The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  Casella was a musician and is known to have set some of Dante’s canzoni to music. The song he strikes up (line 112) is such a canzoni.

  99. he has taken all who asked: Boniface VIII decreed a Jubilee Year from Christmas 1299 to Christmas 1300. (See Inferno, XVIII, 28-33 and note.) His decree extended special indulgences even to the dead. Hence the Angel’s permissiveness.

  Note, however, that he has taken all who wished to go, all who asked. It follows that some souls did not express such a wish, almost certainly because they did not feel themselves to be ready. As in note to I, 5, the souls of Purgatory decide for themselves when they are ready to progress from one stage to the next.

  Canto III

  ANTE-PURGATORY:

  THE BASE OF THE CLIFF

  The Late-Repentant

  Class One: The Contumacious

  Manfred

  The souls scatter for the mountain, and Dante draws close to Virgil as they both race ahead. The newly risen sun is at Dante’s back. He runs, therefore, with his shadow stretched long and directly before him. Suddenly he becomes aware that there is only one shadow on the ground and he turns in panic, thinking Virgil is no longer at his side. Virgil reassures him, explaining that souls are so made as to cast no shadow. His remarks on the nature of souls give him occasion to define THE LIMITS OF REASON IN THE SCHEME OF CREATION.

  The poets reach THE BASE OF THE CLIFF and are dismayed to find that it rises sheer, offering no way by which they may climb. While Virgil is pondering this new difficulty, Dante looks about and sees a band of souls approaching so slowly that they seem scarcely to move. These are the first of THE LATE-REPENTANT souls the Poets will encounter. In life they put off the desire for grace: now, as they were laggard in life, so must they wait before they may begin their purification. The souls in this band are all souls of THE CONTUMACIOUS: they died excommunicated, but surrendered their souls to God when they were at the point of death. Their punishment is that they must wait here at the Base of the Cliff for thirty times the period of their contumacy.

  One soul among them identifies himself as MANFRED and begs Dante to bear a message to his daughter Constance in order that she may offer prayer for Manfred’s soul and thereby shorten his period of waiting. Manfred explains that prayer can greatly assist the souls in Purgatory. He also explains how it is that though contumacy is punished, no act of priest or Pope may keep from salvation a soul that has truly given itself to God.

  Those routed souls scattered across the scene,

  their faces once again turned toward the mountain

  where Reason spurs and Justice picks us clean;

  but I drew ever closer to my Guide:

  and how could I have run my course without him?

  who would have led me up the mountainside?

  He seemed gnawed by remorse for his offense:

  O noble conscience without stain! how sharp

  the sting of a small fault is to your sense!

  When he had checked that haste that urges men

  to mar the dignity of every act,

  my mind, forced in upon itself till then,

  broke free, and eager to see all before me,

  I raised my eyes in wonder to that mountain

  that soars highest to Heaven from the sea.

  Low at my back, the sun was a red blaze;

  its light fell on the ground before me broken

  in the form in which my body blocked its rays.

  I gave a start of fear and whirled around

  seized by the thought that I had been abandoned,

  for I saw one shadow only on the ground.

  And my Comfort turned full to me then to say:

  “Why are you still uncertain? Why do you doubt

  that I am here and guide you on your way?

  Vespers have rung already on the tomb

  of the body in which I used to cast a shadow.

  It was taken to Naples from Brindisium.

  If now I cast no shadow, should that fact

  amaze you more than the heavens which pass the light

  undimmed from one to another? We react

  within these bodies to pain and heat and cold

  according to the workings of That Will

  which does not will that all Its ways be told.

  He is insane who dreams that he may learn

  by mortal reasoning the boundless orbit

  Three Persons in One Substance fill and turn.

  Be satisfied with the quia of cause unknown,

  O humankind! for could you have seen All,

  Mary need not have suffered to bear a son.

  You saw how some yearn endlessly in vain:

  such as would, else, have surely had their wish,

  but have, instead, its hunger as their pain.

  I speak of Aristotle and Plato,” he said.

  “—Of them and many more.” And here he paused,

  and sorrowing and silent, bowed his head.

  Meanwhile we reached the mountain’s foot; and there

  we found so sheer a cliff, the nimblest legs

  would not have served, unless they walked on air.

  The most forsaken and most broken goat-trace

  in the mountains between Lerici and Turbia

  compared to this would seem a gracious staircase.

