The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  62-63. that bright mirror: The Sun, reflector of God’s Love. up and down: in two senses: first, to the upper (Northern) and lower (Southern) Hemispheres; second, up to Heaven and down to Earth.

  71-72. the path that Phaëthon could not follow: Apollo was the charioteer of the Sun. One day Phaëthon, son of Apollo, tried to drive the chariot of his father, but lost control and the four great horses dragged the Sun out of its course, threatening both Heaven and Earth until Zeus killed Phaëthon with a thunderbolt and saved Creation. The Milky Way is the scar left on the sky by Phaëthon’s mad course.

  76-84. THE CELESTIAL EQUATOR: The passage is in Dante’s most pedantic style and has given rise to several varying interpretations. I take the soundest of them to be based on Dante’s Il Convivio, II, iv, 50-58: “And it is to be understood that each heaven below the Crystalline [i.e., the Sphere of the Fixed Stars] has two poles that are constant in relation to that heaven itself; and the ninth [ the Crystalline] has two poles that are firm and fixed and immovable in every respect; and each, the ninth like all the others, has a circle which may be called the equator of its proper heaven; the which is equally distant from one pole and the other, as one may clearly understand if he revolves an apple or some other round thing.”

  Hence the following extended paraphrase of lines 79-84: “The mid-circle of the Crystalline Sphere, which is called the Celestial Equator, always lies between the Sun and that hemisphere in which it is winter, and, for the reason you have just given [i.e., that Purgatory and Zion are antipodal] the Celestial Equator must always lie as far to the north of this place [Purgatory] as the Hebrews [when, before the dispersion of the Jews, they looked at it from Jerusalem] were accustomed to seeing it toward the south [warmer climes].”

  96. I know this much for truth and say no more: At that journey’s end, Virgil (Human Reason) will vanish and Beatrice (Divine Love, a compound of Mercy, Light, and Contemplation) will lead Dante. Virgil has spoken as much as Reason can know to be true.

  97-135. BELACQUA. He was a Florentine who manufactured parts for musical instruments. Of him the Anonimo Fiorentino says: “He was the most indolent man who ever lived. . . . Dante was very intimate with him and used often to take him to task for his laziness.” Dante’s own treatment of him would certainly indicate that he is dealing with an old friend about whose indolence he has often worried.

  119-120. So you really know now . . . : Belacqua’s words are sarcastic, perhaps by way of taking revenge for Dante’s description of him to Virgil, but it is the easy and fond sarcasm of a friend, and Dante accepts Belacqua’s way of speaking with a half-smile.

  128. God’s Bird above the Gate: God’s Angel above the Gate Dante will come to in Canto IX. Dante refers to Angels as God’s Birds in a number of passages. The gate is the entrance to Purgatory proper. There is no gate between Purgatory and Heaven as there is between Earth and Hell. Those who pass the Gate of Purgatory are already effectively in Heaven, though they must first undergo their purification.

  130-132. I must wait here: Because Belacqua indolently put off his repentance (the good sighs) until his last breath, he in effect refused God during the days of his life. Now God makes Belacqua wait, before he may begin his approach to Heaven, for as long a period as Belacqua made Him wait.

  133-135. Prayer could help me: See VI, 30-45.

  136-140. THE TIME: It is now noon at Purgatory. It must therefore be midnight in Jerusalem. Dante believed Morocco to lie exactly 90° west of Jerusalem (in the same longitude as Spain) and 90° west of midnight is six hours earlier. Hence, it is six o’clock there and night would just be beginning.

  Canto V

  ANTE-PURGATORY:

  THE SECOND LEDGE

  The Late-Repentant

  Class Three: Those Who Died

  by Violence Without Last Rites

  The Poets continue up the mountain and Dante’s shadow once more creates excitement among the waiting souls. These are the souls of THOSE WHO DIED BY VIOLENCE WITHOUT LAST RITES. Since their lives were cut off, they did not have full opportunity to repent, and therefore they are placed a step higher than the simply Indolent.

  These souls crowd about Dante, eager to have him bear news of them back to the world and so to win prayers that will shorten their delay. Virgil instructs Dante to listen to these souls, but warns him not to interrupt his own climb to Grace. The Poets, therefore, continue to press on while the souls cluster about and follow them, each of them eager to tell his story and to beg that Dante speak of them when he returns to the world.

  I was following the footsteps of my Guide,

  having already parted from those shades,

  when someone at my back pointed and cried:

  “Look there! see how the sun’s shafts do not drive

  through to the left of that one lower down,

  and how he walks as if he were alive!”

  I looked behind me to see who had spoken,

  and I saw them gazing up at me alone,

  at me, and at the light, that it was broken.

  At which my Master said: “Why do you lag?

