Are we Gods?: In Search of Divine Within
(Paradiso, Canto I): Apollo, Glaucus and Marsyas
"You are a god, my child, you are headed for the stars”
~ Epictetus (105)
Welcome to Dante Read-Along! ✨
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Welcome to Dante Book Club, where you and I descend into Hell and Purgatory to be able to ascend to Paradise. Our guide in Paradise is Beatrice, and in this first Canto of the Paradiso, Dante, purified, begins to understand the nature of light. You can find the main page of the read-along right here, reading schedule here, and the list of chat threads here.
In each post you can find a brief summary of the canto, philosophical exercises that you can draw from it, themes, character, and symbolism explanations.
All the wonderful illustrations are done specially for the Dante Read-Along by the one and only Luana Montebello.
This Week’s Circle ⭕️
The splendor of the light of heaven - Invocation to Apollo - Dante’s desire to craft perfection in poetry - Beatrice gazes into the sun, Dante does likewise - Brightness of a second sun and Dante’s transformation for the journey - He begins to soar upward into the heavens - Music of the spheres - Beatrice explains the ordering of the universe.
Canto I Summary:
Reader, welcome to Paradiso! The struggles of Purgatorio and the darkness of Inferno seem ages away, as we turn our gaze into the heavens.
That upward sight revealed the glory—the light, the illumination, and the creative power—of God. The proem—the introduction of this third and final book—invites us away from the emotional reality of Inferno, the intellectual reality of the Purgatorio, and instead, into an experience of an entirely new realm of illumination. That light is contained within everything, depending on its capacity to embody it.
Dante opened his reflections as though he were looking down upon the Earthly Paradise from the Empyrean realm, the Tenth Heaven, a place from which the experience, beyond human understanding, cannot be described. At the same time, it was a realm that held the possibility of participation with the divine. So far from our regular human consciousness was this state of being, of being finally unified with the object of desire, that even memory of it became lost in the fullness of the submersion:
I was within the heaven that receives
more of His light; and I saw things that he
who from that height descends, forgets or can
not speak
i.4-7
As it draws near to God the intellect penetrates so deeply into the knowledge of the Supreme Good that when the experience is ended human memory is unable fully to recall it. This is an awareness common to the mystics and it is not impossible that Dante underwent a mystical experience of which Paradise is the reasoned, logical, humanized expression in terms of poetry.1
Dante wrote about the structure and meaning of this first canto of Paradiso in his Epistle XIII, more commonly known as the Letter to Can Grande, who was his patron while in exile.2 In it, he spoke of himself in the third person, as the character Dante. Of the idea of this heaven from which he wrote, Dante said:
And having premised this truth, he goes on from it with a circumlocution for Paradise, and says that he ‘was in that heaven which receives most abundantly of the glory or the light of God’; wherefore you are to know that that heaven is the supreme heaven, containing all the bodies of the universe and contained by love, within which all bodies move (itself abiding in eternal rest), receiving its virtue from no corporeal substance. And it is called the Empyrean, which is the same as the heaven flaming with fire or heat, not because there is any material fire or heat in it, but spiritual, to wit holy love or charity.3
Now that we have placed ourselves in the heavenly realms, it is worth taking a moment in which to understand the celestial geography that is before us.
The Paradiso is structured on ancient Greek astronomy, as systematized by Ptolemy. The earth is stationary in the centre of the universe; around it revolve nine transparent circular spheres, bearing the visible heavenly bodies—the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Fixed Stars—beyond which is the Primum Mobile (the First Moved Heaven or Crystalline Heaven), which exists in the Empyrean.4
But, lest we begin at the furthest point from this, our opening lines, let us return to Dante’s present moment, introducing his poem. The holy kingdom that he visited was now the subject of this new song.
