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Dancing Souls in Paradiso

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Dancing Souls in Paradiso chapter 5 Dancing Souls in Paradiso If prayer is a tension toward the divine and an expressed desire to be closer to God or even to become like God, what is the sense of its presence in heaven? In Dante’s Paradiso, prayer loses its basic quality of being an attempt to re- establish lost contact with God, of being a more or less successful “dialogue with divinity,” which were some of its fundamental qualities on earth and in purgatory. Since heavenly souls enjoy full communion with God, they no lon- ger need prayer to increase their closeness to him, and theologically prayer has no reason to exist. The blessed souls of heaven have accomplished what they were striving to achieve with prayer in their lives; in a way, they have become the object of their prayer. In Dante’s Paradiso, prayer becomes a purely poetic device that serves the purpose of describing in human words the beauty and harmony of eternal life in full communion with divinity. It also creates a rhe- torical continuum with Purgatorio, since for the purging souls and certainly for the pilgrim, heaven represents the goal of their purgatorial journey, which they have achieved in part also through prayer. The poet transforms the previ- ous types of prayer into a thankful song of joy for being in paradise, and a gen- eral glorification of God’s love, beauty, and goodness. In the fictional economy of Paradiso, prayer is solely utilized for the sake of Dante the pilgrim but, as Sandra Carapezza points out, the only five prayerful requests are formulated by the poet, not the pilgrim.1 When requesting help to accomplish such a hard endeavor as to narrate his ascent to heaven, the topos of invocation to God or the gods needs the additional effort of other “voices” following him and he calls prayers “little sparks” and “flames”: “Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda:/ forse di retro a me con miglior voci/ si pregherà perché Cirra risponda,” “Great fire can follow a small spark: there may/ be better voices after me to pray/ to Cyrrha’s god for aid—that he may answer” (Par. 1.34–36). As such, prayer often acquires the quality of a petition, a request that the pilgrim may be granted favors never dispensed to anyone before, or that he may be given permission 1 The absence of prayerful requests in Paradiso seems to be the conclusion that Carapezza too reaches in her study, when she claims that the Pilgrim never addresses prayers to either the blessed souls he meets or even God himself: “Il vivo non prega i beati, se non per ottenere risposte da loro, mai ne può sollecitare l’intervento o la mediazione, né si rivolge mai a Dio,” (2009, 94). And also, “Nel Paradiso non c’è dialogo tra Dio e il protagonista, e i casi in cui ricorre la seconda persona indirizzata a Dio sono sempre riferibili all’auctor e si collocano quindi nel tempo della narrazione” (96). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004405257_007 176 chapter 5 to investigate unrevealed divine secrets. As was the case for some liturgical prayers in Purgatorio, heavenly prayers in Paradiso only apply to the pilgrim, even if he only rarely prays himself and is, for the most part, simply the passive agent of prayer. Prayers on his behalf are articulated or enacted by heavenly souls or by angels. One can also broaden this concept and state that much of what happens in Dante’s Paradiso is on the pilgrim’s behalf and there is no narrative structure other than the pilgrim’s own itinerary to the vision of the Trinity. While Inferno and Purgatorio would still be filled with actions and in- teractions among its souls even in the absence of the pilgrim, the essence itself of heaven, devoid of suffering, strife, or desire, would make it impossible to articulate a narration other than around its poetic protagonist. An example of how centered the Third Canticle is on the pilgrim can be the dynamic move- ment of souls. The souls’ appearance from the Empyrean to one of the individ- ual seven heavens that corresponds to their particular beatitude occurs purely for the pilgrim’s sake. Very often the souls’ prayer happens contemporaneously with their apparent dislocation from their steady abode in the Empyrean.2 Dislocation itself—purely perceived as such by the pilgrim although it may be—becomes a form of prayer. Interestingly enough, while prayer precedes or accompanies movement throughout purgatory, at Dante’s arrival in heaven and at Beatrice’s invitation, he addresses his first prayer to God in thankfulness for having been granted ascension. Symptomatic of the different dynamic at 2 Souls never leave the presence of God in the Empyrean, but they appear to Dante in their respective heavens, as stated in Canto 4: D’i Serafin colui che più s’india, Moïsè, Samuel, e quel Giovanni che prender vuoli, io dico, non Maria, non hanno in altro cielo i loro scanni che questi spirti che mo t’appariro, né hanno a l’esser lor più o meno anni; ma tutti fanno bello il primo giro, e differentemente han dolce vita per sentir più e men l’etterno spiro. [Neither the Seraph closest unto God nor Moses, Samuel, nor either John— whichever one you will—nor Mary has, I say, their place in any other heaven than that which houses those souls you just saw, nor will their blessedness last longer. But all those souls grace the Empyrean: and each of them has gentle life—though some sense the Eternal Spirit more, some less.] Par. 4.28–36.
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