WITH THAT passion for accuracy true of the whole Commedia but most characteristic of the last canticle, Paradiso, canto 30, transcribes Dante's "transhumanization" from narcissism to a just self-love. Here Dante's eyes become mirrors (line 85) so that, instead of seeing, he now reflects, and, reflecting, he is no longer physically capable of the error of Narcissus. To be sure, he cannot adequately "reflect" God; as Adam informs him, God is the "`verace speglio / che fa di sé pareglio a l' altre cose, / e nulla face lui di sé pareglio'" ("`the truthful Mirror which makes of itself a reflection of all else, while of It nothing makes itself the reflection'"; Par. 26.106-108). But if unable to "reflect" God because an inadequate mirror, Dante is also unable to mistake God through sight for some "thing" He is not. On the contrary, now, when he "looks into" the "verace speglio," he reflects the reflection of the light which was in principio. Now, in Paradise, it is only God who "sees" since nothing exists except in the sight of God. Now, in Paradise, no creature "sees"; it only reflects--for only in reflecting the glory of God is the creature glorious (cf. Par. 31.70-72).

Paradiso is a poem of vision, in every sense which that word will bear. No study such as this one can begin to do justice to the vision; hence I think it wise to detail right away what I hope to do in this chapter so as to distinguish it from what I have no intention of even attempting. Only so can I prevent misunderstanding. 1

Narcissus, coinage, falsification: these are my primary concerns. Canto 30 is my principal focus. The "transhumanization" of Dante into a redeemed Narcissus is the term of my argument. That "transhumanization" involves first and foremost a reformation of sight; hence I will isolate moments of the Paradiso which record major alterations in the nature and quality of Dante's sight. Crucial to this project is to remember that Dante and his sight con-{67/68} stitute our reference point--and our transference point also, I will eventually argue--in Paradise: he is the only human being in Paradise to whom we can turn for bearings. Consequently, he must figure and figure in our sight but dis-figure and dis-figure in our sight, too. Against the cry of "jargon," let me insist that we never "see" Paradise: we see only the figures which Dante's eyes brought to Paradise and with which those eyes remember the vision of Paradise; he and his eyes are our reference and transference point. But these figures are by definition (the definition of the human body) inadequate to Paradise; they are a darkening of the Light in our behalf, because pure and undifferentiated the Light would be invisible to us--we see only by contrast (cf. Serres 1982:70). Hence these figures do disfigure the pure Light of Paradise, in the Adamic sense of their fallenness: all human similitudes originate in the region of dissimilitude; they are all dark with exile. Consequently, they would also falsify the Light of Paradise if they did not dis-figure even as they figure: so as not to be a falsifier, Dante charges every figure with so much figurativity that the very ostentation of the figure initiates its dis-figurement--the figure figures only to dis-figure, or to cease figuring so as to transfer us beyond figurativity itself. Only thus can we see even as we know we do not see; only thus can Dante represent Paradise even as he knows he does not re-present Paradise; only thus can the Light, invisible without contrast, be purged of the shadow ("ombra") which makes it, not visible--it is never visible--but present by its absence.

The one occurrence in Paradiso of the verb figurare in its active form confirms this argument and, indeed, furthers it. In Paradiso 23.46-48, Beatrice commands Dante:

"Apri li occhi e riguarda qual son io;
tu hai vedute cose, che possente
se' fatto a sostener lo riso mio."

("Open your eyes and look on what I am; you have seen things such that you are become able to sustain my smile.")

io udi' questa proferta,
degna di tanto grato, che mai non si stingue
del libro che 'l preterito rassegna.
Se mo sonasser tutte quelle lingue
che Polimnïa con le suore fero
{68/69}del latte lor dolcissimo più pingue,
per aiutarmi, al millesmo del vero
non si verria, cantando il santo riso
e quanto il santo aspetto facea mero;
e cosí, figurando il paradiso,
convien saltar lo sacrato poema,
come chi trova suo cammin riciso.
Ma chi pensasse il ponderoso tema
e l'omero mortal che se ne carca,
nol biasmerebbe se sott' esso trema:
non è pareggio da picciola barca
quel che fendendo va l'ardita prora,
né da nocchier ch'a sé medesmo parca.

(I heard this proffer, worthy of such gratitude that it can never be effaced from the book which records the past. Though all those tongues which Polyhymnia and her sisters made most rich with their sweetest milk should sound now to aid me, it would not come to a thousandth part of the truth, in singing the holy smile, and how it lit up the holy aspect; and so, depicting Paradise, the sacred poem must needs make a leap, even as one who finds his way cut off. But whoso thinks of the ponderous theme and of the mortal shoulder which is laden therewith, will not blame it if it tremble beneath the load. It is no voyage for a little bark, this which my daring prow cleaves as it goes, nor for a pilot who would spare himself.)

At this point two corollaries of the argument should be emphasized. First, by the very fact that he is a son of Adam in Paradise, Dante risks being a Master Adam or false coiner of the Light of Paradise. Dante has no alternative but to coin the Light. Hence, time and again Beatrice warns him to be quiet and to look again, so that she may rid his eyes of images false in the sense of inadequate to reality. For example, she upbraids him at the beginning of the ascent (Par. 1.88-91; emphasis added):

"Tu stesso ti fai grosso
col falso imaginar, sì che non vedi
ciò che vedresti se l'avessi scosso.
Tu non se' in terra, sì come tu credi;

("You make yourself dull with false imagining, so that you do not see what you would see had you cast it off. You are not on earth, as you believe.")

But when Dante returns to earth and to transcribe the experience for us, he is in a quandary, for--and this is the second corollary--his only recourse is once again the discourse of imagery. Upon his return, in point of fact, Dante is himself, in his person, the coin which "purchases," or, more exactly, "represents," Paradise for us: "l'ombra del beato regno" is "segnata" in his head (Par. 1.23-24). Dante is the coin of God, stamped with the image of Paradise. 4 Hence the precision of his earlier promise (Par. 1.10-12; emphasis added):

Veramente quant'io del regno santo
ne la mia mente potei far tesoro,
sarà ora materia del mio canto.

(Nevertheless, so much of the holy kingdom as I could treasure up in my mind shall now be the matter of my song.)

Trasumanar significar per verba
non si poria; però l'essemplo basti
a cui esperïenza grazia serba.

(The passing beyond humanity may not be set forth in words: therefore, let the example suffice any for whom grace reserves that experience.)