After the proem5 came the invocation; where in Inferno Dante’s invocation was to the Muses in general, and in Purgatorio he called to Calliope, the Muse of Epic Poetry—from the peak Helicon on Mount Parnassus—in this opening of Paradiso he called upon Apollo, god of the Sun and of Music, he who dwelt on another of Parnassus’ peaks, that of Cirra:
O good Apollo, for this final task
make me the vessel of your excellence,
what you, to merit your loved laurel, ask.
i.13-15
Dante, in invoking Apollo, desired the mark of the highest poet, the laurel crown; he asked for the god to breathe through him for inspiration, as he had through Marsyas, a satyr of myth:
The labour, indeed self-abandonment, that is involved in receiving this inspiration is now evoked through reference to the myth of Marsyas. The satyr Marsyas challenges Apollo to a flute-playing contest, loses and is flayed alive for his presumption. This has regularly been regarded as an account of inspiration—the flayed skin of the artist wholly infused by the in-dwelling spirit of the god.6
The invocation shifted to a prayer, emphasizing Dante’s desire to give even a glimpse of the heavenly realms through his poetry. The poet chased the laurel wreath as Apollo chased Daphne in the myth of her transformation. So few reached such heights of fame, but even those that tried to win the laurel crown—that Penian bough, named so for Daphne’s father, Peneus—brought joy ‘born anew’ to Apollo, whose sacred temple was the Delphic oracle.
From the small spark of Dante’s poetry the greatest of flame may be borne, and if he did not accomplish the perfection in verse that he desired, perhaps his example would inspire one to go further than he was able to do. The prayers and invocations that set the stage for the Paradiso are now in place. Now, to the celestial bodies.
The lantern of the world approaches mortals
by varied paths; but on that way which links
four circles with three crosses, it emerges
joined to a better constellation and
along a better course, and it can temper
and stamp the world’s wax more in its own manner.
i.37-42
Dante noted the way the sun appeared from different perspectives, and recognized that the moment he set out for this new phase of his journey was the most auspicious moment possible for him, stamping the wax of the world with its beneficial imprint:
In these lines Dante describes the season. On every day of the year the sun rises from a particular point in the horizon, and this point differs from day to day. The points are called foci, ‘outlets.’ The best ‘outlet’ is the one from which the sun emerges on March 21, the vernal equinox. This is the foci that ‘rings together four circles with three crosses’: it is the point where three great heavenly circles intersect the horizon, each of them forming a cross with it. The circles are the equator, the ecliptic, and the colure of the equinoxes; this last is a great circle that traverses the two heavenly poles and crosses the ecliptic at Aries and Libra. When the sun rises from this point, it is ‘coupled with its best orbit, and with its best constellation,’ namely Aries. In that sign, the sun has the most benign influence on the earth.7
It was noon in the Earthly Paradise, from whence Dante would soon take flight, and midnight in Jerusalem. The journey into Inferno commenced in the evening, and the beginning of Purgatorio was at dawn, purposeful markers in time for each journey.
Now, suddenly, we are back to the narrative, and Beatrice turned to face the east in that light filled hemisphere, gazing at the sun.
Of all the hours of the day, noon, the culminating point of the sun’s light, was considered to be the noblest. The day is near the Spring equinox, considered the perfect season, for then the sun is in the same constellation as it was believed to have been at the time of the Creation. All the celestial conditions are favourable, therefore, to the beginning of the new stage of Dante’s new journey.8
And as a second ray will issue from
the first and reascend, much like a pilgrim
who seeks his home again, so on her action,
fed by my eyes to my imagination,
my action drew, and on the sun I set
my sight more than we usually do.
i.49-54
Imagine that ‘second ray’ as being a reflection of an original light, as from a mirror. The emphasis on gazing upon reflected light, as we see in words like ‘glory’ and ‘splendor,’ are a theme we will see over and over again; Dante imitated Beatrice's gaze and stared, as he was not accustomed to doing, at the sun. He could bear it longer, in that place, where more power to bear such light was granted.
Yet even more light revealed itself beyond that sunlight; it seemed as though a second sun appeared to him, so bright was everything round him. Some commentaries point out that here he may have passed through the ring of fire believed to be around the earth and below the moon
Without knowing it, Dante has left the earth and is speeding heavenwards, rapidly rising ever closer to the sun, which explains the great increase of light.9
While Beatrice gazed upward at the heavenly spheres, Dante gazed at her, turning his eyes from the sun.
In watching her, within me I was changed
as Glaucus changed, tasting the herb that made
him a companion of the other sea gods.
Passing beyond the human cannot be
worded; let Glaucus serve as simile—
until grace grant you the experience.
i.67-72
As Glaucus was changed by water, Dante was transformed by the fire and the light. Glaucus, a fisherman who saw his catch revived by a certain patch of grass they lay on, ate some himself, and found his desire for the sea so strong that he dove into it and was changed into a sea god, living forever in his new element.
