Dante does as he is bid, and Cacciaguida, in answer to Dante’s request, identifies himself, gives an ACCOUNT OF ANCIENT FLORENCE, and explains how he followed CONRAD in the Crusades, BECAME A KNIGHT, and died in battle passing from MARTYRDOM TO BLISS.
Good will, in which there cannot fail to be the outgoing love of right (just as we find self-seeking love in all iniquity),
stopped the sweet trembling harp, and let fall still the blessed viol, upon whose many strings the Hand of Heaven plays Its sacred will.
How shall those beings not heed a righteous prayer when, to encourage me to speak my wish, they stopped with one accord, and waited there?
Justly they mourn in their eternal wasting who, in their love for what does not endure, stripped off the hope of this love everlasting.
As through the pure sky of a peaceful night there streaks from time to time a sudden fire, and eyes that had been still move at the sight, as if they saw a star changing its post (except that none is gone from where it started, and blazed its little while, and soon was lost)—
so, in a trail of fire across the air, from the right arm to the foot of the great cross, a star streaked from the constellation there.
Nor did that gemstone leave its diadem. Like fire behind an alabaster screen, it crossed those radiant ranks, still one with them.
Just so did the shade of ancient Ilium (if we may trust our greatest muse) go forth to greet Aeneas in Elysium.
“O sanguis meus, o superinfusa gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cui bis unquam coeli ianua reclusa?”
So spoke that radiance as I stared wide-eyed. Then I turned my eyes back to my blessed lady, and between those two souls I stood stupefied,
for such a fire of love burned in her eyes that mine, I thought, had touched the final depth both of my Grace and of my Paradise.
Then, radiating bliss in sight and sound, the spirit added to his opening words others I could not grasp: they were too profound.
Nor did the spirit’s words elude my mind by his own choice. Rather, his thoughts took place above the highest target of mankind.
And when the bow recovered from the effect of its own ardor, and its words arced down nearer the target of our intellect,
the first on which my straining powers could feed were: “Praised be Thou, O Triune Unity which showeth me such favor in my seed!”
Continuing: “The sight of you assuages a long dear hunger that grew within this lamp from which I speak, as I perused the pages
of the Great Book where neither black nor white can ever change. I give thanks to this spirit whose love gave you the wings for this high flight.
You believe that what you think rays forth to me from the Primal Intellect, as five and six, if understood, ray forth from unity.
And for that reason you do not inquire who I may be, nor why I am more joyous than the other spirits of this joyous choir.
And you are right: for here in Paradise greatest and least alike gaze in that Mirror where thoughts outsoar themselves before they rise.
But, that the Sacred Love in which I wake to the eternal vision, and which fills me with a sweet thirst, you may the sooner slake, let your own voice, assured, frank, and elated, sound forth your will, sound forth your soul’s desire, to which my answer is already fated!”
I turned to Beatrice and while I still sought words, she heard, and smiled such glad assent the joy of it gave wings to my glad will.
Thus I began: “When the First Equipoise shone forth to you, love and the power to speak love became in each of you an equal voice;
because the Sun that warmed and lighted you contains its heat and light so equally that though we seek analogies, none will do.
But mortal utterance and mortal feelings—for reasons that are evident to you—have no such equal feathers to their wings.
I, then, being mortal, in the perturbation of my unequal powers, with heart alone give thanks for your paternal salutation.
I do indeed beseech you, holy flame, and living topaz of this diadem, that you assuage my hunger to know your name.”
“O leaf of mine, which even to foresee has filled me with delight, I was your root.” —So he began in answer to my plea.
And then: “The first to take your present surname (whose soul has crawled the first round of the mountain a century and more), he who became
father of your grandfather, was my son. You would do well, by offering up good works, to shorten his long striving at his stone.
Florence, within her ancient walls secure—from them she still hears tierce and nones ring down—lived in sweet peace, her sons sober and pure.
No golden chains nor crowns weighed down her spirit, nor women in tooled sandals and studded belts more to be admired than the wearer’s merit.
A father, in those days, was not terrified by the birth of a daughter, for marriage and marriage portion had not escaped all bounds on either side.
No mansions then stood uninhabited. No Sardanapalus had yet arrived to show what may be done in hall and bed.
Montemario had not yet been outshone by your Uccellatoio, which having passed it in the race up, shall pass it going down.
Bellincion Berti, with whom I was acquainted, went belted in leather and bone; and his good wife came from the mirror with her face unpainted.
I have seen the lords of Vecchio and of Nerli content to wear plain leather, and their wives working the spindle and distaff late and early.
Fortunate they! And blest their circumstance! Each sure of her own burial place; none yet deserted in her bed because of France.
One watched the cradle, babbling soft and low to soothe her child in the sweet idiom that is the first delight new parents know.
