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The Divine Comedy

Page 66

by Dante Alighieri


  And one among them who seemed sent from Heaven

  clarioned: “Veni, sponsa, de Libano,”

  three times, with all the others joining in.

  As, at the last trump every saint shall rise

  out of the grave, ready with voice new-fleshed

  to carol Alleluliah to the skies;

  just so, above the chariot, at the voice

  of such an elder, rose a hundred Powers

  and Principals of the Eternal Joys,

  all saying together: “Benedictus qui venis”;

  then, scattering flowers about on every side:

  “Manibus o date lilia plenis.”

  Time and again at daybreak I have seen

  the eastern sky glow with a wash of rose

  while all the rest hung limpid and serene,

  and the Sun’s face rise tempered from its rest

  so veiled by vapors that the naked eye

  could look at it for minutes undistressed.

  Exactly so, within a cloud of flowers

  that rose like fountains from the angels’ hands

  and fell about the chariot in showers,

  a lady came in view: an olive crown

  wreathed her immaculate veil, her cloak was green,

  the colors of live flame played on her gown.

  My soul—such years had passed since last it saw

  that lady and stood trembling in her presence,

  stupefied by the power of holy awe—

  now, by some power that shone from her above

  the reach and witness of my mortal eyes,

  felt the full mastery of enduring love.

  The instant I was smitten by the force,

  which had already once transfixed my soul

  before my boyhood years had run their course,

  I turned left with the same assured belief

  that makes a child run to its mother’s arms

  when it is frightened or has come to grief,

  to say to Virgil: “There is not within me

  one drop of blood unstirred. I recognize

  the tokens of the ancient flame.” But he,

  he had taken his light from us. He had gone.

  Virgil had gone. Virgil, the gentle Father

  to whom I gave my soul for its salvation!

  Not all that sight of Eden lost to view

  by our First Mother could hold back the tears

  that stained my cheeks so lately washed with dew.

  “Dante, do not weep yet, though Virgil goes.

  Do not weep yet, for soon another wound

  shall make you weep far hotter tears than those!”

  As an admiral takes his place at stern or bow

  to observe the handling of his other ships

  and spur all hands to do their best—so now,

  on the chariot’s left side, I saw appear

  when I turned at the sound of my own name

  (which, necessarily, is recorded here),

  that lady who had been half-veiled from view

  by the flowers of the angel-revels. Now her eyes

  fixed me across the stream, piercing me through.

  And though the veil she still wore, held in place

  by the wreathed flowers of wise Minerva’s leaves,

  let me see only glimpses of her face,

  her stern and regal bearing made me dread

  her next words, for she spoke as one who saves

  the heaviest charge till all the rest are read.

  “Look at me well. I am she. I am Beatrice.

  How dared you make your way to this high mountain?

  Did you not know that here man lives in bliss?”

  I lowered my head and looked down at the stream.

  But when I saw myself reflected there,

  I fixed my eyes upon the grass for shame.

  I shrank as a wayward child in his distress

  shrinks from his mother’s sternness, for the taste

  of love grown wrathful is a bitterness.

  She paused. At once the angel chorus sang

  the blessed psalm: “In te, Domine, speravi.”

  As far as “pedes meos” their voices rang.

  As on the spine of Italy the snow

  lies frozen hard among the living rafters

  in winter when the northeast tempests blow;

  then, melting if so much as a breath stir

  from the land of shadowless noon, flows through itself

  like hot wax trickling down a lighted taper—

  just so I froze, too cold for sighs or tears

  until I heard that choir whose notes are tuned

  to the eternal music of the spheres.

  But when I heard the voice of their compassion

  plead for me more than if they had cried out:

  “Lady, why do you treat him in this fashion?”;

  the ice, which hard about my heart had pressed,

  turned into breath and water, and flowed out

  through eyes and throat in anguish from my breast.

  Still standing at the chariot’s left side,

  she turned to those compassionate essences

  whose song had sought to move her, and replied:

  “You keep your vigil in the Eternal Day

  where neither night nor sleep obscures from you

  a single step the world takes on its way;

  but I must speak with greater care that he

  who weeps on that far bank may understand

  and feel a grief to match his guilt. Not only

  by the workings of the spheres that bring each seed

  to its fit end according to the stars

  that ride above it, but by gifts decreed

  in the largesse of overflowing Grace,

  whose rain has such high vapors for its source

  our eyes cannot mount to their dwelling place;

  this man, potentially, was so endowed

  from early youth that marvelous increase

  should have come forth from every good he sowed.

