Paradise part 1 (Cantos 1 – 11) 7/9 Everyone has his or her own idea of Paradise. By this time anyone who is following the poem has become so drawn into the intensity of Dante's experience that it is no surprise to find that everything about Heaven and the ideas it represents, Dante is perfectly up to describing. Most folk will not dispute that while it is Beatrice and his love for her that drives him he has a wonderful conception of human ideals which he somehow manages to convey in a completely acceptable form. The only thing to do is to jump in. Unsurprisingly in Canto 1 Dante the renaissance humanist calls on the Greek/Roman god Apollo to help his descriptions along. He also points to the happy conjunction of the stars as a 'good' sign for their arrival in heaven. All along as ever Dante gets embroiled in discussions with the spirits he meets about politics, morality, common or garden delusions and all the matters which have so concerned them in their lives. These people range from the high and mighty to the mean and lowly. AM111SB20 2020 dur: 2hrs 15 mins