In rising above the human experience, to know a higher state of being, even moving into another dimension, while inexpressible, still could spur others to rise so high.
Here, as so often, it is rewarding to follow to its source the poet’s reference, for only so does its full relevance become apparent. Dante, gazing upon Beatrice and ready to begin his upward flight with her, is as Glaucus was when he tasted of the grass. He too, like Glaucus, suddenly desires another element and suffers a sea-change to a higher, god-like nature. “Farewell, O Earth!” Unlike Glaucus, he will return; but like Glaucus, he leaves earth now for another element or ‘sea,’ in which he is received by those whose element this is.10
In this tremendous experience, Dante, in recounting it, could not say whether the part of him that was drawn upward, with the light from Beatrice, was only his soul, that last created portion of each individual, or if he were there in body.
The realms of the heavens were as wheels, turning with their desire to move ever closer to, even to unite with, God, and the music of the spheres sounded in his ears.
That God, through being desired, moves the spheres is primarily an Aristotelian conception.11
Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, or the Dream of Scipio, is a classical text that expounds upon the music of the spheres, one based in Pythagorean mathematics. In the Somnium, Scipio the Younger, in a dream, ascended to the heavens through the celestial spheres, where his guide, his adoptive grandfather Scipio Africanus, explained the music surrounding them.
“That is produced,” he replied, “by the onward rush and motion of the spheres themselves; the intervals between them, though unequal, being exactly arranged in a fixed proportion, by an agreeable blending of high and low tones, various harmonies are reproduced; for such mighty motions cannot be carried on so swiftly in silence…therefore this uppermost sphere of heaven, which bears the stars, as it revolves more rapidly, produces a high, shrill tone, whereas the lowest revolving sphere, that of the Moon, gives forth the lowest tone; for the earthly sphere, the ninth, remains ever motionless and stationary in its position in the centre of the universe.12
The light and sound created an even greater desire within Dante to understand the nature of the realms that he now found himself in. Here, Beatrice seemed to know Dante just as well as Virgil had, knowing what he was going to ask before he even spoke. She informed him that he was no longer on earth, but traveling upward, faster than lightning, toward God, the source of all.
Beatrice began a speech that would last through the end of the canto, in which she pointed out the new perspective before them, and the nature of the cosmic realms they were embarking upon.
All things, among themselves,
possess an order; and this order is
the form that makes the universe like God.
i.103-15
The governing nature of the universe is order, and the order in the natural world reflects the order of the creator.
There is no suggestion here that order is a kind of restraint or chain of being. On the contrary, the picture offered here by Beatrice is of a dynamic universe, driven by desire, in which each created object, whether intelligent or not, seeks to perform to the full the part that has been given to it.13
The higher creatures, humanity and the angelic beings, were able to see and understand the nature of this order. Additionally, each class of beings on earth had different destinies, which lead to a different definition of ‘order’ for each class—fire, animate creatures, and earth. Each had this in common though: that they moved toward that which they desired out of love. Like elements are drawn to each other; so fire naturally rises upward toward the sun, while earth is attracted to earth.
That aim of like element attracted to like element is as a bow aimed at a target
This figure in the present context makes God, who governs the heavens and all things, an archer who aims (through the motive force of natural love) the creature at its own proper target or resting-place. The Archer is not named as such, but His bow, His instrument in the total movement of the universe, is this love, natural love.14
Yet it is true that, even as a shape
may, often, not accord with art’s intent,
since matter may be unresponsive, deaf,
so, from this course, the creature strays at times
because he has the power, once impelled,
to swerve elsewhere;
i.127-132
Free Will was always in play, and even with this perfect, ordered, cosmos—as we have seen too well—some will choose to sway from that motive force and miss the mark.
Dante’s movement now, however, is naturally upward, as natural as a stream cascading down a mountain.
It would be cause for wonder in you if,
no longer hindered, you remained below,
as if, on earth, a living flame stood still.
i.139-141
And with that final admonition, Beatrice looked into the heavens above them.
💭 Philosophical Exercises
"Within ten days you will be regarded as a god by those very people who now see you as beast or baboon - if you return to your principles and the worship of Reason."
~ Marcus Aurelius
If even the professor of Dante Studies at the University of Colombia begins her commentary on Paradiso Canto I with these words:
The Commedia gets harder as you keep reading.
