusion to the technique of "Amor, tu vedi ben" becomes more direct, in two instances of equivocal rhyme: lega (139, 141) and luce (143, 145). Luce, one of the rhyme-words of "Amor, tu vedi ben," is repeated again out of rhyme in verse 145 ("da luce a luce"), so that the term appears both paired and three times in succession, recalling its cycling in the canzone. Dante's allusion—appropriately, a formal one—to the technique of "Amor, tu vedi ben" calls attention to his elaborate evocation of the poetics and sentenza of that poem in Beatrice's discourse on the moonspots, which occupies the entire second half of Paradiso 2.

As in Boethius's "O qui perpetua," alluded to at the end of Paradiso 2, the principles of form are expressed by a homology between the order of discourse and the order of the cosmos: logical and metaphysical hierarchies are reflected both in the order of the heavens and in the construction of Beatrice's two discourses. Each discourse is a model of the cosmos; between them, they present a descent from first principles to experimental facts, followed by a re-ascent to the first cause expressed in microcosmic terms—techniques that recall "Amor, tu vedi ben" and the models of form, "Donne ch'avete" and "O qui perpetua," that we studied in the Introduction and in Chapter 1.

In Beatrice's first speech, mention of the stars, the sun (and moon), and the observer is apparently casual and for the sake of the argument. In fact, Beatrice returns immediately to first principles in beginning her refutation of the pilgrim's error. Her speech is divisible into two parts. The undivided first part is the rebuttal of the pilgrim's erroneous view: if rare and dense explained the diverse intensity of the stars, then the starry sphere would impart but a single virtue. But this we know is false, for each star produces distinct virtuous influences. The second part is subdivided: the moon could be thought of as pierced throughout by "light" patches (in which case, Beatrice points out, the sun would shine through during eclipses); or it might have light patches of depth short of the whole diameter, beyond which dense material would resume (like the layering of lean and fat in a body, or pages in a book). But if that were the case, the light reflected from the moon would not

show dark patches, for experiment (involving three mirrors at differing distances and a candle placed behind the viewer) demonstrates that dense strata at varying distances would not affect the intensity of reflected light.

Descending from a formal explanation to double empirical proofs, Beatrice refers first to the stars, next to solar eclipses (natural phenomena visible to all), and then to the observer of an experiment. The experiment is at the lowest metaphysical level because it involves induction from the senses and from a particular case. Her description of it, however, also sketches a model of the cosmos: the mirrors suggest the moon; the candle, the sun; the viewer's eye, that of man on earth.^[82] The model is an apparently casual version of the balanced sun and moon in Libra that we discussed earlier.^[83] More important, reference to the observer of the experiment looks forward to the microcosmic analogy with the eye in the second speech. In this sense the movement of reascent has, implicitly, already begun.^[84]

The second account forms a diptych with the first. It is, however, much more complex. Where the first is destructive (riprovando ), hammering away at the pilgrim's error until it is melted and his passive intellect is free, the second is constructive (provando ), like informing light—and this is a key to its structure. It both reflects elements of the first and reverses them. Although apparently descending from stars to the planets to the metaphor of the body, it also ascends to higher and higher poetic and metaphysical levels in a complex design that recalls the structural intricacies of Boethius's "O qui perpetua" and "Donne ch'avete."

Beatrice begins by describing how the uniform influence of the first heaven, the Primum Mobile, is diversified, first by the multitude of stars and subsequently by the planets. In these four tercets she descends from the Empyrean to the planets and speaks of the cosmos as a material creation. In her account of all the planets with a single tercet, however—"li altri giron per varie differenze"—she treats the circle of the Other logically as one circle, as Plato does in his account of how the Demiurge fashions the universe.^[85] The presence of an abstract principle anticipates the ascent to higher levels that follows.