This argument and its corollaries enable us to see that the process of disfigurement is itself a figure of the reformation of Dante's sight during the vision. The reformation of Dante's sight is a constant and incremental "scossare," or casting off, of images and figures, which is a dis-figuring, where the images and figures are the more similar to God the nearer Dante approaches to Him, until the figure of the circle (Par. 33.116ff), which, since it is as close to God's primal unity as a human figure can come, constitutes the purest figurativity in the poem. Moreover, since Dante is the Image of God, the reformation of his sight is simultaneous with (though not the same thing as) the reformation of his Image to similitude with God; and at the term of this reformation, when and because Dante has achieved similitude, figurativity ceases--his mind "percossa" with the vision of God, Dante has no need of figures. We, of course, never reach this term. We have no vision: we have not had the experience; we have only Dante's "essemplo" (Par. 1.70-72). Hence, for example, Dante transcribes the last moment as: "la mia mente fu percossa / da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne" ("my mind was smitten by a flash wherein its wish came to it"; Par. 33.140-41). "Fire" and "desire" or "will," the figures (and the figure) of Narcissus, still remain; and they must, otherwise we could not see. Dante's sight is now beyond even reflection; he is with God. We, however, are still looking into a mirror, struggling to reflect; and because we see a Narcissus, we know that we are not looking into the mirror of Narcissus.

From this vantage point we can articulate the last distinction of the analysis which I am attempting here. If dis-figuration is the figure of the reformation of Dante's sight, which is part of his total "transhumanization," we never reach the term of that figure or the absence of all figures. We remain, on the contrary, with figures, in the space of reference, the space of the poem, which is language. However, when figures dis-figure in Dante's sight, we do see the dis-figuration; we do see beyond, though we do not see what is beyond. I can see that angels are not "faville" (Par. 30.64) but something beyond "faville." The dis- figuration of "faville" transfers me beyond "faville": transference extends and crowns the reference of "faville." I do not because I cannot see God with Dante; but in his poem I am at least beyond this world--almost, for a moment, transhuman.

Canto 30 transcribes the most drastic changes in Dante's sight during the pilgrimage through Paradise before his actual vision of God at the end.{72/73} However, his sight undergoes other important changes at earlier stages of the journey, and some of these deserve separate emphasis as preparation for analysis of those transcribed in canto 30. In particular cantos 21, 22, and 26 should be singled out.

I undertook an analysis of the opening of canto 21 in my discussion of the allusion to Semele in Inferno 30. Here I want to emphasize again that this is the canto in which for the first time Dante's eyes become mirrors (lines 16-18), and I want to add, for special emphasis, that this is the canto in which Dante enters the heaven of Saturn. Dante's eyes, then, become mirrors when he enters the heaven of the contemplatives, or those who speculate. As usual, Dante is precise. And the precision continues into the next canto, where, having begun to reflect, Dante, desiring to exercise his new vision, asks Benedict to assure him "`s'io posso prender tanta grazia, ch'io / ti veggia con imagine scoverta'" ("`if I am capable of receiving so great a grace, that I may behold you in your uncovered shape'"; Par. 22.59-60). This request is momentous for the reformation or redemption of Narcissus.

To understand its importance, we must remember that Benedict answers Dante in terms of desire--desire which is the "mondiglia" with which the narcissist falsifies signs (Par. 22.61-69; emphasis added):

"Frate, il tuo alto disio
s'adempierà in su l'ultima spera
ove s'adempion tutti li altri e 'l mio.
Ivi è perfetta, matura e intera
ciascuna disïanza; in quella sola
è ogne parte là ove sempr' era,
perché non è in loco e non s'impola;
e nostra scala infino ad essa varca,
onde così dal viso ti s'invola."

("Brother, your high desire shall be fulfilled up in the last sphere, where are fulfilled all others and my own. There every desire is perfect, mature, and whole. In that alone is every part there where it always was, for it is not in space, nor has it poles; and our ladder reaches up to it, wherefore it steals itself from your sight.")

quali per vetri trasparenti e tersi,
o ver per acque nitide e tranquille,
non sì profonde che i fondi sien persi,
tornan d'i nostri visi le postille
debili sì, che perla in bianca fronte
non vien men forte a le nostre pupille;
tali vid'io più facce a parlar pronte.

(As through smooth and transparent glass, or through clear and tranquil waters, yet not so deep that the bottom be lost, the outlines of our faces return so faint that a pearl on a white brow comes not less boldly to our eyes, so did I behold many a countenance eager to speak.)

And so it is that where speculation begins, in the heaven of Saturn among the contemplatives, the sight of Narcissus if not also his error is recalled. Speculation if a way of seeing God is also the way Narcissus died. So it is also that in this same heaven Dante undergoes a radical change of sight--through seeing "this little threshing floor" of the earth (Par. 22.151). In a sense this sight of the "aiuola" is Dante's last "sight" in the poem; hereafter he only reflects, progressing in degrees of reflection. Fittingly, his last sight concludes with seeing the earth, ground of ordinary mortal seeing. Moreover, he sees this last time in order "`aver le luci . . . chiare e acute'" ("`to have his eyes clear and keen'"; Par. 22.126), where the word for eyes, or "luci," suggests that they are continuous with though hardly the same thing as the Light which they are being prepared to reflect (see also Par. 1.66). This last sight, with these "luci chiare e acute," so far reforms or redeems the Narcissus in Dante, as he enters the Heaven of the Fixed Stars, that hereafter he can bear because he reflects more and more of the "lux quae erat in principio."{74/75}

And yet, of course, he is still far from capable of the final vision. Hence, for example, not long after he has entered Saturn, he can, in fact, see and sustain Beatrice's smile (Par. 23.46-48). But if he can "see" Beatrice's smile, that sight only prepares him for a more exalted sight which he cannot "see." Beatrice directs his sight to Christ and Mary above them (Par. 23.76-87):

e io, che a' suoi consigli
tutto era pronto, ancora mi rendei
a la battaglia de' debili cigli.
Come a raggio di sol, che puro mei
per fratta nube, già prato di fiori
vider, coverti d'ombra, li occhi miei;
vid' io così più turbe di splendori,
folgorate di sù da raggi ardenti,
sanza veder principio di folgóri.
O benigna vertù che sì li 'mprenti,
sù t'essaltasti per largirmi loco
a li occhi lì che non t'eran possenti.

