“The heavens call to you, and circle about you, displaying to you their eternal splendors, and your eye gazes only to earth.”

-From The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, Italian poet and philosopher, 1265-1321.

This quote is from Dante’s Divine Comedy, written between 1308 and 1320. The epic poem explored the idea of an afterlife, and various themes related to verticality. The main story arc is Dante’s progression through three stages: Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (heaven). These three stages correlate to the underground, surface, and sky from the main verticality narrative, respectively, and they’re arranged vertically along the axis-mundi.

The quote is spoken by Dante’s guide Virgil at the end of Canto XIV in Purgatorio. They are at the second circle of Purgatorio, which represents the sin of envy, and Virgil is lamenting how people tend to focus on earthly possessions rather than the eternal splenders of heaven. It’s a reminder of the human need for verticality, that even as we focus on our surface-based lives, we seek to escape the surface and occupy the space above our heads.

Read more about Dante’s Divine Comedy here.


Lines from: Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, Canto XIV, lines 148-150.