Paradiso Canto XXXIII (Translation) {Dante Sees God}
Draft Copy
In Progress
Paradiso XXXIII
translation of Dante,
a collaboration with Robert M. Stein
Oh, Virgin Mother, daughter of your Son
more humble and exalted than any creature
as determined by the eternal one.
You, who human nature so ennobled
that He who fashioned you
did not disdain to make Himself human.
In your womb love was, the love
whose warmth quickens eternal peace
which germinates and blooms its flower above.
To us you are the high noon torch
of charity, and below, among mortals
You are the living waters of hope.
Madonna, so great and full of valor are you
That one who longs for grace yet fails to turn to
You, his desire would be to fly but without wings.
Your goodness not only gives succor
but most often, for those who ask,
you grant it even before the petition is uttered.
In you there is mercy,in you compassion and pity are bound:
and magnanimity and spendor fused. In you,
rests and all bounty, all virtue that in any creature can be found.
This one, here, who from the most gaping hole
the universe contains, reaching to this high point,
has seen, one by one, the lives of the holy
souls; supplicant, he now asks that by virtue
of your grace you might raise his eyes
that he might look toward the ultimate salvation.
And I who never more for the vision of my heart
Yearned so much as I now burn for his —
all my prayers go out to you — I pray they do not fall short
that you release every darkening cloud you can of it,
the pall that falls over his mortality, by the power of your prayers,
so that highest delight of full bliss might be displayed for his benefit.
Again, I ask, you O, Queen, whose powers of inspiration
bring about what you desire, that in light of such a vision,
he may preserve the wholeness of his adoration.
Conquer his heart as you guard his mortal motions.
See Beatrice with so many beatific hearts
attending her, see her hand hands clasped in devotion.
Those eyes by God beloved and revered,
fixed on him who prays, so demonstrating
how to her all prayer is dear --
Then, into the Eternal Light she turned her
gaze into which it is not to be believed
that any clear-eyed creature ought venture.
And as I approached the finite reach
of all longing, as well it should
so did the ardor of my desire outstretch.
Bernard signaled to me and smiled so
as to look up, but I was already taken
by my eyes, where he wanted me to go,
to look, my vision becoming more pure
more genuine as more and more I found myself entering the ray
of highest light which radiates so true and sure.
From that instant on my vision was greater than my power
to speak, a faculty mighty vision causes to surrender;
so too memory, in the face of such excess, falters,
as with the dreamer who still sees even after he wakes
the passionate impression that remains,
though a dizzying imbalance takes
time for him to solve. Such am I, with vision almost ceasing
as the sweetness distills through me
borne in my heart, sweetness ever increasing,
So like snow in sunlight as it dissolves, it is lost; so
Lost, in wind like the very light
leaves bearing sentences Sibyl’s oracles spoke.
O highest light so elevated above any mere
mortal conceiving, to my mind
restore even a touch of what you appeared
to be and lend power to my tongue’s articulations
so that a scintilla your glory contains
might be left for future generations;
that by turning somewhat to memory
and intoning a little in these verses,
the better conceived will be your victory.
I believe the sharp intensity I suffered
as I beheld the ray of living light might have smitten
me fully had my eyes not turned from it.
I remember how I dared to sustain
it, until with my eyes I attained
the perfect aspect of infinite goodness.
O abounding grace by which I presumed
to fix vision on the Eternal Light
By which my vision was nearly wholly consumed --
In its profundity I saw it contained, bound
by love in a unified volume
the leaves of a unified volume the universe scattered around;
substance, accident and their behavior,
elements joined together in such a way
that what I can tell of it is a pale glimmer of simple light.
I think I saw the universal form I failed to understand
of this knot yet I believe and grasp and hold it because its grand
power blossoms now as I tell of it and I feel my joy expand.
One sole point of this more loads me down with forgetfulness
than that 25 centuries did in the case of Neptune
since when by the shadow of the Argo
he found himself astounded. So my mind was confounded,
suspended entranced in staring, fixed, immobile,
attending ever enchanted with beholding.
Who looks to that light becomes so rapt
that turning away to another aspect
is impossible to consent to, because the good that
is the object of the will
is gathered therein and goes beyond
its defects to become perfection which within is perfect. Still
my words will come up short, fall
short of what I remember, as if spoken from the mouth
of an infant who still bathes his tongue at the breast.
It was no less a simple semblance,
that Living Light I was taking in
because always it is and was as it was before but the substance
and object of my vision was growing mighty;
as I was looking. It was changing
it was being transformed, and I too
was changing. In the clear profound
substance of the highest light appeared three circles
of three colors but all three bound
as one contained, and rainbow by rainbow
each one seemed to reflect another, and the third was fire,
spirits breathed forth equally by the other two, the same. So
frail, my words fall short, so deficient
are they for the conception I cannot capture in words
what I saw was so great in size it is insufficient
to call my weak speech small. O Eternal Light which in you
alone is seated your sole intention, intelligence only you
contain, how it smiles, in love, on you!
That circulating conception
which appeared as light reflected
as it registered somewhat in my perception,
which inside itself was, it seems, painted its own
color our likeness, so that my looking was set
entirely fixed upon it .
Like the geometer who for all his thinking, fixates
on squaring the circle, but cannot retrieve
the principle he truly needs
so was I at that novel sight,
longing to see how the image with the circle
fits and how it found its own ‘where’ in it, there --
But I wasn’t wearing the proper plume:
had my mind not been stunned by the jolt —
like a lightning bolt through which what I desired came.
Here, imagination failed, but already my desire and will solved
like a wheel that turns with ideal even motion as they revolved
in unison with Love that moves the sun and all its other stars.
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