(and I who to her counsels was all eager, again gave myself up to the battle of the feeble brows. As under the sun's ray, which streams pure through a broken cloud, ere now my eyes, sheltered by shade, have seen a meadow of flowers, so saw I many hosts of splendors glowed on from above by ardent rays, though I saw not whence came the glowings. O benign Power, which doth so imprint them, Thou didst ascend so as to yield place /lit: to bestow the largesse of a place to me/ there for the eyes that were powerless before Thee!)

Before they reach full maturity, however, they will err again a number of times, and notably when he strives to gaze on the Apostle John (Par. 25.118-29). This attempt for a moment blinds Dante; his vision is, crucial description, "smarrita" (Par. 26.9) according to John, who goes on, however, to assure Dante that Beatrice can heal his eyes. Thereupon, the latter replies (Par. 26.13-15):{75/76}

"Al suo piacere e tosto e tardo
vegna remedio a li occhi, che fuor porte
quand' ella entrò col foco ond' io sempr' ardo."

("At her good pleasure, soon or late, let succor come to the eyes which were the doors when she did enter with the fire wherewith I ever burn.")

Talvolta un animal coverto broglia,
sì che l'affetto convien che si paia
per lo seguir che face a lui la 'nvoglia;
e similimente l'anima primaia
mi facea trasparer per la coverta
quant' ella a compiacermi venìa gaia.

(Sometimes an animal that is covered so stirs that its impulse must needs be apparent, since what envelops it follows its movements: in like manner that first soul showed me, through its covering, how joyously it came to do me pleasure.)

This simile and the scene which it sets deserve far more attention than I can pay them here. 8 I do, nonetheless, want to emphasize how the terms of the simile provoke the dilemma of Narcissus in Paradise, who can only see with images. "Coverto," "coverta," and above all "invoglia" insist on imagery, and especially "invoglia" since it is equivalent to Latin "involucrum" or "integumentum," technical terms for image or for allegory. 9 Adam, father of Everyman, is also author of imagery since only with the Fall did mediation become necessary (recall Saint Augustine's "nubes"). The author of imagery appears to Dante as the image of an image--of a covering following, or perhaps tracing, the movement ("affetto") internal to its referent. Against a poetics and a metaphysics of absence, which would posit that the internal/external distinction is merely a nostalgia for an idealist signification, Dante opposes and affirms a Christian Platonist reference. Adam is within and beyond the "invoglia" which covers him (and should be compared, therefore, with Ulysses, similarly swathed, but not both beyond and within his covering--he {76/77} is only /and eternally/ within his covering). And so, looking on him, Dante "sees" (i.e., reflects) imagery, which Narcissus (the Narcissus in Everyman) must do before he can cease seeing with imagery. Dante cannot see imagery until it is an image because human beings cannot see without images. He must see imagery with an image, but once he has seen with that image, he knows thereafter when he is seeing with images, and he can allow for such seeing. No longer bound to images, he can come to full self consciousness. Once Dante has "seen" imagery imaging, he knows imagery (in the sense of Fr. connaître) and can allow for it. He can, dis-figuring because of the error of imagery, reflect that imagery is inadequate to ultimate vision. His eyes ("luci") are one grade closer to the Light. And they "see"/reflect imagery, so as to allow for seeing with imagery when--profound accuracy of the poet--they "see"/reflect Adam, author of imagery through "il trapassar del segno" (Par. 26. 1 17).

The transhumanization of Dante's sight reaches in canto 30 the next grade, where the reformation or redemption of Narcissus is clearly evident and also eminently available for analysis. We begin with yet another moment of blindness (Par. 30.46-54):

Come sùbito lampo che discetti
li spiriti visivi sì che priva
de l'atto l'occhio di più forti obietti,
così mi circunfulse luce viva;
e lasciommi fasciato di tal velo
del suo fulgor, che nulla m'appariva.
"Sempre l'amor che queta questo cielo
accoglie in sé con sì fatta salute,
per far disposto a sua fiamma il candelo."

(As a sudden flash of lightning which scatters the visual spirits so that it robs the eye of the sight of the clearest objects, so round about me there shone a vivid light and left me so swathed in the veil of its effulgence that nothing was visible to me. "Ever does the love which quiets this heaven receive into itself with such like salutation, in order to prepare the candle for its flame.")

But our eyes adjust only to more figuration, for we have not had the experience; Dante's eyes, on the other hand, adjust to reality, for he did have the experience which is our "essemplo." Dante experienced the initial blindness as a "velo del fulgor" in which he was "fasciato." The "velo" assimilates Dante to other characters in the poem. Ulysses "si fascia" with flame (Inf. 26.48); Adam "si fascia" with "letizia" (Par. 26.135); Beatrice appears "velata" in Purgatory (30.65, 67). Moreover, the figure calls up only to deflect the burned bodies of Master Adam, Narcissus, and Semele: if Dante is consumed by "fulgor," it is light and not flame that consumes him and which renders him new. In fact, it is the difference between Dante, on the one hand, and all these various characters, on the other, that the figure succeeds in establishing. Not only is Dante not burned to death, he is not veiled for the sake of concealment. He is veiled, rather, that reality might be revealed to him. This veil in a moment will fall away, and Dante will see more and purer light. More and yet more will be revealed to him. Each re-vel-ation will be another veil-- another image, another "ombra," another "accommodation" but these veils also will fall away. To Dante "veiled," he tells us, "nulla appariva." He was blind. But after blindness, greater vision. And as the veil falls away from Dante, so it will fall away from every re-vel-ation. Dante experiences, subjectively, the process of re-vel-ation, and he learns from the experience that the veil shall be taken away (2 Cor. 3.16).

As much is figured in Beatrice's words, "per far disposto a sua fiamma il candelo" (line 54). If Dante is a candle, he is an in-light-of-which, a source of illumination, and no longer a passive viewer. He no longer merely receives the veil of each re-vel-ation; he is the in-light-of-which it is reveiled; he does not {78/79} merely see, as by a virtus exemplaris, rather, he makes visible. He is, if you will, one candlepower of the Light of the Empyrean: this is his "salute" (line 53)-- "welcome" but also "salvation." Part of the Light (and God is Light though the light is not God), Dante makes visible what he sees because he is part of God in the sight of whom all things exist. Any veil of re-vel-ation, therefore, which Dante sees he makes visible, and if he makes it visible, then when he ceases to look on it, it disappears. He is by no means the source of the re-vel-ation, but he is the in-light-of-which it is re-veiled; and when his light is one with God (mystical union) there will be no more veils because God and he will look on each other, light in light, and not need veils. When Dante looks on God, the veil shall be taken away. And "we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, /will be/ transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3.18).

