Very near the end of the “Divine Comedy”, Dante and his beloved Beatrice leave behind the planets of our solar system and enter what was known as the sphere of the Fixed Stars. “Before you enter further here,” Beatrice tells Dante, “look down and see how vast a universe /
I have put beneath your feet.” Defying vertigo, Dante follows Beatrice’s instruction:
My eyes went back through the seven spheres below,
and I saw this globe, so small, so lost in space,
I had to smile at such a sorry show.
Who thinks it the least pebble in the skies
I most approve. Only the mind that turns
to other things may truly be called wise.
("Paradiso” canto 22, John Ciardi translation)
For those who know Italian:
Col viso ritornai per tutte quante
le sette spere, e vidi questo globo
tal, ch’io sorrisi del suo vil sembiante;
e quel consiglio per migliore approbo
che l’ha per meno; e chi ad altro pensa
chiamar si puote veramente probo.
Almost seven centuries later, Voyager I was instructed to take a parting snapshot of our solar system as it entered interstellar space. Our planet appeared no more than a pale blue dot, as Carl Sagan called it: “a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.”
Dante, of course, imagined the Earth at the center of the universe. He wrote the Divine Comedy over two centuries before Copernicus revolutionized astronomy with his theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun. But for Dante, as for so many before him, occupying the center spot of the universe did not confer central importance, nor did it mean that the Earth was anything less than a tiny pebble on a much larger stage. The Earth’s central position gave it actually the lowest point in Dante’s moral and physical universe, and Dante’s faith told him to look and to move upward.
Nevertheless, though I was prepared to find many things in Dante, such a close connection to this modern moment was not something I remotely expected. It was a difficult read, the Divine Comedy — but full of surprises and entirely worth the journey.
What would Dante Alighieri make of Voyager’s photograph? What would it make him think and feel? Carl Sagan was moved to humility by what Voyager showed, and I think Dante would have felt the same humble wonder. And I think he would have marveled at the achievement, the ability to record a vision from that point in space.
I think he would have written a poem about it.
