Purgatorio (The Divine Comedy series Book 2)
Page 16
‘And I, who have been prostrate in this pain →
five hundred years and more, just now felt
69
my freed will seek a better threshold.
‘That is why you felt the earth shake
and heard the pious spirits of this mountain
72
praise the Lord—may He soon raise them!’
Thus he spoke to us, and since it is true →
the greater the thirst the more the drinking pleases,
75
I cannot begin to tell the benefit to me.
And my wise leader: ‘Now I see the net
that here ensnares you and how you are released,
78
why the earth trembled and why you rejoiced. →
‘May it please you to tell me who you were
and to let me understand from your own words
81
why you have lain here for so many centuries.’ →
‘In the time when worthy Titus, → →
aided by the King most high, avenged the wounds
84
from which had poured the blood that Judas sold,
‘on earth I bore the name that most endures →
and honors most,’ replied that spirit.
87
‘Fame I had found, but not yet faith.
‘So sweet was my poetic recitation, →
Rome drew me from Toulouse and deemed me worthy
90
to have my brows adorned with myrtle. →
‘Statius is my name. On earth men often say it.
I sang of Thebes and then of great Achilles,
93
but fell along the way with the second burden. →
‘The sparks that kindled the fire in me →
came from the holy flame
96
from which more than a thousand have been lit—
‘I mean the Aeneid. When I wrote my poems →
it was my mamma and my nurse.
99
Without it, I would not have weighed a dram.
‘To have lived on earth when Virgil lived →
I would have stayed one year’s sun longer than I owed
102
before I came forth from my exile.’
These words made Virgil turn to me →
with a look that, silent, said: ‘Keep silent.’
105
But the power that wills cannot do all it wills,
for laughter and tears so closely follow feelings
from which they spring, they least can be controlled
108
in those who are most truthful.
I only smiled, like one who gives a hint,
at which the shade was silent, probing my eyes,
111
where the soul’s expression is most clearly fixed.
‘So your great labor may end in good,’
he said, ‘why did your face just now
114
give off the sudden glimmer of a smile?’
Now I am caught between one side and the other:
one bids me hold my tongue,
117
the other urges me to speak,
so that I sigh and my master understands.
‘Don’t be afraid to speak,’ he says to me,
120
‘yes, speak—tell him what he is so keen to know.’
And I begin: ‘Perhaps you wonder,
ancient spirit, at my smiling,
123
but I would have a greater wonder seize you.
‘This one who guides my eyes on high
is the very Virgil from whom you took the power →
126
to sing of men and of the gods.
‘If you believed another reason caused my smile,
dismiss that as untrue and understand
129
it was those words you spoke of him.’
Already he was stooping to embrace my teacher’s feet, →
but Virgil said: ‘Brother, do not do so,
132
for you are a shade and you behold a shade.’
And the other, rising: ‘Now you can understand
the measure of the love for you that warms me,
when I forget our emptiness
136
and treat our shades as bodied things.’
OUTLINE: PURGATORIO XXII
1–6
the retrospectively recorded Angel of Justice
7–9
Dante, moving easily, follows Virgil and Statius upward
10–18
Virgil informs Statius that when Juvenal arrived in Limbo he told him of Statius’s affection, thus moving him to return that love, even without having known him
19–24
Virgil’s first question: how could he have been avaricious?
25–36
Statius’s response: he was not avaricious but prodigal
37–42
Statius “converted” from prodigality by reading Virgil
43–48
Statius’s denunciation of innocent-seeming prodigality
49–54
Statius explains the relationship between avarice and prodigality on this terrace: conjoined opposites
55–63
Virgil’s second question: given the lack of evidence in his texts, when and how did he come to the true faith?