But the vision of God is as yet far off, and Dante still sees veils. His eyes however are adjusting to the light of the Empyrean as he "transhumanizes" into a "candle" of God (lines 58-60):

di novella vista mi raccesi
tale, che nulla luce è tanto mera,
che li occhi miei non si fosser difesi.

(such new vision was kindled in me that there is no light so bright that my eyes could not have withstood it.)

Hence the very next vision he has (lines 61-63):

E vidi lume in forma di rivera{79/80}
fulvido di fulgore, intra due rive
dipinte di mirabil primavera.

(And I saw a light in form of a river glowing tawny between two banks painted with marvelous spring.)

So Beatrice (lines 70-74):

"L'alto disio che mo t 'infiamma e urge,
d'aver notizia di ciò che tu vei,
tanto mi piace più quanto più turge;
ma di quest' acqua convien che tu bei
prima che tanta sete in te si sazi.

("The high desire which now inflames and urges you to have knowledge concerning that which you see pleases me the more the more it swells; but first you must needs drink of this water before so great a thirst in you be slaked.")

Before this happens, however, he must have further understanding of the Narcissus within him. Hence Beatrice continues (lines 76-81):

"Il fiume e li topazi
ch'entrano ed escono e'l rider de l'erbe
son di lor vero umbriferi prefazi.
Non che da sé sian queste cose acerbe;
ma è difetto da le parte tua,
che non hai viste ancor tanto superbe."

("The stream and the topazes which enter and issue, and the smiling of the grasses, are the shadowy prefaces of their truth; not that these things are defective in themselves, but on your side is the defect, in that you do not yet have vision so exalted.")

Beatrice's phrase "umbriferi prefazi" facilitates understanding this position. When Dante merely sees, he sees "pre-speakings bearing shadow" of the reality of light. These "pre-speakings bearing shadow"--topazes, a river, laughter, flowers, spring, and so on--are all mortal, this-worldly objects which Dante's eyes, still his own eyes though transhumanizing, bring with them. These "umbriferi prefazi" are a coinage of the Light of Paradise, but not a false coinage, because mortal desire does not substitute them for the light of Paradise. They are rather the necessary coinage which (a son of) Adam brings to Paradise {81/82} and continues to practice, not out of fraud but out of his very fallenness. They are "prefazi"--"already spoken"--because mortal words have named them; and they are "umbriferi"--"shadow bearing"--because everything mortals see, when they merely see, is shadow, since they cannot see without the contrast of light and dark. When, however, seeing is reflecting, "umbriferi prefazi" disappear because then reality is wholly itself and thus wholly other, distinct from the "reflector."

Now from the vantage point afforded by Beatrice's phrase we can proceed to the "mirror" verses. Their content is a continuation of Beatrice's explanation of the things which Dante sees:

Not that of themselves are these things unripe acerbe
but is the defect on your part
that not have you sight yet with such exaltation superbe

Thus the mother to the son appears proud superba
as she appeared to me since bitter
tastes the taste of pity unripe. acerba

Now answering to the "unripe" son in Purgatory is Dante in Paradise increasing in ripeness. Increasing in ripeness, he learns that, one, reality, or the original light which is the body of each of the blessed, is ripe, "non. . . da se. . . acerbe," and that, two, he does not see/reflect this ripeness because his eyes are not yet "superbe"; the implication, of course, is that he will when they are. And that will be when the "umbriferi prefazi" of the mother in Purgatory, or "superba" (behind which her "pietade" is ripe), becomes the true condition of Dante's eyes. When Dante's eyes have transcended by incorporating that "umbriferous preface," they will have been prepared to penetrate all other "umbriferous prefaces," and that because with an "exalted" eye Dante will be mature enough to know that all such appearances are in his eyes. If he "looks away" (the action, of course, is not physical) from the appearance of pride, it will disappear--such is the power of "superbic" eyes--and visible instead will be reality, whether of pity or of the elect. The "umbriferous preface" of "superba" will become in Paradise what it substantially is, or a condition of the eye. Thus Dante "imparadises" the word "superba"-- it no longer means "proud"--and "realizes" its substantial meaning or the opposite of its shaded meaning. And the "imparadised" word indicates that Dante's eyes now comprehend this, "superba," and all other "umbriferous prefaces." Finally, if "superba" corrects so as to "realize" or "imparadise" its reflection, so does "acerba"; and "realized," or "imparadised," it is negated, since perfect or paradisal creatures cannot be unripe; and this negation, in turn, asserts that "pietade," perfect because it is love, is not unripe. The ripening Dante will see the ripeness of perfected creation, which includes the ripeness of mother love.

But Dante is far from ripe yet. He is in fact an infant again (lines 82-90):

Non è fantin che sì sùbito rua
col volto verso il latte, se si svegli
molto tardato da l'usanza sua,
come fec'io, per far migliori spegli
ancor de li occhi, chinandomi all'onda
che si deriva perché vi s'immegli;
e sì come di lei bevve la gronda
de le palpebre mie, così mi parve
di sua lunghezza divenuta tonda.

(No infant, on waking far after its hour, so suddenly rushes with face toward the milk, as then did I, to make yet better mirrors of my eyes, stooping to the wave which flows there that we may be bettered in it. And even {83/84} as the eaves of my eyelids drank of it, so it seemed to me out of its length to have become round.)

Now Dante turns to the light, momentarily "milk," so as "to make better mirrors still of his eyes." This, I take it, is the still center of the canto. If and when Dante's eyes become mirrors, they will reflect rather than see; and in this condition Dante will be incapable of narcissism. That version of self-consciousness peculiar to Narcissus and mystic vision alike will, in this condition, be completely purged of confusion; and the redeemed soul will never again see itself in or projected on its environment. In fact, it will never again "see" itself at all. Rather it will reflect itself reflected in the "`verace speglio'" ("`truthful Mirror'") of God and "`tanti / speculi...in che si spezza, / /though/ uno manendo in sé" ("`so many mirrors . . .wherein it is reflected, /though/ remaining in itself One as before"`; Par. 29.143-45). It will know (and know itself) even as it is known (1 Cor. 13.12). Become the Image of God now reformed to similitude with God, the soul will know as God knows: it will reflect every creature, what the creature is (without intervening image), the image of its Creator.

To attain this "transhuman" condition, Dante bends to the water "che si deriva perché vi s'immegli" (line 87). The verb s'immegli is Dante's coinage (Vernon 1972: 2.403). And it is coinage here and now to insist that all expression in this light and of this light is accidental, subjective, "ab-out." Here Adam can only coin; and we can only spend his coin.

