Dante’s True Constellation: Writing the Stars in Aratus, Ovid, and Paradiso 13

Abstract

This essay uses the constellation writing of Ovid and Aratus to gain comparative perspective upon Dante’s constellation writing in Paradiso 13. Though Dante did not know the Greek poetry of Aratus, the two authors share the goal of bringing the heavens into human view. For Aratus, the constellations are tools for enabling celestial observation. The constellations give form to the firmament. They enable observers to distinguish between stars and therefore to perceive and track celestial structure and motion. But the constellations do not leave a mark upon the sky. Rather, as Ovid’s poetry also helps show, they must continually be rediscovered and reformed through guided observation. The essay explores how these aspects of constellations help Dante to imagine unique forms of literary creativity in Paradiso 13. For Dante, the heavens need to be divided up by fictions in order to be described by poetry. But Dante’s constellation writing suggests how such fictions might not be etched onto the world once and for all. Instead, like constellations, they emerge in the moment of being perceived. In this sense, constellations help Dante to imagine creativity without impact; that is, human art that does not mark or change a preexisting environment. Dante’s constellations gain a sense of immediacy from their ephemerality and their reliance upon a perceiving viewer or reader. Constellation writing helps Dante to bridge the gap between human and divine art by turning human perception into a mirror of divine creation.