The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
your knees into the dust?” he said to me.
And I: “My conscience troubled me for standing
in the presence of your rank and dignity.”
“Straighten your legs, my brother! Rise from error!”
he said. “I am, like you and all the others,
a fellow servant of one Emperor.
It is written in holy scripture Neque nubent;
if ever you understood that sacred text,
my reason for speaking will be evident.
Now go your way. I wish to be alone.
Your presence here distracts me from the tears
that make me ready. And to your last question:
I have a niece, Alagia, still on earth.
If she can but avoid the bad example
those of our line have set, her native worth
will lead her yet the way the blessed go.
And she alone remains to me below.”
NOTES
1-3. An intricate passage based on the medieval belief that sunlight reflected from earth to the Moon produced warmth on the moon, whereas sunlight reflected from the moon to the earth produced cold on the earth. At the hour: Before dawn. The accumulated heat of the day would have been dissipated through the long night and could no longer temper the cold of the Moon. overcome by Earth: The last heat of the day is overcome by the night-chilled earth. or at times by Saturn: The times would be those in which Saturn draws close to the horizon. Saturn was believed to be a cold planet, as opposed to Mars, a hot planet.
5. Fortuna Major: A conjunction of the last stars of Aquarius and the first of Pisces, supposed to signify great good fortune. In this season these stars would be rising just before dawn, hence the sun is coming up behind them and their course will soon be drowned in light.
7 ff. DANTE’S DREAM. The Sirens were mythological creatures, usually of great beauty, and with the power of singing so entrancingly that they charmed the souls of men. They were usually presented as luring sailors at sea to their destruction.
Dante’s Sirena is a Christian adaptation. She symbolizes the three remaining sins (Greed, Gluttony, and Lust), which is to say, the abandonment to physical appetites. So in lines 58-60 Dante calls her “the ageless witch, for whom—and for no other—those above us [on the three remaining ledges] weep.” Dante’s description of her tells all the rest: she is deformed and hideous in herself but grows beautiful in the eyes of men, and few of those she lures to her pleasures ever stray from the kind of satisfaction she gives them. Only when a Heavenly Voice (the unidentified Saintly Lady of lines 26-30) summons Reason to strip Sensual Abandon of its false trappings, does man waken from his dream to realize what abomination has entranced him.
Note that she cannot be taken to symbolize the Pleasures of the Appetite (for those were given by God for man’s joy in His creation), but the Abandonment of the Soul to Excessive Physical Appetite.
22. I turned Ulysses: In the Homeric version Ulysses escapes the Siren’s blandishments by stuffing his ears with wax and having himself lashed to the mast of his ship. Dante may, perhaps, be following another version of the myth, but more probably he means to portray the Siren as a liar, an allegorically significant point.
26. a saintly lady: She may be Beatrice, or she may be Provenient Grace, but any identification is speculative.
43. I heard the words: They are spoken by the Angel of Zeal. Note that Dante is moving along bowed in thought and rather slowly, his spirit still weighed by the vision of the Siren, until they pass the Angel. Once the Angel of Zeal has fanned them with his wings, however (and by now the reader knows, without being told, that the fourth P has disappeared from Dante’s brow), Virgil, as Dante’s own Reason, tells him what he should do, and Dante immediately loses his heaviness, and hurries eagerly up the remaining passage to the next Cornice.
50. blessed are they that mourn: The Fourth Beatitude. “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew, iv, 5.)
73. My soul cleaves to the dust: Psalm CXIX.
76 ff. THE HOARDERS AND WASTERS. The sinfulness of Avarice is in the fact that it turns the soul away from God to an inordinate concern for material things. Since such immoderation can express itself in either getting or spending, the Hoarders and Wasters are here punished together and in the same way for the two extremes of the same excess, as in Hell.
84. what its way of speaking did not hide: The soul has said, “If you have not been sentenced to lie prone in the bitter dust.” The implication is—and it is the first time the point has emerged clearly—that souls may pass through some of the Cornices without delay, if they are free of the taint of sin there punished. The speaker, his face in the dust, cannot know that Dante is a living man. He must have assumed, therefore, that Virgil’s request for directions is that of a soul that has completed its purification on one of the lower Cornices, and that has no penance to do for Avarice. Dante, ever eager to grasp the nature of things, seizes upon the implication. In XIII, 133 ff., Dante makes it clear that he has penance to do for Pride, and some, though very little, for Envy. It is clear, therefore, that souls may be required to undergo penance on successive Cornices, and in XXI and XXII Statius confirms that fact. Now we know that souls may pass through some of the Cornices without delay.
99. scias quod ego fui successor Petri: “Know that I was Peter’s successor.” The speaker is Pope Adrian V. He died in 1276 after having been Pope for thirty-eight days.
