Paradise - Part 2

Nearing the end of his journey through Paradise, Dante has seen and learned much. From the depths of Hell, he learned of the retribution for sin. On Mount Purgatory, he saw those Christian souls striving to prepare themselves for Paradise. Now, in Paradise, the pilgrim has seen almost all the spheres of the blessed and heard their stories. He has experienced what few other human being have been privileged to experience.

Within the sphere of Saturn of the contemplatives, Dante is greeted by Peter Damian and asks him why he should be the one pre-ordained to come and speak to the traveler. The blessed spirit replies, “Not even the heavenly soul of clearest gleam / could satisfy your question, not the most / God-contemplating of the Seraphim, / For what you’ve asked so fathoms the abyss / of law established from eternity, / it is cut off from all created eyes. / . . . / Here you mind shines, there it is smoke and gloom,” (21.91-96, 100). There is no way that anyone could fully answer Dante’s question, not even one of those beings closest to God. The only possible reason why Dante might understand Peter Damian’s feeble answer is because he is in Paradise. But once back on earth, his mind will once again cloud.

This reference to cloudiness of mind on earth I found interesting as it seemed to echo a Biblical passage. Paul states something similar in I Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” Here, the apostle is referencing the difference between our time on earth and once we reach Heaven. While on earth, we see everything through the murkiness of this world. However, in Paradise, all those things will be stripped away and we will be able to see and understand things that were once too lofty for our once feeble comprehension.

Paradise - Part 1

With Beatrice at last, Dante ascends into Paradise. Having witnessed the horrors of Hell and the cleansing work of Purgatory, he is now ready to enter the dwelling of the saints. He has drunk the waters of both Lethe and Eunoe in Earthly Paradise at the top of Mount Purgatory but now must follow Beatrice to the heavens where those who have come through the mount’s purging.

Coming into the light of Paradise, Dante is awed. Nowhere before has he experienced such light and beauty. Questions about where he is burn in his mind but he fears to ask them. But Beatrice, able to read his thoughts like Virgil, says , “You’re making your mind dull / with false imagining – you don’t perceive / what you would see, if you could shake it off. / You are not on earth, as you believe. / Lightning that flees its proper realm is not / so swift as your returning to your own,” (1.88-92). Not even a few minutes in Paradise and Beatrice is correcting him.

However, she has a valid point. As he gazes at his surroundings, Dante tries to understand it by earthly means. He attempts to understand, leaning on his own learning, why how it is that he has ascended with Beatrice. To help him, Beatrice admonishes him to let go of his former way of understanding, that the things of Paradise are so much more than any amount of human comprehension could fathom. If he insists on returning to his worldly way of thinking, his intellect will always remain clouded and uncertain. Only be letting go of what he thinks he knows will Dante be able to ascend in Paradise.

Week 8 Harkins

How to Write a Sentence

Thus far, in my experiences with Stanley Fish and his teaching of how to read and write sentences, I have learned a lot. Coming into the reading, I already knew a lot about the parts of speech and the construction and diagrams of sentences. However, Mr. Fish has helped enlighten me to non-abstract reasons why sentences are constructed and written the way they are. His frank way of speaking and numerous examples help to life to his teaching.

1) Subordinating and additive sentence styles at two ways to communicate thoughts. The subordinating is used when one wants to give a specific order and hierarchy to what they are saying, giving it a much more formulated and formal feel. The additive style, on the other hand, has a more stream-of-consciousness flow to it, having each peace merely added to the rest rather than put into a specific place within it.

2) I found Gertrude Stein’s sentence very confusing. Without the traditional punctuation and capitalization, I found myself becoming lost in her words and not being able to follow her train of thought at all. For me, this was much more a detriment to my understanding than a bolster.

3) Little fishes swimming in the stream, the wind rustling through the leaves, the old tree bowing with age over the water, the picture captured his mind, everything bringing calm and peace, nothing disturbing his time of solitude, relaxing.

Purgatory - Part 2

Throughout their journey together, Dante has relied upon Virgil to explain things to him. Almost nothing was left without some inquiry of Virgil. Graciously, the poet would elucidate the pilgrim on everything asked of him, from the punishments of Hell’s rings to the histories of people to the reason for their journey and direction. Without Virgil, Dante would most certainly have remained lost in more ways than just in the dark forest.

