Slumber and Dream of Dante.—The Eagle.—Lucia.—The Gate of Purgatory.—The Angelic Gatekeeper.—Seven P’s inscribed on Dante’s Forehead.—Entrance to the First Ledge.
The concubine of old Tithonus was now gleaming white on the balcony of the orient, forth from the arms of her sweet friend; her forehead was lucent with gems set in the shape of the cold animal that strikes people with its tail.[1] And in the place where we were the night had taken two of the steps with which she ascends, and the third was already bending down its wings, when I, who had somewhat of Adam with me, overcome by sleep, reclined upon the grass, there where all five of us were seated.
[1] By the concubine of old Tithonus, Dante seems to have intended the lunar Aurora, in distinction from the proper wife of Tithonus, Aurora, who precedes the rising Sun, and the meaning of these verses is that “ the Aurora before moonrise was lighting up the eastern sky, the brilliant stars of the sign Scorpio were on the horizon, and, finally, it was shortly after 8.30 P.M.” (Moore.) “The steps with which the night ascends” are the six hours of the first half of the night, from 6 P.M. to midnight.
At the hour near the morning when the little swallow begins her sad lays,[1] perchance in memory of her former woes, and when our mind, more a wanderer from the flesh and less captive to the thought, is in its visions almost divine,[2] in dream it seemed to me that I saw poised in the sky an eagle with feathers of gold, with wings widespread, and intent to stoop. And it seemed to me that I was there[3] where his own people were abandoned by Ganymede, when he was rapt to the supreme consistory. In myself I thought, “Perhaps this bird strikes only here through wont, and perhaps from other place disdains to carry anyone upward in his feet.” Then it seemed to me that, having wheeled a little, it descended terrible as a thunderbolt, and snatched me upwards far as the fire.[4] There it seemed that it and I burned, and the imagined fire so scorched that of necessity the sleep was broken.
[1] The allusion is to the tragic story of Progne and Philomela, turned the one into a swallow, the other into a nightingale. Dante found the tale in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book vi.
[2] Dante passes three nights in Purgatory, and each night his sleep is terminated by a dream towards the hour of dawn, the time when, according to the belief of classical antiquity, the visions of dreams are symbolic and prophetic. (Moore.)
[3] Mt. Ida.
[4] The sphere of fire by which, according to the mediaeval cosmography, the sphere of the air was surrounded.
Not otherwise Achilles shook himself,—turning around his awakened eyes, and not knowing where he was, when his mother from Chiron to Scyros stole him away, sleeping in her arms, thither whence afterwards the Greeks withdrew him,[1]—than I started, as from my face sleep fled away; and I became pale, even as a man frightened turns to ice. At my side was my Comforter only, and the sun was now more than two hours high,[2] and my face was turned toward the sea. “Have no fear,” said my Lord; “be reassured, for we are at a good point; restrain not, but increase all thy force. Thou art now arrived at Purgatory; see there the cliff that closes it around; see the entrance, there where it appears divided. A while ago in the dawn that precedes the day, when thy soul was sleeping within thee, upon the flowers wherewith the place down yonder is adorned, came a lady, and said, “I am Lucia; let me take this one who is sleeping; thus will I assist him along his way.’ Sordello remained, and the other gentle forms: she took thee, and when the day was bright, she came upward, and I along her footprints. Here she laid thee down: and first her beautiful eyes showed me that open entrance; then she and slumber went away together.” Like a man that in perplexity is reassured, and that alters his fear to confidence after the truth is disclosed to him, did I change; and when my Leader saw me without solicitude, up along the cliff he moved on, and I behind, toward the height.
[1] Statius, in the first book of the Achilleid, tells how Thetis, to prevent Achilles from going to the siege of Troy, bore him sleeping away from his instructor, the centaur Chiron, and carried him to the court of King Lycomedes, on the Island of Scyros, where, though concealed in women’s garments, Ulysses and Diomed discovered him. Statius relates how wonderstruck Achilles was when on awaking he found himself at Scyros: Quae loca? qui fluctus? ubi Pelion? onmia versa Atque ignota videt, dubitatque agnoscere matrem—249-50.