Canto XXVI of Paradise
image Rousseau

The beautiful females of the garden of the eternal Gardener.
Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus.

Mentr'io dubbiava per lo viso spento, de la fulgida fiamma che lo spense uscì un spiro che mi fece attento, dicendo: «Intanto che tu ti risense de la vista che hai in me consunta, ben è che ragionando la compense. Comincia dunque; e di' ove s'appunta l'anima tua, e fa' ragion che sia la vista in te smarrita e non defunta: perché la donna che per questa dia region ti conduce, ha ne lo sguardo la virtù ch'ebbe la man d'Anania».


RETURN TO THE PORTAL OF HELL


I feared to have lost my sight, to have fixed too much the dazzling flame; and from her came a voice which drew my attention and which said: "Until you recover the sight consumed in me, tell me the object of your love, and be assured that your sight did not die out, because the lady which leads you by this divine stay, has in her glance, the virtue to let herself seen." I then said: "Let her choose the moment which will please het, to offer me the remedy to my eyes by where she entered, with the fire which makes me, since, burn of Love for her." This same voice, which had removed me the fear of my sudden blindness, decided to speak still more; she says to me: "It is necessary for you to undergo a rigorous examination and I ask you if you are ready, specify then your thought and tell me from where your love for Her came to you, and what is the cause of it?" I answered: "It is through arguments of reason, as by what was revealed to me, that my love must mark its print in me. Because the good, as a good, and as much as it is perfect, ignites then my love. I must go while loving more than towards any other lady, towards Whom who is the good, and me who sees in Her the perfection of the good, should I not love her above any other one? This truth, that One reveals it to my understanding, who shows me the first Love of His carnal substance; she reveals it also by the voice of the Truth: "I will show you any good" He said to Moïse speaking of Himself." And he answered me as follows: "By the understanding and the authorities who agree with them, keep towards Jeanne the highest of your loves. But tell me, if you still feel other bonds attaching you to her, so that you show with how many teeth her love devours you." I seized then, that he tested my profession of faith, and also I continued: "All these bites, these wounds which tear off my heart and pushes it towards Jeanne, had fed the spirit of charity in me, because the existence of the world and my own existence, the death which she suffered so that I live, and from the desires which I have as his disciple, as well as the supreme knowledge, had pulled me off from the abyssal of the false and makes me approach to the shore of the true Love. The beautiful females, these flowers from whom dressed itself the garden of the eternal Gardener, I love them, according to the good that they communicate through Him, to all my being." As soon as I stop talking, a very soft song resounded in the sky; and I heard my lady singing with the others: "Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus!" Thus, Jeanne drove out the shade of my eyes, by a bursting ray from her own eyes which slet me see better than before, and amazed, I asked from where came a fourth light that I saw coming towards us. My lady answered to me: "See in these rays the first soul that has ever created the first Virtue, contemplate his Author." Thus I did and I said: "Oh fruit who alone was produced mature! Oh our antique father! You from whom, every spouse is the doughter at the same time as it is the daughter-in-law, as piously as I can, I beg you to speak to me, you see my desire, and, to hear you earlier, I let to you guess what." Full with joy, Adam answered me: "I know your desire better than yourself; you want to learn since when, God place me in the garden of Eden, and how long I remained there, what was the true reason of the anger of God, and which was the language which I used and which I developped? However, my son, it was not of having tasted to the fruit which was in oneself the cause of such an exile, but only to have crossed the imposed borders. As for the time tha I had passed into the Garden of Eden, this concept exists only in your concept of a linear time, whereas in a curve dimension of time, from any point of the circle which one is, time turns around itself, so that it does not exist. The language that I spoke disappeared entirely. That man speaks is a fact of nature, but that he speaks in such or another way, nature let itself down, then, to the good pleasure of men, so that, that I could speak Hebrew, Latin or American and that the American, the Latin and the Hebrew languages have disappeared from the surface of the earth, and that man does not speak himself about it more badly. Before I did came down to the infernal sorrow, the supreme Good from whom comes the joy which wraps me, was called Him on earth, then one tried to name it Her; the humans on earth being as frivolous as the leaves on the branch, of which one comes and the other goes. Whereas here, in the eternal residence, it bears neither the name of Him, nor that of Her, because it does not have a proper nature or has possesses both at the same time, so that he is Hermaphrodite: Male and female at the same time; it can give birth like the female or give its seed like the male, indifferently, according to the circumstances and its good pleasure. Thus, all that these good Doctors of the Church have teached you, or imposed on your faith and to that of so many of people, by the genocide, so that they agree to believe in it, are in fact only nonsenses and childishness, which, if they believed themselves in it, do nothing but demonstrate their low naivety, and the reason for which one does not see few of them, here."



Marco Polo ou le voyage imaginaire (La tragédie humaine, janvier 2000) © 1999 Jean-Pierre Lapointe
Theme musical: Musique de film (Philadelphia), empruntée aux Archives du Web.
Important Notice: any photos or fragments of photos subject to copyright will be removed on notice.


CANTO XXVII OF PARADISE