  But richest soil the soonest will grow wild

  with bad seed and neglect. For a while I stayed him

  with glimpses of my face. Turning my mild

  and youthful eyes into his very soul,

  I let him see their shining, and I led him

  by the straight way, his face to the right goal.

  The instant I had come upon the sill

  of my second age, and crossed and changed my life,

  he left me and let others shape his will.

  When I rose from the flesh into the spirit,

  to greater beauty and to greater virtue,

  he found less pleasure in me and less merit.

  He turned his steps aside from the True Way,

  pursuing the false images of good

  that promise what they never wholly pay.

  Not all the inspiration I won by prayer

  and brought to him in dreams and meditations

  could call him back, so little did he care.

  He fell so far from every hope of bliss

  that every means of saving him had failed

  except to let him see the damned. For this

  I visited the portals of the dead

  and poured my tears and prayers before that spirit

  by whom his steps have, up to now, been led.

  The seal Almighty God’s decree has placed

  on the rounds of His creation would be broken

  were he to come past Lethe and to taste

  the water that wipes out the guilty years

  without some scot of penitential tears!”

  NOTES

  1. the Septentrion of the First Heaven: The Septentrion is the seven stars of the Big Dipper. Here Dante means the seven candelabra. They are the Septentrion of the First Heaven (the Empyrean) as distinct from the seven stars of the dipper which occur lower down in the Sphere of the Fixed Stars.

  2. which doe
s not rise nor set: The North Star does not rise or set north of the equator, but the Septentrion, revolving around the North Star, does go below the horizon in the lower latitudes. This Septentrion of the First Heaven, however, partaking of the perfection and constancy of Heaven, neither rises nor sets but is a constant light to mankind. So these unchanging lights guide the souls of man on high, as the “lower Seven” (line

  5), in their less perfect way, guide the earthly helmsmen to their earthly ports.

  7. the holy prophets: The twenty-four elders who represent the books of the Old Testament. (See XXIX, 64, note.)

  10. one among them: The Song of Solomon.

  11. Veni, sponsa, de Libano: “Come [with me] from Lebanon, my spouse.” Song of Solomon, iv, 8. This cry, re-echoed by choirs of angels, summons Beatrice, who may be taken here as revelation, faith, divine love, hence as the bride of the spirit, to Dante (man’s redeemed soul).

  17-18. a hundred Powers and Principals: Angels.

  19. Benedictus qui venis: “Blessed is he who cometh.” (Matthew, xxi, 9.)

  21. Manibus o date lilia plenis: “Oh, give lilies with full hands.” These are the words of Anchises in honor of Marcellus. (Aeneid, VI, 883.) Thus they are not only apt to the occasion but their choice is a sweetly conceived last literary compliment to Virgil before he vanishes.

  31. a lady: Beatrice. She is dressed in the colors of Faith (white), Hope (green), and Caritas (red).

  34. since last it saw: Beatrice died in 1290. Thus Dante has passed ten years without sight of her.

  36. stupefied: Dante describes the stupor of his soul at the sight of the living Beatrice in La Vita Nuova, XIV, and XXIV. Then, however, it was mortal love; here it is eternal, and the effect accordingly greater.

  54. washed with dew: By Virgil. I, 124.

  55. Dante: This is the only point in the Commedia at which Dante mentions his own name. Its usage here suggests many allegorical possibilities. Central to all of them, however, must be the fact that Dante, in ending one life (of the mind) and beginning a new one (of faith), hears his name. The suggestion of a second baptism is inevitable. And just as a child being baptized is struck by the priest, so Beatrice is about to strike him with her tongue before he may proceed to the holy water.

  64. that lady: There are thirty-four Cantos in the Inferno and this is the thirtieth of the Purgatorio, hence the sixty-fourth Canto of the Commedia. This is the sixty-fourth line of the sixty-fourth Canto. In Dante’s numerology such correspondences are always meaningful. Six plus four equals ten and ten equals the sum of the square of trinity and unity. Obviously there can be no conclusive way of establishing intent in such a structure of mystic numbering, but it certainly is worth noting that the line begins with “that lady.” The Italian text, in fact, begins with vidi la donna, i.e., I saw the lady [who represents the sum of the square of trinity plus unity?]. The lady, of course, is Beatrice.

