Paradiso

Images of wheels, circles, and spheres throughout the poem serve as a symbol of the order of God’s universe, in which various parts work together in harmony. Dante conceives of Heaven as a series of spheres surrounding Earth. The Earth and the planets are themselves spherical rotating bodies—Dante compares them to “lofty wheels” (10: 8)—whose roundness suggests completeness or perfection. The universe itself is like a giant wheel or series of cogs all moving together in intricate motion according to God’s plan, and producing a kind of music that inspires love and joy in the beholder (10: 139-148).

Images of eating, drinking, and feasting serve to underline the communal joy that characterizes Heaven—imagery that recalls Jesus’s descriptions of heaven as a wedding feast (e.g. 30: 127-138). Food also serves as a metaphor for knowledge or intellection, as when Dante declares to the reader, “I have set your table. From here on feed yourself” (10: 25). St. Thomas Aquinas compares Dante’s desire for knowledge of God with a thirst for wine (See: Important Quotes, Quote #14), while Beatrice tells Dante to drink from the river of the Primum Mobile as preparation for the beatific vision, when his thirst will be totally quenched (30: 73-75).

Throughout the poem, the heavenly souls are depicted as singing songs of joy and praise to God. Heaven is presented as a place of music and harmony, in which earthly discord is gone and human beings are “in tune” both with each other and with God’s will. Dante sometimes reproduces the words of the singing, including the liturgical hymns Hosanna (7: 1-3) and Holy, holy, holy! (26: 69); at one point he characterizes the heavenly music as “the sweet symphony of Paradise” (21: 59). Music is so pervasive in Heaven that Saturn seems conspicuous to Dante for its silence (21: 58-60)—appropriate for the home of contemplatives.