Because it is our lot to deal in coin, we see Dante bend to the water, which is not water but light, where the eaves of his eyelids drink of it. Again the ostentation and excess of the figure are important. The image is almost too much and thus signals its disfigurement of Paradise. If Dante's lashes drink of the light in the manner of eaves, then his eyelids are roofs or coverings intended to protect and to defend his eyes, while the lashes or eaves are projec- {84/85} tions or overhangs intended to collect runoff rain and so on, so as to discard it. The figure continues the emphasis on defense introduced earlier (line 60) and suggests that Dante's eyes, in becoming better mirrors, are opened wide but, as it were, under a roof there to receive the light as an excess dripping over the eaves. The figure is so excessive because Dante is still in the body as he experiences the vision. If Dante took in the light as do Beatrice and the other "speculi" of Heaven, it would, I think we are to assume, destroy him. Hence his body protects itself. And even as the eyes of his body drink the light in the only way the eyes of a body could drink the light-- namely, through the interference of a medium--so we, who deal in images and coins, see them drink it through similar interference: we see a figure, an image, a coin because we are seeing a body, primary cause of media.

Dante, the pilgrim, on the other hand, as soon as the eyes of his body have drunk the light, is prepared to "reflect" a radical disappearance of figuration (lines 91-99):

Poi come gente stata sotto larve
che pare altro che prima, se si sveste
la sembianza non süa in che disparve,
così mi si cambiaro in maggior feste
li fiori e le faville, sì ch'io vidi
ambo le corti del ciel manifeste.
O isplendor di Dio, per cu'io vidi
l'alto trïunfo del regno verace,
dammi virtù a dir com'ïo il vidi.

(Then, as folk who have been under masks seem other than before, if they do off the semblances not their own wherein they were hid, so into greater festival the flowers and the sparks did change before me that I saw both the courts of Heaven made manifest. O splendor of God whereby I saw the high triumph of the true kingdom, give to me power to tell how I beheld it!)

We are here at the optimum vantage point for falling back to retrieve Dante's understanding of faith as "moneta" so as to proceed with it to the conclusion of our analysis. The relevant text is Paradiso 24, during Saint Peter's examination of Dante on faith. Dante responds to the first question as follows (Par. 24.64-66):

"fede è sustanza di cose sperate,
e argomento de le non parventi;
e questa pare a me sua quiditate."

("Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen; and this I take to be its quiddity.")

Now, faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not. For by this the ancients obtained a testimony. By faith we understand that the world was framed by the word of God: that from invisible things visible things might be made.

As Hebrews 11. 3 suggests, the Word of God brings visibles from invisibles. Just so, Dante's words, though vastly inferior, bring visibles from invisibles; faith, seeing these visibles-- language showing them--reasons or argues back to the Word of God. Faith, in short, exchanges the visibles for the invisibles. And so it is that Peter likens faith, at the end of the first part of Dante's examination, to money: "`Assai bene è trascorsa / d'esta moneta già la lega e 'l peso'" ("`Now the alloy and the weight of this coin have been well enough examined"`; lines 83-84). To set this bold and brilliant maneuver in perspective, we need to see it in its total theological context. At one extreme, St. Ambrose, for example, writes: "For Christ is not bought with money, but rather with grace: the price you pay is faith (pretium tuum fides est), with this divine mysteries are bought (hac emuntur divina mysteria)"; at the other, Hugh of St. Victor argues that "your heart is a mirror if only it is clean and polished and clear. And an image in the mirror is faith in your heart. For faith itself is an image and a sign." 15 If faith is image, nothing is more natural or compellingly logical than Dante's likening faith to money, itself an image too. Like money, faith is a promise (see Heb. 11.17; Heb. 6.13-18). Like money, faith purchases what it is not; like money, it is a medium of exchange for an Otherness. Like money, faith has a value of its own, and yet that value is subject to supply and demand--if indulgences are easy to buy, faith will be cheap. Like money, faith is not the thing itself, it only refers. Like money, faith can be falsified, and, false or "bad," it is incapable of rendering the promise whole. So it is that, to insist that his faith is true, Dante replies, when Peter asks him whether he has this money in his purse, "`si ho, sì lucida e sì tonda, / che nel suo conio nulla mi s'inforsa'" ("`Yes, I have it so shining and so round that in its stamp nothing is doubtful to me"`; lines 86-87). Dante's faith is true because of its stamp or "conio," so true, in fact, that he has no doubt of it. And he proves his faith as well as its truth by relying on its "conio" to coin or {87/88} stamp the word "s'inforsa": Dante boldly coins a word in this line to demonstrate, as by a kind of intellectual onomatopoeia, that the "conio" of his faith coins faithfully or truthfully (Singleton 1975:3.2, 392). Dante can be this sure of the "conio" of his faith because that "conio" is Christ, the Image of God. Since, moreover, he, Dante, is made in the Image of God, he already bears within him this "conio," or at least the potential for receiving it. Hence, for example, his later description of his faith in the Trinity: he says that evangelic doctrine stamps ("sigilla") his mind with it (Par. 24.143). If Scripture "sigilla" Dante's "mente" with the "conio" of faith in the Trinity, it is because his "mente" is the Image of God primed, as it were, to receive it.

Now Dante's strategy begins to emerge in complete clarity. A poet, he can work only with images--say, with visibles--and yet everything he would communicate to us is invisible because archaic, original, divine. Hence in a radical sense Dante must purchase invisibles with visibles. The only coin he has for such a purchase, once the vision has passed, is faith. Faith and imagery or language are ultimately one; ultimately either each is sealed with Christ, or it is false.

