The Divine Comedy

  as would be reckoned, here on earth, a mile;

  when we began to hear in the air above

  invisible spirits who flew toward us speaking

  sweet invitations to the feast of love.

  The first voice that flew past rang to the sky

  “Vinum non habent.” And from far behind us

  we heard it fade repeating the same cry.

  Even before we heard it cry its last

  far round the slope, another voice rang out:

  “I am Orestes!”—and it, too, sped past.

  “Sweet Father,” I began, “what are these cries?”—

  and even as I asked, I heard a third

  bodiless voice say: “Love your enemies.”

  And my good Master then: “This circle purges

  the guilt of Envious spirits, and for these

  who failed in Love, Love is the lash that scourges.

  The Rein must cry the opposite of Love:

  you will hear it, I expect, before you reach

  the pass of absolution that leads above.

  But now look carefully across the air

  ahead of us, and you will see some people

  seated against the inner cliff up there.”

  I opened my eyes wider: further on

  I saw a group of spirits dressed in cloaks

  exactly the same color as the stone.

  As we drew nearer I heard prayers and plaints.

  “O Mary, pray for us,” I heard them cry;

  and to Michael, and to Peter, and all Saints.

  I cannot think there walks the earth today

  a man so hard that he would not be moved

  by what I saw next on that ashen way.

  For when I drew near and could see the whole

  penance imposed upon those praying people,

  my eyes milked a great anguish from my soul.

  Their cloaks were made of haircloth, coarse and stiff.

  Each soul supported another with his shoulder,

  and all leaned for support against the cliff.

  The impoverished blind who sit all in a row

  during Indulgences to beg their bread

  lean with their heads together exactly so,

  the better to win the pity they beseech,

  not only with their cries, but with their look

  of fainting grief, which pleads as loud as speech.

  Just as the sun does not reach to their sight,

  so to those shades of which I spoke just now

  God’s rays refuse to offer their delight;

  for each soul has its eyelids pierced and sewn

  with iron wires, as men sew new-caught falcons,

  sealing their eyes to make them settle down.

  Somehow it seemed to me a shameful act

  to stare at others and remain unseen.

  I turned to Virgil. He, with perfect tact,

  knew what the mute was laboring to say

  and did not wait my question. “Speak,” he said,

  “but count your words and see they do not stray.”

  Virgil was walking by me down the ledge

  on the side from which—because no parapet

  circled the cliff—one might plunge off the edge.

  On the other side those spirits kept their places

  absorbed in prayer, while through the ghastly stitches

  tears forced their way and flowed down from their faces.

  I turned to them and said: “O souls afire

  with hope of seeing Heaven’s Light, and thus

  already certain of your heart’s desire—

  so may High Grace soon wash away the scum

  that clogs your consciousness, that memory’s stream

  may flow without a stain in joys to come—

  tell me if there is any Latin soul

  among you here: I dearly wish to know,

  and telling me may help him to his goal.”

  —“We are all citizens of one sublime

  and final city, brother; you mean to ask

  who lived in Italy in his pilgrim-time.”

  These are the words I heard a spirit say

  from somewhere further on. I moved up, therefore,

  in order to direct my voice that way.

  I saw one shade who seemed to have in mind

  what I had said.—How could I tell? She sat

  chin raised, the waiting gesture of the blind.

  “O soul self-humbled for the climb to Grace,”

  I said, “if it was you who spoke, I beg you,

  make yourself known either by name or place.”

  “I was Sienese,” she answered. “On this shelf

  I weep away my world-guilt with these others

  in prayers to Him that he vouchsafe Himself.

  Sapìa was I, though sapient I was not;

  I found more joy in the bad luck of others

  than in the good that fell to my own lot.

  If this confession rings false to your ears,

  hear my tale out; then see if I was mad.

  —In the descending arc of my own years,

  the blood of my own land was being spilled

  in battle outside Colle’s walls, and I

  prayed God to do what He already willed.

  So were they turned—their forces overthrown—

  to the bitter paths of flight; and as I watched

  I felt such joy as I had never known;

  such that I raised my face, flushed with false power,

  and screamed to God: ‘Now I no longer fear you’—

  like a blackbird when the sun comes out an hour.

  Not till my final hour had all but set

  did I turn back to God, longing for peace.

  Penance would not yet have reduced my debt

  had not Pier Pettinaio in saintly love

  grieved for my soul and offered holy prayers

  that interceded for me there above.

  But who are you that you come here to seek

  such news of us; and have your eyes unsewn,

  as I believe; and breathe yet when you speak?”

