The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  But who is this Gherard’ in whom you say

  the past survives untarnished to reprove

  the savage breed of this degenerate day?”

  “Your question seeks to test me,” said Lombardo,

  “or else to trick me. How can you speak Tuscan

  and still seem to know nothing of Gherardo?

  Just what his surname is, I do not know—

  unless he might be known as Gaia’s father.

  Godspeed: this is as far as I may go.

  See there across the smoke, like dawn’s first rays,

  the light swell like a glory and a guide.

  The Angel of this place gives forth that blaze,

  and it is not fit he see me.” Thus he spoke,

  and said no more, but turned back through the smoke.

  NOTES

  2. no planet: Dante, it must be remembered, considered the Moon (like the Sun) to be a planet.

  15. Take care. Do not let go of me. Take care: Virgil’s warning is especially apt at this point. Wrath is a bitter and a smoky passion that blinds the wrathful soul to reason. The Italian idiom a perso i lumi degli occhii (literally, “he has lost the lamps of his eyes”) means that a man has lost his reason. Thus Virgil is warning Dante, allegorically, not to lose his Guiding Reason in the blind immoderations of Wrath.

  19-20. Agnus Dei: The Litany of the Mass includes three prayers, each of which begins with Agnus Dei—“Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.” The first two add “have mercy upon us.” The third adds “give us peace.”

  21. in perfect unison: Wrath is a discord that divides men. So, as part of their purification, these souls learn to unite in perfect concord.

  27. kalends: The kalends were the first day of each Roman month. To reckon time by kalends, therefore, is to use mortal measures which are meaningless in the eternity of the dead.

  27. someone spoke: Marco Lombardo, or Marco the Lombard. Nothing is definitely known of him, not even his exact name, for his own identification of himself may mean either “I am a man of Lombardy named Marco,” or “I am Marco of the Lombardi family.”

  38. these swathings death dissolves: Mortal flesh. That Dante is alive and that he came by way of Hell are the wonders he promised to reveal to Marco in line 33. (Here, too, one may argue that he is comparing his eternal journey with the voyages of Marco Polo.)

  51. mounted there: To Heaven, not to the next Cornice.

  57. what was said to me below: Dante must surely mean what was said by Guido del Duca. Lombardo’s theme certainly continues from what Guido had said.

  63. Some see it in the stars; some, here below: The movements of the stars and planets, as surviving astrologists still believe, determine man’s fate and compel his actions. here below: Despite the fact that Dante is in Purgatory, his words here must mean “in the world.”

  66. and you are its true son: I.e., “you have inherited its blindness.” 70-72. The problem of Free Will is one of the knottiest in Christian theology. Dante is arguing that if a man’s actions were entirely determined by the stars, he would have no control over what he does, and that he could not, therefore, justly be given eternal rewards for his virtues nor punishment for his sins.

  98-99. The shepherd who now leads mankind: The Pope. In 1300 the Pope was Boniface VIII, Dante’s supreme symbol of clerical corruption. can chew the cud, but lacks the cloven hoof . . . : Another mixed metaphor: the shepherd is presented as himself a sheep. Almost all commentators agree that chewing the cud signified spiritual reflection, and that the cloven hoof signifies the ability to distinguish between good and evil. Cf. Aquinas: discrezionem boni et mali.

  105. in you: In mankind. 116. the land the Po and the Adige water: Lombardy. 117. till Frederick came to loggerheads with Rome: Frederick II engaged in a long and disastrous conflict with, successively, Popes Honorius III, Gregory IX, and Innocent IV.

  121-122. in whom the past reproves the present: Their merit as survivors from a better age of honor and courtesy is a living reproof to the debased new age.

  124. Conrad (Corrado) da Palazzo: A nobleman of Brescia (BRESH-ah). He held various high offices in Florence, Siena, and Piacenza between 1276 and 1289. According to one old commentator, there was a report that during a battle in which Conrad served as standard-bearer, both his arms were hacked off, but that he held the standard up by hugging it with his stumps until he died. The report is unconfirmed.

  124. Gherard’: Gherardo da Cammino, Captain-General of Treviso from 1283 till his death in 1306. Dante cites him as the type of the true noble in Il Convivio, IV, 16, 114-123.

  125. Guido da Castel (Castello): A nobleman of Reggio, famous for his graciousness and liberality. Dante himself had been received by Guido with great honor.

  126. in the fashion of the French, “The Honest Lombard”: The French called all Italians “Lombards” and believed all of them to be shrewd and unscrupulous usurers. To be thus called “honest” by them would be to win praise from the least likely source. (Dante’s word is “simple”—i.e., not shrewd and unscrupulous—but “honest” is closer in English to what Dante intended.)

