Page 27 - GALIET EXILE: Dante IV+

Galiet & Galiet
ascend the stairway of heaven towards the celestial poetry of being in God’s firmament.
The Stairway to Heaven. As the salt and bread of exile will redeem a lost Dante, so will the poignant rungs of the ladder in the stranger’s house deliver him from exile’s fall to God’s lofty heights. Cacciaguida, referring not only to Dante’s kind host, della Scala 3⁄4 as the host of the Stairs 3⁄4 also alludes to Dante’s many aspirations. Many are the journeys and invisible ladders he must in exile and faith ascend: from the abyss of Inferno to the terraces of Purgatorio to the spheres of Paradiso; from base language to the mountains of pure poesy; from injustice and falsehood to divine justice, truth and beauty; from earthly love to the cascades of eternal love. Many tears will he weep from his paradise lost to his paradise found, as many as there are stars dwelling in the heavens.
These divine ascensions symbolize Dante’s unfolding pilgrimage from torment to bliss. The ladder of beauty and virtue that links heaven and earth recalls Calypso’s magnificent ladder in her delightful cavern7 and Jacob’s famous dream vision of heavenly angels ascending and descending a similar ladder (Gen. 28:12), both direct links between God and humanity. It shall not be surprising at all, then, to find breathless Beatrice descend this imaginary ladder from the azure firmament she so adores to reach Virgil, just in time to save Dante (Inf. 2, 109-118). Dante, beloved yet wandering sinner of hers, must descend and ascend the Virgilian ladder to reach as low as Satan’s wintry den, and as high as the idyll of flowers in Eden’s glen if he is to gaze at the brilliant
7 Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Richmond Lattimore. New York: Harper Collins, 1967.
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