Page 34 - GALIET EXILE: Dante IV+

Galiet & Galiet
away and purify the last blemish of fear and mortal sin. Overcoming this ordeal and symbolic crucifixion, he will resurrect, like dead poetry, to dwell in complete trust as he endeavours his next ascensions.
Fire, that glorious and first of the classical elements associated with elemental energy, becomes the instrument by which Dante will convert and deliver his newfound wisdom to humanity, in part, mirroring Prometheus, Hephaestus, Demeter and the Holy Spirit. Prometheus must symbolically steal that which had been forbidden to mortals. By crossing boundaries, he will attain the fire of divine knowledge, and thus, participate in the conversion of humanity. However, he will be punished for his transgression while Dante will be delivered by his in the name of Beatrice. Dante’s crossing and tempering by fire will not destroy but ignite his being, will not be a passive but active principle, a testament to Virgil and to Hephaestus’s12 active and transmuting flame. Just as Virgil had been torch to Dante and to Statius, so does Dante the poet and pilgrim become a torch unto humanity, igniting, kindling others with the eternal flames of wisdom, virtue and pure love. New world orders shall come and cease, Cleanthus says, but fire shall always remain constant. Dante’s spiritual light perdures and endures in time’s vorágine. Just as Demeter cleanses Demophoon from earth’s soot to immortalize him in a hearth fire,13 Virgil, in the name of Beatrice, cleanses Dante from false perceptions and immortalizes him by walking through fire. Ultimately, Dante’s ascension through the nine spheres towards the Empyrean and God’s divine light, mirrors Elijah’s fire-chariot ascension and Christ’s in his
12 Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Richmond Lattimore. New York: Harper Collins, 1967.
13 Apollodorus. The Library of Greek Mythology. Trans. Robin Hard. UK: Oxford University Press, 1997.
• 34 •