Paradiso

The third and final part of Dante's Divine Comedy, the Paradiso carries the poet upward from the summit of Mount Purgatory through the nine celestial spheres of Heaven toward the presence of God. Guided now by his beloved Beatrice, the embodiment of divine grace, Dante ascends past the Moon, the planets, and the fixed stars, meeting the souls of the blessed and questioning them on faith, free will, and the order of the cosmos.

As he rises, the light grows ever more brilliant and the mysteries more profound, until language itself begins to fail before the final vision of the divine love that moves the sun and the other stars.

Luminous, philosophical, and rapturous, the Paradiso completes one of the supreme achievements of Western literature, bringing to a close the pilgrim's journey from the depths of Hell, through the terraces of Purgatory, to the very heart of Heaven.