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.
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