The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  of the Almighty King, avenged the wounds

  that poured the blood Iscariot betrayed,

  I lived renowned back there,” replied that soul,

  “in the most honored and enduring name,

  but still without the faith that makes us whole.

  My verses swelled with such melodious breath

  that, from Toulouse, Rome called me to herself,

  and there I merited a laurel wreath.

  Statius my name, and it still lives back there.

  I sang of Thebes, then of the great Achilles,

  but found the second weight too great to bear.

  The sparks that were my seeds of passion came

  from that celestial fire which has enkindled

  more than a thousand poets; I mean the flame

  of the Aeneid, the mother that brought forth,

  the nurse that gave suck to my song. Without it

  I could not have weighed half a penny’s worth.

  And to have lived back there in Virgil’s time

  I would agree to pass another year

  in the same banishment from which I climb.”

  Virgil, at these last words, shot me a glance

  that said in silence, “Silence!” But man’s will

  is not supreme in every circumstance:

  for tears and laughter come so close behind

  the passions they arise from, that they least

  obey the will of the most honest mind.

  I did no more than half smile, but that shade

  fell still and looked me in the eye—for there

  the secrets of the soul are most betrayed.

  “So may the road you travel lead to grace,”

  he said, “what was the meaning of the smile

  that I saw flash, just now, across your face?”

  Now am I really trapped on either side:

  one tells me to be still, one begs me speak.

  So torn I heave a sigh, and my sweet Guide

  understands all its meaning. “Never fear,”

  he says to me, “speak up, and let him know

  what he has asked so movingly to hear.”

  At which I said: “Perhaps my smiling thus

  has made you marvel, Ancient Soul; but now

  listen to something truly marvelous:

  this one who guides my eyes aloft is he,

  Virgil, from whom you drew the strength to sing

  the deeds of men and gods in poetry.

  The only motive for my smiling lay

  in your own words. If you conceived another,

  as you love truth, pray put the thought away.”

  He was bending to embrace my Teacher’s knee,

  but Virgil said: “No, brother. Shade you are,

  and shade am I. You must not kneel to me.”

  And Statius, rising, said: “So may you find

  the measure of the love that warms me to you

  when for it I lose all else from my mind,

  forgetting we are empty semblances

  and taking shadows to be substances.”

  NOTES

  1. The natural thirst: “All men naturally desire knowledge.” (Aristotle, Metaphysics, I, 1.) that nothing satisfies: “In acquiring knowledge, there always grows the thirst for more.” (Il Convivio, IV, 12.)

  2-3. that water the Samaritan woman begged: At Jacob’s Well, Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for a drink, and she showed surprise that a Jew should make such a request of her, but Jesus replied that had she known who he was, she would have asked him for a drink and he would have given her the living water of the truth. “The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water that I thirst not. . . .” (John, iv, 6-15.)

  7. as Luke lets us know: “And behold two of them [James and John] went that same day to a village called Emmaus. . . . And it came to pass that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.” (Luke, xxiv, 13-15.)

  11. a shade appeared: The shade is Statius, for whom see note to lines 82 ff. 14-15. with a sign . . . due reply: There were regular formulas for greeting and reply among monks of the Middle Ages. Most commonly, “God give you peace” or “God’s peace be with you,” would be answered “And with thy spirit.” Virgil’s answer is not verbal. He replies with what must have been a gesture of benediction.

  23. the Angel’s mark: The three remaining P’s on Dante’s brow, which identify him as a saved soul, i.e., as one who will enter Heaven when he has completed his purification.

  24-27. she: Lachesis. She is the Fate (or Parca) who spins the Thread of Life. Her sister Clotho winds each man’s thread about her distaff, forming it into a hank begun at each man’s birth. The third sister, Atropos, cuts the thread at the end of the man’s life. Virgil means simply that Dante is not yet dead, i.e., his thread has not been cut. (The Poets are on the western side of the mountain with the sun in the east, and Dante casts no identifying shadow.)

  36. cry with one voice down to its last moist rock: I.e., “Down to the shore where the reeds grow.” “Rock” is rhyme-forced. Dante says, literally, “down to its moist feet,” and the shore is described not as rocky but as muddy.

  40 ff. STATIUS’ REPLY. Virgil has asked the reason for the earthquake and the shout. Statius begins his elaborate reply in good scholastic form by explaining the principles on which the answer must be based, and having stated them in brief, he goes on to develop each in detail.

  The first principle is that nothing on the mountain is subject to change except within itself, for nothing there is subject to external forces. Every soul in Purgatory is effectively in Heaven, and beyond the Gate evil does not exist.

  The second principle follows from the first. The soul issues from the hand of God. When the soul goes from Purgatory to Heaven, therefore, it is not entering from outside. Heaven is simply receiving its own again. Only that motion of Heaven’s receiving its own from itself to itself can, therefore, be a cause on the mountain, “cause” being “that which gives rise to an effect.”

