ABSTRACT
Dante addresses in some unprecedented ways breakthrough to eternity, yet he does so precisely through circling reflexivities. The angelic "torch" descends through heaven to encircle Mary and self-reflexively "turns itself around her". It embodies the most general structures of cosmos and Creation, and therewith God's own artistic "technique", which the poem imitates. Self-reflection captures something even of the Creator himself, since the Son-the Creator Word and perfect image of the Father-is reflected throughout the Creation. The risk of falling into the trap of Narcissus-of a reductive and deadly circularity-is held in check and is countered, figuratively, by the circle's being broken open into a chiasmus. In the end, the whole poem contrives to cross itself out by silence of ineffability. The chiasmus is itself sort of broken-open circle in its abba movement circling round to the term from which it began. The divine self-reflexivity inscribed in the cross-chiasmus is constantly harped on as very condition of divine engendering and creativity.