64–66
Statius: Virgil directed him to poetry and to God
67–73
Statius: Virgil carried his lantern behind him so that others could find their path
74–95
Statius now fleshes out his autobiographical sketch: he frequented the new preachers; Domitian’s persecutions; he was baptized, but remained a secret Christian: hence his purgation of Sloth on the terrace below
96–99
Statius asks Virgil to tell him about his fellow poets
100–114
Virgil names poets (and characters of Statius) in Limbo
I. The setting (terrace of Gluttony)
115–126
it is between 10 and 11 AM; the three poets begin to circle the sixth terrace
127–129
while Dante listens, Virgil and Statius discuss poetry
130–138
they come to a tree, covered with fruit and watered from a rock above, its branches pointing downward
139–141
Virgil and Statius approach the tree and are warned off by a mysterious voice
II. Exemplars of Temperance
142–147
the voice tells of Mary, Roman matrons, Daniel
148–154
the voice recalls the Golden Age (acorns and water) and John the Baptist (honey and locusts) for temperance
PURGATORIO XXII
The angel who had shown the way →
to the sixth circling now was left behind,
3
having erased another swordstroke from my brow
as he declared that those who long for righteousness
are blessed, ending on sitiunt
6
without the other words he might have said.
And now I could move on, lighter →
than at the other entrances, so that I followed
9
the swifter spirits up with ease,
when Virgil began: ‘A love that is kindled by virtue →
has always ignited another, as long as its flame
12
was shining where it could be seen.
‘From the hour, therefore, when Juvenal descended
into the limbo of hell, among us,
15
and made your affection known to me,
‘my good will toward you was as great
as anyone has ever felt for someone never seen,
18
so that to me these stairs will now seem short.
‘But tell me—and as a friend forg
ive me →
if with too much assurance I relax the reins,
21
and as a friend speak with me now—
‘how could avarice find room
amidst such wisdom in your breast,
24
the wisdom that you nourished with such care.’
These words made Statius smile a little →
before he answered: ‘Every word of yours
27
is to me a welcome token of your love.
‘But, in truth, things often are misleading →
when their true causes remain hidden,
30
thus leading us to false conclusions.
‘Your question shows me you believe,
perhaps because of the terrace I was on,
33
that I was avaricious in the other life.
‘Know then that avarice was much too far
removed from me and that this lack of measure
36
lunar months in thousands now have punished. →
‘And had I not reformed my inclination
when I came to understand the lines in which, →
39
as if enraged at human nature, you cried out:
‘ “To what end, O cursèd hunger for gold, →
do you not govern the appetite of mortals?”
42
I would know the rolling weights and dismal jousts.
‘Then I learned that we can spread
our wings too wide with spending hands,
45
and I repented that and other sins.
‘How many more will have to rise again, hair shorn →
through ignorance, which takes away repentance →
48
of this sin in life and in the hour of death!
‘Note this also: the fault that runs →
directly counter to a sin
51
is here grouped with it and is withered of its green.
‘Therefore, if I, to purge my sins, have been →
among those shades who weep for avarice,
54
this has befallen me for the opposing fault.’
‘But, when you sang the savage warfare → →
between the twofold sorrows of Jocasta,’
57
said the singer of the Eclogues,
‘it does not seem, from what you wrote with Clio’s help, →
that you had found as yet the faith,
60
that faith without which good works fail.
‘If that is so, what sun, what candles →
dispelled your darkness so that afterwards
63
you hoisted sail, following the fisherman?’
And the other answered him: ‘It was you who first →
set me toward Parnassus to drink in its grottoes, →
66
and you who first lit my way toward God.
‘You were as one who goes by night, carrying
the light behind him—it is no help to him,
69
but instructs all those who follow—
‘when you said: “The centuries turn new again. →
Justice returns with the first age of man,
72
and new progeny descends from heaven.”
‘Through you I was a poet, through you a Christian.
But, that you may see better what I outline, →
75
I will set my hand to fill the colors in.
‘Already all the world was pregnant →
with the true faith, inseminated
78
by the messengers of the eternal kingdom,
‘and the words of yours I have just recited
did so accord with the new preachers
81
that I began to visit them.
‘More and more they seemed to me so holy →
that when Domitian started with his persecutions
84
their weeping did not lack my tears.
