Throughout Paradiso, light symbolizes the presence or knowledge of God. On the surface, light’s simplicity suggests God’s purity and perfect self-sufficiency. But light also suggests God’s constant generosity, as God’s love and grace naturally shine forth to illuminate his creation.
Throughout most of his journey through the heavens, Dante is unable to look directly at God’s light—at the beginning, even a brief glance toward the sun stuns him. This inability to look directly at light suggests that Dante isn’t ready or able to fully see and know God yet. Instead, he sees God’s light reflected in the eyes of his beloved, Beatrice, who guides him through Heaven. Beatrice’s gaze symbolizes indirect revelation of God, as opposed to direct sight: “This light in me proceeds / from perfect sight,” she explains when Dante finds he cannot steadily endure even this much light. But as Dante learns more about the nature of God and Heaven over the course of his journey, his sight acclimates until he can enjoy more of Beatrice’s gaze and, eventually, can graduate from indirect revelation of God to direct sight of God’s light. At the end of Paradiso, Dante is able to look directly at the light of God (“pure light of intellect, all love”) and sees that the entire universe, in all its diversity, is contained and bound together within this single light.
Light Quotes in Paradiso
Glory, from Him who moves all things that are,
penetrates the universe and then shines back,
reflected more in one part, less elsewhere.
High in that sphere which takes from Him most light
I was – I was! – and saw things there that no one
who descends knows how or ever can repeat.
For, drawing near to what it most desires,
our intellect so sinks into the deep
no memory can follow it that far.
I see full well that human intellect
can never be content unless that truth
beyond which no truth soars shines down on it.
[…] Born of that will, there rise up, like fresh shoots,
pure doubts. These flourish at the foot of truth.
From height to height, they drive us to the peak.
This beckons me.
Call as I might on training, art or wit,
no words of mine could make the image seen.
Belief, though, may conceive it, eyes still long.
In us, imagination is too mean
for such great heights. And that’s no miracle.
For no eye ever went beyond the sun.
So shining there was that fourth family
that’s always fed by one exalted Sire
with sight of what He breathes, what Son He has.
The providence that rules the universe,
in counsels so profound that all created
countenance will yield before it finds its depth […]
ordained two princes that, on either side,
should walk along with [the Church] and be her guide.
The one was seraph-like in burning love,
the other in intelligence a splendour
on the earth that shone like Heaven’s cherubim.
[…] Their different actions served a single plan.
So too, like constellations in the depths
of Mars, these rays composed the honoured sign […]
And here remembering surpasses skill:
that cross, in sudden flaring, blazed out Christ
so I can find no fit comparison.
But those who take their cross and follow Christ
will let me off where, wearily, I fail,
seeing in that white dawn, as lightning, Christ.
As bolts of fire, unlocked from thunder clouds,
expand beyond containment in those bounds,
then fall to ground […]
so, too, surrounded by this solemn feast,
my own mind, grown the greater now, went forth
and can’t remember what it then became.
‘Open your eyes and look at what I am!
You have seen things by which you’re made so strong,
you can, now, bear to look upon my smile.’