  My Guide exclaimed: “Now who is there to say

  in which direction we may find some slope

  up which one without wings may pick his way!”

  While he was standing, head bowed to his shoulders,

  and pondering which direction we might take,

  I stood there looking up among the boulders,

  and saw upon my left beside that cliff-face

  a throng that moved its feet in our direction,

  and yet seemed not to, so slow was its pace.

  “Master,” I said, “look up and you will find

  some people coming who may solve the problem,

  if you have not yet solved it in your mind.”

  He looked up then and, openly relieved,

  said: “Let us go to them, since they lag so.

  And you, dear son, believe as you have believed.”

  We were as far off yet from that slow flock

  (I mean when we had gone a thousand paces)

  as a strong slingsman could have thrown a rock,

  when they drew in against the cliff and stood there

  like men who fear what they see coming toward them

  and, waiting for it, huddle close and stare.

  “O well-concluded lives! O souls thus met

  already among the chosen!” Virgil said,

  “By that sweet crown of peace that shall be set

  on each of you in time, tell us which way

  leads to some slope by which we two may climb.

  Who best knows time is most grieved by delay.”

  As sheep come through a gate—by ones, by twos,

  by threes, and all the others trail behind,

  timidly, nose to ground, and what the first does

  the others do, and if the first one pauses,

  the others huddle up against his back,

  silly and mute, not knowing their own causes—

  just so, I stood there watching with my Guide,

  the first row of that happy flock come on,

  their look meek and their movements dignified.

  And when the souls that came first in that flock

  saw the light broken on the ground to my right

  so that my shadow fell upon the rock,

  they halted and inched back as if to shy,

  and all the others who came after them

  did as the first did without knowing why.

  “Let me confirm the thought you leave unspoken:

  it is a living body you see before you

  by which the sunlight on the ground is broken.

  Do not be astonished: you may rest assured

  he does not see
k the way to climb this wall

  without a power from Heaven.”—Thus my Lord

  addressed them, and those worthy spirits said,

  waving the backs of their hands in our direction:

  “First turn around, and then go straight ahead.”

  And one soul said to me: “Whoever you are,

  as you move on, look back and ask yourself

  if you have ever seen me over there.”

  I studied him with care, my head turned round:

  gold-blond he was, and handsomely patrician,

  although one brow was split by a sword wound.

  When I, in all humility, confessed

  I never before had seen him, he said, “Look”

  —and showed me a great slash above his breast.

  Then, smiling, added: “I am Manfred, grandson

  of the blessed Empress Constance, and I beg you,

  when you return there over the horizon,

  go to my sweet daughter, noble mother

  of the honor of Sicily and of Aragon

  and speak the truth, if men speak any other.

  My flesh had been twice hacked, and each wound mortal,

  when, tearfully, I yielded up my soul

  to Him whose pardon gladly waits for all.

  Horrible were my sins, but infinite

  is the abiding Goodness which holds out

  Its open arms to all who turn to It.

  If the pastor of Cosenza, by the rage

  of Clement sent to hunt me down, had first

  studied the book of God at this bright page,

  my body’s bones would still be in the ground

  there by the bridgehead outside Benevento,

  under the heavy guard of the stone mound.

  Now, rattled by the wind, by the rain drenched,

  they lie outside the kingdom, by the Verde,

  where he transported them with tapers quenched.

  No man may be so cursed by priest or pope

  but what the Eternal Love may still return

  while any thread of green lives on in hope.

  Those who die contumacious, it is true,

  though they repent their feud with Holy Church,

  must wait outside here on the bank, as we do,

  for thirty times as long as they refused

  to be obedient, though by good prayers

  in their behalf, that time may be reduced.

  See, then, how great a service you may do me

  when you return, by telling my good Constance

  of my condition and of this decree

  that still forbids our entrance to the kingdom.

  For here, from those beyond, great good may come.”

  NOTES

  1-3. The original lines are in Dante’s densest style, and every commentator has felt the need to discuss this passage at length. once again turned: Dante’s intent here seems clear enough. On their arrival the souls had looked straight ahead at the mountain. The distraction for which Cato chastised them had led them to look away. where Reason spurs and Justice picks us clean: The original phrasing is ove ragion ne fruga. If ragion is taken to mean “reason” and fruga in one of its senses to mean “to prick on,” then one meaning follows clearly enough. If, however, ragion is taken in context to mean Divine Justice—and many commentators have argued that it must so be taken—and if fruga (a very complex word) is taken in its first sense of “to probe, to search minutely, to pick clean”—then a second meaning follows. I am inclined to think that Dante always means both possibilities in such cases and I have, therefore rendered both.

