ABSTRACT
To avoid lingering in Antepurgatory, the Donati require the prayers of a woman, Forese's wife Nella. Only a woman, Piccarda, can place them in Paradise. In short, Dante draws upon a solid and coherent tradition and puts in Piccarda's mouth a hymn to charity and peace on a par with those of Paul, John, Dionysius, and Augustine. Peace and quiet are alien to the Streben required by the post-Romantic sentiment of beauty. The beauty which Paradise displays, and which Dante speaks of in the Paradiso, leads to knowledge and is one with truth, goodness, and peace. Mind in love and peace are the two poles of beauty in cantos in and iv of Paradiso: one, so to speak, in via, and the other in fine—in porto. In Paradiso in, the metaphorical language is a 'shadowy preface' of the splendour which it will gradually acquire in the cantica.
