120. his nature gives: The demons are fallen but they still retain many of the powers given them by their angelic origins. Note that Dante implies the existence of no such power in those Angels found in the vestibule of Hell (those who took no sides in the Wars of Heaven).
121. From Pratomagno to the spine: The Casentino, or upper valley of the Arno, is closed in on the east by the spine of the Apennines, and on the west by the Pratomagno range.
128. the royal river: The Arno.
132. the cross I had formed upon my breast: His arms crossed in contrition and as a symbol of surrender to God.
140. Pia: She has been traditionally identified as Pia de’ Tolomei (Tall-oh-MAY-yee) of Siena, who married a Guelph leader and was murdered by him. The identification is doubtful, however. The text itself must say all that is certain about her. Nor can there be much doubt that Dante’s principal interest in her is poetic rather than historical. After Bonconte’s fulsome account of his own dramatic importance, Pia’s gracious and courteous voice enters as a moving example of how effortlessly Dante can change and contrast tone. Note especially Pia’s graciousness (despite her ardent desire to win the help of prayers) in asking nothing of Dante until he has returned and rested from his great journey.
Canto VI
ANTE-PURGATORY:
THE SECOND LEDGE
The Late-Repentant
Class Three: Those Who Died by Violence
Sordello
The Poets move along with the souls still crowding about them. Dante promises all of them that he will bear word of them back to the world, but he never pauses in his climb. Among that press of souls, Dante specifically mentions seeing BENINCASA DA LATERINA, GUCCIO DE’ TARLATI, FEDERICO NOVELLO, COUNT ORSO, and PIERRE DE LA BROSSE.
Finally free of that crowd, Dante asks Virgil how it is that prayer may sway God’s will. Virgil explains in part but once more finishes by declaring that the whole truth is beyond him and that Dante must refer the question to Beatrice when he meets her.
The sun passes behind the mountain as they climb (midafternoon of Easter Sunday). The poets press on, and there on the shady slope they encounter the majestic spirit of SORDELLO who, like Virgil, is a Mantuan. Dante watches Sordello and Virgil embrace in a transport of love for their common birthplace and is moved to denounce Italy for setting brothers to war on one another, to denounce the EMPEROR ALBERT for his failure to bring unity and peace to Italy, and finally to utter an invective against Florence as the type of the war-torn and corrupt state.
The loser, when a game of dice is done,
remains behind reviewing every roll
sadly, and sadly wiser, and alone.
The crowd leaves with the winner: one behind
tugs at him, one ahead, one at his side—
all calling their long loyalty to his mind.
Not stopping, he hands out a coin or two
and those he has rewarded let him be.
So he fights off the crowd and pushes through.
Such was I then, turning my face now here,
now there, among that rout, and promising
on every hand, till I at last fought clear.
There was the Aretine who came to woe
at the murderous hand of Tacco; and the other
who drowned while he was hunting down his foe.
There, hands outstretched to me as I pushed through,
was Federico Novello; and the Pisan
who made the good Marzucco shine so true.
I saw Count Orso; and the shade of one
torn from its flesh, it said, by hate and envy,
and not for any evil it had done—
Pierre de la Brosse, I mean: and of this word
may the Lady of Brabant take heed while here,
lest, there, she find herself in a worse herd.
When I had won my way free of that press
of shades whose one prayer was that others pray,
and so advance them toward their blessedness,
I said: “O my Soul’s Light, it seems to me
one of your verses most expressly states
prayer may not alter Heaven’s fixed decree:
yet all these souls pray only for a prayer.
Can all their hope be vain? Or have I missed
your true intent and read some other there?”
And he: “The sense of what I wrote is plain,
if you bring all your wits to bear upon it.
Nor is the hope of all these spirits vain.
The towering crag of Justice is not bent,
nor is the rigor of its edict softened
because the supplications of the fervent
and pure in heart cancel the debt of time
decreed on all these souls who linger here,
consumed with yearning to begin the climb.
The souls I wrote about were in that place
where sin is not atoned for, and their prayers—
they being pagan—were cut off from Grace.
But save all questions of such consequence
till you meet her who will become your lamp
between the truth and mere intelligence.
Do you understand me? I mean Beatrice.
She will appear above here, at the summit
of this same mountain, smiling in her bliss.”
“My Lord,” I said, “let us go faster now:
I find the climb less tiring than at first,
and see, the slope already throws a shadow.”
“The day leads on,” he said, “and we shall press
as far as we yet may while the light holds,
but the ascent is harder than you guess:
before it ends, the Sun must come around
from its present hiding place behind the mountain
and once more cast your shadow on the ground.
But see that spirit stationed all alone
and looking down at us: he will point out
the best road for us as we travel on.”
