Dante's verses: The wink of grace

so I saw how during his last words - I still remember exactly - the two blessed lights, just like the eyes opening and closing in harmony, moved their little flames to the words.

sì, mentre ch'e 'parlò, sì mi ricorda

ch'io vidi le due luci benedette,

pur come batter d'occhi si concorda,

con le parole mover le fiammette.

(Paradiso XX, 145–148, translated by Hartmut Köhler)

At the entrance to the Paradiso, an understandably surprised Dante is received by Cato the Younger, who once anticipated his killing by Caesar by evacuating himself. A pagan suicide in paradise? Dante's astonishment does not diminish when the wanderer soon sees the famous but unbaptized pagan emperor Trajan as the redeemed floating in the divine light, together with an unsigned Trojan hero mentioned in Virgil's Aeneid. What's going on here? To pursue this question means to approach one of the mysteries of this poetry. It is the mystery of the connection between grace and humor.

Already in the tenth Canto des Purgatorio, the wanderer saw Trajan on the relief images that God himself puts in front of the eyes of aspiring souls to encourage them. There Trajan follows King David and the Mother of God, as ideal ruler and model of compassionate mercy. For the sake of his help for a pleading widow, for whom he made atonement for the murder of her son, we learn that the pagan, suffering in the inferno, was released by Pope Gregorius. At the intercession of the holy man, God moved him into the kingdom of heaven - according to Dante's conviction, as an admonition even for overly confident Christians. Besides the wanderer himself, Trajan is the only figure of the commedia who appears in all three parts of the other world. That he was in the infernowe learn in retrospect in the passage quoted; in the purgatorio, God's own work of art is a reminder of his merciful deed; and in Paradiso the wanderer will meet him again - under remarkable circumstances.

This happens many Cantos later, in the second heaven of Jupiter. Again the wanderer is overcome by astonishment and doubt at the sight of a Gentile in heaven. “Che cose son queste?” He asks, stunned: “What is that supposed to mean?” The sky eagle gives him two answers: first, that “heaven loves a righteous ruler”, and second, that “hot love and strong hope together for himself defeat divine will ”. This is because "because he wants to be defeated and, when defeated with his goodness, wins".

So, Dante learns, even Trajan returned “from hell, from which one actually never comes out to do good, back into his bones; this was the reward for strong hope ”(

). But didn't he, too, have to give up all hope there? No doubt. But Trajan's hope is not mentioned here either, but that of someone else. The intercession of St. Gregorius is meant, who could even subdue the divine will - that will that would love to be conquered through love. So Dante is now, together with the sky

,

a

in which even the judgment of sinners can become a redeeming grace.

But this is a process of the utmost, heavenly serenity; Dante speaks of

. The modern concept of "humor" is alien to him, but it does not seem out of place here, as it were as an aesthetic equivalent of the joy of grace. In any case, the utterly astonishing ending into which the Festival of Lights of this Paradise Canto finally culminates is wondrously humorous. While the sky eagle is still talking, the hiker observes "how during his last words - I still remember exactly - the two blessed lights, just as the eyes open and close in harmony, moved their flames to the words". The blessed lights: In this sphere in which all solid bodies are dissolved in light phenomena, these are the two gifted pagans, the great emperor from Rome and the unknown fighter from Troy. Its lights end the Canto by opening and closing "like eyes". Yes indeed:They wink at the wanderer.

The harshness of Dante's otherworldly world has been emphasized infinitely often, the cruelly hopeless infinity of the punishments in hell.

From this one point, however, the ray of light of a universal possibility of salvation seems to fall on all inmates of the inferno.

A ray of light that winks.

Heinrich Detering

teaches literary studies in Göttingen.

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