The most important consequence of this metaphysical identity is that money becomes a common metaphor adequate to both faith and imagery or language. An important corollary of this consequence for Paradiso 24 is the wealth imagery. When Dante first sees the blessed, they "de la sua ricchezza /si/ facieno stimar" ("of their riches made /him/ judge"; lines 17-18) and when he acknowledges the invisibility of the heavenly mysteries, he says, "`le profonde cose / che mi largiscon qui la lor parvenza'" ("`the deep things which grant to me here the sight of themselves"`; lines 70-71). The money of faith and the money of imagery or language are exchanged, just as money normally is, for other wealth. But implicit in Dante's words is the sense that faith and imagery are by no means adequate to the riches and the largess of the "invisibilia Dei." The bounty of Heaven far exceeds the purchasing power of both. 16

In addition to this corollary, the metaphor of money also imports manifest Narcissus imagery into Paradiso 24, particularly fire and water. When Peter tells Dante, "`Di', buon cristiano, fatti manifesto: / fede che è?"` ("`Speak, good Christian, and declare yourself: Faith, what is it?"`), Dante turns to Beatrice, and she "sembianze femmi perch' ïo spandessi /l' acqua di fuor del mio interno fonte" ("signaled to me that I should pour the water forth from my inward fountain"; lines 52-53, 56-57). The ice melting from around Dante's heart so that he wept before Beatrice (Purg. 30.97-99) not only purged the dropsical and fetid waters of (Master) Adam and Narcissus but also, it seems, left room for new water to rush into their place. Instead of those waters {88/89} Dante now has an internal fountain. This new "water," however, does in one way resemble the "water" in Inferno 30: it is only an image. This resemblance is purposeful. Dante insists on it so as to expose the overwhelming difference between the two images. Here in Heaven the referent, or, better, the transferent--the faith in which Dante shares--is real, if transcendent, and because the transferent is real, the image has value; say, it is stamped as current for its transferent. At the same time, though, its palpability or thingness is a disfigurement of the Light of Paradise, and so it must also necessarily dis- figure; and as and because it does, all threat of infernal imagery vanishes. The difference between Paradise and Hell is this, that, in Paradise the referent-transferent being real, the image or figure is both true and real without, however, being materialized and thus burdened with the death imminent in matter.

The other Narcissus image follows directly on the "stamping" of Dante's mind. Dante says (Par. 24.145-47):

"Quest'è 'l principio, quest' è la favilla
che si dilata in fiamma poi vivace,
e come stella in cielo in me scintilla."

("This is the beginning, this is the spark which then dilates to a living flame and like a star in heaven shines within me.")

Faith is a money which exchanges visibles for invisibles. So is language. Dante demonstrates this truth in a stunning maneuver in Paradiso 30 at the moment when his "mirror eyes" are finally able to see the blessed as they really are, without "sembianza" emanating from his eyes to clothe them. He communicates his "sight"/reflection of the blessed in a simile whose principal verb openly challenges faith. The simile insists on the gesture of Narcissus, but the gesture is completely free, to the eyes of faith, of the content of narcissism (lines 109-14; emphasis added):

E come clivo in acqua di suo imo
si specchia, quasi per vedersi addorno. {89/90}
quando è nel verde e ne' fioretti opimo,
sì, soprastando al lume intorno intorno,
vidi specchiarsi in più di mille soglie
quanto di noi là sù fatto ha ritorno.

(and as a hillside mirrors itself in water at its base, as if to look upon its own adornment when it is rich in grasses and in flowers, so above the light round and round about in more than a thousand tiers I saw reflected all of us that have won return up there.)

A careful analysis of the simile itself will aid our vision. The verb specchiar is present here in the Empyrean as the "reality" of which "lo specchio di Narcisso" in Hell is only the perverted and insubstantial "ombra." Next in importance to the verb itself are the two subjects of which it is predicated: an imagined cliff, slightly personified, and as many of the saved as have returned to the Rose. Neither of these subjects is logically capable of the error of Narcissus. The cliff, "quasi"-personified, looks not to see itself but to see itself adorned, in the handiwork of Another. The blessed, seated in the Rose, "reflect themselves"/"are reflected" simply because Dante is looking at "sommo del mobile primo" ("the summit of the Primum Mobile"), where the extent of the Rose is "fassi di raggio . . . reflesso" ("made of a ray . . . reflected"; lines 106-107). Dante's first "sight" of the Rose is a reflection in his mirror eyes of its reflection "al sommo del mobile primo"; and this first "sight" serves to demonstrate that the gesture of Narcissus in Paradise is innocent of narcissism. Where all "sight" is reflection, the only Being "visibile" is the One on Whom reflection depends, or "lo creatore" ("the Creator"), in seeing Whom every creature "ha la sua pace" ("has his peace"; lines 100-102). And so it is that "specchiar" can have its proper sense renewed; here it is impossible that Narcissus should ap-propr-iate the word to his own perverse "meaning. {90/91}

"per cui tanta stoltezza in terra crebbe,
che, sanza prova d'alcun testimonio,
ad ogne promession si correbbe /sc. the people/.
Di questo ingrassa il porco sant'Antonio,
e altri assai che sono ancor più porci,
pagando di moneta sanza conio."

("from which such folly has grown on earth that without proof of any testimony they would flock to every promise. On this the pig of St. Anthony fattens, and others also, who are far more pigs, paying with money that has no stamp of coinage.")

We arrive here, by the logic of the relationship between cantos 29 and 30, at the term of Dante's argument on the error of Narcissus, though we are far as yet from the term of his, Dante's, vision. Beatrice's last speech in the poem, the conclusion of canto 30--the canto of the redeemed Narcissus--is an attack on "blind cupidity" because cupidity is the Christian name for the error which Dante has followed throughout the canticle--the error of Narcissus. Cupidity is the narcissism of instrumentality understood as a corruption of images:

But in that apostatizing pride, which is called "the beginning of sin," /the soul/ sought for something more than the whole; and while it struggled to govern by its own laws, it was thrust into caring for a part, since there is nothing more than the whole; and so by desiring something more, it becomes less, and for this reason covetousness is called "the root of all evils." The efforts by which it urges its own interests against the whole, and against the laws by which the whole is governed, are made through its own body which it possesses as part of the whole; and so, having found its delights in those corporeal forms and movements, since it cannot have them with it within itself, it becomes entangled with their images which it has fixed in its memory, and is foully defiled by the fornication of the phantasy; and it refers all its functions towards those ends for which it curiously seeks corporeal and temporal things through the senses of the body.... When the soul, therefore, consults either itself or others with a good will for the purpose of perceiving interior and superior things which are possessed in a chaste embrace, not privately but commonly, without any narrowness or envy by all who love such things, even though it may err in something through its ignorance of temporal things because it also directs these things in a temporal way, and may not observe the manner of acting that it should, this is a human temptation.... But when it does anything in order to obtain those things which are perceived through the body, because of its lust for experiencing them, excelling in them, or handling them, so that it places the end of its own good in those things, then whatever it does, it does shamefully; it commits fornication, sinning against its own body, while it snatches the deceptive images of corporeal things from within and combines them together by empty thought, so that nothing seems to it to be divine unless it be such a kind as this; covetous of its own selfish possessions it becomes prolific in errors, and prodigal of its own selfish goods it is emptied of strength. 18 {92/93}