  What has so turned your mind that you look back?

  What is it to you that idle tongues will wag?

  Follow my steps, though all such whisper of you:

  be as a tower of stone, its lofty crown

  unswayed by anything the winds may do.

  For when a man lets his attention range

  toward every wisp, he loses true direction,

  sapping his mind’s force with continual change.”

  What could I say except “I come”? I said it

  flushed with that hue that sometimes asks forgiveness

  for which it shows the asker to be fit.

  Meanwhile across the slope a little before us

  people approached chanting the Miserere

  verse by verse in alternating chorus.

  But when they noticed that I blocked the course

  of the Sun’s arrows when they struck my body,

  their song changed to an “Oh! . . .” prolonged and

  hoarse.

  Out of that silenced choir two spirits ran

  like messengers and, reaching us, they said:

  “We beg to know—are you a living man?”

  My Guide replied: “You may be on your way.

  And bear back word to those who sent you here

  he does indeed still walk in mortal clay.

  If, as I think, it was his shadow drew them

  to stand and stare, they know already. Tell them

  to honor him: that may be precious to them.”

  I never saw hot vapors flashing through

  the first sweet air of night, or through the clouds

  of August sunsets, faster than those two

  ran up to join their band, wheeled round again,

  and, with the whole band following, came toward us,

  like cavalry sent forward with a loose rein.

  “There are hundreds in that troop that charges so,”

  my Guide said, “and all come to beg a favor.

  Hear them, but press on, listening as you go.”

  “Pure spirit,” they came crying, “you who thus

  while still inside the body you were born to

  climb to your bliss—oh pause and speak to us.

  Is there no one here you recognize? Not one

  of whom you may bear tidings to the world?

  Wait! Won’t you pause? Oh please! Why do you run?

  We all are souls who died by violence,

  all sinners to our final hour, in which

  the lamp of Heaven shed its radiance

  into our hearts. Thus from the brink of death,

  repenting all our sins, forgiving those

  who sinned against us, with our final breath

  we offered up our souls at peace with Him

  who saddens us with longing to behold

  His glory on the throne of Seraphim.”

  “O
h well-born souls,” I said, “I can discover

  no one among you that I recognize

  however much I search your faces over;

  but if you wish some service of me, speak,

  and if the office is within my power

  I will perform it, by that peace I seek

  in following the footsteps of this Guide,

  that peace that draws me on from world to world

  to my own good.” I paused, and one replied:

  “No soul among us doubts you will fulfill

  all you declare, without your need to swear it,

  if lack of power does not defeat your will.

  I, then, who am no more than first to plead,

  beg that if ever you see that land that lies

  between Romagna and Naples, you speak my need

  most graciously in Fano, that they to Heaven

  send holy prayers to intercede for me;

  so may my great offenses be forgiven.

  I was of Fano, but the wounds that spilled

  my life’s blood and my soul at once, were dealt me

  among the Antenori. I was killed

  where I believed I had the least to fear.

  Azzo of Este, being incensed against me

  beyond all reason, had me waylaid there.

  Had I turned toward La Mira when they set

  upon me first outside of Oriaco,

  I should be drawing breath among men yet.

  I ran into the swamp, and reeds and mud

  tangled and trapped me. There I fell. And there

  I watched my veins let out a pool of blood.”

  Another spoke: “So may the Love Divine

  fulfill the wish that draws you up the mountain,

  for sweet compassion, lend your aid to mine.

  I am Bonconte, once of Montefeltro.

  Because Giovanna and the rest forget me,

  I go among these souls with head bowed low.”

  And I: “What force or chance led you to stray

  so far from Campaldino that your grave

  remains to be discovered to this day?”

  And he: “There flows below the Casentino

  a stream, the Archiana, which arises

  above the hermitage in Appennino.

  There where its name ends in the Arno’s flood

  I came, my throat pierced through, fleeing on foot

  and staining all my course with my life’s blood.

  There my sight failed. There with a final moan

  which was the name of Mary, speech went from me.

  I fell, and there my body lay alone.

  I speak the truth. Oh speak it in my name

  to living men! God’s angel took me up,

  and Hell’s cried out: ‘Why do you steal my game?

  If his immortal part is your catch, brother,

  for one squeezed tear that makes me turn it loose,

  I’ve got another treatment for the other!’

  You are familiar with the way immense

  watery vapors gather on the air,

  then burst as rain, as soon as they condense.

  To ill will that seeks only ill, his mind

  added intelligence, and by the powers

  his nature gives, he stirred the mist and wind.

  From Pratomagno to the spine, he spread

  a mist that filled the valley by day’s end;

  then turned the skies above it dark as lead.

