Purgatory: Canto XXIII. Sixth Ledge
Sixth Ledge: the Gluttonous.--Forese
Donati.--Nella.--Rebuke of the women of Florence.
While I was fixing my eyes upon the green leafage, just as he who
wastes his life following the little bird is wont to do, my more
than Father said to me, "Son, come on now, for the time that is
assigned to us must be parcelled out more usefully." I turned my
face, and no less quickly my step after the Sages, who were
speaking so that they made the going of no cost to me; and ho! a
lament and song were heard, "Labia mea, Domine,"[1] in such
fashion that it gave birth to delight and pain. "O sweet Father,
what is that which I hear?" I began, and he, "Shades which go,
perhaps loosing the knot of their debt."
[1] "Lord, open thou my lips." -- Psalm li. 15.
Even as do pilgrims rapt in thought, who, overtaking on the road
unknown folk, turn themselves to them, and stay not; so behind
us, moving more quickly, coming up and passing by, a crowd of
souls, silent and devout, gazed at us. Each was dark and hollow
in the eyes, pallid in the face, and so wasted that the skin took
its shape from the bones. I do not think that Erisichthon[1] was
so dried up to utter rind by hunger, when he had most fear of it.
I said to myself in thought, "Behold the people who lost
Jerusalem, when Mary struck her beak into her son."[2] The
sockets of their eyes seemed rings without gems. Whoso in the
face of men reads OMO,[3] would surely there have recognized the
M. Who would believe that the scent of an apple, begetting
longing, and that of a water, could have such mastery, if he
knew not how?
[1] Punished for sacrilege by Ceres with insatiable hunger, so
that at last he turned his teeth upon himself. See Ovid,
Metam.,viii. 738 sqq.
[2] The story of this wretched woman is told by Josephus in
his narrative of the siege of Jerusalem by Titus: De Bello Jud.,
vi. 3.
[3] Finding in each eye an O, and an M in the lines of the brows
and nose, making the word for "man."
I was now wondering what so famished them, the cause of their
meagreness and of their wretched husk not yet being manifest,
and lo! from the depths of its head, a shade turned his eyes on
me, and looked fixedly, then cried out loudly, "What grace to me
is this!" Never should I have recognized him by his face; but in
his voice that was disclosed to me which his aspect in itself had
suppressed.[1] This spark rekindled in me all my knowledge of the
altered visage, and I recognized the face of Forese.[2]
[1] His voice revealed who he was, which his actual aspect
concealed.
[2] Brother of the famous Corso Donati, and related to Dante,
whose wife was Gemma de' Donati.
"Ah, strive not [1] with the dry scab that discolors my skin," he
prayed, "nor with my lack of flesh, but tell me the truth about
thyself; and who are these two souls, who yonder make an escort
for thee: stay not thou from speaking to me." "Thy face, which
once I wept for dead, now gives me for weeping no less a grief,"
replied I, "seeing it so disfigured; therefore, tell me, for
God's sake, what so despoils you; make me not speak while I am
marvelling; for ill can he speak who is full of another wish."