  127. Say, then: Dante has asked to be shown the truth that he may teach it to others. Here, Marco is summing up with Dante’s request in mind. “Say [to them] then [to sum up the whole thing].”

  131. why Levi’s sons alone: The Levites, the priests of Israel, were forbidden to inherit wealth, for the Lord was their inheritance, and except for their houses, they were commanded to depend on the tithes and offerings of the people. (See Numbers, xviii, 20; Joshua, xiii, 14; and Deuteronomy, xviii, 2.) Dante has returned once more to his basic charge against the Church—that in massing wealth and power it lost spirituality and grew corrupt. (See Inferno, XIX, 109-111.)

  139. Just what his surname is, I do not know: Whoever Marco may be, it seems unlikely that he, in his turn, could speak Tuscan, know so much about Gherardo, and not know him as one of the famous da Cammino family. Dante probably has Marco phrase things in this way in order to bring in a reference to the daughter, Gaia (GUY-yah). Gaia seems to have left two reputations behind her, one for chastity, and one for sexual abandon. Dante has been developing the theme of the degeneration of the descendants of great and good men. It seems likely, therefore, that he thought of Gaia as a wanton, hence, as one more example of the degenerate age in which the daughter of great virtue flits through easy beds.

  Canto XVII

  THE FOURTH CORNICE

  The Wrathful

  The Rein of Wrath

  THE ASCENT

  The Angel of Meekness

  The Poets emerge from the smoke and Dante is immediately enrapt by the visions that make up THE REIN OF WRATH. In succession he beholds THE DESTRUCTION CAUSED BY WRATH to PROCNE, to HAMAN, and to QUEEN AMATA. Dante emerges from his trance to hear THE ANGEL OF MEEKNESS calling to him to show him the ascent, and the Poets mount at once as the Beatitude, Blessed are the Peacemakers, is sounded behind them.

  They reach the top of the Ascent just as night falls, and though they might normally continue along the level way Dante feels his body so weighed down that he has to pause and rest.

  As the Poets rest, Virgil gives Dante a DISCOURSE ON LOVE, demonstrating to him that all actions spring from either NATURAL or SPIRITUAL LOVE, and that it is the various PERVERSIONS OF LOVE that lead to the sins that are punished in Purgatory.

  Reader, if you have ever been closed in

  by mountain mist that left you with no eyes

  to see with, save as moles do, through the skin;

  think how those dense damp vapors thinned away

  slow bit by bit till through them the sun’s ball

  was once more dimly visible—thus you may,

  and without strain, imagine from your own

  recalled experience how I came again

  to see the Sun, which now was almost down.

  Thus, matching steps with my true Guide once more,

  I passed beyond the cloud int
o those rays

  which lay already dead on the low shore.

  O Fantasy, which can entrance us so

  that we at times stand and are not aware

  though in our ears a thousand trumpets blow!—

  what moves you since our senses lie dead then?

  —A light that forms in Heaven of itself,

  or of His will who sends its rays to men.

  A vision grew within me of the wrong

  she did who for her cruelty was changed

  into that bird which most delights in song;

  and my imagination was so shut

  into itself that what I saw revealed

  could never have come to me from without.

  Next, down like rain, a figure crucified

  fell into my high fantasy, his face

  fierce and contemptuous even as he died.

  Nearby him great Ahasuerus stood,

  Esther his wife, and the just Mordecai

  whose word and deed were always one in good.

  And as soap bubbles rise in air and seem

  full-bodied things, then rupture of themselves

  when the film about them breaks, just so that dream

  vanished, and through my vision rose an image

  in which a maid cried: “O Queen! Queen no more!

  Your very being canceled by your rage!

  All not to lose Lavinia? Ah, mother,

  now have you truly lost her. I am she,

  and mourn your death before I mourn another.”

  When strong light beats against a man’s closed eyes

  his sleep is broken in him; yet, though broken,

  gives a last twitch before it wholly dies:

  my vision fell from me exactly so

  the instant a new light beat on my face,

  a light outshining any that men know.

  I was looking all about, as if to find

  where I might be, when a new voice that cried,

  “Here is the ascent” drove all else from my mind;

  and kindled in my spirit such a fire

  to see who spoke, as cannot ever rest

  till it stand face to face with its desire.

  But, as in looking at the sun, whose rays

  keep his form hidden from our stricken eyes—

  so I lacked power to look into that blaze.