  The saturated air changed into rain

  and down it crashed, flooding the rivulets

  with what the sodden earth could not retain;

  the rills merged into torrents, and a flood

  swept irresistibly to the royal river.

  The Archiana, raging froth and mud,

  found my remains in their last frozen rest

  just at its mouth, swept them into the Arno,

  and broke the cross I had formed upon my breast

  in my last agony of pain and guilt.

  Along its banks and down its bed it rolled me,

  and then it bound and buried me in silt.”

  A third spoke when that second soul had done:

  “When you have found your way back to the world,

  and found your rest from this long road you run,

  oh speak my name again with living breath

  to living memory. Pia am I.

  Siena gave me birth; Maremma, death.

  As he well knows who took me as his wife

  with jeweled ring before he took my life.”

  NOTES

  3. when someone at my back pointed and cried: Dante does not explain how he could see a gesture made behind his back.

  8-9. at me alone, at me: Dante feels a moment of pride at attracting so much attention. He will have more to say later about Pride as his most dangerous spiritual fault.

  20. that hue that sometimes asks forgiveness: A typically Dantean figure. The hue, of course, is red, i.e., the blush. But one may flush red with anger as well as blush with shame. Hence, the hue only “sometimes” asks forgiveness.

  22. across: The souls are not climbing the slope but are circling it in their long delay. before us: Since the poets are facing uphill, “before” must equal “above.”

  23. Miserere: The souls are singing the Fiftieth Psalm: “Have mercy upon us.” Each band of souls on the mountain has its particular prayer—all, that is, but the Contumacious (who have been cut off from the offices of ritual).

  24. verse by verse in alternating chorus: They are singing, that is to say, antiphonally, but with two choruses rather than with a single voice and a chorus as is more usual in the litany.

  37-39. hot vapors: Dante’s meteorology was built largely on a theory of the opposition of hot and wet vapors. (See Inferno, XXIV, 142 ff., note.) Here he describes, first, falling stars (flashing through the first sweet air of night) and, second, heat lightning (flashing through the clouds of August sunsets). He attributes both phenomena to hot or “fiery” vapors.

  37-42. The figure certainly goes from the instantaneous to the merely rapid with an interesting flourish of anticlimax. One may guess that Dante set out to indicate great speed, established that in the meteorological part of the figure, and then, needing time for Virgil to make the remarks that establish the following scene, slowed down the charge from the speed of lightning to the speed of horses.

  52. THE LATE-REPENTANT WHO DIED BY VIOLENCE: Like the Indolent, these souls put off repentance to their last breath, but with the partially extenuating circumstance that their lives were cut short. Had they lived out their full lives, they might have repented before the end. The benefit of the doubt is at least possible. They are, therefore, a step above the merely Indolent and a step below the Negligent Princes who, powerfully occupied by worldly affairs (with the exception of Henry III of England), had a special excuse for not turning their thoughts to Heaven sooner.

  69-90. one replied: Jacopo del Cassero. Of a leading family of Fano, a city located in the district that lay between Romagna and the kingdom of Naples, he served as chief magistrate of Bologna from 1296 to 1297 in a manner that offended the powerful Azzo VIII of Este. In 1298, Jacopo was called to Milan to serve as chief magistrate (podestà) of that city. On his way there he was set upon outside the town of Oriaco (or Oriago) and killed by Azzo’s hirelings after a chase in which he foundered among the reeds and mud of a nearby swamp area. Had he turned instead toward La Mira, a Paduan city, he would have found refuge. among the Antenori: Among the Paduans. According to legend, Padua was founded by Antenor of Troy. incensed . . . beyond all reason: Theologically, of course, murder is beyond all reason, but Jacopo’s constant slurring references to Azzo as a traitor, and worse, would have passed as reason enough among the proud lords of that day.

  94-135. Bonconte: Son of Guido da Montefeltro who is in Hell as an evil counselor (Inferno, XXVII). Bonconte was a leader of the Ghibellines at the battle of Campaldino, a battle in which it has been reported that Dante
took part. The Florentine Guelphs defeated the Ghibellines in this battle and Bonconte was killed (June 11, 1289). The Archiana is a nearby river that rises in the Apennines and flows into the Arno (the point at which “its name ends”). Giovanna (line 95) was his wife, and neither she nor anyone else has offered prayers to shorten his time of waiting.

  The nicely functioning ambiguity of line 96 must not be missed: (1) I go among these whose heads are bowed low; (2) with head bowed low in shame for such neglect I go among these.

  110-114. The incident is very similar to the one Bonconte’s father describes in Inferno , XXVII, but with opposite results. Such parallel scenes, as noted before, are very much a part of Dante’s structural sense and are certainly intended to suggest moral reflection on the parallelism.