ABSTRACT
The intimate life of love within the Godhead is thereby reflected and projected outward into the Creation. Self-reflexivity belongs to the internal structure of the Godhead and defines also the innermost structure of the Creation. Scripture instructs the reader that God can be seen reflected analogically in all Creation: "the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead". Thus, in a sense that would have been evident to Dante and his contemporaries, the self-reflexive structure of the Trinity is embodied in the immanent order of language even more immediately than in the outward order of Creation, whether of the physical or of the spiritual universe. The abyss of Godhead that is manifest only through self-reflection forces Dante to resort to a poetics of ineffability.
