“E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.”[246] “Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle.”[247] “L’Amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.”[248]
Here “stelle” has the wider meaning of the French “astres,” for which we have no equivalent in English except the clumsy “heavenly bodies;” but most of Dante’s hundred references are to stars in the more special sense, and often to particular stars or constellations. Over eighty occur in the Divine Comedy.
Stars are jewels, torches, flames, immortal nymphs adorning every region of the sky.[249] Heaven is made beautiful by their light, and the joy of the angels is expressed in their shining, as mortal joy shines forth in human eyes.[250] If the spirits in the fourth heaven are described as glowing suns,[251] the “splendours” that descend upon the golden ladder in the seventh, make Dante think that all the stars in the sky are gathered together there.[252]
The eyes of Beatrice shone brighter than stars;[253] light comes as from many stars in reading the sacred books;[254] faith gleams like a star in the sky;[255] and truth appears in a mind cleared of falsehood and error like the radiance of stars in a sky which has been wholly swept of cloud and mist by a north wind.
“Come rimane splendido e sereno L’emisperio dell’ aer, quando soffia Borea da quella guancia ond’ è più leno, Perchè si purga e risolve la roffia Che pria turbava, sì che il ciel ne ride Con le bellezze d’ogni sua paroffia: Così fec’ io, poi che mi provvide La Donna mia del suo risponder chiaro, E come stella in cielo il ver si vide.”[256]
Stars, as well as the sun, are used as symbols for the objects of Dante’s deepest reverence; for the Blessed Virgin is called “la viva stella,”[257] and the Final Vision in which the redeemed find their ultimate bliss is a Trinal Light seen as a single star:—
“O trina Luce, che in unica stella Scintillando a lor vista sì gli appaga, Guarda quaggiù alla nostra procella.”[258]
The diurnal motion of the stars is referred to many times. As Dante watched the mystical procession in the Earthly Paradise, and saw one group follow in the footsteps of another across the flowers and the grass, he thought of the stately procession of stars which we see here by night, star following star across the sky.[259] Their movement marks for him the passage of time, as we see in the first sonnet of the Vita Nuova:—
“Già eran quasi ch’ atterzate l’ ore Del tempo che ogni stella è piu lucente.”[260]
and in the Inferno, where Virgil hastens Dante, saying that all the stars are sinking which were rising when he started on his long journey.[261]