The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  a hamlet ignorant of the name you bear?

  The glories of your noble house proclaim

  its lords abroad, proclaim the lands that bear them;

  and he who does not know them knows their fame.

  I swear to you—so may my present course

  lead me on high—your honored house has never

  put by its strict sword and its easy purse.

  Usage and nature have so formed your race

  that, though the Guilty Head pervert all else,

  it still shuns ill to walk the path of grace.”

  And he: “Go now, for the Sun shall not complete

  its seventh rest in that great bed the Ram

  bestrides and covers with its four spread feet,

  before this testimony you have given

  shall be nailed to the center of your head

  with stouter nails, and more securely driven,

  than ever hearsay was. And this shall be

  certain as fate is in its fixed decree.”

  NOTES

  7-9. The original passage is hard to interpret. I think it is best taken as another of Dante’s extraordinary accounts of how his senses work. (Cf. Inferno, XX, 10, and XXXI, 14-15, and notes thereto.) Dante’s descriptions of how his senses work seem ever to call forth his pedantry. His basic idea here seems to be most nearly related to that with which he opens Canto IV—that the soul, under intense stimulus, is absorbed into one sense at a time. Up to this point he has been absorbed in listening to the spirits sing Salve Regina! and to Sordello’s account of the spirits. Now both have fallen still, and Dante gives what amounts to a sort of physiological report of his reactions, stating that bit by bit he emerges from his absorption in the sense of hearing, now useless for lack of anything to hear, and re-settles his attention in his sense of sight. (Cf. also lines 13-15, below.)

  13. Te lucis ante: The beginning of the Compline Hymn, Te lucis ante terminum (“To Thee before the light is done”). The hymn is a prayer for protection against the evils that walk the dark. Like all of Dante’s hymn choices, it is fitted to the situation, the vision that follows being precisely in answer to the hymn’s plea.

  15. my senses lost the sense of self completely: (Lit.: “It made me from myself pass from all awareness.”) Here, too, I think the key to the proper interpretation lies in the opening lines of Canto IV.

  26-27. THE BROKEN SWORDS. Symbols, well used, can seldom be narrowed to a single meaning that excludes other possibilities. The swords may symbolize God’s Justice, and the broken points that it is tempered with Mercy. They may equally symbolize that the Angel Guardians are for defense only and not for offense. There is also a possible reference to the legend that the guardian angels broke their swords when Christ entered Paradise, thereby symbolizing that they would no longer exclude with the whole sword, i.e., completely.

  34-36. In line 36, Dante clearly meant one of his characteristic comments on the behavior of all of our senses. A more literal rendering of this tercet would be:I could distinctly see their golden hair, but my eyes drew back defeated from their faces, like a sense perceiving more than it can bear.

  I have preferred the less literal rendering because it seems to manage a better effect as English poetry.

  46. three steps: I am inclined to think Dante intended only to show that the bank was not very high, but three is an important number and any of its symbolic possibilities could be argued here.

  51. before: Then Dante was standing on the bank.

  53. Judge Nin: Nino de’ Visconti da Pisa, nephew of Count Ugolino (see Inferno, XXXIII) was Justiciary of Gallura in Sardinia, then a Pisan possession. It was he who ordered the hanging of Friar Gomita (see Inferno, XXII, 82, note). He should be thought of as more nearly a viceroy for his uncle than as a judge in the modern sense. Dante knew him intimately. Lines 53-54 should be taken not as an implication that Dante knew of any great sin for which Nino should have been damned, but rather as a simple rejoicing that a man so deeply involved in worldly affairs had yet managed not to lose his soul to worldliness. Nino died in 1296.

  68-69. Cf. III, 34-39.

  70. enormous tide: Figuratively, the enormous tide between life and death. Literally, the sea between the mouth of the Tiber and the shores of Purgatory, the longest sea-route on earth as Dante conceived it.

  71. my Giovanna: his daughter. 72-81. JUDGE NINO’S REPROACH OF HIS WIFE BEATRICE: Nino Visconti’s widow was Beatrice, daughter of Opizzo da Esti (Inferno, XII, 111). She put off the weeds and white veil (the mourning costume of Dante’s time) first in being betrothed to Alberto Scotti, Lord of Piacenza, and then in jilting him to marry Galeazzo Visconti of Milan, all under the pressure of her family’s insistence and for political motives. Nino makes no allowance for the pressures that must have been brought to bear upon Beatrice, and Dante (see below) endorses his sentiments with the same lack of reservation.