Then this is an explicit warning that a challenge lies ahead. But what is the nature of that challenge? When Teodolinda Barolini says the Commedia becomes “harder” the further we go, what exactly does she mean?
Perhaps the answer lies in the difference between hard and difficult. Something hard demands persistence and endurance; something difficult requires a particular skill, a sharper tool of understanding, to solve the puzzle before us.
In Paradiso, Dante gives us both: unity and uniqueness, difficulty and simplicity, hardness and effortlessness.
I.
The glory of the One who moves all things permeates the universe and glows in one part more and in another less.
These are the words that mark the beginning of our ascent into Paradiso. Dante borrows the phrase “One who moves all things” from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, a work which, by curious coincidence, happened to land on my desk only a few days ago. This prime mover, this force, pervades everything, though to differing degrees, stronger in some places, fainter in others.
Already, in this very first canto, we sense that the radiance of that mover shines more vividly here than anywhere else in the Comedy. The last time we felt something akin to this was when we crossed the threshold of Inferno and arrived on the shore of Purgatorio: the stars reappeared, the wind brushed our faces, the natural order of time was restored.
This is Dante’s genius and why I love him so deeply. He makes us feel in ways that are utterly unique to each realm, yet each of these realms is part of a greater whole. You must read Dante in full to experience how the oppressive despair of Inferno only deepens in contrast to the serene hope of Purgatorio. And once we breathe that calm, once we dwell in gentleness of Purgatorio, we are suddenly lifted into the mystical, almost ecstatic atmosphere of Paradiso. But I digress…
The mover is present in each of these realms but, as Dante tells us in the first three lines of Paradiso, he is present ‘in one part more and in another less’.
II.
Barolini offers us a helpful insight, one that will guide both myself and my reader throughout this ascent. In Inferno, the boundaries were rigid, almost brutally precise: every vice had its fixed circle, every punishment its fixed place. This is why artists across the centuries have filled libraries with drawings of Hell, while far fewer have dared to capture Paradiso.
The boundaries of Paradise are different. They are fluid, mutable, transformative like rivers that merge seamlessly, one flowing into another. Here, the divisions are not sharp but continuous, and the soul learns to move within a reality that shifts and deepens rather than confines. Yes, vice confines, virtue liberates.
This is another mark of Dante’s genius: the careful reader soon realises that their senses must be sharpened, their perception heightened, if they are to truly experience Paradise and imprint its vision upon the heart.
This fluidity of Paradise does not mean that this realm is shapeless.
III.
What is the key to the atmosphere of Paradiso?
It is a poem not of cognition but of deification. Here lies a paradox that we must carry with us as we ascend. In Inferno, we met figures such as Ulysses, Nimrod, and Lucifer, each of whom attempted to overstep their bounds, to cross the frontier into the divine by their own power. Ulysses, sailing past the Pillars of Hercules; Nimrod, raising the Tower of Babel; Lucifer, reaching for God’s throne. All sought to transgress.
Here, however, Dante invents a new word: transumanar, “to transhumanise.” It marks the difference between transgression and transformation. The former strives to become more than human by defiance of grace; the latter, by surrender to it. What separates Ulysses and Lucifer from Dante is not the desire to go beyond the human, but their refusal of divine aid.
IV.
How does one participate in the divine aid? How can we be sure that we are transforming ourselves and not transgressing as Ulysses or Nimrod?
Three myths, each inverted and Christianised by Dante, trace the path toward transumanar.
First comes Apollo, whose divine breath pierces Dante’s soul, a figure who also, according to Hollander, foreshadows Christ as the source of inspiration. Then Marsyas, flayed alive, embodies the painful stripping away of the old self, the inner transformation that makes space for the new.
Finally, Glaucus, who tastes the divine herb and is reborn as a god of the sea, signifies the consummation of the journey: becoming part of the Divine itself.
I believe it is worth imagining the three stories of Apollo, Marsyas, and Glaucus as a continuous transformation. When we visualize these stories, we can see that the soul-piercing knowledge of Apollo, who traditionally carries a bow and arrow, invokes a power that pierces the poet's heart.
This piercing by Apollo's arrow leads to Marsyas's transformation, a myth I will explore briefly in the themes section. The inner transformation that results from Apollo's piercing arrow ultimately creates Glaucus. Glaucus tastes the divine herb and becomes part of the sea, transformed into a sea god. (This is also explored briefly in the Themes).
