Purgatory: Canto XIX. Fourth Ledge
Fourth Ledge: the Slothful--Dante dreams of the
Siren.--The Angel of the Pass.--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 ... cum 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 passage," 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 God, 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 God,
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 title 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 God 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
title 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 worship 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.
Siren.--The Angel of the Pass.--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 ... cum 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 passage," 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 God, 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 God,
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 title 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 God 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
title 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 worship 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.
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