Page 14 - GALIET DOOMSDAY AND DANTE´S PROPHECY 515: Dante IV

ante or post eventum prophecy to express a coming, secular redeemer 3⁄4 whether emperor, prince or pontiff 3⁄4 that would exclude Christ as the avarice-and-sin redeemer, new-world reformer and universal peace deliverer? Did Dante know of our hidden cravings for nectars forbidden? Did he foresee, once in exile hidden, our confabulations to his glory kneeling? Or was his mystic number angelically delivered? One he neither understood nor imagined? Curious, perplexing number leaping light-enwrought from heaven’s vault stirring, evermore, our ironic post- modern spirits towards a lost, irretrievable Empyrean. Fabled, theosophical number, seed of the Empyrean, in timelines tossed, lays now ill suffering nausea devoid of its solar essence and meaning. Heed. Be what earthly or starry ink it may, Dante bequeathed a sacred message upon humanity to endure for all times, one to awaken others to his vision.17
Vision professed by his immortal beloved Beatrice. As Beatrice’s prophetic vessel 3⁄4 for she speaks to him face to face, neither in dreams nor visions, just as God speaks to Moses18 3⁄4 Dante claims to belong to that four thousand-year-old succession of immortal prophets, who, as Pascal argues, successively and invariably came to foretell a nation’s destiny and the same messianic event.19 Just as his predecessor poet-prophets, Dante has seemingly bestowed an enigma of immeasurable worth, one that is paradoxically obscure, yet as luminous and open as Paradiso’s spheres. Wilson argues:
“Dante has taken great care with the other types of prophecies, the post eventum, and the other ante-eventum, to ensure that they are either true, or insufficiently detailed to be proven false. In view of the number of other prophecies, it seems reasonable to assume that he would follow the same principle with these. By creating flexible yet guaranteed predictions Dante maintains the veracity of his text and keep it open to historical
17 Moev. The Metaphysics of Dante. 183
18 The prophets speak not only of the future, but of the present and the past. They are divinely appointed teachers, no less than the patriarchs and Moses. Yet they may rank below Moses by reason of the manner in which God addresses them. As Hobbes says, recapitulating the OT: “God himself in express words decclareth that to other prophets he spake in dreams and visions, but to his servant Moses, in such manner as a man speaketh to his friend, face to face.” KJV
19 Pascal. Pensees. The Great Books of the Western World. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer Adler.Vol. 33. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952.
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