Purgatorio (14 page)
Authors: Dante
‘A lady from Heaven, who knows about such things,’
my master replied, ‘said to us just now,
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“Go that way, that way lies the gate.” ’
‘And may she speed your steps to good,’
continued the courteous keeper of the gate.
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‘Come forward, then, to these our stairs.’
At that we moved ahead. The first step
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was of clear white marble, so polished
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that my image was reflected in true likeness.
The second was darker than the deepest purple,
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of unhewn stone, looking as if it had been burned,
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cracked through its length and breadth.
The third, resting its heavy mass above,
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seemed to me porphyry, as flaming red
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as blood that spurts out from a vein.
On this, seated on the threshold,
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which seemed to be of adamant,
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the angel of God rested both his feet.
Up the three steps my leader drew me
and I was glad for that. Then he said:
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‘Humbly petition him to slide the bolt.’
Devoutly I cast myself down at his holy feet.
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I begged him for mercy and to let me enter,
With the point of his sword he traced seven P’s
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upon my forehead, then said: ‘Once you are inside,
Ashes or earth, when it is dug up dry,
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would be the very color of his vestments.
one of gold, the other one of silver.
He touched the door, first with the white,
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then the yellow, and thus my wish was satisfied.
‘Any time one of these keys should fail
so that it does not turn inside the lock,’
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he said to us, ‘this portal does not open.
‘One is more precious, but the other one requires
much skill and understanding before it will unlock,
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for it is this one that unties the knot.
‘From Peter do I hold them, and his instruction was
to err in opening rather than in keeping locked,
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if but the soul fall prostrate at my feet.’
Then he pushed one door of the sacred portal open,
saying: ‘Enter, but I warn you
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he who looks back must then return outside.’
And when the hinges of that sacred door,
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which are of heavy and resounding metal,
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were turning in their linchpins,
the Tarpeian rock roared not so loud
nor proved so strident when good Metellus
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was drawn away and it was then left bare.
I turned, intent on a new sound,
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and thought I heard ‘Te Deum laudamus’
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in voices mingled with sweet counterpoint,
giving me the same impression
one has when listening to singers
accompanied by an organ when the words
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are sometimes clear and sometimes lost.
Introduction: arrival in purgatory
not
look back
I. The architecture of the first terrace
II. Exemplars of Humility
Gabriel
and
Mary
: the Annunciation
dancing before the Ark of the Covenant while
Michal
looks on in disdain
and
the widow
III. The penitent prideful
Once we had crossed the threshold of the gate
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not used by souls whose twisted love
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attempts to make the crooked way seem straight,
I knew that it had shut by its resounding.
And had I turned my eyes to look,
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how could I have excused my fault?
We were climbing through a crevice in the rock,
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which first bent one way, then another,
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like a wave that ebbs and then comes rushing back,
when my leader said: ‘Here we must use skill
in keeping close to one side or the other,
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hewing to the side where the rock gives way.’
before we issued from that needle’s eye.
But free above, out in the open
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where the cliff draws back to leave a space—
I weary and both of us uncertain of our path—
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we stopped at a flat and open spot
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more solitary than a desert track.
From its edge, which borders on the void,
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to the foot of the lofty bank in its sheer rise,
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would measure thrice the body of a man.
And as far as my eye could wing its flight,
now toward the left, now toward the other side,
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the terrace stretched before me.
Our feet had not yet stepped on it
when I perceived that the encircling bank,
was of white marble carved with so much art
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that Polycletus and Nature’s very self
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would there be put to shame.
The angel who came to earth with the decree of peace
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that had been wept and yearned for all those years,
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which opened Heaven, ending God’s long ban,
appeared before us so vividly engraved
in gracious attitude
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it did not seem an image, carved and silent.
One would have sworn he was saying:
‘Ave,’
for she as well was pictured there
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who turned the key to love on high.
And in her attitude imprinted were
the words:
‘Ecce ancilla Dei’
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as clearly as a figure stamped in wax.
‘Do not fix your mind on one part only,’
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said the kind master, who had me
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on that side of him where we have our hearts.
another story set into the rock.
I went past Virgil and drew near
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so that my eyes might better take it in.
There, carved into the marble, were the cart
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and oxen, drawing the sacred ark that makes men fear
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to assume an office not entrusted to them.
The foreground, peopled by figures grouped
in seven choirs, made one sense argue ‘No’
