[739] Par. xxiv.-xxvi.
[740] Typified in St. Bernard, Par. xxxi. and following. Suitable reasons for this choice may be suggested by the extracts from Bernard’s De deligendo Deo and Sermons on Canticles, ante, Chapter XVII.
[741] Conv. ii. 13. The symbolism inherent in all human mental processes seems indicated by the argument of Aquinas (ante, p. 466) that the mind knows “the particular through sense and imagination; ... it must turn itself to images in order to behold the universal nature existing in the particular.” This is a necessity of our half material nature.
[742] Convito ii. 1. Letter to Can Grande, par. 7.
[743] In the Can Grande letter, having stated this fourfold significance, Dante does not proceed to exemplify it in the interpretation which follows of the opening lines of the Paradiso. Possibly those lines did not admit of the fourfold interpretation; yet, in general, Dante does not try to carry it out in practice, any more than other mediaeval writers commonly.
[744] Convito ii. ch. 14 and 15.
[745] Doubtless the commentator habit is fixed in the nature of man; but it was pre-eminently mediaeval. We have seen enough elsewhere of the multiplication of Commentaries on the Sentences of the Lombard and other scholastic works. Dante’s friend, Guido Cavalcanti, wrote a little poem beginning Donna mi priego, upon which we have eight Commentaries, the first from Egidio Colonna in 1316.
[746] Yet, however obvious the meaning, tying the pole of the Chariot to the Tree of Life was a great stroke (Purg. xxxii. 49).
[747] There is a piece of allegory in the Paradiso which almost gets on one’s nerves, i.e. the ceaseless whirling of the blessed spirits, usually in wheel formations: e.g. Par. xii. 3; xxi. 81; xxiv. 10 sqq.: cf. x. 145; xiii. 20.
[748] One notes that all the symbolizing personages of the poem—Virgil, Statius, Matilda, Lia, Beatrice—have literal reality, however subtle or far-reaching may be the allegorical intendment with which the poet has invested them.