Paean

Profile

In canto XIII of the Paradiso, as Dante contemplates the triple dance of the lights of wisdom, he hears a song that surpasses every human experience in sweetness and wonder. The echo of that harmony is such that anyone who tried to describe it, even drawing upon the loftiest poetic images, would obtain only a pale shadow of the reality heard. Precisely at that point the poet declares openly that it was neither Bacchus nor Paean who inspired that song, but the three Persons in the divine nature, and that their harmony transcends any earthly comparison. Paean, evoked alongside Bacchus, thus represents the tradition of pagan song, here called to measure itself against the Trinitarian music of the Heaven of the Sun.