Paradiso: Divine Comedy, Book Three (Unabridged)

How do you imagine unimaginable joy? How can you behold blinding holiness?

Paradiso gives our imagination a hint of the beauty to come, by uncovering the deepest reality of the life we are living now. God is the same, eternity past to eternity future; He is the same God today. The great crescendo that is His beauty, dance, song, joy, holiness, and glory we hear but dimly, as from a distance land; but it undergirds and gives meaning to everything we know and experience.

Dante’s staggering imagination helps us hear and see as much as we can, as he walks his pilgrim through the heavenly spheres, singing their songs of praise, and into the very presence of the Triune God. It is his journey, and our own, to the Beatific Vision, to stand before the Supreme Good, to move in concert with the Love that moves the sun and the other stars. These are the riches our modern, impoverished imaginations need.

In this translation of the final canticle of Dante’s Comedy, poet and author Joe Carlson brings his blank verse rendition to an end, suffused with the light and dance of the original Italian, while maintaining a readability students and scholars alike will appreciate as he reads his own translation of Dante's great poem.