  10-11. that haste that urges men to mar the dignity of every act: There can be no doubt that Dante cherished his dignity. Even in moving toward salvation he preferred a slow and stately manner. On his own premises, there is obviously a taint of pride in such a disposition. When he reaches the Cornice of the Proud, he makes it clear that Pride is the sin that most weighs upon him. Dignity, of course, is closely related to Moderation, one of the Cardinal Virtues.

  21 ff. for I saw one shadow only on the ground: The fact that Dante was still in his mortal body was evidenced in Hell by his breathing, by the way his weight made a boat settle in the water, by the fact that his foot dislodged a stone, and by the force with which he inadvertently kicked one of the damned. Now that he is once more in the light, his shadow becomes the principal means of identifying him as a living man, for souls cast no shadows. Dante is to use this device often in the Cantos that follow.

  27. It was taken to Naples from Brindisium: Virgil died in Brindisium in 19 B.C. His bones were later exhumed and reinterred in Naples by order of the Emperor Augustus.

  29-30. the heavens which pass the light: The heavens are the spheres of the Ptolemaic system. They are conceived as crystalline and as so clear that light passes from one to the other undiminished. Dante’s figure, literally rendered, is: “whose rays do not block one another.”

  40-45. You saw how some yearn: Dante saw them in Limbo. As Virgil goes on to explain, he means “the masters of those who know.” His clear implication is that if such monuments of human intellect could never penetrate the mystery of the All, it is folly for mankind to seek to explain the reasons for God’s ways. Of them and many more: Part of Virgil’s sorrow is due to the fact that he is one of the “many more.”

  50. Lerici and Turbia: Lerici lies on the shores of the Mediterranean near the river Magra, and Turbia stands a bit inland from the Mediterranean on the other side of Liguria. The tract of mountains between them is one of the most rugged in all Europe.

  52. Now who is there to say: Virgil had traveled through Hell once before (see Inferno , IX, 24, note) and knew that way, but the road of Purgatory is unknown to him.

  58 ff. THE CONTUMACIOUS. The section of the Mount of Purgatory that lies below the Gate (the Ante-Purgatory) is occupied by the Late-Repentant who put off their surrender to God until the end of their lives. As they made God wait, so must they now wait before they may begin their purification. These souls suffer no pain but the burning of their own frustrated desire to mount to God. They may well be compared with the souls in Limbo, except that they are all assured that they will one day rise, whereas there is no hope in Limbo.

  The Contumacious, therefore, are the first class of the Late-Repentant. (Hence the slowness of their motions now. Note that such slowness, in constraining souls whose most ardent wish is to race forward to God, is a moral allegory. Purgatory, one must recall, is the way to the renunciation of sin. The soul so long curbed cannot fail to root out of itself the last laggard impulse. Such, at least, is clearly Dante’s moral intention.) The present band must expiate not only personal negligence and tardiness in turning to God but disobedience to the Church from which they were excommunicated. Before they can mount to the next phase of their purification they must delay here for a period thirty times as long as the period of their disobedience.

  66. believe as you have believed: Virgil’s remark here is best taken to mean, in an extended paraphrase: “Continue as you have done [to submit yourself and your reason to the revealed fact of God without seeking to probe too deeply], for unlike these souls who put off their repentance to the moment of their deaths, you have repented early and strained every resource to win to Grace.”

  74. already among the chosen: The souls in Purgatory must suffer their purification but they are already, in effect, saved and will eventually enter Heaven.

  78. Who best knows time is most grieved by delay: A home thrust. Who knows time better than these souls who must suffer their most grievous delay?

  89-90. to my right . . . my shadow fell upon the rock: The sun has only recently risen. It is still, therefore, in the east. Since it threw Dante’s shadow directly before him as he approached the mountain, and now throws his shadow to the right, the Poets must have moved more or less due west toward the cliff and must then have borne south.

  101. waving the backs of their hands in our direction: To indicate the way. Th
e gesture is Italian. We should be inclined to point.

  104. as you move on, look back: Note that the speaker does not ask Dante to delay his journey even an instant, but only to look back while continuing on his way.

  105. over there: In Purgatory “over there” always means “back in the world.”