In the next section (127–132), Beatrice explains how the effects of the planetary spheres just mentioned (the arte del martello ) draw their movement and power from their intelligences (the fabbro ).^[86] Although still speaking of the planets, she has ascended in metaphysical level with

mention of the intelligences that govern the planetary and stellar spheres. In the last lines of this section, she speaks of the intelligence of the first heaven ("la mente profonda che lui volve") as the exemplar for the activity of the stellar sphere ("e'l ciel che tanti lumi fanno bello"), directly echoing the language of "O qui perpetua" for the World-Soul turning around noûs. The reference again raises the metaphysical temperature, so to speak, and prepares the microcosmic image of the following section.

In verses 133–138, Beatrice compares the joining of the intelligence with the starry sphere to that of life with the body.^[87] In the comparison of the heavens to a physical body there is another apparent descent.^[88] However, the introduction of the microcosmic simile—a trope—heightens the stylistic level. Where the previous section ascended from material to intelligible realms, moreover, now Beatrice's language adumbrates the unity of the first cause and establishes the human person, soul and body, as an image participating in that unity. In terms like bontate and unitate, Boethian and Neoplatonic terms for the intelligible hierarchy screen the Christian equivalent of the Neoplatonic One.

The last three tercets appear to repeat the previous four. But Beatrice now uses the glow of life radiating from a part of the body to describe the union of intelligence with its sphere: she compares the virtue of the star to the expression of happiness in the human eye. Although the term of comparison is a part of the whole and thus lower in metaphysical rank, at the same time the vehicle of the metaphor is the active, radiant letizia of the soul reflecting the Creator who is its source. In terms that Plato would have found familiar, the diaphanous sphere of the eye is the part of the body most like the heavens, most like the intellect in its permeability to form, most like the lieto fattor himself.^[89] Most striking, the stars, described previously as multiple (tante vedere ) and full of lights (tanti lumi ), are now presented as actively shining: "la virtù mista per lo corpo luce "—the first use of an active verb derived from lux in rhyme position in Beatrice's two discourses. Just as the presence of light in the eye is the sign of a living person, so the visible radiation of light from the stars is evidence of the virtù they possess: only here, in Beatrice's discourse, do the stars actively shine and the eye gleam. The use of the active form, luce, is thus also the act that unifies the whole passage.

The descent from cosmos to the body and its parts has therefore also been an ascent, via terms of the intelligible cosmos, to the first cause,

which logically and metaphysically contains the entire creation. It is in the final, comprehensive tercets that allusion to "Amor, tu vedi ben" is strongest:

Virtù diversa fa diversa lega 
   col prezïoso corpo ch'ella avviva, 
   nel qual, sì come vita in voi, si lega. 
Per la natura lieta onde deriva, 
   la virtù mista per lo corpo luce 
   come letizia per pupilla viva. 
Da essa vien ciò che da luce a luce 
   par differente, non da denso e raro; 
   essa è formal principio che produce, 
conforme a sua bontà, lo turbo e'l chiaro.

Virtù (twice), corpo (twice), luce (three times), forma (and conforme )—all these are important words from "Amor, tu vedi ben" (and in the presence of much other repercussio: repeated diversa, avviva/vita/viva, lieta/ letizia ). Note also the oppositions denso/raro, turbo/chiaro, as against di notte e di luce (46), luogo e tempo (47) in the canzone.

Heaven and earth, soul and body, generic and specific, whole and part, logical order and trope, containment and contained, exemplar and microcosm—these categories are all exploited in the ordering of Beatrice's discourse. We note with all of them Dante's use of a poetics learned from Boethius and when composing "Donne ch'avete." But the resemblances with "Amor, tu vedi ben" are the most extensive. Beatrice's simile of the pilgrim's mind as snow, melting under the heat of her arguments so that she can reinform it with the truth, forms the center of her whole discussion and corresponds to the central stanza of "Amor, tu vedi ben."^[90] Both the metaphor of the informant as craftsman and that of the heavens as revolving around and informing the sublunar are, we recall, essential to the form of "Amor, tu vedi ben," and they constitute the principal theoretical underpinnings of Beatrice's two discourses. Perhaps most important for the parallels with Dante's crystal poem, Beatrice's speeches are themselves modeled, logically and spatially, to exemplify the activity of circling and informing performed by the heavens; the form of her discourse is itself a model of the cosmos (see Chapter 2, note 75). Finally, of course, Beatrice's speech is itself (as Nardi intuited) a form of light, of luce that informs the pilgrim's mind. That light shapes it as the hammer shapes metal or the spheres shape the sublunar world (thus the reference to the "strokes"—colpi —of the sun melting