101. a pleasant river: The river is the Lavagna. It flows between Sestri and Chiaveri, small coastal towns near Genoa. Adrian, born Ottobuono de’ Fieschi, was of the line of the Counts of Lavagna.
139. Neque nubent: “. . . they neither marry [nor are given in marriage but are as the angels of God in heaven]” (Matthew, xxii, 30). These were Christ’s words when asked to which husband a remarried widow would belong in Heaven. Adrian obviously extends the meaning to include the cancellation of all earthly contracts, fealties, and honors. Cf. Cato’s attitude toward Marcia in Canto I. It is well to remember, too, that the phrasing of the Christian marriage vow is “till death do us part.”
145. Alagia (Ah-LAH-djah): Daughter of Niccolò di Tedisio di Ugone de’ Fieschi (Oo-GO-ne day Fee-YEH-ski) and wife of Moroello (Moh-roh-ELL-oh) Malaspina, Marquis of Giovagallo (Djoe-vah-GAH-lo). Dante had been well received by Malaspina and knew and admired his wife for her good works.
Canto XX
THE FIFTH CORNICE
The Hoarders and Wasters
(The Avaricious)
The Whip of Avarice
The Rein of Avarice
Dante walks on after Adrian has dismissed him, wishing he might have continued the conversation, but bowing to Adrian’s wish to resume his purification.
The Poets find the ledge so crowded with the souls of the Avaricious that only one narrow passage is left open to them. Dante hears a soul cry out THE WHIP OF AVARICE, a litany in praise of MARY, FABRICIUS, and ST. NICHOLAS. The sinner identifies himself as HUGH CAPET and proceeds to a DENUNCIATION OF THE CAPETIAN KINGS, the dynasty he himself founded, but which has degenerated into a succession of kings distinguished only for their bloodthirsty avarice.
Hugh Capet then explains THE REIN OF AVARICE, citing seven examples of the downfall of the Avaricious.
Dante has hardly left Capet when he feels the mountain shake as if stricken by AN EARTHQUAKE, and he hears A SHOUT OF TRIUMPH. Dante is frightened but Virgil reassures him. The Poets move on at top speed, but Dante remains deep in thought, his mind pondering these new phenomena.
What’s willed must bow to what is stronger willed: against my pleasure, to please him, I drew my sponge back from the water still unfilled.
I turned: my Guide set off along the space left clear next to the rock; for they who drain, slow tear by tear, the sin that eats the race left little room along the outer edge.
Thus, as one hugs the battlements in walking atop a wall, we moved along the ledge.
Hell take you, She-Wolf, who in
You Heavens, in whose turnings, as some say, things here below are changed—when will he come whose power shall drive her from the light of day?
We moved along with measured step and slow, and all my thoughts were centered on those shades, their tears and lamentations moved me so.
And walking thus, I heard rise from the earth before us: “Blessed Mary!”—with a wail such as is wrung from women giving birth.
“How poor you were,” the stricken voice went on, “is testified to all men by the stable in which you laid your sacred burden down.”
And then: “O good Fabricius, you twice refused great wealth that would have stained your honor, and chose to live in poverty, free of vice.”
These words had pleased me so that I drew near the place from which they seemed to have been spoken, eager to know what soul was lying there.
The voice was speaking now of the largesse St. Nicholas bestowed on the three virgins to guide their youth to virtuous steadiness.
“O soul,” I said, “whose words recite such good, let me know who you were, and why no other joins in your praises of such rectitude.
If I return to finish the short race remaining of that life that ends so soon, your words will not lack some reward of grace.”
“Not for such comfort as the world may give do I reply,” he said, “but that such light of grace should shine on you while yet you live.
I was the root of that malignant tree which casts its shadow on all Christendom so that the soil bears good fruit only rarely.
But if Douay and Lille and Bruges and Ghent were strong again, their vengeance would be swift; and that it may, I pray the King of Judgment.
I was Hugh Capet in my mortal state. From me stem all the Philips and the Louis’ who have occupied the throne of France of late.
I was born in Paris as a butcher’s son. When the old line of kings had petered out to one last heir, who wore a monk’s gray gown,
I found that I held tight in my own hand the reins of state, and that my new wealth gave me such power, and such allies at my command,
that my son’s head, with pomp and sacrament rose to the widowed crown of France. From him those consecrated bones took their descent.
Till the great dowry of Provence increased my race so that it lost its sense of shame, it came to little, but did no harm at least.
That was the birth of its rapacity, its power, its lies. Later—to make amends—it took Normandy, Ponthieu, and Gascony.
Charles came to Italy, and—to make amends—he victimized Conradin. Then he sent Saint Thomas back to Heaven—to make amends.
