Commentary Par IV 49-54

The Timaeus argues that the souls of the dead return to the stars which gave them birth.  This is heresy, tout court, if it is meant literally.  Beatrice's correction of Dante's error, concocted in the previous canto as a recapitulation of the error he had in fact first made in the Convivio, should end our own confusion as to the presence of the souls in the spheres.  They appear in a sort of cosmic accommodative metaphor, thus suggesting that all the last canticle up to its thirtieth canto (with a brief hiatus in the twenty-third -- see C.Par.XXIII.61-63) is a vast metaphoric preparation for the seeing face-to-face that will occur in the Empyrean.  Further, such an understanding reminds us how 'historical,' how 'real,' everything described and seen in the first two canticles has seemed in comparison.