  68. wise Minerva’s leaves: The olive crown.

  80. his mother’s sternness: Beatrice appears in the pageant as the figure of the Church Triumphant. The Church is the mother of the devout and though she is stern, as law decrees, her sternness is that of a loving mother.

  83-84. In te, Domine, speravi . . . pedes meos: In mercy the Angel chorus sings Psalm XXXI, 1-8, beginning “In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust” and continuing as far as “thou hast set my feet in a large room.”

  85-90. the spine of Italy: The Apennines. the living rafters: The trees. the land of shadowless noon: Africa. In equatorial regions the noonday sun is at the zenith over each point twice a year. Its rays then fall straight down and objects cast no shadows.

  101. compassionate essences: The Angel chorus.

  106. greater care: For his understanding than for your intercession.

  109-11. the workings of the spheres . . . : The influence of the stars in their courses which incline men at birth to good or evil ends according to the astrological virtue of their conjunctions.

  114. our eyes: Beatrice is still replying to the plea of the Angel choir. Hence “our eyes” must refer not to mortal eyes, but to the eyes of the blessed. Not even such more-than-human eyes may mount to the high place of those vapors, for that place is nothing less than the Supreme Height, since Grace flows from God Himself.

  124-126. my second age: Beatrice’s womanhood. When she had reached the full bloom of youth Dante turned from her and wrote to his donna gentile. Allegorically, he turned from divine “sciences” to an overreliance upon philosophy (the human “sciences”). For this sin he must suffer.

  144-145. were he to come past Lethe: In passing Lethe and drinking its waters, the soul loses all memory of guilt. This, therefore, is Dante’s last opportunity to do penance.

  Canto XXXI

  THE EARTHLY PARADISE

  Lethe Beatrice, Matilda

  Beatrice continues her reprimand, forcing Dante to confess his faults until he swoons with grief and pain at the thought of his sin. He wakes to find himself in Lethe, held in the arms of Matilda, who leads him to the other side of the stream and there immerses him that he may drink the waters that wipe out all memory of sin.

  Matilda then leads him to THE FOUR CARDINAL VIRTUES, who dance about him and lead him before THE GRIFFON where he may look into THE EYES OF BEATRICE. In them Dante sees, in a FIRST BEATIFIC VISION, the radiant reflection of the Griffon, who appears now in his human and now in his godly nature.

  THE THREE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES now approach and beg that Dante may behold THE SMILE OF BEATRICE. Beatrice removes her veil, and in a SECOND BEATIFIC VISION, Dante beholds the splendor of the unveiled shining of Divine Love.

  “You, there, who stand upon the other side—”

  (turning to me now, who had thought the edge

  of her discourse was sharp, the point) she cried

  without pause in her flow of eloquence,

  “Speak up! Speak up! Is it true? To such a charge

  your own confession must give evidence.”

  I stood as if my spirit had turned numb:

  the organ of my speech moved, but my voice

  died in my throat before a word could come.

  Briefly she paused, then cried impatiently:

  “What are you thinking? Speak up, for the waters

  have yet to purge sin from your memory.”

  Confusion joined to terror forced a broken

  “yes” from my throat, so weak that only one

  who read my lips would know that I had spoken.

  As an arbalest will snap when string and bow

  are drawn too tight by the bowman, and the bolt

  will strike the target a diminished blow—

  so did I shatter, strengthless and unstrung,

  under her charge, pouring out floods of tears,

  while my voice died in me on the way to my tongue.

  And she: “Filled as you were with the desire

  I taught you for That Good beyond which nothing

  exists on earth to which man may aspire,

  what yawning moats or what stretched chain-lengths lay

  across your path to force you to abandon

  all hope of pressing further on your way?

  What increase or allurement seemed to show

  in the brows of others that you walked before them

  as a lover walks below his lady’s window?”

  My breath dragged from me in a bitter sigh;

  I barely found a voice to answer with;

  my lips had trouble forming a reply.

  In tears I said: “The things of the world’s day,

  false pleasures and enticements, turned my steps

  as soon as you had ceased to light my way.”

  And she: “Had you been silent, or denied

  what you confess, your guilt would still be known

  to Him from Whom no guilt may hope to hide.

  But here, before our court, when souls upbraid

  themselves for their own guilt in true remorse,

&n
bsp; the grindstone is turned back against the blade.

  In any case that you may know your crime

 

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