SOURCE: Brandeis, Irma. “The Ladder of Vision.” In The Ladder of Vision: A Study of Dante's Comedy, pp. 185-227. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1962.

In the following excerpt from an essay originally published in 1960, Brandeis describes the Paradiso as “the supreme test of Dante's poetic power,” since this work presented the formidable challenge of conveying transcendent experience using worldly language and conventional poetic devices.

The third canticle [of The Divine Comedy] is the supreme test of Dante's poetic power, since here he faces the virtually impossible task of making the concrete world of images suggest an experience which is totally foreign to almost every reader, and which, by its very nature, would seem untranslatable into words. It is a supreme test of the reader, too: if he is honest, he will see that the book has no easy charm; he must give it the severest attention before he...