Authors: Dante
Purgatorio (24 page)
II. Exemplars of Zeal
IV. The speakers (giving satisfaction)
“follow after us and forgive us our apparent rudeness”
V. Exemplars of Sloth
exempla
:
(who died in the Exodus)
(who died in Sicily)
My lofty teacher, having brought
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his discourse to its end, now studied
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my face to see if I seemed satisfied,
while I, spurred on by yet another thirst,
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kept silent, rehearsing in my mind the thought:
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‘Perhaps I trouble him with all these questions.’
But that true father, mindful
of the timid wish that I did not declare,
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spoke and gave me courage to speak out.
Therefore I said: ‘Master, your light so quickens
my mental sight that I discern in full
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your argument’s distinctions and its thesis.
‘And thus I pray, dear, gentle father,
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that you expound this love, from which you say
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each good deed and its opposite derive.’
‘Direct on me your intellect’s keen eyes,’
he said, ‘and the error of the blind
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who set themselves as guides will be revealed.
‘The mind, disposed to love at its creation,
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is readily moved toward anything that pleases
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as soon as by that pleasure it is roused to act.
‘From real forms your perception draws
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an image it unfolds within you
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so that the mind considers it,
‘and if the mind, so turned, inclines to it,
that inclination is a natural love,
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which beauty binds in you at once.
‘Then, as fire, born to rise,
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moves upward in its essence,
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to where its matter lives the longest,
‘just so the mind, thus seized, achieves desire,
a movement of the spirit never resting
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as long as it enjoys the thing it loves.
‘Now you see how hidden is the truth
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from those who hold that every love
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is in itself deserving praise,
‘perhaps because such love seems always good.
But every seal is not a good one,
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even if imprinted in good wax.’
‘Your words and my responding wit,’ I said,
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‘have made love’s nature clear to me,
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but that has left me even more perplexed.
‘For if love is offered from outside us
and if the soul moves on no other foot,
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it has no merit in going straight or crooked.’
And he to me: ‘As far as reason may see in this,
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I can tell you. To go farther you must look
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to Beatrice, for it depends on faith alone.
‘Every substantial form that is at once distinct
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from matter and is, as well, united with it,
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contains its own defining disposition.
‘This is not perceived except in operation,
nor ever demonstrated except by its effect, as,
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in a plant, the force of life by its green leaves.
‘In consequence, where we derive our knowledge
of first principles and the inclination
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to universal objects of desire, no one knows.
‘These are innate in you just like the zeal in bees
for making honey, and this primal inclination
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admits no positing of praise or blame.
‘That to this will all others may conform
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there is innate in you the faculty that counsels
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and ought to guard the threshold of assent.
‘This is the principle in which is found
the measure of your merit, as it welcomes
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and then winnows good from guilty loves.
‘Those who in their reasoning reached the root
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recognized this innate freedom
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and thus bequeathed their ethics to the world.
‘Let us posit as a given: every love
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that’s kindled in you arises of necessity.
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Still, the power to restrain it lies with you.
‘That noble power is called free will by Beatrice,
and so make sure that you remember this
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if she should ever speak of it to you.’
Still brilliant after midnight, the moon
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was blazing like a fiery bucket,
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making the stars seem fewer than they were,
as in its course against the sky it followed
the tracks the sun inflames when seen from Rome,
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setting between Sardegna and the Corsicans.
That noble shade through whom Pietola
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is more renowned than any Mantuan town
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had doffed the weight with which I’d burdened him,
so that I, having harvested his clear
and forthright answers to my questions,
But suddenly this drowsiness was snatched away
by a crowd who were approaching,
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having already rounded the terrace from behind us.
As once the rivers Ismenus and Asopus
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saw a furious throng of revelers crowd their banks
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on any night the Thebans felt the need for Bacchus,
such a throng cut their way, as does a sickle,
around that circle, and I could tell
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that virtuous will and just love drove them on.
Soon they were upon us,
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for the whole frenzied mob was running,
‘Mary ran with haste into the mountains,’
and ‘Caesar, to subdue Lèrida, thrust at Marseilles
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and then raced on to Spain.’
‘Quickly, quickly, lest time be lost for lack of love,’
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the others cried behind them. ‘Let our zeal
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for doing good make grace grow green again.’
‘O you who with keen fervor make amends,
perhaps for your past negligence and sloth
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in being lukewarm to do good,
‘this man, who is alive—indeed I do not lie—
is eager to ascend at day’s first light.
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Tell us, then, where is the nearest opening?’
These were my leader’s words,
and one of those spirits answered:
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‘Follow us and you shall find the gap.
‘We are so filled with our desire to keep on moving
we cannot rest. Pardon us, then,
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if our just penance seems discourteous.
‘I was Abbot of San Zeno at Verona
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under the rule of worthy Barbarossa,
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of whom Milan still speaks with sorrow.
‘And one there, with a foot already in the grave,
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will soon bemoan that monastery
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and regret his power over it,
‘because he put his son, lame in body,
deformed in mind, and base of birth,
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in the place of its true shepherd.’