FOOTNOTES:
[183] Close of day: The evening of the Friday. It comes on us with something of a surprise that a whole day has been spent in the attempt to ascend the hill, and in conference with Virgil.
[184] Alone: Of earthly creatures, though in company with Virgil, a shade. In these words is to be found the keynote to the Canto. With the sense of deliverance from immediate danger his enthusiasm has died away. After all, Virgil is only a shade; and his heart misgives him at the thought of engaging, in the absence of all human companionship, upon a journey so full of terrors. He is not reassured till Virgil has displayed his commission.
[185] Muses: The invocation comes now, the First Canto being properly an introduction. Here it may be pointed out, as illustrating the refinement of Dante’s art, that the invocation in the Purgatorio is in a higher strain, and that in the Paradiso in a nobler still.
[186] Silvius’ father: Æneas, whose visit to the world of shades is described in the Sixth Æneid. He finds there his father Anchises, who foretells to him the fortunes of his descendants down to the time of Augustus.
[187] Both of these: Dante uses language slightly apologetic as he unfolds to Virgil, the great Imperialist poet, the final cause of Rome and the Empire. But while he thus exalts the Papal office, making all Roman history a preparation for its establishment, Dante throughout his works is careful to refuse any but a spiritual or religious allegiance to the Pope, and leaves himself free, as will be frequently seen in the course of the Comedy, to blame the Popes as men, while yielding all honour to their great office. In this emphatic mention of Rome as the divinely-appointed seat of Peter’s Chair may be implied a censure on the Pope for the transference of the Holy See to Avignon, which was effected in 1305, between the date assigned to the action of the poem and the period when it was written.
[188] Papal gown: ‘The great mantle’ Dante elsewhere terms it; the emblem of the Papal dignity. It was only in Dante’s own time that coronation began to take the place of investiture with the mantle.
[189] Chosen Vessel: Paul, who like Æneas visited the other world, though not the same region of it. Throughout the poem instances drawn from profane history, and even poetry and mythology, are given as of authority equal to those from Christian sources.
[190] A dame: Beatrice, the heroine of the Vita Nuova, at the close of which Dante promises some day to say of her what was never yet said of any woman. She died in 1290, aged twenty-four. In the Comedy she fills different parts: she is the glorified Beatrice Portinari whom Dante first knew as a fair Florentine girl; but she also represents heavenly truth, or the knowledge of it—the handmaid of eternal life. Theology is too hard and technical a term to bestow on her. Virgil, for his part, represents the knowledge that men may acquire of Divine law by the use of their reason, helped by such illumination as was enjoyed by the virtuous heathen. In other words, he is the exponent of the Divine revelation involved in the Imperial system—for the Empire was never far from Dante’s thoughts. To him it meant the perfection of just rule, in which due cognisance is taken of every right and of every duty. The relation Dante bears to these two is that of erring humanity struggling to the light. Virgil leads him as far as he can, and then commits him to the holier rule of Beatrice. But the poem would lose its charm if the allegorical meaning of every passage were too closely insisted on. And, worse than that, it cannot always be found.
[191] Dubious state: The limbo of the virtuous heathen (Canto iv.).
[192] The star: In the Vita Nuova Dante speaks of the star in the singular when he means the stars.
[193] In narrowest space: The heaven of the moon, on the Ptolemaic system the lowest of the seven planets. Below it there is only the heaven of fire, to which all the flames of earth are attracted. The meaning is, above all on earth.
[194] The region vast: The empyrean, or tenth and highest heaven of all. It is an addition by the Christian astronomers to the heavens of the Ptolemaic system, and extends above the primum mobile, which imparts to all beneath it a common motion, while leaving its own special motion to each. The empyrean is the heaven of Divine rest.
[195] Burning: ‘Flame of this burning,’ allegorical, as applied to the limbo where Virgil had his abode. He and his companions suffer only from unfulfilled but lofty desire (Inf. iv. 41).
[196] A noble lady: The Virgin Mary, of whom it is said (Parad. xxxiii. 16) that her ‘benignity not only succours those who ask, but often anticipates their demand;’ as here. She is the symbol of Divine grace in its widest sense. Neither Christ nor Mary is mentioned by name in the Inferno.
[197] Lucia: The martyr saint of Syracuse. Witte (Dante-Forschungen, vol. ii. 30) suggests that Lucia Ubaldini may be meant, a thirteenth-century Florentine saint, and sister of the Cardinal (Inf. x. 120). The day devoted to her memory was the 30th of May. Dante was born in May, and if it could be proved that he was born on the 30th of the month the suggestion would be plausible. But for the greater Lucy is to be said that she was especially helpful to those troubled in their eyesight, as Dante was at one time of his life. Here she is the symbol of illuminating grace.
[198] Thy vassal: Saint Lucy being held in special veneration by Dante; or only that he was one that sought light. The word fedele may of course, as it usually is, be read in its primary sense of ‘faithful one;’ but it is old Italian for vassal; and to take the reference to be to the duty of the overlord to help his dependant in need seems to give force to the appeal.
[199] Rachel: Symbol of the contemplative life.
[200] A flood, etc.: ‘The sea of troubles’ in which Dante is involved.
[201] Tears: Beatrice weeps for human misery—especially that of Dante—though unaffected by the view of the sufferings of Inferno.
[202] My Guide, etc.: After hearing how Virgil was moved to come, Dante accepts him not only for his guide, as he did at the close of the First Canto, but for his lord and master as well.
CANTO III.
Through me to the city dolorous lies the way,
Who pass through me shall pains eternal prove,
Through me are reached the people lost for aye.