If instrumentality is narcissistic or cupidinous, then the poet, because of his unique temptation, either confronts this problem or remains forever a fornicator with images, a falsifier of the instruments of creation. The very language with which Dante represents the Other World threatens to falsify it in the measure to which it appears to re-present it, where repetition, distance, and the human hand in figuration open the possibility of error and forgetfulness, absence and lapse. But Dante does confront the problem, and consequently he thwarts such an appearance. He radicalizes every mediation in his own body and resigns himself to temporality and to the secondariness of writing. Every image Dante writes would be a "moneta sanza conio" did it not betray the body, both in the sense that the image is bodily and in the sense that the body is inadequate to the space of the Other World. All that separates Dante from Narcissus and (Master) Adam is the New Adam, Christ, the Word or Idea or Image of God. The Image of God, Christ, is the "conio" of Dante's imagery because He, the Son, is the resurrected and transfigured body. He is the "testimonio" (cf. Heb. 11.2) and the promise that flesh and mortality, however alien to the Joy of Light, can (at least) "transhumanize." He is the only Means also His own End. Without Him, Dante is only looking at himself, Narcissus.

With him, however, Dante coins true words. With Him and the faith which He makes real, Dante figures language in Paradiso at its purest: language not mimetic--how could any human instrument mime Para- {93/94} dise?--not indicative--how could any human instrument point to Paradise? but creative, productive of provocations of the invisible and the transhuman. Dante's text is no transparency, rather a darkening ("ombra") by which the light becomes more bearable for fallen eyes. Dante's figures are his faith (which is "moneta") because they substantiate and argue for the transhuman and the invisible. They are his hope with which "'nfiora / la mente sua" ("his mind blossoms"; Par. 25.46-47) because they are "fiore" making visible the invisible. They are his charity because they imprint his mind as does "amor" itself (Par. 26.27). 22 None of this is to say that Dante's language embeds itself in a residual arche, nostalgic for a covert security of origination. The substance is not bedrock, the argument not a dogma; the hope is as fragile as a flower; and love's print is subject to effacement (Par. 33.64-66). Dante's language is open, anxious, patient, nervous, dynamic, and historical. Its futurity and incompleteness are the authority of the figures it generates. Dante himself, at the end, wheels with the love that moves the sun and the other stars. But his language knows no end. What is more, it has fallen into writing .

In writing, the creativity of language suffers secondariness, belatedness, and illusory stasis. In Paradiso, Dante finds this fall felicitous. The futurity and incompleteness of his figures constantly strain against the graphic and hence fixed reference of writing; differentiating themselves from it, they break it down (cf. Deleuze 1968: 28, 36-37, 375). Writing is the mask his figures are always removing so as to become other. Other than writing, breaking out of writing in writing, his figures recall their vocal-ity and say, for example, "I saw the two courts of Paradise change into a greater festival." Other than writing, breaking out of writing in writing, their vocality recalled, Dante's figures refer to what he saw by transferring us beyond what he says: we hear "festival" and know that "festival" is not enough. Transference revokes reference. But both remain: that is the privilege of the "essemplo." The "essemplo" is a simultaneous reference and transference. It is written and spoken, universal and particular, present and absent. It is a relation and a translation. Finally, the "essemplo" is not a work of "cieca cupidigia" because it is not a false coin, nor is it the mirror of Narcissus.

By the end of canto 30, Dante-Narcissus is almost ready to "see"-reflect God. He is almost ready for the final "outrage" ("oltraggio"; Par. 33.57). And it is an "outrage," in part, because Dante never does "see" or, in fact, even reflect; he wishes to do so, but cannot (Par. 33. 137-38). Rather, when his own feathers, "penne" (Par. 33.139), and therefore also his pen, prove inadequate to the vision, his "mente fu percossa / da un fulgore in che sua voglia {94/95} venne" ("mind was smitten by a flash wherein its wish came to it"; Par. 33.140-41). Hence the vision violates even "transhumanized" sight--arrives as a piercing flash. All the preparation of bodily eyes, even preparation as extraordinary as Dante's, is insufficient ultimately to strengthen them for the vision of God, the joining with Him. It follows that every sight up to the sudden penetration of Dante's mind, however "transhumanized," is still bodily sight. Everything Dante sees is measured by and is a measure of the bodily eye, and the communication to us of what he sees must follow that measure. His vision exceeds his eye (Par. 33.76-78):

io credo, per l'acume ch'io soffersi
del vivo raggio, ch'i' sarei smarrito,
se li occhi miei da lui fossero aversi.

(I believe that, because of the keenness of the living ray which I endured, I should have been lost if my eyes had been turned from it.)

E mi ricorda ch'io fui più ardito
per questo a sostener, tanto ch'i' giunsi
l'aspetto mio col valore infinito.

(I remember that on this account I was the bolder to sustain it, until I united my gaze with the Infinite Goodness.)

Dante insists on as much in a crucial description of the metamorphosis or transhumanization of his sight (Par. 33.109-14; emphasis added):

Non perché più ch'un semplice sembiante
fosse nel vivo lume ch'io mirava,
che tal è sempre qual s'era davante;
ma per la vista che s'avvalorava
in me guardando, una sola parvenza,
mutandom'io a me si travagliava. {95/96}

Not because more than a simple semblance was in the living light /God, the Trinity/ which I gazed at, for such it is always as it was before; but through my sight which increased in strength in me looking, one sole appearance, I myself changing, to me travailed itself.

