With Dante God is always the sun, "which leadeth others
right by every road." (Inferno, I. 18.) "The spiritual and
unintelligible Sun, which is God." (Convito, Tr. III. c. 12) His
light "enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world," but his
dwelling is in the heavens. He who wilfully deprives himself of this
light is spiritually dead in sin. So when in Mars he beholds the
glorified spirits of the martyrs he exclaims, "O Elios, who so
arrayest them!" (Paradiso, XIV. 96.) Blanc (Vocabolario, _sub voce_)
rejects this interpretation. But Dante, entering the abode of the
Blessed, invokes the "good Apollo," and shortly after calls him
_divina virtu._ We shall have more to say of this hereafter.
[106] Convito, Tr. III. c. 12.
[107] Convito, Tr. III. c. 15. Recalling how the eyes of Beatrice
lift her servant through the heavenly spheres, and that smile of hers
so often dwelt on with rapture, we see how Dante was in the habit of
commenting and illustrating his own works. We must remember always
that with him the allegorical exposition is the true one (Convito,
Tr. IV. c. 1), the allegory being a truth which is hidden under a
beautiful falsehood (Convito, Tr. II. c. 1), and that Dante thought
his poems without this exposition "under some shade of obscurity, so
that to many their beauty was more grateful than their goodness"
(Convito, Tr.
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