Purgatorio (13 page)
Authors: Dante
The shade, who had drawn closer to the judge
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when he called out, had not through that assault
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at any time removed his gaze from me.
‘So may the lantern leading you above
have ample wax in the candle of your will
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to bring you to the enameled summit,’
he said, ‘if you have true news of Valdimagra
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or of the parts around, please tell me,
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for there I once was great.
‘I was called Currado Malaspina,
not the old Currado but descended from him.
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To my own I bore the love that here is purified.’
‘Oh,’ I said to him, ‘never have I been there,
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in your country. But where do men dwell,
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anywhere in Europe, that it is not renowned?
‘The fame that crowns your house with honor
proclaims alike its lords and lands—
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even those who have not been there know them,
‘and, as I hope to go above, I swear to you
your honored race does not disgrace
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the glory of its purse and of its sword.
‘No matter how a wicked chief may warp the world,
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privileged both by nature and by custom,
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your race alone goes straight and scorns the evil path.’
Then he said: ‘Enough. Not seven times
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shall the sun return to rest in the very bed
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that the Ram covers and bestrides with all four feet
‘before this courteous opinion
shall be nailed within your brain
by stronger nails than the words of others,
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if the course of Judgment is not stayed.’
Introduction: the temporal setting
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among his four companions
I. The first purgatorial dream
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, Dante alone with Virgil
Interruption: address to the reader
Purgatorio
: Dante’s “art”
II. The gate of purgatory
The concubine of old Tithonus,
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fresh from her doting lover’s arms,
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was glowing white at the window of the east,
her forehead glittering with gems
set in the shape of that cold-blooded creature
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that strikes men with its tail.
Where we were, night had made
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two steps in her ascent and now the wings
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of the third were already drooping,
when I, who had with me something of Adam,
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lay down, overcome by sleep, there on the grass
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where the five of us were seated.
At the hour near the verge of morning,
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when the swallow begins her plaintive song,
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remembering, perhaps, her woes of long ago,
and when our mind, more pilgrim
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from the flesh and less caught up in thoughts,
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is more prophetic in its visions,
in a dream I seemed to see an eagle,
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with golden feathers, hovering in the sky,
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his wings spread wide, ready to swoop.
And to me it seemed I was in the very place
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where Ganymede abandoned his own kind
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when he was caught up to the highest council.
And I pondered:—‘Perhaps it is its habit
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to strike only here, disdaining to pluck
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from elsewhere any in its talons.’
Then it seemed to me that after wheeling awhile
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it plunged down terrible as lightning,
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and carried me straight to the sphere of fire.
There it seemed that it and I were both aflame,
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and the imagined burning was so hot
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my sleep was broken and gave way.
Not otherwise Achilles started up,
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gazing with startled eyes around him,
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not knowing where he was
that time his mother carried him,
sleeping in her arms, from Chiron to Scyros,
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where later the Greeks would take him away—
than I awoke, the sleep gone from my eyes,
and then went deadly pale,
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like a man frozen in his terror.
At my side there was no one but my comfort,
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the sun more than two hours high.
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My face was turned toward the sea.
‘Do not be frightened,’ said my lord,
‘have confidence, for all is well with us.
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Do not hold back, but rally all your strength.
‘Now you have come to purgatory:
there you see the rock wall that encloses it
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and, where that seems breached, the entrance.
‘A short time ago, in the early light of dawn,
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when your soul was asleep within you,
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on the flowers that adorn the place below
‘there came a lady who said: “I am Lucy.
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Let me gather up this sleeping man
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so I may speed him on his way.”
‘Sordello stayed, as did the other noble souls,
and she took you and, as soon as it was day,
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went up, and I then followed in her steps.
‘Here she set you down, but first her lovely eyes
showed me that entrance, standing open.
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Then she and sleep, as one, departed.’
Like a man who comes to see the truth
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when he has been in doubt and now is reassured,
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confidence replacing what in him was fear,
so was I changed. When my leader saw
that I was free of care, he started up the path,
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and I behind him, heading for the height.
Reader, you surely understand that I am raising
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the level of my subject here. Do not wonder,
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therefore, if I sustain it with more artifice.
We drew closer until we reached a place
where what at first had seemed a gap,
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a breach that rends a wall,
I now saw was a gate, with three steps leading
up to it, each one of a different color.
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The keeper of that gate as yet said not a word.
And, when my eyes could make him out more clearly,
I saw that he was seated above the topmost step,
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