And he to me, "From the eternal council falls a power into the
water and into the plant, now left behind, whereby I become so
thin. All this folk who sing weeping, because of following their
appetite beyond measure, here in hunger and in thirst make
themselves holy again. The odour which issues from the apple and
from the spray that spreads over the verdure kindles in us desire
to eat and drink. And not once only as we circle this floor is
our pain renewed; I say pain, and ought to say solace, for that
will leads us to the tree which led Christ gladly to say,
'Eli,'[2] when with his blood he delivered us." And I to him,
"Forese, from that day on which thou didst change world to a
better life, up to this time five years have not rolled round. If
the power of sinning further had ended in thee, ere the hour
supervened of the good grief that to God reweds us, how hast thou
come up hither?[3] I thought to find thee still down there below,
where time is made good by time." And he to me, "My Nella with
her bursting tears has brought me thus quickly to drink of the
sweet wormwood of these torments. With her devout prayers and
with sighs has she drawn me from the shore where one waits, and
has delivered me from the other circles. So much the more dear
and more beloved of God is my little widow, whom I loved so much,
as she is the more solitary in good works; for the Barbagia[4] of
Sardinia is far more modest in its women than the Barbagia where
I left her. O sweet brother, what wouldst thou that I say? A
future time is already in my sight, to which this hour will not
be very old, in which from the pulpit it shall be forbidden to
the brazen-faced dames of Florence to go displaying the bosom
with the paps. What Barbarian, what Saracen women were there ever
who required either spiritual or other discipline to make them go
covered? But if the shameless ones were aware of that which the
swift heaven is preparing for them, already would they have their
mouths open for howling. For if foresight here deceives me not,
they will be sad ere he who is now consoled with the lullaby
covers his cheeks with hair. Ak brother, now no longer conceal
thyself from me; thou seest that not only I but all these people
are gazing there where thou dost veil the sun." Whereon I to him:
"If thou bring back to mind what thou wast with me, and what I
was with thee, the present remembrance will even now be grievous.
From that life he who goes before me turned me the other day,
when the sister of him yonder," and I pointed to the sun, "showed
herself round. Through the deep night, from the truly dead, he
has led me, with this true flesh which follows him. Thence his
counsels have drawn me up, ascending and circling the mountain
that sets you straight whom the world made crooked. So long he
says that he will bear me company till I shall be there where
Beatrice will be; there it behoves that I remain without him.
Virgil is he who says thus to me," and I pointed to him, "and
this other is that shade for whom just now your realm, which from
itself releases him, shook every slope."
[1] Do not, for striving to see me through my changed look, delay
to speak.
[2] Willingly to accept his suffering, even when he exclaimed,
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"--Matthew, xxvii. 46.
[3] If thou didst delay repentance until thou couldst sin no
more, how is it that so speedily thou hast arrived here?
[4] A mountainous district in Sardinia, inhabited by people of
barbarous customs.
Donati.--Nella.--Rebuke of the women of Florence.
While I was fixing my eyes upon the green leafage, just as he who
wastes his life following the little bird is wont to do, my more
than Father said to me, "Son, come on now, for the time that is
assigned to us must be parcelled out more usefully." I turned my
face, and no less quickly my step after the Sages, who were
speaking so that they made the going of no cost to me; and ho! a
lament and song were heard, "Labia mea, Domine,"[1] in such
fashion that it gave birth to delight and pain. "O sweet Father,
what is that which I hear?" I began, and he, "Shades which go,
perhaps loosing the knot of their debt."
[1] "Lord, open thou my lips." -- Psalm li. 15.
Even as do pilgrims rapt in thought, who, overtaking on the road
unknown folk, turn themselves to them, and stay not; so behind
us, moving more quickly, coming up and passing by, a crowd of
souls, silent and devout, gazed at us. Each was dark and hollow
in the eyes, pallid in the face, and so wasted that the skin took
its shape from the bones. I do not think that Erisichthon[1] was
so dried up to utter rind by hunger, when he had most fear of it.
I said to myself in thought, "Behold the people who lost
Jerusalem, when Mary struck her beak into her son."[2] The
sockets of their eyes seemed rings without gems. Whoso in the
face of men reads OMO,[3] would surely there have recognized the
M. Who would believe that the scent of an apple, begetting
longing, and that of a water, could have such mastery, if he
knew not how?
[1] Punished for sacrilege by Ceres with insatiable hunger, so
that at last he turned his teeth upon himself. See Ovid,
Metam.,viii. 738 sqq.
[2] The story of this wretched woman is told by Josephus in
his narrative of the siege of Jerusalem by Titus: De Bello Jud.,
vi. 3.
[3] Finding in each eye an O, and an M in the lines of the brows
and nose, making the word for "man."