Again Saint Augustine will help us sharpen our focus. In book 5 of De Trinitate, Augustine confronts a problem very similar to Dante's own: How can he talk about God coming to be the friend and father of a man, a man who has converted, without suggesting that God suffers change ("coming to be": "esse incipit")? Obviously, Augustine hastens to affirm, God does not suffer change, in this or any other event. It is the man who changes. He goes on to extend this point in a crucial way: "So, too, when we speak of /God/ as being angry with the wicked and gentle towards the good; it is they who are changed not He: just as light is painful to weak eyes and pleasing to strong eyes, namely by their change, not its own." 23 Augustine's analogy takes us back to Dante's text with new vision. Light is always light, Augustine suggests: if it hurts one pair of eyes and not another, it remains the same light, identical with itself. Now, of course, for Dante and in the Christian tradition, God is light--"vivo lume," to quote Dante's words--and with Augustine's analogy in mind, we can see why Dante constructs the crucial terzina the way he does. Repeatedly he emphasizes that it is he who is changing as he approaches the unchanging "vivo lume." His sight increases in strength--the appearance remains "sola," identical with itself, self contained; he is mutating--and the action is reflexive, as the verb indicates, "mutando mi io"; and finally, it is "to" or "in" him--"a me"--that the "parvenza si travagliava." Everything in the construction of the second terzina insists on Dante and his body and his body's sight. Everything insists that, just as Augustine would have it, it is Dante who is changing. God, the Trinity, does not travail except to Dante; "si travagliava" is the way it seems to Dante. {96/97}

And because that is the way it seems to Dante, we see the limits of Dante's vision. As Dante was changing, the Trinity seemed to travail. In reality--the only reality we can know--it was Dante who travailed. The travail was in him--"a me"--and in that travail Dante saw the Trinity. Dante saw the Trinity in his travail and yet was strong enough, his language suggests, not to see the Trinity as his travail. Dante saw himself but did not project himself; he was self-conscious, but he was not beside himself ("para" + "noia" = "beside the mind" or "out of the mind"). 24 He was Narcissus redeemed.

So it is that if the son of (Master) Adam still generates "as" even now when "is" looms imminent, he does not--crucial difference--confuse "as" and "is." On the contrary, "as" remains the servant of "is." With "as" he goes on toward "is," and the measure remains the bodily eye (lines 127-32):

Quella circulazion che sì concetta
pareva in te come lume reflesso,
da li occhi miei alquanto circunspetta,
dentro da sé, del suo colore stesso,
mi parve pinta de la nostra effige;
per che 'l mio viso in lei tutto era messo.

(That circling which, thus begotten, appeared in Thee as reflected light, when my eyes had dwelt on it for a time, seemed to me depicted with our image within itself and in its own color, wherefore my sight was entirely set upon it.)

Even of what is painted there: "nostra effige." On the one hand, "nostra ef- {97/98} fige" is the Trinity; on the other hand, it is the body of man. The gesture of the vision is that of Narcissus. So much so that Dante's "viso"--sight and face--was sent ("messo") all the way into it. Even more (lines 97-105):

Così la mente mia, tutta sospesa,
mirava fissa, immobile e attenta,
e sempre di mirar faceasi accesa.
A quella luce cotal si diventa,
che volgersi da lei per altro aspetto
è impossibil che mai si consenta;
però che 'l ben, ch' è del volere obietto,
tutto s'accoglie in lei, e fuor di quella
è defettivo ciò ch'è lì perfetto.

(Thus my mind, all rapt, was gazing, fixed, motionless and intent, ever enkindled by its gazing. In that Light one becomes such that it is impossible he should ever consent to turn himself from it for other sight; for the good, which is the object of the will, is all gathered in it, and outside of it that is defective which is perfect there.)

And Narcissus must remain because, as Dante rightly says, it is an "effige" which he sees. Dante-Narcissus sees "a thing from which it is made" ( = "e + fingere"). 28 Now the "fictio" ( = "fictus," ppl. "fingere") is the very scandal of Dante's profound faith as well as the testimony that he is made in the Image of God. Dante does not see his own image, nor does he see just the good. He sees the source from which he is made and sees, moreover, that it is ours, where this plural, like the plural of "nostra vita" (Inf. 1.1), claims the community of men because of which Narcissus need never again die. It must be Narcissus who looks into "nostra effige"; but it is not Narcissus who sees himself.

This paradox is more readily intelligible if we turn to the one other occurrence of the word "effige" in the poem. After Beatrice has left Dante and just before Bernard assumes the role of guide, Dante sees his lady in her seat in the Rose: "süa effige / non discendëa a me per mezzo mista" ("her image came down to me unblurred by aught between"; Par. 31.77-78). Of Beatrice and the Trinity, and of them only, Dante uses the word "effige": Beatrice is the "effictio" or source from which Dante's "vita nova" was made, just as the Trinity is the "effictio" or source from which his "vista nova" (Par. 33.136) is {98/99} made. But there is rather too much of the critic's virtuosity in this reading. Such a reading, in fact, elides Dante's boldness. He believes Beatrice made his new life, just as he believes the Trinity makes his and all human life. And when he reflects her in the Rose, the im-mediacy he insists upon--"non per mezzo mista"--is itself only and necessarily a mediation of the incomprehensible but real fact that he and Beatrice are identical in effigy--it is Narcissus who looks into the effigy--but radically different and separate in being--it is not Narcissus who sees himself.

Both Beatrice and Dante are mirrors reflecting the same effigy, the Trinity, the source from which they are made. And if they reflect that effigy, it follows that the Trinity is gazing into them even as the Trinity itself is gazing each member of itself into the other (Par. 33.124-26). And here, I would like to suggest in conclusion, is the full measure of Dante's vision--namely, his celebration of the self-reflexivity of the Trinity. Whereas Narcissus, without "nostra effige" and beside himself, sees an image of a body which is only water, the Father reflects, and the Son is born, Image made flesh (not water); and the love with which they love each other, unlike the sterile ardor of Narcissus, breathes into Being, the Holy Spirit, and moves the sun and the other stars.

To conclude what is obviously little more than a fragment is an insult to intelligence, I know. But I must be on to Chaucer. Hence let me make only one final point. When Dante-Narcissus looks into the Trinity, he does not see himself as God, but he does see God as himself. Bear with me. A fine distinction, yes, but of absolute importance. Say it this way, though this way diffuses Dante's vision: he does not see his person as God, but he sees God personally. At the supreme moment Dante resembles God, though God does not resemble Dante at all. At the supreme moment Dante is God, but God is not Dante. This is the mystery of the Judaeo-Christian God: He is a personal God. This is the genius of Dante: in assimilating himself to Narcissus, he is able to insist that he sees himself in God but does not see himself as God. 29

Dante's vision, then, is personal. When Chaucer saw this, he saw that the personal vision of the truth must also necessarily be a personal version of the truth. No one else could see God the way Dante saw God, "Dantesquely." And yet everyone can see and participate in if he likes the "Dantesque" way of seeing God. Dante's version, then, is not such a version as reason's "attraversion" nor Master Adam's perversion. No. Version though it be, Dante's version of the truth is a true version arising in and from the whole man. Indeed, the purpose of the vision was to make Dante whole so that his version would be true. From all of this Chaucer reasoned, I will now go on to {99/100} argue, that one's personal version of the truth is true in the measure to which it is not a subversion of oneself or a perversion of the truth of others. {100}