Dante’s vision

Dante claimed he had a vision of the Trinity while crossing a bridge over the Tiber in 1300 and the whole of the Divine Comedy leads up to an evocation of this vision in the last canto of the Paradiso.  But how do you put such an experience into words?  Even Dante couldn’t do it but he has such lovely images in that last canto.  Looking back now, he says, it was like having a dream you can’t remember but the feeling of the dream is still on you.  It was, he says, like Neptune looking up from the ocean bed astonished as he sees the shadow of The Argo passing above him.  The music of these last lines is wonderful and perhaps that more than anything communicates something of what in his mind he saw.

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