O grace abounding and allowing me to dare to fix my gaze on the Eternal Light, so deep my vision was consumed in it! I saw how it contains within its depths all things bound in a single book by love of which creation is the scattered leaves: how substance, accident, and their relation were fused in such a way that what I now describe is but a glimmer of that Light.

The ensuing line L'ombra sua torna ch'era dipartita ("his spirit which had left us returns") is poignantly absent from the empty tomb. (The city council of Florence finally passed a motion rescinding Dante's sentence in June 2008. In 2007 a reconstruction of Dante's face was undertaken in a collaborative project.

: /ˈdænti/ US /ˈdɑːnteɪ/; Italian: [ˈdante]; c. His Divine Comedy originally called Commedia and later called Divina by Boccaccio is widely considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.