In 1978 Salvador Dai painted “Gala’s Christ,” a stereoscopic work in two components. Over the four months that I have been reading the 100 cantos of The Divine Comedy a canto a day, I also have been doing stereoscopic vision therapy with a behavioral optometrist. Having been amblyopic since birth, I always had considered myself effectively blind in my right lazy eye. I learned, however, that it was not the eye but rather my brain that was lazy. Within the first behavioral optometry appointment, using some vision therapy tricks, my doctor demonstrated to my amazement that I could see with my “blind” eye. Now, after over a year of weekly appointments and at-home work, my facial droop is barely discernible, I have complete peripheral vision, and I am working on central vision and on coordinated movement of both eyes. As a result of this work, I was able to see Avatar 3D. And that is the point of stereoscopic vision–to see simultaneously with depth from two points of view, to see true.
Little by little as my vision grew
it penetrated further through the aura
of the high lamp which in Itself is true.
What then I saw is more than tongue can say.
(XXXIII, 52-55)
O Light Eternal fixed in itself alone,
by Itself alone understood, which from Itself
loves and glows, self-knowing and self-known;
That second aureole which shone forth in Thee,
conceived as a reflection of the first–
or which appeared so to my scrutiny–
seemed in Itself of its own coloration
to be painted with man’s image. I fixed my eyes
on that alone in rapturous contemplation.
Like a geometer wholly dedicated
to squaring the circle, but who cannot find,
think as he may, the principle indicated–
so did I study the supernal face.
I yearned to know just how our image merges
into that circle, and how it there finds place; . . .
(XXXIII, 124-138)
In the light of faith, we labor and are given the grace to see true. We learn to see true first by gazing into the eyes of our mothers, and then we encounter the multiple others who serve that place in our lives that Beatrice served in Dante’s. We also yearn to see Christ in his real presence, whether in the rituals of our sacramental life or with the inner eye of contemplation. And as our souls learn to see the depth and truth of things with the eyes of Christ here below, so above we one day will see Truth with the eyes of Christ.
The idea for this blog started with the Inferno paintings of Soloni Robertson posted on the University of Texas at Austin Dante Worlds website. Reading The Purgatorio, I then discovered Salvador Dali’s Divine Comedy woodcuts, which often had an uncanny sensibility for the seven primary chakras, each of which according to Carolyn Myss in Anatomy of the Spirit “contains a universal spiritual life-lesson that we must learn as evolve into higher consciousness” (68). Numerous other artists also came into play.
Reading The Paradiso, I then encountered the masterworks of Dali’s Christian corpus, done later in his artistic career. I also encountered Dali’s stormy relationship with Gala–his Beatrice and his stolen wife. The cantos and the art reawakened interest and insight in the Jungian archetypes of the male developmental journey.
The art helped me to sustain interest in the poetry, and this stereoscopic encounter has awakened my consciousness as much as any extended retreat–all the more so for having been done over the Lenten and Easter seasons.
Looking forward, I can imagine two more projects in play. The first could be a paper for the Academy of Homiletics on the coming theme of “the call to preach,” using insights gleaned from Dante and Dali. The second might be to re-appropriate my study of the evolution of the stages of human consciousness as posed by Ken Wilbur in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, bringing these into conversation with Dante.
Looking back, a handful of the artists’ images have spoken most powerfully to me, and I have presented them once again here.
