ABSTRACT
One of the main determinations of Dante's approach to language and divinity in the Paradiso is that it is lyrical. Yet Dante finds capacities for transcendence in the lyric which escape the reduction to solipsistic vanity that persistently menaces the lyric mode. The lyrical use of language testifies eminently to what is beyond language, namely, the experience of the Unsayable-in which all beings are held together in undifferentiated, unarticulated (dis)order. However, the potential of lyric experience for becoming Paradise in a fully theological sense is made palpable in unprecedented ways by the lyricism of the Paradiso. The very intensity and perfection of its self-enclosure brings on the lyric poem's dialectical inversion into openness toward the other. Thus, the self-containment or reflexiveness of rhyme has also its own self-transcendence built into it. This always open-ended threefold rhythm has wide-ranging anthropological ramifications and psychoanalytical resonances.