However, upon entering Purgatory, a change begins to take place in their relationship. Now, Virgil is no longer the authority. He says just before they enter the ring of the slothful, “I’ll tell you everything that reason sees; / beyond that, wait for Beatrice still, for faith / Must do the work,” as a preface before answering one of Dante’s questions about love (18.47-49). It struck me as an interesting turning point in their relationship. Rather than simply giving an answer as had been his custom before, Virgil states that he can only explain so much and must leave the rest to Beatrice.

Here, for me, Virgil becomes a symbol for what can be learned by reason and Beatrice is what can be learned by faith. Virgil, though a virtuous pagan, is still a pagan. He has not received the divine gift of salvation and thus can only discover what can be found reasonably about love. However, Beatrice, having received and believed the true faith, can fathom the nature of love in a deeper and better way. No matter how hard Virgil may desire to know or how hard he tries to delve, his understanding will always be limited by its dissociation from faith, which is why he acknowledges his own short comings and points Dante to look beyond the wisdom reasonable Virgil can give towards the fuller wisdom faithful Beatrice will give.

Purgatory - Part 1

At last, Dante reaches Purgatory and begins the second leg of his journey. Now, he will see the purifying punishments of those who will one day enter Paradise. With Virgil still at his side to help illuminate the mysteries that still puzzle Dante. Traversing the plain at the foot of Purgatory, he learns of those souls that must wait because of various other sins before they may ascend the mount. Once past the Porter at the base, Dante and Virgil see the souls bearing the boulders of pride and the tears fall from the sewn eyes of the envious. At both these levels, the two pilgrims see and discuss with those who are being purged.

In the level of the wrathful though, they encounter a new problem. “Profoundest darkness of the realm below, / or of the night under a starless vault / when it’s most shrouded by the glooming clouds, / Never spread for my eyes so thick a veil / as did that smoke that wrapped us all about,” (16.1-5). Here, they cannot even see the suffering souls. However, what strikes me most is that “profoundest darkness of the realm below . . . never spread for my eyes so thick a veil as did that smoke.” Even the darkness of Hell could not match the darkness of wrath in a Christian. Compared to the places that Dante has described in Inferno, this is a very heavy accusation. How scary to think that not even the worst sin and all its gloom could equal the darkness that comes over a Christian when they submit to wrath and its horrid accomplices.

Inferno - Part 2

Through thirty-four cantos, Dante travels through the nine rings of Hell, guided by the ever-wise Virgil. He has viewed those lukewarm souls outside the gates of Hell. Also, he has seen the virtuous pagans in Limbo alongside the lustful, gluttons, avaricious, wrathful, heretics, violent, fraudulent, and traitorous. Among the sinners, he has witnessed their punishments and seen the destruction that their earthly actions have heaped upon them in the afterlife. Finally, he has come to the end of his journey through Hell. Having passed Satan, the lowest sinner in Hell, Virgil leads Dante towards the other side of the center of the earth, the side that leads to Purgatory.

I thought the very last few lines of Inferno incredibly interesting. "Upon this hidden path my guide and I / entered, to go back to the world of light, / and without any care to rest at ease, / He first and I behind, we climbed so high / that through a small round opening I saw / some of the turning beauties of the sky. / And we came out to see, once more, the stars," (34.133-139). So, after everything that he has experienced in Hell, the first thing that Dante notes upon entering the outside world is the stars. Not even while lost in the wood could Dante see the stars up above him. The only heavenly light that he could see were rays of the sun from behind the hill he was attempting to scale. Now though, he is again under the light and blessing of Heaven. Now that he has passed through the trials of Hell, he can once again move under the grace of God and pursue the glory of Paradise.

Week 6 Harkins

How to Write a Sentence

The subordinating style of sentence writing consists of placing the events of the sentence in sequence of causality (one event causing another), temporality (one event following another along a timeline) and precedence (one event being more important than another). The significance of each action is imbedded in the way that the actions are ordered.

Original Aphorism

Sometimes you have to look at the world upside-down in order to see it right-side up.

Inferno - Part 1

Inferno is probably Dante’s most well-known work from his Divine Comedy. There, he describes his descent, guided by Virgil, into Hell and each of its concentric rings in which the various levels of sins are punished. In each ring, someone tells their woeful tale of their past transgressions, becoming warnings to Dante of the pits and traps of life to avoid in the years to come.