’Twas Justice did my Glorious Maker move;
I was created by the Power Divine,[203]
The Highest Wisdom, and the Primal Love.
No thing’s creation earlier was than mine,
If not eternal;[204] I for aye endure:
Ye who make entrance, every hope resign!
These words beheld I writ in hue obscure10
On summit of a gateway; wherefore I:
‘Hard[205] is their meaning, Master.’ Like one sure
Beforehand of my thought, he made reply:
‘Here it behoves to leave all fears behind;
All cowardice behoveth here to die.
For now the place I told thee of we find,
Where thou the miserable folk shouldst see
Who the true good[206] of reason have resigned.’
Then, with a glance of glad serenity,
He took my hand in his, which made me bold,20
And brought me in where secret things there be.
There sighs and plaints and wailings uncontrolled
The dim and starless air resounded through;
Nor at the first could I from tears withhold.
The various languages and words of woe,
The uncouth accents,[207] mixed with angry cries
And smiting palms and voices loud and low,
Composed a tumult which doth circling rise
For ever in that air obscured for aye;
As when the sand upon the whirlwind flies.30
And, horror-stricken,[208] I began to say:
‘Master, what sound can this be that I hear,
And who the folk thus whelmed in misery?’
And he replied: ‘In this condition drear
Are held the souls of that inglorious crew
Who lived unhonoured, but from guilt kept clear.
Mingled they are with caitiff angels, who,
Though from avowed rebellion they refrained,
Disloyal to God, did selfish ends pursue.
Heaven hurled them forth, lest they her beauty stained;
Received they are not by the nether hell,41
Else triumph[209] thence were by the guilty gained.’
And I: ‘What bear they, Master, to compel
Their lamentations in such grievous tone?’
He answered: ‘In few words I will thee tell.
No hope of death is to the wretches known;
So dim the life and abject where they sigh
They count all sufferings easier than their own.
Of them the world endures no memory;
Mercy and justice them alike disdain.50
Speak we not of them: glance, and pass them by.’
I saw a banner[210] when I looked again,
Which, always whirling round, advanced in haste
As if despising steadfast to remain.
And after it so many people chased
In long procession, I should not have said
That death[211] had ever wrought such countless waste.
Some first I recognised, and then the shade
I saw and knew of him, the search to close,
Whose dastard soul the great refusal[212] made.60
Straightway I knew and was assured that those
Were of the tribe of caitiffs,[213] even the race
Despised of God and hated of His foes.
The wretches, who when living showed no trace
Of life, went naked, and were fiercely stung
By wasps and hornets swarming in that place.
Blood drawn by these out of their faces sprung
And, mingled with their tears, was at their feet
Sucked up by loathsome worms it fell among.
Casting mine eyes beyond, of these replete,70
People I saw beside an ample stream,
Whereon I said: ‘O Master, I entreat,
Tell who these are, and by what law they seem
Impatient till across the river gone;
As I distinguish by this feeble gleam.’
And he: ‘These things shall unto thee be known
What time our footsteps shall at rest be found
Upon the woful shores of Acheron.’
Then with ashamèd eyes cast on the ground,
Fearing my words were irksome in his ear,80
Until we reached the stream I made no sound.
And toward us, lo, within a bark drew near
A veteran[214] who with ancient hair was white,
Shouting: ‘Ye souls depraved, be filled with fear.
Hope never more of Heaven to win the sight;
I come to take you to the other strand,
To frost and fire and everlasting night.
And thou, O living soul, who there dost stand,
From ’mong the dead withdraw thee.’ Then, aware
That not at all I stirred at his command,90
‘By other ways,[215] from other ports thou’lt fare;
But they will lead thee to another shore,
And ’tis a skiff more buoyant must thee bear.’
And then my leader: ‘Charon, be not sore,
For thus it has been willed where power ne’er came
Short of the will; thou therefore ask no more.’
And hereupon his shaggy cheeks grew tame
Who is the pilot of the livid pool,
And round about whose eyes glowed wheels of flame.
But all the shades, naked and spent with dool,100
Stood chattering with their teeth, and changing hue
Soon as they heard the words unmerciful.
God they blasphemed, and families whence they grew;
Mankind, the time, place, seed in which began
Their lives, and seed whence they were born. Then drew
They crowding all together, as they ran,
Bitterly weeping, to the accursed shore
Predestinate for every godless man.
The demon Charon, with eyes evermore
Aglow, makes signals, gathering them all;110
And whoso lingers smiteth with his oar.
And as the faded leaves of autumn fall
One after the other, till at last the bough
Sees on the ground spread all its coronal;
With Adam’s evil seed so haps it now:
At signs each falls in turn from off the coast,
As fowls[216] into the ambush fluttering go.
The gloomy waters thus by them are crossed,
And ere upon the further side they land,
On this, anew, is gathering a host.120
‘Son,’ said the courteous Master,[217] ‘understand,
All such as in the wrath of God expire,
From every country muster on this strand.
To cross the river they are all on fire;
Their wills by Heavenly justice goaded on
Until their terror merges in desire.
This way no righteous soul has ever gone;
Wherefore[218] of thee if Charon should complain,
Now art thou sure what by his words is shown.’
When he had uttered this the dismal plain130
Trembled[219] so violently, my terror past
Recalling now, I’m bathed in sweat again.
Out of the tearful ground there moaned a blast
Whence lightning flashed forth red and terrible,
Which vanquished all my senses; and, as cast
In sudden slumber, to the ground I fell.