‘While I remained on earth,
I gave them comfort. Their upright ways
87
made me despise all other sects.
‘I was baptized before, in my verses, →
I had led the Greeks to the rivers of Thebes,
90
but, from fear, I stayed a secret Christian, →
‘long pretending I was still a pagan.
More than four centuries, because I was lukewarm, →
93
did I circle the fourth terrace.
‘You, then, who have raised the veil →
that hid from me the great good I describe,
96
tell me, while there is time in this ascent, →
‘where is our ancient Terence, where Cecilius, →
Plautus, Varius, if you know.
99
Tell me if they are damned and in what place.’
‘Those, Persius, and I, and many more,’
replied my leader, ‘are with that Greek
102
the Muses suckled more than any other,
‘in the first circle of the dark prison.
We often talk about that mountain
105
where those who nursed us ever dwell.
‘Euripides is with us there and Antiphon,
Simonides and Agathon and many other Greeks
108
whose brows were once adorned with laurel.
‘Among those from your works who may be seen →
are Antigone, Deïphyle, Argia,
111
and Ismene, still sad as once she was.
‘She that revealed Langìa also may be seen,
as well as the daughter of Tiresias,
114
and Thetis, and Deïdamìa with her sisters.’
Both the poets now were silent,
again intent on looking all around them,
117
freed from the constraint of stairs and walls.
Already four handmaids of the day were left behind →
and the fifth was at the chariot-shaft,
120
guiding its gleaming tip still higher,
when my leader said: ‘It might be better if we turned →
our right side’s shoulders to the outer edge,
123
circling the mountain as we are accustomed.’
Thus habit was our teacher there,
and we took our way with less uncertainty
126
because that other worthy soul encouraged us.
They went along in front and I, alone, →
came on behind, listening to their discourse,
129
which gave me understanding of the art of verse.
But soon their pleasant talk was interrupted →
by a tree found in the middle of the path,
132
with fruits that smelled both savory and good,
and, as a fir tree narrows as it branches upward,
this one tapered down from branch to branch,
135
so that, I think, no one could climb it.
On that side, where our way was blocked, →
from the high rock fell pellucid water,
138
which was dispersed among the upper leaves.
As the two poets neared the tree
a voice from among the boughs called out: →
141
‘This is a food that you shall lack.’
And then it said: ‘Mary gave more thought → →
that the marriage-feast be decorous and complete
144
than for the mouth with which she pleads for you.
‘The Roman matrons of antiquity →
were glad to have but water as their drink,
147
and Daniel scorned banquets and acquired wisdom.
‘The first age was as beautiful as gold. →
Its acorns were made savory by hunger
150
and thirst made nectar flow in every brook.
‘Honey and locusts were the food
that nourished John the Baptist in the desert,
for which he is glorious and as great
154
as in the Gospel is revealed to you.’
OUTLINE: PURGATORIO XXIII
1–6
Virgil gently chastises Dante for seeking the source of the words he has heard in the foliage of the tree
7–9
Dante follows, listening with pleasure to the two poets
III. The penitent gluttons
10–15
hearing their plangent song, Dante wants to know what he is hearing; Virgil says that those singing are penitents
16–21
simile: pilgrims overtaking strangers and only observing them when they turn to look as they pass by
22–36
description of gluttons is interrupted by Dante’s own exemplars of starvation (Erysichthon and the fellow citizens of Mary [of Jerusalem]); the “m” in their faces
IV. The speakers
37–42
as Dante wonders what so emaciates them, one of them cries out with the pleasure of seeing him
43–48
his voice, unlike his face, reveals him: Forese Donati
49–54
Forese wants to know about him and his two companions
55–60
Dante, too moved to speak, wants to know about Forese
61–75
Forese explains the supernatural power of the tree and water to make them experience hunger and thirst as a form of joyous abnegation
76–84
Dante cannot understand how Forese has moved so quickly upward, since he has been dead only four years