ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes that Dante is not evoking a turning of the mind towards one's emotional, semi-conscious attachment to an external object of grasping. Contrary to what is too often repeated by commentators, and even more disquietingly claimed by translators, in these celebrated lines Dante is not focusing on the seamen's supposed yearning for the sweet friends they left behind, nor on the pilgrim's alleged nostalgia. From the exoteric/narrative point of view, Dante the wayfarer is now approaching God, here called the end of all desires: consequently, he feels that the blazing of desire is coming to its end in him, as it should. The readers should be wary of dreams and visions, both in general and especially in Dante's case. However, they could also understand differently, and more esoterically. The concluding paradox, then, lies in the non-dual relationship between subject and object that Dante finds in the act of S/self-mirroring.
