Page 24 - GALIET DOOMSDAY AND DANTE´S PROPHECY 515: Dante IV

realize that the Greek word Monas also added to 55.63 Indeed, these wonderful beauties, kindled by the One and Ten, also embraced the first five-triangular (3,6,10,15 and 21) and five-square (1,4,9,16 and 25) number sequences, each begetting yet another wondrous 55. Was Dante aware of these wonders? Possibly 3⁄4 if not certainly. Number symbolism was essential to Medievalists. It shall not startle us, therefore, while daydreaming through the vast green fields of Olympus, to learn that Plato’s cosmology came into being from triangle and square.64 It is from equilateral triangles that Plato builds three breathless, elemental figures: the pyramid, octahedron and icosahedron, symbols of fire, air and water; and from the square, he creates the cube, the figure of earth.65
Ciquecento diece e cinque and 515 are, therefore, multiform yet perfect cryptograms, spiritual numbers, writing themselves being written, metaphysical and transcendental lyric entities 3⁄4 azure visions 3⁄4 removed from the contingent and ephemeral, always revealing enchanting and Christological meanings. One and Ten, The Maker and the Made, Father and Son, holograms of one another, siring all things, stirring the cosmos and being, always sustaining the scales of universal, divine justice.66 Quintessential idea sublimated by the most potent and magic of numbers and symbols in the Commedia: the five and the eagle.
Of Pentads.
The ‘cinque’ rhyme, appearing only once in the Commedia,67 obliterates chance. As Wilson suggests, any re-arrangement, re-interpretation of letters and numbers always runs the risk of becoming ever more abstruse, such as in cabbalism’s Gematria whereby numbers can yield corresponding letters of the Hebrew alphabet in order to spell out words or names.68 5 1 5, figuratively a
63 Hen (one) adds up to 55. The letters of the Greek alphabet also serve as numerical symbols: hence a system of Gematria was obvious. The Greek monas is 40+70+50+1+200. Presumably 361, rather than 360 is given as the number of degrees because the first one is counted twice, to indicate a complete circle. Iamblicus. Theology of Arithmetic. Note 15, 39.
64 Plato. Timaeus 53c-56c. Plato. Complete Works. Timaeus. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 1997.
65 Pythagoreans would have delighted in knowing that 55 is the tenth number in the Fibonacci series. Hopper.
Medieval Number Symbolism.
66 Virgil’s fame as the pagan, poet-prophet foretelling Christ’s birth explicit in Purgatorio XXII favours a Christological interpretation of the Veltro.
67 See MASTROBUONO, p. 164, following MOORE, Symbolism, pp. 263-283.
68 MOORE, Symbolism, pp. 253-283, concludes that they can be manipulated to spell out the name “Arrico.” ARMOUR, Dante’s Griffin, pp. 247-248, presents some other methods of interpreting and calculating letters and numbers to illustrate his conclusion: “However interpreted, these letters add further suppositions without solving the puzzle.” PARODI, p. 252, n.I, describes Moore’s theory as a “bizarre e certo erronea congettura”, a sentiment echoed by BELLOMO, Canto XXXIII, 507. M.E. KEARNEY and M.S. SCHRAER, A Better
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