Another, spinning in her simple home, would tell old tales to children gathered round her, of Troy, and of Fiesole, and of Rome.
A Cornelia or Cincinnatus would amaze a modern Florentine as a Cianghella or a Lapo would have startled men in those days.
To so serene, so fair a townsman’s life, to a citizenry so wedded in good faith, to such sweet dwelling, free of vice and strife,
Mary gave me—called in the pain of birth—and in your ancient Baptistry I became a Christian—and Cacciaguida, there on earth.
Moronto and Eliseo my brothers were. My wife came from the valley of the Po. The surname you now bear derives from her.
I served with Conrad in the Holy Land, and my valor so advanced me in his favor that I was knighted in his noble band.
With him I raised my sword against the might of the evil creed whose followers take from you—because your shepherds sin—what is yours by right.
There, by that shameless and iniquitous horde, I was divested of the flesh and weight of the deceitful world, too much adored
by many souls whose best hope it destroys; and came from martyrdom to my present joys.”
NOTES
4-6. Dante does not say “harp” and “viol” but “lyre” and “strings.” I take him to be referring to XIV, 118, and repeat the phrasing of that line to reinforce the reference. In any case, it is the spirits themselves who are the instruments, and it is God’s Will (the Hand of Heaven) that plays upon them. Now, however, as an act of heavenly caritas, they have forgone the bliss of their singing and wait silently to be the more readily at Dante’s service.
7-12. Since caritas is the essence of Heaven, it is the joy of the blessed to hear and to grant righteous prayers. It is fitting, therefore, that the damned mourn forever, having deliberately cast from themselves, for the sake of temporal satisfactions, the everlasting love that would have received them with such eager joy.
22-24. The soul whose glory Dante sees flashing like a falling star is compared first to a gem on a ribbon or diadem, and then to a fire moving behind an alabaster screen. The soul does not leave the blessed company, but moves through it, so rapidly and so brightly that it seems to be a falling star. Dante is standing at the foot of the great cross. Thus, the spirit approaches him from within it, remaining inside th
e cross, but at the point closest to Dante.
25-27. Ancient Ilium: Anchises, i.e., “the ancient king of Ilum.” Aeneid, VI, 684 ff., narrates the meeting of Anchises and Aeneas in the Elysian Fields. Muse: For “poet.” Virgil.
28-30. “O blood of mine! O ever abundant grace of God poured over you! To whom was the gate of Heaven ever thrown open twice, as it is to you?” twice: Now, while Dante is still in the flesh, and again after his death. St. Paul was borne up in a dream to the Third Heaven, but Dante has come in the flesh. The speaker is Cacciaguida (cahcha-GWEE-da), Dante’s great-great-grandfather. The details of Cacciaguida’s life are best presented piecemeal, in the notes to the conversation that follows. Note, however, that Cacciaguida lived in the middle and later twelfth century when the spoken language was still basically Latin. The reference to Virgil and to the Aeneid makes it doubly felicitous that he begin his remarks in Latin.
31-36. Dante is astonished by the fact that this new soul addresses him as “Blood of mine!” He turns to Beatrice (Revelation) and sees her eyes light with such bliss that he believes he has experienced the final joy of Heaven. Beatrice, of course, is radiant with her foreknowledge of Dante’s pleasure when he learns the identity of the new soul.
37-39. in sight and sound: By the sight of his radiance and by the quality of his voice. added to his opening words: some commentators have taken this phrasing to signify that Cacciaguida continued in Latin. He may have done so but that can hardly be Dante’s point, for Latin would have posed no problem of understanding. There is, rather, a much richer point to be made. Cacciaguida left the earth about a century before this meeting. His long absorption into the Divine Intellect has given him infinite insights and has made natural to him modes of thought beyond mortal understanding. He must learn, therefore, to adjust his speech to Dante’s understanding, and he begins by overshooting it.
What he has been absorbed into is, of course, omniscience, and omniscience, one might argue logically enough, would have no need to learn by trial and error. Yet, as a touch of characterization, his first inability to speak on Dante’s level is masterful.
42. target: Not only does his thought exist at a higher level than any arrow of human thought could reach, but higher even than man could think of placing the target.
48. seed: Line of descent.
52. the Great Book: Of fate. black nor white: To alter the black would be to change what is written. To alter the white would be to add to or subtract from what is written. If neither can be changed, no least change is possible.
53. this spirit: Beatrice.
55. Dante is asserting, as a principle of mathematics, that all numbers (Five or Six, for example) derive from One. So all knowledge derives from the Primal Thought, which is unity.
62. greatest and least alike: All souls in Paradise brim full of the most bliss they can achieve or conceive, and all are united in the body of God. Yet, as everywhere in Dante, degrees of difference are meticulously observed. Perhaps this state of things will seem contradictory to human reason, but we are here dealing with revelation. And certainly one can accept the premise that God’s grace, while giving to each its fill, gives one soul a greater capacity than another.