I was now wondering what so famished them, the cause of their
meagreness and of their wretched husk not yet being manifest,
and lo! from the depths of its head, a shade turned his eyes on
me, and looked fixedly, then cried out loudly, "What grace to me
is this!" Never should I have recognized him by his face; but in
his voice that was disclosed to me which his aspect in itself had
suppressed.[1] This spark rekindled in me all my knowledge of the
altered visage, and I recognized the face of Forese.[2]
[1] His voice revealed who he was, which his actual aspect
concealed.
[2] Brother of the famous Corso Donati, and related to Dante,
whose wife was Gemma de' Donati.
"Ah, strive not [1] with the dry scab that discolors my skin," he
prayed, "nor with my lack of flesh, but tell me the truth about
thyself; and who are these two souls, who yonder make an escort
for thee: stay not thou from speaking to me." "Thy face, which
once I wept for dead, now gives me for weeping no less a grief,"
replied I, "seeing it so disfigured; therefore, tell me, for
God's sake, what so despoils you; make me not speak while I am
marvelling; for ill can he speak who is full of another wish."
And he to me, "From the eternal council falls a power into the
water and into the plant, now left behind, whereby I become so
thin. All this folk who sing weeping, because of following their
appetite beyond measure, here in hunger and in thirst make
themselves holy again. The odour which issues from the apple and
from the spray that spreads over the verdure kindles in us desire
to eat and drink. And not once only as we circle this floor is
our pain renewed; I say pain, and ought to say solace, for that
will leads us to the tree which led Christ gladly to say,
'Eli,'[2] when with his blood he delivered us." And I to him,
"Forese, from that day on which thou didst change world to a
better life, up to this time five years have not rolled round. If
the power of sinning further had ended in thee, ere the hour
supervened of the good grief that to God reweds us, how hast thou
come up hither?[3] I thought to find thee still down there below,
where time is made good by time." And he to me, "My Nella with
her bursting tears has brought me thus quickly to drink of the
sweet wormwood of these torments. With her devout prayers and
with sighs has she drawn me from the shore where one waits, and
has delivered me from the other circles. So much the more dear
and more beloved of God is my little widow, whom I loved so much,
as she is the more solitary in good works; for the Barbagia[4] of
Sardinia is far more modest in its women than the Barbagia where
I left her. O sweet brother, what wouldst thou that I say? A
future time is already in my sight, to which this hour will not
be very old, in which from the pulpit it shall be forbidden to
the brazen-faced dames of Florence to go displaying the bosom
with the paps. What Barbarian, what Saracen women were there ever
who required either spiritual or other discipline to make them go
covered? But if the shameless ones were aware of that which the
swift heaven is preparing for them, already would they have their
mouths open for howling. For if foresight here deceives me not,
they will be sad ere he who is now consoled with the lullaby
covers his cheeks with hair. Ak brother, now no longer conceal
thyself from me; thou seest that not only I but all these people
are gazing there where thou dost veil the sun." Whereon I to him:
"If thou bring back to mind what thou wast with me, and what I
was with thee, the present remembrance will even now be grievous.
From that life he who goes before me turned me the other day,
when the sister of him yonder," and I pointed to the sun, "showed
herself round. Through the deep night, from the truly dead, he
has led me, with this true flesh which follows him. Thence his
counsels have drawn me up, ascending and circling the mountain
that sets you straight whom the world made crooked. So long he
says that he will bear me company till I shall be there where
Beatrice will be; there it behoves that I remain without him.
Virgil is he who says thus to me," and I pointed to him, "and
this other is that shade for whom just now your realm, which from
itself releases him, shook every slope."
[1] Do not, for striving to see me through my changed look, delay
to speak.
[2] Willingly to accept his suffering, even when he exclaimed,
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"--Matthew, xxvii. 46.
[3] If thou didst delay repentance until thou couldst sin no
more, how is it that so speedily thou hast arrived here?
[4] A mountainous district in Sardinia, inhabited by people of
barbarous customs.
Translation:
Language:
Reviews
No reviews yet.