Dante's curious canto of hope - Paradiso 25

Paradiso 25 begins se mai . . .  -- if ever . . . - the strange foolishness of the phenomenon is all right there.

Does one "need" hope? Or is it something one cannot not have? What does hope know? Does it hope for something that it has reason to think will come true, or for precisely that which all rational thought and argument says is not going to happen?

Hope is more irrational even than Faith, which takes as true something that is received as such via language or some sign that points to that which is unverifiable this side of death. Hope, built upon Faith, adds emotive force -- we are moved by hope to expect that which others see no reason to expect. To have no expectation is to experience, as our center of gravity, the absence of motion and expectation. To be hope-less.

The Greeks - or our readings of them - appear to be of two minds about hope. Either it's what we have left after all the ills of Pandora have infested our world, or, it's what we're doomed to be unable to rid ourselves of, despite knowing, beyond all doubt, that it is blind, a useless sign.

At the end of Paradiso 25, the pilgrim in fact is blind.

The realm of the theological virtues is wholly different from what came before - they're not classical, not rational, not a matter of balance and reason and measure and justice.

It's easier to say what they're not than what they are. Unless, as the poet does, we simply repeat the definitions of Faith and Hope that we have from the Epistles and our catechisms.

Paradiso 25 raises more questions than it answers. It does not convey to this reader some buoyant, sanguine confidence that we can be sure of hope. We can be sure of its definition, which Dante the poet says was offered by Dante the pilgrim:

Like a pupil who answers his master, ready and eager in his subject that he may show his parts, "Hope" I said, "is a sure expectation of future glory, and it springs from divine grace and precedent merit." (25:64-69)

A similar scene of a pupil and master was evoked in Paradiso 24, when the pilgrim was asked about Faith.

These "supernatural" virtues are bound up with the event of learning from a teacher, and repeating the lesson learned.

Dante was probed by Peter as to whether he had the real coin of Faith in hand. James asks him from whence Hope came to him, and he points to David. Specifically, to Psalm 9, verse 11:

11 And let them trust in thee who know thy name: for thou hast not forsaken them that seek thee, O Lord. 

11 et sperent in te qui noverunt nomen tuum quoniam non dereliquisti quaerentes te Domine

One thing we can say is that it's usually not possible to know someone's name unless it is told to us. I.e., the appearance of a person, their eye color, hair, or complexion, doesn't scream "Jack," "Susie" or "Bob." To know a name, a few conditions must be met:

1. The name must be shared with us via writing or speech.
2. We must be able to tell, when we hear it, that it is a name, rather than a common noun. Usually this requires at least some shared sense of the language in which the name exists.
3. Once we know the name, we can seek that which it represents - in this case, the Lord.

So at least we can say that acquiring a name is in some sense not unlike acquiring a definition of Faith, or Hope - someone verbally imparts it to us, we repeat it, and it becomes something we "know."

Interesting that the line of David's that Dante found helpful for his own grasp of Hope contains the word, and does so in a wish: "Let them hope" - Douay-Rheims says "trust," but the Vulgate of Dante's bible says sperent. Let them hope in thee who have learned your name. There is teaching, learning, naming, hope. That is, names must be taught because they are signs that are not imitations of things. There is no bond or relation of resemblance. And to acquire a name is to hope for what it is the name of, which suggests that it is not "in" the name. In a sense, when we learn a proper name, at that moment all we have is that -- it yields no knowledge beyond its own verbal form. To learn is to start by knowing only that we do not see what the name means -- we are blind as of yet. We hope our hopes will not be forsaken.

Dante is talking to James, who, he says, passed to him the inspiration of David. Psalm 9 goes on to speak of the weak, of those the Lord does not forget. This is a major theme in James -- the fatuity of the rich.

Psalm 9 is the first of the 150 psalms to have been broken into two parts and counted as 9 and 10 in the Septuagint, whereas it's one work (9) in the Hebrew Bible. Scholars (e.g., Robert Alter) say it shows the remains of an alphabetic scheme in which each verse begins with the next letter of the alphabet. Some translations end Psalm 9 at verse 20, and begin Psalm 10 at verse 21 (see, e.g., this rendering), but Douay-Rheims keeps the psalm intact. 

Now, It is unlikely that one would hear the alphabetic scheme of letters if the song were sung aloud in Hebrew. It's an inscribed pattern -- broken because the text is corrupted, but still an inaudible pattern that comes back at the end. 

And it's the ending where perhaps James and David meet. For there we are told, in 9:38 in Douay-Rheims, that

38 The Lord hath heard the desire of the poor: thy ear hath heard the preparation of their heart. 

38 desiderium pauperum exaudivit Dominus praeparationem cordis eorum audivit auris tua

Because now we are told of a hearing that is well beyond the hearing of a name. It's a hearing of something inaudible - a pattern, an order.The Lord's ear hears desire; it hears the preparation of their (the poor's) heart. We are at a level of hearing well beyond the use of words, of verbal utterances.

To hear "the preparation of the heart" is an extraordinary thing to say. What might be such preparation? Could it be the very thing Dante and James are talking about? Hope might be blind, but apparently it's not mute to the Lord's ear. If it is heard, says David, the poor are not forgotten.

Unlike the Gentiles:

32 For he hath said in his heart: God hath forgotten, he hath turned away his face not to see to the end.

32 dixit enim in corde suo oblitus est Deus avertit faciem suam ne videat in finem

One can assume God forgets. Or not. From David to James, Dante hears something bearing on hope. In Italian, "I hope" is spero. In this canto, Dante hears a lot of breathing -- in Italian, spiro. David breathes, James breaths, Dante breathes. Inspiration. In the most basic sense, if we're breathing, we're hoping.