  “A spirit of Heaven guides us toward the height:

  he shows us the ascent before we ask,

  and hides himself in his own holy light.

  He does for us what men in the world’s uses

  do only for themselves; for who sees need

  and waits a plea, already half refuses.

  To such sweet bidding let our feet reply

  by striving as they may before night fall;

  for then they may not, till day light the sky.”

  So spoke my Guide, and he and I as one

  moved toward the ascent; and soon as I had mounted

  the first step cut into that ramp of stone,

  I felt what seemed to be a great wing fan

  my face and heard: “Blessèd are the peacemakers,

  who feel no evil wrath toward any man.”

  The last rays, after which night rules the air,

  were now so far above us that already

  the stars began to shine through, here and there.

  “O strength, why do you melt away?” I said

  several times over to myself, for now

  it seemed my legs were turning into lead.

  We had come to where the stair ascends no more

  and we were stuck fast on the topmost step

  like a vessel half drawn up upon the shore.

  I waited with my head cocked to one side

  for any sound that might reveal the nature

  of the new ledge. Then, turning to my Guide,

  I said: “Dear Father, what impurity

  is washed in pain here? Though our feet must stay,

  I beg you not to stay your speech.” And he:

  “That love of good which in the life before

  lay idle in the soul is paid for now.

  Here Sloth strains at the once-neglected oar.

  But that you may more clearly know The Way,

  give your entire attention to my words;

  thus shall you gather good fruit from delay.

  Neither Creator nor his creatures move,

  as you well know,” he said, “but in the action

  of animal or of mind-directed love.

  Natural love may never fall to error.

  The other may, by striving to bad ends,

  or by too little, or by too much fervor.

  While it desires the Eternal Good and measures

  its wish for secondary goods in reason,

  this love cannot give rise to sinful pleasures.

  But when it turns to evil, or shows more

  or less zeal than it ought for what is good,

  then the creature turns on its Creator.

  Thus you may understand that love alone

  is the true seed of every merit in you,

  and of all acts for which you must atone.

  Now inasmuch as love cannot abate

  its good wish for the self that loves, all things

  are guarded by their nature from self-hate.

  And since no being may exist alone

  and apart from the First Being, by their nature,

  all beings lack the power to hate That One.

  Therefore, if I have parsed the truth of things,

  the evil that man loves must be his neighbor’s.

  In mortal clay such bad love has three springs:

  some think they see their own hope to advance

  tied to their neighbor’s fall, and thus they long

  to see him cast down from his eminence;

  some fear their power, preferment, honor, fame

  will suffer by another’s rise, and thus,

  irked by his good, desire his ruin and shame;

  and some at the least injury catch fire

  and are consumed by thoughts of vengeance; thus,

  their neighbor’s harm becomes their chief desire.

  Such threefold love those just below us here

  purge from their souls. The other, which seeks good,

  but without measure, I shall now make clear.—

  All men, though in a vague way, apprehend

  a good their souls may rest in, and desire it;

  each, therefore, strives to reach his chosen end.

  If you are moved to see good or pursue it,

  but with a lax love, it is on this ledge—

  after a proper penance—you will rue it.

  There is another good which bears bad fruit:

  it is not happiness, nor the true essence

  of the Eternal Good, its flower and root.

  The love that yields too much to this false good

  is mourned on the three Cornices above us;

  but in what way it may be understood

  as a tripartite thing, I shall not say.

  That, you may learn yourself upon our way.”

  NOTES

  1-3. as moles do, through the skin: Dante follows a medieval belief that the eyes of moles were completely sealed by a membranous covering through which they could see a diffused foggy light only. Here the fog does for Dante what the skin covering was supposed to do for the eyes of moles.

  9. the Sun, which now was almost down: It is near sunset of Easter Monday, the second day on the mountain.

  10. matching steps . . . once more: Through the smoke, Dante has stumbled along holding on to Virgil’s shoulder. Now, once more in the light, he is able to match Virgil’s pace.

  12. already dead on the low shore: Dante, it must be remembered, conceives Purgatory to be on a scale unmatched by any earthly mountain. The Sun, as seen from the mountain’s base, would already have set. At the poet’s altitude, however, the Sun is still
in sight. Since sunset would be at six o’clock on the earth’s surface, it must be a bit later than six now.

  13-18. THE POWER OF FANTASY: Dante is about to describe the Rein of Wrath, which consists of another set of visions. Typically, he introduces the visions with a question on the nature of the imagination, and in developing his discussion makes clear, first, that the visions are from Heaven, and second, that he is utterly enrapt by them.