I see a time, not far off, that brings forth another Charles from France. It shall make clear to many what both he and his are worth.
He comes alone, unarmed but for the lance of Judas, which he drives so hard he bursts the guts of Florence with the blow he plants.
He wins no land there; only sin and shame. And what is worse for him is that he holds such crimes too lightly to repent his blame.
The third, once hauled from his own ship, I see selling his daughter, haggling like a pirate over a girl sold into slavery.
O Avarice, what more harm can you do? You have taken such a hold on my descendants they sell off their own flesh and blood for you!
But dwarfing all crimes, past or yet to be, I see Alagna entered, and, in His Vicar, Christ Himself dragged in captivity.
I see Him mocked again and crucified, the gall and vinegar once more sent up. He dies again—with live thieves at His side.
I see another Pilate, so full of spite not even that suffices: his swollen sails enter the very Temple without right.
O God, my Lord, when shall my soul rejoice to see Thy retribution, which, lying hidden, sweetens Thine anger in Thy secret choice?
What you first heard me cry in adoration of that one only Bride of the Holy Ghost, which made you turn and ask an explanation, is the litany we add to every prayer as long as it is day. When the sun sets we raise the counter-cry on the night air.
We cry then how Pygmalion of old was made a traitor, thief, and parricide by his insatiable sick lust for gold;
how Midas suffered when his miser’s prayer was answered, and became forever after the legend of a ludicrous despair;
and then we tell how Achan, covetous, stole from the booty, for which Joshua’s rage still falls upon him—so it seems to us.
We cry Sapphira’s and her husband’s blame; we praise the hooves that battered Heliodorus; then round the ledge runs Polymnestor’s name,
foul to all time with Polydorus’ blood. Then we conclude the litany crying: ‘Crassus, you supped on gold—tell us, did it taste good?’
We wail or mutter in our long remorse according to the inner spur that drives us, at times with more, at others with less force:
thus I was not the only one who praised the good we tell by day; but, as it happened, the only one nearby whose voice was raised.”
We had already left him to his prayers and were expending every ounce of strength on the remaining distance to the stairs,
when suddenly I felt the mountain shake as if it tottered. Such a numb dread seized me as a man feels when marching to the stake.
Not even Delos, in that long ago before Latona went there to give birth to Heaven’s eyes, was ever shaken so.
Then there went up a cry on every side, so loud that the sweet Master, bending close said: “Do not fear, for I am still your Guide.”
“Glory to God in the Highest!” rang a shout from every throat—as I could understand from those nearby, whose words I could make out.
We stood there motionless, our souls suspended—as had the shepherds who first heard that hymn—until the ground grew still and the hymn ended.
Then we pushed on our holy way once more, studying those prostrate souls who had already resumed their lamentation, as before.
I never felt my soul assaulted so—unless my memory err—as in that war between my ignorance and desire to know
the explanation of that shock and shout; nor dared I ask, considering our haste; nor could I of myself, looking about,
find anywhere the key to what I sought. So I moved on, timid and sunk in thought.
NOTES
2. him: Adrian. Dante’s wish to know more had to bow to Adrian’s greater wish to resume his purification. Thus, Dante had to withdraw the sponge of his desire to know, from the water of Adrian’s presence, before he had absorbed all he wished for.
4-9. THE CROWDING OF THE LEDGE. The point, of course, is that Avarice is so common a sin that the ledge is jammed full of sinners, so many in fact that the space between their shades and the open side of the ledge is too narrow for safe passage. Virgil leads Dante, therefore, along the narrow space between the bodies and the inner cliff-face.
10-15. She-Wolf: See the three beasts encountered by Dante in Inferno, I, 33 ff. have taken more prey: As in lines 4-9, above, Avarice has infected more souls than has any other sin. when will he come: Another reference to the mysterious Greyhound who will come to make the world pure again and who will drive the She-Wolf from the light of day, back into Hell. (See Inferno, I, 95-104, and note.)
20-33. THE WHIP OF AVARICE. Once more the examples that make up the Whip are cried aloud by the sinners themselves. On this Cornice, however, all the sinners cry out the examples as impulse moves them, adding them as a litany to each prayer they recite as part of their penance. The prayer of this Cornice is, of course, from Psalm CXIX, “My soul cleaves to the dust.” (See Canto XIX, 73.)
A further peculiarity of the Whip and the Rein on this ledge is that the sinners recite the Whip by day and the Rein by night.
The first example of the Whip (lines 20-24) praises the blessed poverty of Mary. So great was it that she gave birth to Jesus in a manger. Yet in such poverty she achieved blessedness in comparison with which all the possessions of the world are as baubles.
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