  “My eyes,” I said, “will yet be taken from me

  upon this ledge, but not for very long:

  little they sinned through being turned in envy.

  My soul is gripped by a far greater fear

  of the torment here below, for even now

  I seem to feel the burden those souls bear.”

  And she: “Then who has led you to this Round,

  if you think to go below again?” And I:

  “He who is with me and who makes no sound.

  And I still live: if you would have me move

  my mortal feet down there in your behalf,

  ask what you will, O soul blessed by God’s love.”

  “Oh,” she replied, “this is a thing so rare

  it surely means that God has loved you greatly;

  from time to time, then, help me with a prayer.

  I beg by all you most desire to win

  that if you walk again on Tuscan soil

  you will restore my name among my kin.

  You will find them in that foolish mob whose dream

  is Talamone now, and who will lose there

  more than they did once in their silly scheme

  to find the lost Diana. Though on that coast

  it is the admirals who will lose the most.”

  NOTES

  6. the arc it cuts is sooner bent: As the mountain tapers, the circumference of each succeeding circle shrinks; its arc, therefore, is “sooner bent.”

  9. livid: I have found this word to be so frequently misunderstood that it seems well to remind readers that Latin livious means “ashen blue-black, the color of a bruise.” The color is symbolic of Envy, the fortune of all others bruising the souls of the Envious. There are no carvings on this ledge, only the first ledge is so carved, and carvings would in any case be lost on these blind s
hades.

  13-15. Having contemplated the Divine Light for a while, Virgil executes a sort of military right-face, swinging his left side around on the pivot of his right heel, and then moves toward the Sun. He has learned the rule of the Mountain, which is, to follow the Light of God. In the first twenty-seven Cantos of the Purgatorio (up to the time Virgil disappears), there are two pilgrims. In the Inferno, only Dante was the pilgrim. There, Virgil was an experienced guide. Dante’s rather strange way of describing Virgil’s action is almost certainly meant to indicate how utterly Virgil gives himself to the Sun’s (God’s) guidance.

  It is shortly after noon (see XII, 80-81); the Sun is a little beyond the mid-point from east to west, and, of course, to the north of the Poets. They have, therefore, entered the second Cornice at a point just a bit north of east.

  19-21. VIRGIL’S ADDRESS TO THE SUN. Virgil seems to be confusing the allegorical and the literal function of the Sun in this apostrophe. How could the Sun as Divine Illumination fail to lead men right? Virgil can only mean, “Since no other guide is available to us, let us walk toward the [literal] Sun.” Yet his words seem clearly to take the Sun in more than its literal significance.

  25 ff. THE WHIP OF ENVY. Since the Envious have their eyes wired shut, it is appropriate that the Whip of Envy be oral rather than visual. The Whip, accordingly, consists of three disembodied voices that cry out the key lines from scenes that exemplify great Charity (i.e., Caritas, the love of others). Thus “sweet invitations to the feast of love” (line 27) may be read in two senses. The feast may be in contemplating these high examples, and it may as readily be taken to mean the feast of Divine Love these sinners will share in the sight of God when they have been purified.

  29. Vinum non habent: “They have no wine.” These words were spoken by Mary at the Wedding Feast in Cana of Galilee (John, ii, 1-10). Mary, instead of envying those about her, thought only of their happiness, and noting that there was not enough wine, she turned to Jesus and spoke her loving dismay. Thereupon Jesus turned the water into wine, his first miracle. Note that it was in response to an act of Caritas that the first miracle took place.

  Structurally, it may be well to note again, that the first incident in each Whip is drawn from the life of Mary.

  33. I am Orestes: The second lesson in love of others clearly reflects John, xv, 13: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

  Orestes and Pylades were famous for the depth of their friendship. Cicero (De Amicitia , VII, 24) relates the incident in which, Orestes having been condemned to death, Pylades pretended to be Orestes in order to die in his friend’s place. Orestes then came forward asserting his own identity, and thereupon both friends argued “I am Orestes,” each trying to save the other.

  36. Love your enemies: These words were spoken by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. the Mount of Purgatory). “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” (Matthew, v, 44.) Dante specifies that the first two voices were loud, but in their special dignity the words of Christ are not rung out; they are “said.”

  So the third lesson in love: not only to love others, and to love friends, but to love those who offer injury. When the Envious have suffered their souls to this understanding, they will be free to ascend to the next ledge.