  Nino proceeds to prophesy (it had already happened between 1300 and the time of the writing) that Beatrice will one day wish she had remained a widow, for the jilted Scotti took his revenge by ruining Visconti, and Beatrice had to share his poverty. Nino carries his reproach to eternity in saying that even her burial will be less honorable than it would have been had she remained true. (It was the custom for the tombs of ladies to be marked with their husbands’ coats of arms.) “The Milan” (I hope that form will do for “Milanese,” i.e., “of Milan,” and in any case it will have to) is Galeazzo Visconti, whose arms contained a viper eating a child. That viper on her tomb, says Nino, will do her less honor than would the cock of Gallura from Nino’s arms. A piece of family pride: the arms of Gallura were more ancient than those of the Visconti of Milan and Nino looks upon Galeazzo as an upstart.

  In 1328 Beatrice’s son (she was then a widow for the second time) was made Lord of Milan and her fortunes thereafter (she died in 1334) rode high once again—a turn of events Dante could not have prophesied at the time of the writing, and which, in fact, he did not live to see.

  73. her mother: Nino’s wife. But note that he refers to her not as “my wife” but as “her mother.”

  83. considered anger: Cf. Inferno, VIII, 43, and note. 85-87. I looked up . . . next: Students regularly take this line to mean that Dante is avoiding Nino’s eyes. It is simply one of Dante’s fast transitions. Nino’s remarks are closed, Dante has emphatically approved them, and with no time wasted, he passes on to the next thing of interest—the South Pole, whose stars he has never before seen except for a glimpse at dawn.

  90. the polar regions here: “Here,” equals “on this side of the Equator.” The stars are important symbols and will recur. At dawn, on the shore (at the beginning of the Ante-Purgatory) Dante had seen Four Stars representing the Four Cardinal Virtues. Now, just before beginning the True Purgatory, he sees three evening stars which may be taken as the Three Theological Virtues. In Canto XXIX, just before the appearance of Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise, Dante sees all seven together in the form of Heavenly Nymphs.

  106. hearing their green wings: How even the Serpent can register with his hearing the color of the wings remains an unanswered question. This sort of figure is one of Dante’s mannerisms. Cf. his first description of Virgil in Inferno, I, where Virgil is described as appearing (visual) hoarse (auditory) with long silence. Some critics have labeled both these passages as master ambiguities. Perhaps so.

  107-108. climbed back to their posts again: Dante does not specify whether to the bank (their watch posts) or to Heaven (their original posts). I think he meant watch posts, for the souls’ prayer (which the Angels answer) is for night-long protection. In Purgatory, only the souls below the Gate (Ante-Purgatory) are subject to temptation, and that, it would seem, of only the most perfunctory sort. In any case it is certain that they will not yield to temptation, for they are saved. The Serpent, therefore, is best taken as a formal masque-like allegory, like the Heavenly Pageant Dante will encounter at the top of the mountain.

  109-111. The shade the J
udge had summoned with his cry: Conrad. See line 65. stared at me without blinking an eye: Another Dantean peculiarity. If Dante was staring at the Angels and the Serpent, he could not know this detail.

  112-113. the lamp: the light of Divine Grace must be merited (i.e., find oil within the soul). The summit of Purgatory (the Earthly Paradise) is an “enameled” plateau. Dante uses the same word to describe the Citadel of Limbo (Inferno, IV, 115). Sense: “So may you find within your soul all the merit you need to win to the summit. . . .”

  118. Conrad Malaspina: Very little is known about this Conrad except that he was the son of Frederick I, Marchese di Villafranca, and the grandson of Conrad I. The house of Malaspina, on the other hand, was honorably known, though scarcely as well as Dante declares below. In his praise of the Malaspina family, Dante is paying a debt of gratitude for the honor and hospitality with which it received him after his exile from Florence.

  119-120. Here I purify . . . : Various interpretations of these lines have been offered. I think Conrad means that for love of friends and kin he remained so occupied in worldly affairs that he neglected God. Now in Purgatory he purifies and offers to God the love that formerly led him to be negligent.

  129. st

  rict sword . . . easy purse: valor . . . liberality. 131. the Guilty Head: Certainly the primary meaning is the Devil. The corrupt Papacy and the negligent Emperor may be secondary meanings.

  133-134. the Sun shall not complete its seventh rest: The Sun will not have completed its seventh transit of Aries (the Ram), i.e., the seven years will not pass, before Dante will know from his own experience the truth of what he has here uttered as hearsay (of the virtue and liberality of the Malaspina family). that great bed the Ram bestrides: That portion of the zodiac which falls under the sign of Aries. Aries is often depicted with his four feet spread wide.

  Canto IX

  THE GATE OF PURGATORY

  The Angel Guardian

  Dawn is approaching. Dante has a dream of A GOLDEN EAGLE that descends from the height of Heaven and carries him up to the Sphere of Fire. He wakes to find he has been transported in his sleep, that it was LUCIA who bore him, laying him down beside an enormous wall, through an opening in which he and Virgil may approach THE GATE

  OF PURGATORY.