If we consider the metaphor of the hunter and the continuous theme of sailing—as with Odysseus (Ulysses), we see a crucial distinction. Odysseus does not become a sea god; instead, he uses ships and boats as artificial means of transgressing the gods' will. In contrast, the story of Glaucus presents a different path: Glaucus immerses himself in the waters, the metaphorical divine waters, and becomes part of them.
This distinction illuminates the difference between transhumanisation and transgression. Glaucus becomes a sea god by becoming part of the sea, integrating himself into the larger whole of the divine order. Meanwhile, figures like Odysseus and King Nimrod attempt to get out of the sea, to separate themselves from it. Consequently, they become like fish taken out of water, creatures who believe they can walk on land but die because they are not meant to transgress the natural order.
This Week’s Sinners and Virtuous 🎭
(Themes, Quotes, Terms and Characters)
I. Beatrice’s gaze
Beatrice fixes her eyes on the sun “like an eagle,” and Dante, looking into her eyes, receives the very act of her seeing:
through her eyes, into my image, my act became hers, and I fixed my eyes on the sun beyond our wont.
This is not a private rapture but a pedagogy of perception. Hollander notes the literal geography of her “leftward” turn in Eden and the traditional eagle lore to underline that the miracle lies in the communication of vision: Beatrice as mirror-of-the-mirror trains Dante’s sight to bear more light.
My reader might remember that at the end of Purgatorio Dante is blinded by the Divine light he cannot bear.
The result is transformation itself, sealed by trasumanar and the Glaucus simile that immediately follows.
II. Dante’s Misreading
Dante’s first false notion is to read what’s happening by sense and surface; Beatrice interrupts and replaces that frame with an account grounded in virtù and order.
All natures have an inner bend toward their source; Providence is the bow whose “cord” draws each thing to its joyful mark. The correction is precise and ethical at once: do not measure by what seems, measure by the power at work.
Hence her move from his confusion to the doctrine of instinct, bowstring, and the possibility of a swerve when false pleasure diverts the primal impulse.
III. Glaucus and Marsyas
Ovid’s characters have a tendency to transgress against the gods and never learn their lessons. Dante, however, inverts these myths and Christianises them.
Take Marsyas: in Ovid, he dares to challenge Apollo in music, imagining he could surpass the god in his own art. His punishment is cruel, Apollo peels the skin from his body. Dante transforms this image. No longer the god who tears flesh from bone, but the god who draws the singer out of his skin. Marsyas is not destroyed by his daring, but transfigured, his skin shed not in punishment but in worship. He becomes a figure who steps beyond the body in order to glorify the divine. He deifies Apollo, instead of challenging.
Glaucus’s story is equally curious. As a fisherman, he notices that a certain herb restores life to the fish he catches. Testing it himself, he is changed, becoming an immortal god who, legend says, came to the aid of sailors in shipwrecks. Two details here are striking: first, his transformation begins in careful observation of nature, of the sea and the life within it.
He watches how the hidden machinery of the world works, and learns. Second, his immortality comes not from resisting nature but by merging with it: he becomes part of the sea itself, part of its eternal life.
How beautiful!
Quotes 🖋️
(The ones I keep in my journal as reminders of eternal wisdom):
Whether I only was the part of me
that You created last, You—governing
the heavens—know: it was Your light that raised me.
~ lines 73-75, Paradiso, Canto I
Dorothy L. Sayers, Paradise 58
While the validity of the letter to Can Grande della Scala has been brought into question, we will leave that depth of discussion for the Dante scholars, and instead use what it contains to understand a greater purpose to his work.
Dante, “Letter to Can Grande” 66-68
Allen Mandelbaum The Divine Comedy 707
Purgatorio i.1-12
Robin Kirkpatrick, Paradiso 332
Charles S. Singleton, Commentary on Paradiso 14
Sayers 57
Singleton 17
Charles S. Singleton, Journey to Beatrice 28
Singleton Paradiso 19
Cicero, Somnium Scipionis, from de Republica vi.xviii.18
Kirkpatrick 334
Singleton 52
The three parts of the Comedia are like three movements of a symphony. There is a running theme, but each is expressed in a distinctive style. The first Canto of Paradiso brought to my mind 1920's science fiction with an Art Deco feel. Dante was definitely ahead of his time.
This was so helpful, thank you!