  48. the little three-step stairway: The three steps that lead to the Gate of Purgatory mark the highest point to which the weathers of the world (literally and in every extended sense) can reach. Above them, all that is, is from God.

  50. Thaumas’ glowing daughter: Iris, the rainbow. Daughter of the Centaur Thaumas and of Electra. Her sisters were the Harpies. Like her sisters, she was a messenger of the Gods and came and went by way of the rainbow, with which she became identified.

  The rainbow is an especially apt symbol of mutability. Note, too, that it always appears away from the sun, never between the sun and the observer. Taking Iris to represent changeableness and the sun to represent God, one may pursue a number of interesting allegories.

  52. dry vapors: For Dante’s theory of wet and dry vapors as the origin of storms see Inferno, XXIV, last note. The theory is from Aristotle. Wet vapors cause rain, hail, dew, and hoarfrost, as specified in lines 46-47. Dry vapors, if they are free, produce lightning and thunder. If, however, they enter the earth as winds and are locked inside, they cause earthquakes. But such terrestrial earthquakes (lines 55-60) cannot be felt above the three steps at the Gate.

  58. whenever a soul feels: Once again the point is made that the Purgatorial souls are free of external restraints. Each decides within itself when it is free to move up.

  59. that it gets up: If the soul has been crawling with the Proud, seated with the Envious, or lying with the Avaricious, its moment of purity is achieved when it feels the will to get up.

  60. or moves to climb: If the soul has been circling with the Wrathful, the Slothful, the Gluttonous, or the Lustful, it would not need to get up: its moment of purity would be achieved when it feels moved to stop circling and to move toward the ascent. to climb: Statius must mean “to climb to Paradise” rather than merely to a higher ledge. As Dante has already hinted, and as Statius soon demonstrates, a soul may pass unchecked through those ledges that punish sins of wh
ich it is not guilty. Thus on completing a given penance, a soul may move on to another, or directly to Paradise. There is no conclusive evidence that the mountain shakes and the hymn peals only when souls achieve their final purification, but the very scale of the celebration suggests that it is reserved for graduation exercises only. If the shock and shout occurred every time a soul moved from one ledge to another, there is every likelihood that Dante would have touched things off every time he passed up one of the stairways, or every time an Angel removed one of his P’s.

  62. cloister: An especially apt choice in that “cloister” implies (a) confinement, (b) confinement of one’s own free will, and (c) a life ordered by strict rules of worship and discipline. Dante, because “soul” is feminine in Italian, uses “convent.”

  64-66. wish . . . will: I am not happy about these terms, but they are the only ones I could make work within prosodic necessity. The intended distinction is between “impulse” (the relative will of scholastic philosophy) and what might be called “innate desire” (the absolute will of scholastic philosophy). Thus the passage in extended paraphrase: “Before purification it does have a relative will to climb, but the absolute will that High Justice sets against that relative will, gives the soul the same sort of will to suffer penitential pain that it once had [in life] toward the crime it now expiates.” (Compare the state of the Infernal souls who cross Acheron driven by their own absolute will to yearn for what they fear.)

  82 ff. STATIUS. Publius Papinius Statius (c. A.D. 45-96) is a central figure of the Purgatorio and an especially complex one. He remains with Dante till the very end of the ascent. Thus Dante completes his climb to the presence of Beatrice (Divine Love) in the company of Virgil as Human Reason, and of Statius, who must be taken as a symbol of the soul’s triumphant redemption.

  Thus Statius has a major role, though his known history hardly serves to explain it. In life he was a Latin poet much admired by Dante, though it is difficult to see why Dante, himself so stylistically sparse, should admire a writer as prolix as was Statius. Statius’ main work was the Thebaid, an epic of the Seven against Thebes (so line 92: “I sang of Thebes”). He was engaged in an epic of the Trojan War, the Achilleid, at his death (so line 93, “but found the second weight too great to bear,” i.e., he died bearing it). An earlier collection of poems, the Silvae, came to light after Dante’s time.

  Statius was born in Naples and lived in Rome. Dante confused him in part with Lucius Statius Ursulus, a rhetorician of Toulouse, and has Statius give his birthplace accordingly in line 89.

  Why Dante should have chosen Statius to represent the triumph of the purified soul is a matter open to any careful reader’s speculation. The very fact that so little is known of Statius’ life may be a point in favor, for it leaves Dante free to attribute qualities to Statius without embarrassment from history. (There is, for example, no slightest historical evidence that Statius turned Christian.)