We climbed on then. O Lombard, soul serene,
how nobly and deliberately you watched us!
how distant and majestic was your mien!
He did not speak to us as on we pressed
but held us fixed in his unblinking eyes
as if he were a lion at its rest.
Virgil, nonetheless, climbed to his side
and begged him to point out the best ascent.
The shade ignored the question and replied
by asking in what country we were born
and who we were. My gentle Guide began:
“Mantua . . .” And that shade, till then withdrawn,
leaped to his feet like one in sudden haste
crying: “O Mantuan, I am Sordello
of your own country!” And the two embraced.
Ah servile Italy, grief’s hostelry,
ah ship unpiloted in the storm’s rage,
no mother of provinces but of harlotry!
That noble spirit leaped up with a start
at the mere sound of his own city’s name,
and took his fellow citizen to his heart:
while still, within you, brother wars on brother,
and though one wall and moat surrounds them all,
your living sons still gnaw at one another!
O wretched land, search all your coasts, your seas,
the bosom of your hills—where will you find
a single part that knows the joys of peace?
What does it matter that Justinian came
to trim the bit, if no one sits the saddle?
Without him you would have less cause for shame!
You priests who, if you heed what God decreed,
should most seek after holiness and leave
to Caesar Caesar’s saddle and his steed—
see how the beast grows wild now none restrains
its temper, nor corrects it with the spur,
since you set medd
ling hands upon its reins!
O German Albert, you who turn away
while she grows vicious, being masterless;
you should have forked her long before today!
May a just judgment from the stars descend
upon your house, a blow so weirdly clear
that your line tremble at it to the end.
For you, sir, and your father, in your greed
for the cold conquests of your northern lands,
have let the Empire’s Garden go to seed.
Come see the Montagues and Capulets,
the Monaldi and Filippeschi, reckless man!
those ruined already, these whom ruin besets.
Come, cruel Emperor, come and see your lords
hunted and holed; come tend their wounds and see
what fine security Santafior affords.
Come see your stricken Rome that weeps alone,
widowed and miserable, and day and night
laments: “O Caesar mine, why are you gone?”
Come see your people—everywhere the same—
united in love; and if no pity for us
can move you, come and blush for your good name.
O Supreme Jove, for mankind crucified,
if you permit the question, I must ask it:
are the eyes of your clear Justice turned aside?
Or is this the unfolding of a plan
shaped in your fathomless counsels toward some good
beyond all reckoning of mortal man?
For the land is a tyrant’s roost, and any clod
who comes along playing the partisan
passes for a Marcellus with the crowd.
Florence, my Florence, may you not resent
the fact that my digression has not touched you—
thanks to your people’s sober management.
Others have Justice at heart but a bow strung
by careful counsels and not quickly drawn:
yours shoot the word forever—from the tongue.
Others, offered public office, shun
the cares of service. Yours cry out unasked:
“I will! I’ll take it on! I am the one!”
Rejoice, I say, that your great gifts endure:
your wealth, your peacefulness, and your good sense.
What truth I speak, the facts will not obscure.
Athens and Sparta when of old they drew
the codes of law that civilized the world,
gave only merest hints, compared to you,
of man’s advance. But all time shall remember
the subtlety with which the thread you spin
in mid-October breaks before November.
How often within living recollection
have you changed coinage, custom, law, and office,
and hacked your own limbs off and sewed them on?
But if your wits and memory are not dead
you yet will see yourself as that sick woman
who cannot rest, though on a feather bed,
but flails as if she fenced with pain and grief.
Ah, Florence, may your cure or course be brief.
NOTES
13-14. the Aretine: Benincasa da Laterina, a justice of the city of Arezzo. (“Aretine” means “of Arezzo.”) On the charge of highway robbery and brigandage, he passed the death sentence on the brother of Ghino (GHEE-no) di Tacco. Soon thereafter Benincasa was called to Rome to a Papal Judgeship. Ghino, a fierce robber-baron, followed him there, burst in upon him in open court, cut off his head, and escaped safely. the other (Aretine): Guccio (GHOO-tchoe) or Ciacco (TCHA-coe) de’ Tarlati (day Tahr-LAH-tee). He drowned in the Arno after the battle of Montaperti, or perhaps of Campaldino. There is some doubt as to whether he was hunter or hunted at the time.
17. Federico Novello: Little is known about him except that he was the son of Guido Novello and that he was killed in a skirmish with a band of Aretines.