63. where thoughts outsoar themselves before they rise: I have had to yield to a rhyme-forced metaphor. Dante’s text, rendered literally, would read: “In which, before you think it, your thought outspreads itself.”
64-69. Cacciaguida knows Dante’s wish and what the answer will be, but has a sweet thirst to hear Dante’s voice: an understandable grandfatherly sentiment.
73-87. DANTE’S REPLY TO CACCIAGUIDA. Cacciaguida has asked that Dante speak in his “own voice, assured, frank, and elated.” In one sense, then, he has asked the poet Dante to rejoice Heaven with the power of poetry. Dante replies with a passage so superbly balanced that the temptation to cite it as an example of Dante’s highest style is counterbalanced only by the fact that he achieves such heights so regularly.
The First Equipoise: God, in whom all attributes co-exist equally, as light and heat co-exist in the sun. When the spirits of the Blessed are subsumed into the body of God, they, too, share this fullness of equal powers. Thus, their feelings of love and their ability to express those feelings are equal to one another in their fullness. Mortal man’s powers of feeling, on the other hand, outrun his powers of utterance. In the perturbation of his unequal powers, therefore, Dante can give thanks only with his heart. Thus, hearing Cacciaguida address him as “sanguis meus” (his “paternal salutation”) he is more deeply moved than he has power to express.
88-89. “O leaf of mine . . . I was your root”: Dante seems not to have known his lineage prior to Cacciaguida, who here describes himself as the root of the family tree of which Dante is the present leaf. The metaphoric tree can foresee little continuity from a leaf, and certainly “branch of mine” might have promised more for the future. In “leaf,” Dante may have meant to express his transience and smallness as compared to Cacciaguida’s eternal glory. foresee: Dante uses “aspettando” (awaiting). But since Heavenly souls can foresee what they wait for—and rhyme demanding—I have thought this rendering reasonable.
91-96. present surname: The surname Alighieri (then Aldighiero) is thus identified as having originated with Cacciaguida’s son. The name occurs in a Florentine document of 1189. This Aldighiero (father of Bellincione, who fathered Dante’s father) was still alive in 1201 though his date of death is not known. “A century and more,” therefore, is a bit too long. first round of the mountain: Of Purgatory. The ledge of the Proud. Pride may have been a hereditary failing of the Alighieri, or Dante may be further recognizing his own weakness. (Cf. Purgatorio, XIII, 133-138.)
97. her ancient walls: The original Roman walls. In 1173 a new ring of walls was completed, and others were added in 1284.
98. from them . . . tierce and nones: The church called La Badia was built on the old Roman walls. This church rang all the canonical hours (including tierce and nones).
103-105. In Dante’s time, Florentine girls were married in childhood, before they were ten in some cases, and with such enormous dowries that it was said a man with one daughter was impoverished and a man with two ruined. on either side: The marriage custom escaped all bounds of moderation, on one side because the girls were too young, and on the other because the dowry demands were too great.
106. no mansions then stood uninhabited: Mansions might be empty because wealthy Florentines kept great suites and halls for ostentatious display, rather than to live in; or because dissolute living had destroyed ancestral fortunes and hereditary palaces had to be closed for lack of maintenance; or because the owners (like Dante) had been forced into exile. Dante probably intends all of these reasons, for all are part of the degeneracy he has Cacciaguida lament.
107-108. Sardanapalus: King of Assyria from 667 to 626 B.C. He is cited as the type of the luxurious and libertine debauché of the harem. in hall and bed: I.e., “indoors” (by way of debauchery and of riotously expensive display).
109-111. Montemario: (Mon-teh-MAHR-i-o): A hill with a commanding view of Rome. Uccellatoio (Oo-tchell-ah-TOY-oh): A hill with a similar view of Florence. The splendor of the view from the Uccellatoio had not yet outdone the view from Montemario, but just as Florence is rising faster than Rome, so will she plunge to ruin faster.
112-113. Bellincion Berti: A nobleman of some importance, honorary citizen of Florence, and father of “the good Gualdrada” (see Inferno, XVI, 38, note). belted in leather and bone: I.e., simply—a leather belt with a bone clasp rather than ornamented stuff with a jeweled clasp.
115. Vecchio (VEH-kyo), Nerli (NEHR-lee): Both were Guelph lords of Cacciaguida’s time and leading citizens of Florence.
119. sure of her own burial place: As Dante was not, having been exiled. As, by implication, few later Florentines could be, since any of them might find himself banished.
120. because of France: In both of two possible senses. Florentine bankers and merchants often trave
led to France, hence they were often out of town. But in France, too, they learned vices for which they abandoned their wives even when they were back in Florence.
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