AtDTDA [38] p. 1084/1085: Bending Light, Creating Invisibility

[Mark Kohut]

Because I haven't read Dante, I had to retrieve this about a scholar's work on Dante after Monte's
post....

Sounds relevant:
As the pilgrim progresses in his journey, she argues, he moves beyond a merely literal, 'infernal' self-interpretation that is grounded on present attachments to things in the world. If we readers accompany the pilgrim in this hermeneutic conversion, we will see that our own existential commitments can help disclose the meaning of our world and our own finite freedom.


--- On Sun, 8/10/08, Monte Davis <monte.davis at verizon.net> wrote:

> From: Monte Davis <monte.davis at verizon.net>
> Subject: RE: AtDTDA [38] p. 1084/1085:  Bending Light, Creating Invisibility
> To: robinlandseadel at comcast.net, "'P-list'" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Sunday, August 10, 2008, 1:59 PM
> Robinlandseadel quotes:
> 
> > in the bright flowerlike heart of a perfect
> hyper-hyperboloid 
> > that only Miles can see in its entirety
> 
> At the apex of Paradise in Cantos 31-33, Dante is in the
> "Rose Bowl," seeing
> the blessed in their concentric ranks:
> 
> "Canst thou behold from seat to seat descending
> Down in gradation, as with each one's name
> I through the Rose go down from leaf to leaf."
> 
> And a few lines before the transcendent end, he tried to
> describe the divine
> appariution of "light in light":
>  
> "Like the geometer who tries to square the circle, and
> for all his thought
> cannot discover the principle he lacks... I tried to see
> how the image fit
> the circle, and how it found [placed] itself there."