17-18. the Pisan . . . Marzucco: Farinata, son of Marzucco degli Scornigiani (Scorenih-JAH-nee) of Pisa. Farinata was killed in Pisa and Marzucco, who had become a minor friar, went to bury his body. In one account, he preached a funeral sermon of forgiveness and ended by kissing the hand that had murdered his son, thus “shining so true” in Christian charity. In another account, Count Ugolino had ordered that the body be left unburied, and Marzucco went boldly before his enemy and won permission to bury his son, thus “shining so true” in courage.
19. Count Orso: Alessandro and Napoleone degli Alberti are two of the most infamous sinners in Hell. They lie together in the ice of Caïna among those who were treacherous against their own kin. Count Orso, son of Napoleone, was murdered by his cousin, the son of Alessandro.
19-22. Pierre de la Brosse: Court physician and favorite of Louis IX and later of Philip III of France. Philip had Pierre hanged in 1278. The accounts of Pierre’s downfall vary. Dante clearly believes him to have been the innocent victim of the intrigues of Queen Mary of Brabant, “the Lady” he calls upon to repent while still on earth, for fear she may find herself in a worse herd (i.e., in Hell) than that in which Pierre finds himself.
29. one of your verses: Dante must be referring to the Aeneid, VI, 376: Palinurus begs Aeneas to get him out of Hell, but the reply comes from the Sibyl: Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando (Do not hope to bend the fixed decree of the Gods by prayer).
54. the slope already throws a shadow: The Sun has declined to the west of the mountain and the Poets, on the east slope, are now in shadow. Because of the enormous height of the mountain, however, the Sun would decline behind it relatively early. It is probably about 3:00 P.M. (or a bit later) on Easter Sunday.
60. and once more cast your shadow on the ground: Virgil is chiding Dante for having been so proud of the attention his shadow attracted, and Dante has earned the gentle reproof (which, in one sense of course, he is giving himself). When Virgil mentioned Beatrice (line 49) Dante was suddenly afire to run up the rest of the mountain to the top. (As he was ready to climb the Mount of Joy in Inferno, I.) Virgil tells him that the climb is longer and harder than he supposes, for purification does not happen in a day. It is as if Virgil were saying: “Don’t sound so suddenly zealous so soon after your proud strutting: you will still have a chance to astonish the souls here with that shadow of yours.” Allegorically, if the Sun is taken as Divine Illumination, it will return to make Dante see the error of Pride—as it will indeed when Dante comes upon the souls of the Proud.
77. Sordello: A troubadour poet of the first three-quarters of the thirteenth century. He was born in Mantua, which was also Virgil’s birthplace. His life is only sketchily known, but he seems to have been a person of some political consequence. Such accounts as survive also seem to indicate his considerable accomplishments as a climber into assorted bedroom windows.
Dante has given Sordello the same relative position in Purgatory and the same majestic dignity he assigns to Farinata in Hell (Inferno, X). There is no entirely satisfactory explanation of Dante’s reasons in assigning such greatness of character to Sordello. Aside from his love poems, Sordello did write several impassioned political pieces, and Dante probably honors him for their integrity and sincerity. Great political integrity would make Sordello an especially apt guide to the souls of the Negligent Princes, the next group above, and in lines 91-137 of Canto VII, Sordello repeats exactly the sort of charges he made against the rulers of his day in Complaint (Planh) on the death of Baron Blacas, whom he represented as the figure of high chivalry dying from the world.
These correspondences may serve to explain his selection as guide to what follows, but why is he drawn so majestically? High indignation such as Sordello had shown in his Complaint seems always to have had a special attraction for Dante, who had his own gift for indignation. It would, moreover, honor Virgil to honor his noble fellow Mantuan. I am tempted to guess, however, that it was Dante’s structural sense that ruled. Sordello is one of three majestic figures that occur at roughly equiv
alent points of the three kingdoms: Farinata in Hell, Sordello in Purgatory, and Cacciaguida (Dante’s own ancestor) in Paradise. Since all three are political figures, it follows, too, that it is for Sordello’s politics rather than for his poetry or for his amours that Dante has so ennobled him. Note too, as evidence of Dante’s own character, the traits of slow dignity and hauteur for which Dante admires Sordello (cf. III: 10-11, and note).
91. Justinian: The Emperor Justinian. His reorganization and codification of Roman law trimmed the bit and adjusted the bridle of the horse (the Empire), making a unified Italy possible, but his work has gone for nothing.
94-99. You priests . . . set meddling hands upon its reins: Dante has already (Inferno, XIX, 109-111, and see note) asserted that the corruption of the Church began when it acquired wealth and power. He now charges the priests with having helped create the bloody chaos of Italian politics by meddling in temporal affairs. Thus by disregarding the Biblical injunction to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s, they have brought corruption upon the Church and destruction upon the State.
The Divine Comedy Page 39