Language and the Ineffable Theme Analysis

A curious aspect of Paradiso is that Dante often uses his poetic skill not to describe the sights and sounds of Heaven in detail but to indicate his inability to fully capture an experience in words. In fact, Dante opens the cantica with this very warning: in Paradise, “our intellect so sinks into the deep [of God] / no memory can follow it that far. / As much, though, truly of that holy realm / as I could keep as treasure in my mind / will now become the substance of my song.” In other words, human capacities cannot hold the overwhelming memories of Heaven, much less do justice to them in words. This is even true for Dante, despite the fact that he’s blessed with both a masterful grasp on language as a poet and the rare favor of visiting Paradise. However, Dante deploys his poetic ability in another way—by gesturing to the ineffable (inexpressible), he encourages his audience to seek the divine for themselves. By repeatedly emphasizing that Heaven cannot be contained within language or even memory, and by seeking to enchant rather than solely inform his audience, Dante argues that God and Heaven must be sought through firsthand experience instead of through secondhand accounts.

Language cannot capture the beauties of Heaven; however, it can persuade Dane’s audience to seek the ineffable for themselves. In the sphere of Mars, Dante briefly sees a vision of Christ in the sky: “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.” In this case, Dante can remember the blazing vision of Christ, but when he tries to describe his memory, language eludes him. He asks his fellow Christians to forgive him for this failure, suggesting that those who are following Christ, like him, will someday be able to experience this sight firsthand. His language cannot capture the experience, but it can urge Christians to pursue the same experience for themselves.

Again, when Dante witnesses the sheer joy of souls in the sphere of the fixed stars, he refrains from describing the sight in detail: “Three times [a soul] circled Beatrice round, / the song it sang too deeply divinized / for my imagination to recount. / And so my pen will leap, and I’ll not write. / Such pictures as we form – and words, of course – / are far too garish for those subtle pleats.” The sights and sounds of Heaven are so divine that the limited human mind cannot convey them through either pictures or words. Instead of using his poetic ability to try to describe them, Dante instead uses it to describe the ineffability of what he experiences, intending by this means to enchant his audience and draw them toward the divine for themselves.

Not only does the experience of Paradise defy language; it’s so overpowering that it even eludes Dante’s capacity to remember it. When the beauty of Heaven is reflected in Beatrice’s eyes, he finds himself unable to describe the sight or even to remember it fully; he can only relate the effect that this beauty had on him: “I turned towards that sound so full of love / […] but saw, within / those holy eyes, a love I leave unsaid, / unsure not only of my powers of speech, / but Memory, as well – […] This much of that one point I can repeat: / my heart, in awe now looking back at her, / was free of all desires, save that alone.” In other words, Dante can only remember and speak of the desire to keep gazing into Beatrice’s eyes, savoring the love and beauty he saw reflected there. In doing so, he entices his audiences not with specific images (which will inevitably fall short), but with the desire to experience the same love and beauty for themselves and to keep pursuing it, rather than being satisfied with Dante’s account.

Even though manmade language falls short of describing the glory of God and Heaven, Dante suggests that language is nevertheless an important aspect of a person’s pursuit of God. When Dante joins the saints in the sphere of the fixed stars, St. Peter quizzes him about Christianity, requiring Dante not to shun language but to “arm [himself] / with every argument.” So although the divine is too glorious, powerful, and beautiful to be adequately summed up in language, it seems that there’s still value in trying to speak about God—even if just to express the idea that God’s goodness transcends words.

When Dante finally does experience God directly at the end of Paradiso, he is once again at a loss for words: “How short mere speaking falls, how faint against my own idea,” he exclaims when he glimpses the Trinity firsthand; “alone, you [God] know yourself.” To experience God, then, Dante’s audience must not rely on his secondhand account, which will forever fall short; instead, they should pursue God, who transcends all language and knowing, for themselves.