  If, as seems likely, Dante himself invented this legend, its own elements best explain it, for so interpreted, Statius becomes a symbolic figure joining the Roman and the Christian past, a theme always dear to Dante. Thus Statius may be seen as a lesser Virgil and a greater; a less perfect writer, but a greater soul in the gift of Christ’s redemption. Thus he may be taken as springing from that cardinal point in Church history at which the greatness of the Roman past and the glory of the Christian present are joined. So Dante may now climb guided not only by Virgil (as Human Reason, Philosophy, and the Classic Virtues of Ancient Rome) but by Statius (those same qualities transformed by Faith and thus nearer to God). Between Virgil and Statius, that is, Dante now climbs in the company of the total Roman tradition.

  Dramatically, of course, the possibilities inherent in presenting Statius to Virgil must have been especially inviting.

  82. the good Titus: Roman Emperor, A.D. 79-81. In A.D. 70 in the reign of his father, Vespasian, Titus besieged and took Jerusalem. Thus, with God’s help, Rome avenged the death (the wounds) of Christ. So Dante, within his inevitable parochialism, chose to take that passage of history. The Jews, one may be sure, found less cause for rejoicing in the goodness of Titus.

  86. in the most honored and enduring name: Of poet.

  Canto XXII

  THE ASCENT TO THE SIXTH CORNICE

  THE SIXTH CORNICE

  The Gluttons

  The Tree

  The Whip of Gluttony

  The Poets have passed the Angel who guards the ascent, and Dante has had one more P removed from his forehead. So lightened, he walks easily behind Virgil and Statius despite their rapid ascent, listening eagerly to their conversation.

  Virgil declares his great regard for Statius, and Statius explains that he was on the Fifth Cornice for Wasting rather than for Hoarding. He adds that he would certainly have been damned, had Virgil’s poetry not led him to see his error. For Virgil, he acknowledges, not only inspired his song, but showed him the road to faith, whereby he was baptized, though secretly, for fear of the persecutions—a lukewarmness for which he spent four hundred years on the Fourth Cornice.

  Statius then names his favorite poets of antiquity and asks where they are. Virgil replies that they are with him in Limbo. He then cites many who have not been mentioned before as being among his eternal companions.

  At this point the Poets arrive at THE SIXTH CORNICE and, moving to the right, come upon AN ENORMOUS TREE laden with fruits. From its foliage a voice cries out the examples of abstinence that constitute THE WHIP OF GLUTTONY.

  We had, by now, already left behind

  the Angel who directs to the Sixth Round.

  He had erased a stigma from my brow,

  and said that they who thirst for rectitude

  are blessèd, but he did not say “who hunger”

  when he recited that Beatitude.

  I, lighter than on any earlier stairs,

  followed those rapid spirits, and I found it

  no strain at all to match my pace to theirs.

  Virgil began: “When virtue lights in us

  a fire of love, that love ignites another

  within the soul that sees its burning. Thus,

  ever since Juvenal came down to be

  one of our court in the Infernal Limbo,

  and told me of your great regard for me,

  my good will toward you has been of a sort

  I had not felt for any unseen person;

  such as will make the climb ahead seem short.

  But tell me—and if I presume too much

  in slackening the rein this way, forgive me

  as a friend would and answer me as such:

  how, amid all the wisdom you possessed—

  and which you won to by such diligence—

  could Avarice find a place within your breast?”

  At these words Statius let a brief smile play

  across his lips, and fade. Then he replied:

  “I hear love’s voice in every word you say.

  Often, indeed, appearances give rise

  to groundless doubts in us, and false conclusions,

  the true cause being hidden from our eyes.

  Seeing me on the ledge from which I rose,

  you have inferred my sin was Avarice;

  an inference your question clearly shows.

  Know then that my particular offense

  was all too far from Avarice: I wept

  thousands of months for riotous expense.

  Had I not turned from prodigality

  in pondering those lines in which you cry,

  as if you raged against humanity:

  ‘To what do you not drive man’s appetite

  O cursèd gold-lust!’—I should now be straining

  in the grim jousts of the Infernal night.

  I understood then that our hands could spread

  their wings too wide in spending, and repented

  of that, and all my sins, in grief and dread.

  How many shall rise bald to Judgme
nt Day

  because they did not know this sin to grieve it

  in life, or as their last breaths slipped away!

  For when the opposite of a sin, as here,

  is as blameworthy as the sin itself,

  both lose their growth together and turn sere.

  If, then, I lay so long in my distress

  among the Avaricious where they weep,

  it was to purge the opposite excess.”

  “But when you sang of the fierce warfare bred

  between the twin afflictions of Jocasta,”

  the singer of the sweet Bucolics said,

  “from what you said when Clio tuned your strain,

  it would not seem that you had found the faith

  without the grace of which good works are vain.

  If that be so, what Sun or beacon shone

  into your mist that you set sail to follow

  the Fisherman?” And that long-waiting one:

  “You were the lamp that led me from that night.

  You led me forth to drink Parnassian waters;

  then on the road to God you shed your light.