The Divine Comedy Volume Ii Part 11

Then when those shades were so far parted from us that they could no more be seen, a new thought set itself within me, from which many others and diverse were born; and I so strayed from one unto another that, thus wandering, I closed my eyes, and trans.m.u.ted my meditation into dream.

CANTO XIX. Fourth Ledge: the Slothful--Dante dreams of the Siren.--The Angel of the Pa.s.s.--Ascent to the Fifth Ledge.--Pope Adrian V.

At the hour when the diurnal heat, vanquished by the Earth or sometimes by Saturn,[1] can warm no more the coldness of the moon,--when the geomancers see their Greater Fortune[2] in the east, rising before the dawn along a path which short while stays dark for it,--there came to me in dream[3] a woman stammering, with eyes asquint, and crooked on her feet, with hands lopped off, and pallid in her color. I gazed at her; and as the sun comforts the cold limbs which the night bennmbs, so my look made her tongue nimble, and then set her wholly straight in little while, and so colored her wan face as love requires. Then, when she had her speech thus unloosed, she began to sing, so that with difficulty should I have turned my attention from her. "I am,"

she sang, "I am the sweet Siren, and the mariners in mid sea I bewitch, so full am I of pleasantness to hear. I turned Ulysses from his wandering way by my song; and whoso abides with me seldom departs, so wholly I content him."

[1] Toward dawn, when the warmth of the preceding day is exhausted, Saturn was supposed to exert a frigid influence.

[2] "Geomancy is divination by points in the ground, or pebbles arranged in certain figures, which have peculiar names. Among these is the figure called the Fortuna Major, which by an effort of imagination can also be formed out of some of the last stars of Aquarius and some of the first of Pisces." These are the signs that immediately precede Aries, in which the Sun now was, and the stars forming the figure of the Greater Fortune would be in the east about two hours before sunrise.

[3] The hour when this dream comes to Dante is "post mediam noctem ... c.u.m somnia vera,"--the hour in which it was commonly believed that dreams have a true meaning. The woman seen by Dante is the deceitful Siren, who symbolizes the temptation to those sins of sense from which the spirits are purified in the three upper rounds of Purgatory.

Not yet was her mouth closed when at my side a Lady[1] appeared, holy, and ready to make her confused. "O Virgil, Virgil, who is this?" she sternly said; and he came with his eyes fixed only on that modest one. She took hold of the other, and in front she opened her, rending her garments, and showed me her belly; this waked me with the stench that issued from it. I turned my eyes, and the good Virgil said, "At least three calls have I given thee; arise and come; let us find the opening through which thou mayst enter."

[1] This lady seems to be the type of the conscience, virtus intellectualis, that calls reason to rescue the tempted soul.

Up I rose, and now were all the circles of the sacred mountain full of the high day, and we went on with the new sun at our backs. Following him, I bore my forehead like one who has it laden with thought, and makes of himself the half arch of a bridge, when I heard, "Come ye! here is the pa.s.sage," spoken in a mode soft and benign, such as is not heard in this mortal region.

With open wings, which seemed of a swan, he who thus had spoken to us turned us upward between the two walls of the hard rock. He moved his feathers then, and fanned us, affirming qui lugent[1]

to be blessed, for they shall have their souls mistresses of consolation.[2] "What ails thee that ever on the ground thou lookest?" my Guide began to say to me, both of us having mounted up a little from the Angel. "With such apprehension a recent vision makes me go, which bends me to itself so that I cannot from the thought withdraw me." "Hast thou seen," said he, "that ancient sorceress who above us henceforth is alone lamented? Hast thou seen how from her man is unbound? Let it suffice thee, and strike thy heels on the ground;[3] turn thine eyes to the lure that the eternal King whirls with the great circles."

[1] "They that mourn."

[2] The meaning seems to be, "they shall be possessed of comfort." Donne (i.e."mistresses ) is a rhyme-word, and affords an instance of a straining of the meaning compelled by the rhyme.

[3] Hasten thy steps.

Like the falcon that first looks down, then turns at the cry, and stretches forward, through desire of the food that draws him thither; such I became, and such, so far as the rock is cleft to afford a way to him who goeth up, did I go on as far as where the circling[1] is begun. When I was come forth on the fifth round, I saw people upon it who were weeping, lying upon the earth all turned downward. "Adhoesit pavimento anima mea,"[2] I heard them saying with such deep sighs that the words were hardly understood. "O elect of G.o.d, whose sufferings both justice and hope make less hard, direct us toward the high ascents." "If ye come secure from the lying down, and wish to find the speediest way, let your right hands always be outside." So prayed the Poet, and so a little in front was replied to us by them; wherefore I, in his speaking, marked the hidden one;[3] and then turned my eyes to my Lord, whereon he granted me, with cheerful sign, that which the look of my desire was asking for. Then when I could do with myself according to my will, I drew me above that creature whose words had first made me note him, saying, "Spirit in whom weeping matures that without which no one can turn to G.o.d, suspend a little for me thy greater care. Tell me who thou wast; and why ye have your backs turned upward; and if thou wishest that I obtain aught for thee there whence I alive set forth." And he to me, "Thy heaven turns to itself our hinder parts thou shalt know; but first, scias quod ego fui successor Petri.[4] Between Sestri and Chiaveri[5] descends a beautiful stream,[6] and of its name the t.i.tle of my race makes its top.[7] One month and little more I proved how the great mantle weighs on him who guards it from the mire, so that all other burdens seem a feather. My conversion, ah me! was tardy; but when I had become the Roman Shepherd, then I found out the lying life. I saw that there the heart was not at rest; nor was it possible to, mount higher in that life; wherefore the love of this was kindled in me. Up to that time a wretched soul and parted from G.o.d had I been, avaricious of everything; now, as thou seest, I am punished for it here. That which avarice doth is displayed here in the purgation of these converted souls, and the Mountain has no more bitter penalty.[8] Even as our eye, fixed upon earthly things, was not lifted on high, so justice here to earth has depressed it. As avarice, in which labor is lost, quenched our love for every good, so justice here holds us close, bound and captive in feet and hands; and, so long as it shall be the pleasure of the just Lord, so long shall we stay immovable and outstretched."