One interesting passage is in the third canto, when Virgil and Dante reach the gate of Hell. Engraved on the archway into Hell are the following words:

I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE, / I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL PAIN, / I AM THE WAY TO GO AMONG THE LOST. / JUSTICE CAUSED MY HIGH ARCHITECT TO MOVE: / DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE CREATED ME, / THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE. / BEFORE ME THERE WERE NO CREATED THINGS / BUT THOSE THAT LAST FOREVER – AS DO I. / ABANDON ALL HOPE YOU WHO ENTER HERE. (3.1-9)

What interested me is the way in which these statements were worded. The first three lines begin with the words “I AM,” the same words used by Jesus in John 14:6 when he states, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” and the various other "I Am" statements. Seems almost as if a connection is be made between Christ as the doorway to Heaven and the arch as the doorway to Hell. Also, the second and third to last lines confused me at first as it seemed that Hell had existed before men, which did not make sense to me. But then, it could possibly be that it was created after men because it says that “before me there were no created things / but those that last forever” and men will last forever. Perhaps these are all misinterpretations of what Dante wrote and meant but they were the best of my theories.

Hymns on Paradise - Part 2

Normally, when we speak of Paradise, it is in a quasi-dreamy mystical way. Seemingly, it relates to an elation of the emotions more than anything else. We speculate about the great love and awe we will experience when we finally reach the arms of our God. Some even tear up at the mention of Paradise, because they desire it so much and imagine the intense beauty and reunion that is there. Though sometimes there is talk of what our physical bodies will be like and what we’ll do, most of the time, when discussing Paradise in my experience, the talk has focused on the emotional experience of it.

However, St. Ephrem brings a different idea to the table of the experience of Paradise. Though he does reflect a lot on his own emotional responses to Paradise, in the end, he focuses on how entrance to Paradise comes from intellect. He says, “Through this gate of knowledge / the intellect enters in, / explores every kind of treasure, / brings out every kind of riches,” (16.3.9-12). It is not through some mystical, highly emotional experience that one gains the most from Paradise but rather through the use of intellect because the Tree of Knowledge stood, and still stands, as the gate to Paradise. “So . . . the Tree of Knowledge, / can, with its fruit, roll back / the cloud of ignorance, / so that eyes can recognize / the beauty / of that Tabernacle / hidden within,” (183.5.1-6). By coming through the Tree of Knowledge with intellect, we can fully enter into the mystery and beauty that is Paradise.

Hymns on Paradise - Part 1

Saint Ephrem the Syrian paints several beautiful pictures of Paradise throughout his fifteen hymns. All his descriptions pulsate with images of the divine grace and perfection that were once home to mankind. Delving deeper into it, Saint Ephrem illuminates for his readers certain qualities of this transient life that are reflections or compulsions towards Paradise. Also, while praising Paradise, he shows how perverse man has become since his fall, in his desire to remain in a place far from Paradise rather than glorying in the opportunity to finally return to his original home.

Yet what caught my attention was a passage in Saint Ephrem’s eighth hymn when he describes the relationship between the soul and the body.

If the soul, while in the body, / resembles an embryo / and is unable to know / either itself or its companion, / how much more feeble will it then be / once it has left the body, / no longer possessing on its own / the senses / which are able to serve / as tools for it to use. / For it through the sense of its companion / that it shines forth and becomes evident. (8.6)

To me, this idea of the soul’s dependency upon the body seemed absolutely foreign. I had always believed that the body needed the soul for its animation but the soul did not, necessarily, need the body to exist as well. It lived and had its existence and sustenance from God alone. And yet here, and earlier, Saint Ephrem clearly states the soul is not truly whole without the body in which it is to dwell. Perhaps it comes from always thinking of the word “soul” and the word “spirit” as synonymous, which gives rise to the idea of living without a body such as ghosts or shades, that I have always believed the soul to be autonomous apart from the body. But it still seems strange to me that the soul, the eternal part of man, would need the body, the fleeting part of man, in order to have its fullest existence.

Week 5 Harkins

How to Write a Sentence

“People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a sentence is measure by the degree to which the desired effect has been achieved.”

“Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead.”

“In short, pick your effect, figure out what you want to do, and then figure out how to do it.”

In my own writing, I often have problems with deciding how to execute a sentence well and then when to keep it or not. These sentences help to give me guidance behind the purpose of sentences, the mentality that I should have while I’m writing.

People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a sentence is measure by the degree to which the desired effect has been achieved.

Compound-complex sentence

You don’t need to know all the parts of the sentence to know that the “in order” clause and the “to which” clause describe the sentence that precedes them

It follows a form (noun-verb) and is able to give its message, or content, clearly