Page 302 - Lanzarotto Malocello from Italy to the Canary Islands

302 from Italy to the Canary Islands

(the Fortunate Isles like the Hesperides) located in the vicinity of Mount
Atlas.
The Fortunate Isles as Earthly Paradise next to Mount Atlas. Dante
is nearby, we might say, finding a beneficial continuity. Dante’s realism
knows how to emerge at the right time; thus Orosius - Christian historian
and apologist of the fourth century, a native of the Iberian Peninsula - illu-
minates him on that location - in his most famous book “Liber Apologeti-
cus contra Pelagianos e Historiarum adversum paganos libri septem”, he
attempted to demonstrate how the evils of the time were not attributable
to the Christians but had to be considered a result of humanity’s perennial
disagreements.
Whether it was the Fortunate Isles or the Hesperides, Virgil and Orosius
stood along the same lines by placing a pagan Earthly Paradise a short dis-
tance from Mount Atlas. The Paradise of the ancient like Dante’s Paradise.
We see here how Dante, more than the Sublime, maintained an ancient
deep feeling that moved the mind from everyday reality by catching sight
of something else.
The Poet is also close to the ancients while citing their dreams and
longings, before getting settled on the true Christian mountain of the
Earthly Paradise. There is light, then, and so all the classic wisdom - from
the Fortunate Isles of the ancients to Virgil’s Mount Atlas - is catalogued,
for sure, but nothing more than that with respect to the new light of Rev-
elation.
Virgil’s epic arrives in the age of Augustus and is actualized in the world
of men; in Dante’s case, the Christian plan is heavenly salvation.
Therefore, the Fortunate Isles and Mount Atlas evaporate and eventu-
ally vanish, for they are no longer possible in the new light indicated by
Dante through his journey.
Were the Pillars of Hercules a mental or educational limit? Rather a
way to assess one’s courage, be it practical or literary. The ancients, as
a point of fact, had already gone past the Pillars of Hercules. Brunetto
Latini spoke of it in his tesoretto: “Ma doppo la sua morte/ si son gente
raccolte/ e son altri passati,/sì che sono abitati/di là, in bel paese/e ricco
per le spese.”
Poetry springs certainly from the soul but reality is very good business
for it. And so Dante’s teacher too must have heard that the ancients had
passed that boundary with confidence. What actually really happened was
undoubtedly behind the immense representation of the aeneid with its