[1] The level of the fifth round.

[2] "My soul cleaveth to the dust."-- Psalm cxix. 25.

[3] The face of the speaker, turned to the ground, was concealed.

[4] "Know that I was a successor of Peter." This was the Pope Adrian V., Ottobono de' Fieschi, who died in 1276, having been Pope for thirty-eight days.

[5] Little towns on the Genoese sea-coast.

[6] The Lavagna, from which stream the Fieschi derived their t.i.tle of Counts of Lavagna.

[7] Its chief boast.

[8] Others may be greater, but none more humiliating.

I had knelt down and wished to speak; but when I began, and he became aware, only by listening, of my reverence, "What cause,"

said he, "hath bent thee thus downward?" And I to him, "Because of your dignity my conscience stung me for standing." "Straighten thy legs, and lift thee up, brother," he replied; "err not, fellow servant of one power am I with thee and with the rest.[1]

If ever thou hast understood that holy gospel sound which says neque nubent,[2] thou mayst well see why I speak thus. Now go thy way. I will not that thou longer stop; for thy stay hinders my weeping, with which I ripen that which thou hast said. A grandchild I have on earth who is named Alagia,[3] good in herself, if only our house make her not wicked by example; and she alone remains to me yonder."[4]

[1] And I fell at His feet to wors.h.i.+p him. And He said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellow servant."--Revelation xix.

10.

[2] They neither marry."--Matthew, xxii. 80. The distinctions of earths do not exist in the spiritual world.

[3] Alagia was the wife of the Marquis Moroello Malaspina. See the close of Canto VIII. Dante had probably seen her in 1306, when he was a guest of the house, in the Lunigiana.

[4] Not that she was his only living relative, but the only one whose prayers, coming from a good heart, would avail him.

CANTO XX. Fifth Ledge: the Avaricious.--The Spirits celebrate examples of Poverty and Bounty.--Hugh Capet.--His discourse on his descendants.--Trembling of the Mountain.

Against a better will the will fights ill: wherefore against my own pleasure, in order to please him, I drew from the water the sponge not full.

I moved on, and my Leader moved on through the s.p.a.ce vacant only alongside of the rock, as upon a wall one goes close to the battlements. For on the other side the people, that through their eyes are pouring drop by drop the evil that possesses all the world, approach too near the edge.[1]

[1]Too close to leave a s.p.a.ce for walking.

Accursed be thou, old she-wolf, who more than all the other beasts hast prey, because of thy hunger hollow without end! O Heaven! by whose revolution it seems that men believe conditions here below are trans.m.u.ted, when will he come through whom she shall depart?[1] We were going on with slow and scanty steps, and I attentive to the shades whom I heard piteously lamenting and bewailing; and peradventure I heard in front of us one crying out, "Sweet Mary," in his lament, even as a woman does who is in travail; and continuing, "So poor wast thou as may be seen by that inn where thou didst lay down thy holy burden." And following this I heard, "O good Fabricius,[2] thou didst rather wish for virtue with poverty than to possess great riches with vice." These words were so pleasing to me that I drew myself further on to have acquaintance with that spirit from whom they seemed to come. He was speaking furthermore of the largess which Nicholas[3] made to the damsels in order to conduct their youth to honor. "O soul that discoursest so well," said I, "tell me who thou wast, and why thou alone renewest these worthy praises. Not without meed will be thy words, if I return to complete the short journey of that life which flies towards its end." And he, "I will tell thee, not for comfort that I may expect from yonder,[4]

but because such grace s.h.i.+neth on thee ere thou art dead. I was the root of the evil plant which so overshadows all the Christian land[5] that good fruit is rarely plucked therefrom. But if Douai, Lille, Ghent, and Bruges had power, soon would there be vengeance on it;[6] and I implore it from him who judges everything. Yonder I was called Hugh Capet: of me are born the Philips and the Louises, by whom of late times France is ruled. I was the son of a butcher of Paris.[7] When the ancient kings had all died out, save one, who had a.s.sumed the grey garb,[8] I found me with the bridle of the government of the realm fast in my hands, and with so much power recently acquired, and so full of friends, that to the widowed crown the head of my son was promoted, from whom the consecrated bones[9] of these began.

[1] The old she-wolf is avarice, the same who at the outset (h.e.l.l, Canto I.) had driven Dante back and made him lose hope of the height. The likeness of the two pa.s.sages is striking.

[2] Caius Fabricius, the famous poor and incorruptible Roman consul, who refused the bribes of Pyrrhus, King of Epirus. Dante extols his worth also in the Convito, iv. 5.

[3] St. Nicholas, Bishop of Mira, who, according to the legend, knowing that owing to the poverty of their father, three maidens were exposed to the risk of leading lives of dishonor, secretly, at night, threw into the window of their house money enough to provide each with a dowry.

[4] The earth.

[5] In 1300 the descendants of Hugh Capet were ruling France, Spain, and Naples.

[6] Phillip the Fair gained possession of Flanders, by force and fraud, in 1299; but in 1802 the French were driven out of the country, after a fatal defeat at Courtrai, here dimly prophesied.

[7] Dante here follows the incorrect popular tradition.

[8] Who had become a monk. The historical reference is obscure.

[9] An ironical reference to the ceremony of consecration at the coronation of the kings.