Commentary Par I 49-54

This, the first formally developed simile of Paradiso, is in fact double (and that its second element deploys the image of a completed pilgrimage should not surprise us). We may sense an increasing degree of abstraction in the similes of this cantica (but not always -- see [Par I 67-69], where Dante's 'transhumanization' is cast in physical terms; he is changed as was Glaucus). For the increasingly abstract nature of the poetry of roughly the first two-thirds of Paradiso, see Chiappelli (Chia.1967.3). And for two bibliographies of studies devoted to the Dantean simile, see Sowell (Sowe.1983.1) and Varela-Portas (Vare.2002.1).

Beatrice's miraculous (to ordinary mortals) ability to look into the Sun is momentarily granted to Dante, who sees its reflection in her eyes and somehow is able to look up into that planet with his returning gaze. When we reflect that, according to [Purg IV 62], the Sun itself is a mirror (specchio), Beatrice then becomes a mirror of the mirror of God.