Chapter 7: Dante’s Labyrinth, Dante’s Cosmos

The turning inside out of profane/sacred music has been an aspect of the doubleness of the Commedia. More obvious are those moments where the written text’s Cosmos turns inside out. There had been the moment in the bottom of Inferno where Dante and Virgil climb down/up Lucifer’s legs, the turning point at his groin, his genitalia. Another moment is in Purgatorio where Beatrice and the Gryphon gaze into each other’s eyes, Dante’s joining in that gaze, putting on the mind of Christ. Finally, in Paradiso, Dante drinks with his eyes and the Cosmos turns right way round, to God at the center, the earth at the farthest periphery, the perception Philosophia had taught earth-bound, self-pitying Boethius, and that Cicero had had Scipio Africanus see with his ancestors in his dream. Horia-Roman Patapievici, the physicist who was Romania’s Minister of Culture until he was unjustly ousted by Romanian Nationalism, discussed Dante’s Commedia showing that most perceptions of the Rose are wrong. It is not a small object perched atop the Cosmos but is instead the entire Cosmos righted, the Kingdom of Heaven that is here and now if we would but see it.