Authors: Dante
Purgatorio (22 page)
‘do not conceal from me the life you led
before you died: tell it, and tell me if I’m headed
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for the passage—your words shall be our escort.’
‘I was a Lombard, known as Marco.
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I knew the world and loved that valor
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at which today all aim a slackened bow.
‘You are on the path that leads you up.’
Thus he replied, then added: ‘I pray you,
And I to him: ‘I pledge to do your bidding.
But I will burst with my unspoken doubts
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if I don’t speak and free myself of them.
‘A single doubt before, it now is paired
by what you said, which here confirms
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what elsewhere I have heard, to which I couple it.
‘Please point out to me the cause
that I may know it and make it known to others,
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for both the heavens and the earth receive the blame.’
First he heaved a heavy sigh, which grief wrung
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to a groan, and then began: ‘Brother,
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the world is blind and indeed you come from it.
‘You who are still alive assign each cause
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only to the heavens, as though they drew
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all things along upon their necessary paths.
‘If that were so, free choice would be denied you,
and there would be no justice when one feels
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joy for doing good or misery for evil.
‘Yes, the heavens give motion to your inclinations.
I don’t say all of them, but, even if I did,
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you still possess a light to winnow good from evil,
‘and you have free will. Should it bear the strain
in its first struggles with the heavens,
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then, rightly nurtured, it will conquer all.
‘To a greater power and a better nature you, free,
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are subject, and these create the mind in you
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that the heavens have not in their charge.
‘Therefore, if the world around you goes astray,
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in you is the cause and in you let it be sought.
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In this I will now be your informant.
‘From the hand of Him who looks on it with love
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before it lives, comes forth, like a little girl
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who weeps one moment and as quickly laughs,
‘the simple infant soul that has no knowledge
but, moved by a joyous maker,
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gladly turns to what delights it.
‘At first it tastes the savor of a trifling good.
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It is beguiled by that and follows in pursuit
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if guide or rein do not deflect its love.
‘Therefore, there was need that laws be set
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to act as curbs, need for a ruler to discern
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at least the tower above the one true city.
‘Yes, there are laws, but who takes them in hand?
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No one, because the shepherd who precedes
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may chew his cud, but does not have cleft hooves.
‘The people, then, who see their leader lunge
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only at the good for which they themselves are greedy,
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graze on that and ask for nothing more.
‘As you can plainly see, failed guidance
is the cause the world is steeped in vice,
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and not your inner nature that has grown corrupt.
‘Rome, which formed the world for good,
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once had two suns that lit the one road
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and the other, the world’s and that to God.
‘The one has snuffed the other out, the sword
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is fastened to the crook, and these two,
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forced to be together, must perforce go ill,
‘since, joined, the one fears not the other.
If you don’t believe me, think of a grain of wheat,
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for by its seed each plant is known.
‘In the land watered both by the Àdige and Po
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valor and courtesy could once be found
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before Frederick encountered opposition.
‘Now it may with impunity be crossed by anyone
who for shame would shun all discourse
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with the virtuous or even coming near them.
‘Three old men are left on earth,
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longing for the better life when God will take them,
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in whom the ancient times rebuke the new:
‘Currado da Palazzo and the good Gherardo
and Guido da Castel, better called,
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as say the French, the simple, honest Lombard.
‘Spread the word, then, that the Church of Rome,
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confounding in herself two governments, stumbles
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in the mud, befouling herself and her burden.’
‘O Marco mine,’ I said, ‘you reason well,
and now I understand just why the sons of Levi
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were disbarred from their inheritance.
‘But who is this Gherardo who, you say,
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is left as an example of a race extinct,
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thus rebuking this barbaric age?’
‘Either your speech deceives me,’ he replied,
‘or it puts me to the test, for, speaking Tuscan,
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how is it you know nothing of the good Gherardo?
‘I know him by no other name unless
I were to take one from his daughter, Gaia.
‘You see the brightness shining through the smoke
already whitens, and I must take my leave
before the angel waiting there can see me.’
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Then he turned back and would not hear me more.
V. Exemplars of Wrath
VI. The Angel of Mercy
I. The fourth terrace: the setting
Virgil’s “Digression”
Remember, reader, if ever in the mountains
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you were trapped in fog and could not see
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except as moles do, through their eyelids,
how, when the strands of mist, humid and dense,
began dispersing, the sun’s disk
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dimly glimmered through,
then you can readily imagine
how, on my seeing it again, the sun appeared,
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now on the verge of setting.