Re-spatializing: Space-walking the Stars, a Multitude of Horizons

If the reader opts to take the whole journey from start to finish with Dante, by the time the pilgrim reaches the edge of the Starry Sphere (Pd. 27) from his opening in the selva obscura (In. 1.2), one ceases reading the Divine Comedy and proceeds only by weeping through it. It is the stars which orients Dante's journey from, in and through being and the beyond. His works for us begin first as stars themselves, as the end each end with the stelle, serve as theopoetics which orient us toward the horizon. He moves in and through the stars that are the many others who reflect the primal point of light itself, and leave him oriented toward God. Dante's stars then, are also our stars in a twofold sense and outline the last two movements of this exploration.

First, the stars are the points of light which hover nightly at the edge of the vast blackness of our universe. Whether they are literally at 'the edge' or not makes no difference, as far as our gaze is concerned they occupy the horizon of being. As far as we have been able to travel into space (and will continue to) there will always be points of light which occupy the horizon beyond. They serve as icons of the God that is beyond the material universe and yet, as Marion would put it, is indifferent to the difference between our material universe and what lies beyond its edge. In this sense these stars spatialize us as they insinuate what is beyond themselves as horizons, and therefore orient us towards it.

Second, the stars are the point of light that Dante see's reflected in the eye of Beatrice. Dante first see's Love in his earthly Beatrice:

From her eyes, as she moves them, issue spirits ablaze with love, which pierce the eyes of those who gaze on her then, and pass within so each one finds the heart: you will see Love pictured in her face, there where no man may fixedly gaze.³²

And as she herself descends from the Empyrean only to bring the pilgrim up, so she never wholly departs from her place in the rose of Paradise. Just as Dante fails to fix his gaze upon Godself in the final Canto, so does the horizon in the other represent the horizon of being.

After finishing his time with Peter, Dante watches the host like flakes "snowing themselves back home," into the Empyrean (Pd. 27.67-72).³³ Even at the edge of the stars themselves he is subjected to the horizon of being: "My eyes were following their forms / and followed them until the wider intervening space / made me unable to pursue them higher" (Pd. 27.73-75). Although they are subsistent form they disappear beyond the space between the Starry Sphere and Crystalline Sphere. Standing at the edge of the stars, Dante's gaze still cannot fall beyond the horizon. And yet, Beatrice reminds him once more to "cast [his] sight below," (Pd. 27.77) and observe the earth "beneath [his] feet" (Pd. 22.129, 151-154; 27.85-87).³⁴

Dante is that man who Boethius writes of "who once walked the paths of heaven / on solid ground under open skies" (2.5-6).³⁵ Dante is space-walking with the earth beneath his feet. It is when his eyes fall finally upon the final horizon of the heavenly spheres that he again sees the ground below him. This is, as Beatrice says, only possible because Dante is "so near to the final blessedness," that his eyes have been made "clear and keen" (Pd. 22.124-126) enough to gaze into the sun itself. His gaze set upon the horizon of being spatializes Dante. Dante's awareness of his spatiality is constituted precisely by the closeness of God—although God still lies beyond the horizon.³⁶ This is the circumspective nature of de-severing [ent-fernung] as bringing-close "the farness of the ready-to-hand" which we "can never cross over."³⁷ What is beyond the horizon of being is that which is ready-to-hand but can never be brought-to-hand—to be more precise, divine life beyond-being has no "place." Heidegger's spatial acrobatics offer us a helpful way to understand Dante's situatedness:

Dasein understands its "here" [Hier] in terms of its environmental "yonder." The "here" does not mean the "where" of something present-at-hand, but rather "whereat" [Wobei] of a deseverant Being-alongside, together with this de-severance. Dasein, in accordance with its spatiality, is proximally never here but yonder; from this " yonder" it comes back to its "here;" and it comes back to its "here" only in the way in which it interprets its concernful Being-towards in terms of what is ready-to-hand yonder.³⁸

How does this apply to the horizon of being? Or to put it differently: how does one de-sever the divine life which is is always yonder ready-to-hand, but never brought-to-hand? It seems that the same circumspection still applies in this case: that to set one's gaze upon the horizon of being is to be 'concernfully' oriented toward it (that is its directionality [Ausrichtung]) and discover oneself both here and yonder. The divine life has no "place," but we are spatialized in our concernful 'Beingtowards' the horizon. And so we return to our pilgrim—but where is he?

By Beatrice's divine beauty Dante is once again is thrust "into heaven's swiftest sphere" (Pd. 27.99). In the Crystalline Sphere Beatrice anticipating Dante's question explains, "The nature of the universe, which holds / the center still and moves all else around it, / starts here as from its boundary line" (Pd. 27.106-108). Dante and Beatrice, now stand at the edge of universe—upon the very horizon of being. "This heaven," Beatrice continues, "has no other where / but in the mind of God" (Pd. 27.109-110). They stand on the very boundary line which has no other where but in the mind of God. It does not have a where as you as I have wheres. That is, both a 'here' and also a 'yonder' in the mind of God as she later relates, "where every ubi [where] and every quando [when] has its center."

This horizon of being itself, on which they stand together, is understood as a location born only in the mind of God. But it is, as Beatrice explains, the central location which gives all else "space." This horizon of being is the gift of God by which we are situated in the divine life beyond-being. This horizon is the gift by which we are spatialized in the divine life. More significantly, the horizon is the absolute gift of gift. It is the nature of the being situated within the beyond which enables the capacity for the gift without 'reappropriation.'³⁹ Without a horizon no gift can be given. It is the horizon, that makes our directionality toward the impossible, possible. Because of this Caputo can say (with strikingly spatializing metaphors), "let us be driven by, impelled by, set into motion by, impassioned by this impossible desire, this desire for the impossible gift, for the impossible."⁴⁰ The ever-present messianic structures (whether they are observed as weak or 'strong') and potentialities of being are buttressed and insinuated by the ever-present existence of the horizon. The following section returns to the import of this.