unfathomable greatness

I was within the heaven that receives
more of His light; and saw things that he
who from that height descends, forgets or can
not speak; for nearing its desired end,
our intellect sinks into an abyss
so deep that memory fails to follow it.

[The Divine Comedy, Paradiso; Canto I (4-9)]

Call it fate. I have read an analysis of Dante's Inferno (read my post almost 4 years ago where I misspelled hypocrisy, ew), because that particular library book seemed as if a spotlight was focused on it and it suddenly shrunk all else in the library and magnetically drew my hand. Interestingly, Purgatorio is nowhere in sight, unless the strings of the universe were weaved by God so that I should read Inferno first then Paradiso and then go back to the supposed middle section of the poem at the end.

I did not intend to buy a book when I entered the bookstore 2 days ago. I just wanted to kill time inside the mall. If at all, I had a greater chance of grabbing a girly magazine (since my late onset adolescence has impelled me to be of a higher grooming standard)...until the center island display of classic literature (probably aimed at high school & college students who were about to start this semester) tipped the probability scale.

The cover was attractive. It was Michaelangelo-ic and then I made a silent nod affirming "ooh, Dante Alighieri..." I read the back cover and in the middle of the text it said, "With extensive notes and commentary." Okay, I'm sold. It didn't take 3 minutes for me to reach the payment counter. It was cheap anyway. Cheap seems like such an undermining word for the text...it undermines the whole idea and brilliance of the opus....but since I'm just a state university teacher and not the owner of a chain of malls, I should just quit my melodrama.

What is with the "extensive notes and commentary" statement and why did it convince me to buy it?

The Divine Comedy is a poem. A long poem like Beowulf. And even if it were translated in English, I still wouldn't be able to appreciate it. Hello, Dante wrote it in the 1200s so it's pretty obvious that there would be loads of historically apt metaphors that I have absolutely no comprehension, whatsoever. Like Shakespearean plays. I love Shakespeare's plots and witty phrases (many of which have become household idiomatic expressions or quotable conversational phrases like love is blind, beware the ides of March, to be or not to be, etc.), but I wouldn't be able to love Much Ado About Nothing without Cliff's Notes or the actual movie (with Kate Beckinsale and that doctor best friend of House who played that suicidal boy in Dead Poet's Society...and of course, the spectacular Emma Thompson who, I firmly believe is immortal like her Nanny McPhee character and probably knew William Shakespeare...in a professional way, because I heard Shakespeare was gay...of course, that's hearsay....WHAT IN THE NAME OF *insert mythical creature* AM I BLABBERING ABOUT????).

Going back to Dante. Alighieri. Anyway, I hope to desire to go to heaven even more because of Dante's Ptolemaic depiction of the heavens (of course, the reality is that the solar system is Copernican and who knows what the shape of the cosmos is). Of Empyrean, where "our intellect sinks into an abyss so deep that memory fails to follow it." Faith and Reason. Fides et Ratio. Not divergent...can reach an eclipse.