the snow); it is as if the colpi of the sun and the blows of the heavens as hammers echo the repercussio of Dante's craft in "Amor, tu vedi ben"—precisely in the crucial term, thrice repeated, of luce. And that same light is everywhere in the canto like the glimmering of lights from a crystal—to adopt an image of Adam of St. Victor. It is a light that radiates, successively, in the three mirrors and in the moon, in the eye, in sources of light like candles and the sun, in the stars.^[91]

Beatrice's discourses focus, finally, on the human body and the eye as microcosms for the cosmos. It is a tendency that will have considerable consequences for the Paradiso as a whole, whose structure, as we argue below, is itself modeled after that of the human mind. In the immediate context, the concluding image of the heavenly sphere as a radiant eye is particularly suggestive. In one sense it might refer to the moon itself, its face turned to the earth like a brightly shining eye, echoing its functions both in the hexamereal tradition and in Dante's own usage—moon and sun are "li due occhi del ciel" in the Purgatorio (22.132). More to the point, Beatrice's discourses in Canto 2 require that the diversity of formal principles represented by the various stars and the diversity of the moon's surface—turbo e chiaro —be homologous phenomena.^[92] In one sense, the moon is a receptacle for (and representation of) all the spheres above it.^[93] And in terms we have already used of the atmosphere and the surface of the eye, the moon is itself a horizon between the sublunar and ethereal realms, as described in the astronomical treatises Dante knew.^[94]

But in metaphor—and metaphor is crucial, as we saw—the eye that concludes Beatrice's discourse is a human eye, part of a human face. In the heaven of the moon, for the last time in the Paradiso with the exception of Beatrice and the final vision, the pilgrim sees and the poet emphasizes the human effigy and visage. From the reference to Cain in the moon to the simile of faces reflected in water ("d'i nostri visi le postille," 3.13) and the beautiful image of a white pearl on a white brow ("perla in bianca fronte," 3.14), the face is constantly presented. Dante's use of volti (2.66, from vultus ) and vedute (2.115) for the stars also suggests faces, and of course the lunar orb is a face, a faccia.^{[ 95]} Dante's appeal, in Beatrice's discourse, to the great chain of being ("di grado in grado / che di sù prendono e di sotto fanno," 2.122–123) rests on Macrobius's image of the chain as a series of mirrors reflecting the same face, vultus eius.^[96] The presence of the human imago is not surprising: as Nardi has shown, the underlying metaphysics of Beatrice's explanations is more Neoplatonic than Aristotelian, depending—as the citation of "O qui

perpetua" confirms—on the Platonic theory of celestial influence, by which ideas in the divine mind (imagines ) are impressed, as formal principles, on the material world below.^[97] In Christian terms, of course, the archetypal human imago is that of the Logos, of Christ—as the pilgrim will discover at the end of the poem.

In a subtle but most important sense, however, the happy radiant eye of Paradiso 2 is the eye of Beatrice. It is Beatrice's eye through which, in a complex optical simile (1.49–54), the pilgrim first leaves the earth. The pilgrim's look to the stars and the glance at Beatrice are inseparable: Beatrice lieta, or bella, or ridente, is constantly the passport upward.^[98] But the heavens smile because Beatrice's smile is the reflex of a fictional cosmos ordered to the satisfaction of the pilgrim by its author, who is Dante.^[99] In the happy, responsive, and solicitous eye of Beatrice, the poet imagines the antidote to the unyielding sembiante freddo of the petra; in his joyful reception in Paradise, the antidote to his painful exclusion from his native city. This inversion of aspects and of outcomes, attempted with such art in the petrose, the poet achieves for himself in that heaven of the stars so often anticipated in the moon.