g., are less
favored than those in the Heaven of Mercury. The inequality of merit,
and therefore of reward, is also declared by the difference in both the
quickness of the spirits' movement and their clearness of vision into
the essence of God. The Empyrean, it is worth while repeating, is the
only true Paradise, the nine Heavens being only myths or poetic devices.
If spirits are seen there, they have come forth only from the Empyrean
and will quickly return there after preparing the poet for the eternal
Light of Light.
The materials out of which Dante constructs his Paradiso are not, as we
are already aware, fantastic images such as he employed for the first
two parts of the Divina Commedia, but are things of the spirit, viz.,
knowledge, beauty, faith, love, joy; and he is aided in making visible
those invisible entities of the spiritual life by such intangible things
as sound, motion and light.
Light, indeed, is one of the leading elements in the Paradiso. The poem
begins with a reference to the light of God's glory, and its last line
speaks of "the Love which moves the Sun and the other stars." And
between this beginning and this end in thirty-three cantiche light is
represented not only by degrees of increasing intensity and variety of
unlocked for movements but as surrounding the spirits, living flames,
and constituting, symbolically, the beatitude of Heaven.
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