  Having explained these matters, Virgil leads Dante to the Gate and its ANGEL GUARDIAN. The Angel is seated on the topmost of THREE STEPS that symbolize the three parts of a perfect ACT OF CONFESSION. Dante prostrates himself at the feet of the Angel, who cuts SEVEN P’s in Dante’s forehead with the point of a blazing sword. He then allows the Poets to enter. As the Gates open with a sound of thunder, the mountain resounds with a great HYMN OF PRAISE.

  Now pale upon the balcony of the East

  ancient Tithonus’ concubine appeared,

  but lately from her lover’s arms released.

  Across her brow, their radiance like a veil,

  a scroll of gems was set, worked in the shape

  of the cold beast whose sting is in his tail.

  And now already, where we were, the night

  had taken two steps upward, while the third

  thrust down its wings in the first stroke of flight;

  when I, by Adam’s weight of flesh defeated,

  was overcome by sleep, and sank to rest

  across the grass on which we five were seated.

  At that new hour when the first dawn light grows

  and the little swallow starts her mournful cry,

  perhaps in memory of her former woes;

  and when the mind, escaped from its submission

  to flesh and to the chains of waking thought,

  becomes almost prophetic in its vision;

  in a dream I saw a soaring eagle hold

  the shining height of heaven, poised to strike,

  yet motionless on widespread wings of gold.

  He seemed to hover where old history

  records that Ganymede rose from his friends,

  borne off to the supreme consistory.

  I thought to myself: “Perhaps his habit is

  to strike at this one spot; perhaps he scorns

  to take his prey from any place but this.”

  Then from his easy wheel in Heaven’s spire,

  terrible as a lightning bolt, he struck

  and snatched me up high as the Sphere of Fire.

  It seemed that we were swept in a great blaze,

  and the imaginary fire so scorched me

  my sleep broke and I wakened in a daze.

  Achilles must have roused exactly thus—

  glancing about with unadjusted eyes,

  now here, now there, not knowing where he was—

  when Thetis stole him sleeping, still a boy,

  and fled with him from Chiron’s care to Scyros,

  whence the Greeks later lured him off to Troy.

  I sat up with a start; and as sleep fled

  out of my face, I turned the deathly white

  of one whose blood is turned to ice by dread.

  There at my side my comfort sat—alone.

  The sun stood two hours high, and more. I sat

  facing the sea. The flowering glen was gone.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “From here our course

  leads us to joy, you may be sure. Now, therefore,

  hold nothing back, but strive with all your force.

  You are now at Purgatory. See the great

  encircling rampart there ahead. And see

  that opening—it contains the Golden Gate.

  A while back, in the dawn before the day,

  while still your soul was locked in sleep inside you,

  across the flowers that made the valley gay,

  a Lady came. ‘I am Lucia,’ she said.

  ‘Let me take up this sleeping man and bear him

  that he may wake to see his hope ahead.’

  Sordello and the others stayed. She bent

  and took you up. And as the light grew full,

  she led, I followed, up the sweet ascent.

  Here she put you down. Then with a sweep

  of her sweet eyes she marked that open entrance.

  Then she was gone; and with her went your sleep.”

  As one who finds his doubt dispelled, sheds fear

  and feels it change into new confidence

  as bit by bit he sees the truth shine clear—

  so did I change; and seeing my face brim

  with happiness, my Guide set off at once

  to climb the slope, and I moved after him.

  Reader, you know to what exalted height

  I raised my theme. Small wonder if I now

  summon still greater art to what I write.

  As we drew near the height, we reached a place

  from which—inside what I had first believed

  to be an open breach in the rock face—

  I saw a great gate fixed in place above

  three steps, each its own color; and a guard

  who did not say a word and did not move.

  Slow bit by bit, raising my lids with care,

  I made him out seated on the top step,

  his face more radiant than my eyes could bear.

  He held a drawn sword, and the eye of day

  beat such a fire back from it, that each time

  I tried to look, I had to look away.

  I heard him call: “What is your business here?

  Answer from where you stand. Where is your Guide?

  Take care you do not find your coming dear.”

  “A little while ago,” my Teacher said,

  “A Heavenly Lady, well versed in these matters,

  told us: ‘Go there. That is the Gate ahead.’ ”

  “And may she still assist you, once inside,

  to your soul’s good! Come forward to our three steps,”

  the courteous keeper of the gate replied.

  We came to the first step: white ma
rble gleaming

  so polished and so smooth that in its mirror

  I saw my true reflection past all seeming.

  The second was stained darker than blue-black

  and of a rough-grained and a fire-flaked stone,

  its length and breadth crisscrossed by many a crack.

  The third and topmost was of porphyry,

  or so it seemed, but of a red as flaming

  as blood that spurts out of an artery.

  The Angel of the Lord had both feet on

  this final step and sat upon the sill