  37-42. It must be remembered that Virgil is not speaking here from experience. His earlier journey (see Inferno, IX, 19-24) was only as far as Judaïca. Virgil, in his capacity as Human Reason, is deducing what probably lies ahead by analogy to what has gone before, and from his understanding of the nature of Envy.

  46. I opened my eyes wider: Another example of Dante’s characteristically strange way of describing how his senses work.

  50. I heard them cry: They are chanting the Litany of the Saints, hence invoking those who were most free of Envy. Note, moreover, that they are chanting “pray for us” rather than “pray for me,” as they might have prayed on earth in their Envy.

  57. my eyes milked a great anguish from my soul: The line literally rendered would be: “Through my eyes I was milked of heavy grief,” a strange and daring figure.

  58. haircloth: A coarse, heavy fabric made of goat hair. Even today peasants wear haircloth capes in heavy weather, but in the Middle Ages, and beyond, haircloth was worn against the skin as a penance, and to discipline the flesh. Such hair shirts were not only intolerably itchy; they actually rubbed the flesh open, causing running sores. In an age, moreover, that was very slightly given to soap and water, such hair shirts offered an attractive habitat to all sorts of bodily vermin that were certain to increase the odor of sanctity, even to the point of the gangrenous. I am told, and have no wish to verify, that hair shirts are still worn today by some penitential and unventilated souls.

  59-60. each soul supported another: As they had failed to do in life. and all leaned for support against the cliff: The cliff is probably best taken as God’s Decree: their punishment, which is also their purification, sustains them.

  61-66. The figure here is based on the behavior of blind beggars at church doors, and particularly at the doors of those churches which offer special Indulgences (Pardons for Sin) during certain feast days. English readers, long devoted to the illustrations of Doré, will do well to visualize Dante’s scenes in terms of Dante’s own details rather than in terms of Doré’s romantic misconceptions.

  71-72. sew new-caught falcons: Since diurnal birds sit still in the dark, the eyelids of newly caught falcons were sewn shut by their trainers to make them sit still, partly, as I understand it, to keep them from battering themselves against the cage, and partly to break them for their later training. In hunting, the birds were normally carried hooded to the point of release.

  76. the mute: Dante himself.

  81. one might plunge off the edge: Allegorically, therefore, Dante places Human Reason between him and a fall.

  86. Heaven’s Light: God.

  88-90. Dante is alluding here to the River Lethe, the same stream along whose banks he climbed from Hell. At the top of Purgatory, the finally purified souls are washed in Lethe, and it removes from them the very memory of sin. Thus Dante is uttering a wish for the more rapid advancement of these souls, a sentiment all of them would take in good part.

  93. and telling me may help him to his goal: Dante is making use here of one of those narrator’s devices in which the reader will understand the remark made, more fully than will the characters to whom it is addressed. We know that Dante is alive and that he may therefore win prayers for these souls on earth. The souls addressed, however, know only that an unknown voice is making a vague but attractive offer.

  94 ff. SAPÌA OF SIENA. Dante speaks briefly and to the point, as Virgil instructed him, but Sapìa responds with a long and rambling narrative, to understand which one must recall the story of Provenzano Salvani (Canto XI). Sapìa was Salvani’s paternal aunt. As the wife of another nobleman, she resented Salvani’s rise to great power. When Salvani attacked the Florentines at Colle in 1269, she stationed herself at a palace window to watch the battle, and when she saw Salvani defeated and beheaded on the field, she is reported to have cried: “Now God, do what you will with me, and do me any harm you can, for after this I shall live happily and die content.”

  According to another account, she had been exiled from Siena (hence her resentment) and was living at Colle at the time of the battle.

  The dates of her birth and death are unknown, but she seems to have been about sixty at the time of the Battle of Colle, and Dante makes clear that she died before Pier Pettinaio, whose death occurred in 1289.

  94-95. one sublime and final city: Heaven, The New Jerusalem.

  96. his pilgrim-time: His time on earth. As any concordance to the Bible will show, “pilgrim” for “wayfarer through life” and “pilgrimage” for “man’s time on earth” are common Biblical usages.

  103. self-humbled for the cl
imb to Grace: A poor compromise rendering of che per salir ti dome (literally: “who master yourself in order to ascend”). The idea not to be missed here touches upon the essence of Purgatory: that the souls purify themselves. Just as Hell is the state of things the damned truly desire (see Inferno, III, 123, note), so the souls in Purgatory will their purifying pains upon themselves, and nothing but their own will keeps them from ascending, for they themselves decide when they are worthy to move up.