Paradiso
Canto IV
Two questions perplex Dante’s mind; but, equally desirous to learn the answer to each of them, he is paralysed into silence. Beatrice, reading his thoughts, gives them utterance. One of Dante's doubts refers to Plato’s theory, in the Timaeus, that each soul returns after death to the star from which it came. This involves a poisonous heresy, since the orthodox view is that the blessed all have their home in the Empyrean, though they show themselves to Dante in the different spheres. The other question is prompted by the lower place assigned to those who were forced to break their vows; which seems inconsistent with divine justice. Beatrice explains the difference between the absolute and the relative will.
At the end of the canto Dante asks whether a person, by other good deeds, may compensate for broken vows.
BETWEEN two foods, each near in like degree
And tempting, would a man starve ere he chose
To put one to his teeth, though choice were free.
And so between two wolves, his ravening foes,
In equal dread of both, would stand a lamb:
So would a hound stand still between two does.
Hence, if I held my peace, I take no blame
Upon me, in like perplexity bemused,
Since help was none, nor therefor merit claim.
I held my peace; but my desire suffused [10]
My face, together with my question’s need,
Warmer than if articulate speech I used;
And Beatrice did as Daniel, when he freed[i]13. “Daniel” revealed the forgotten dream of Nebuchadnezzar, saving the astrologers from the anger of the king.
Nebuchadnezzar from the wrath that made
His heart unjustly will a cruel deed.
“I see how one and the other desire,” she said,
“So draw thee that thy trouble is knotted fast
Within itself, and thou art speechless stayed.
Thou arguest: ‘If the good will in me last,
By what reason can violence from without [20]
Lessen for me the merit long amassed?”
Also it is perplexing to thy thought
That to the stars the souls seem to fly home,
According to the doctrine Plato taught.
These are the questions that thy will benumb
With equal burden; therefore first I treat
Of that which holds in it the worst venom.
Not Seraphs who in God most inly meet,
Not Moses, Samuel, nor whichever John[ii]29. “Whichever John . . .”: the Baptist and the Evangelist.
Thou choose, not Mary even, have a seat [30]
In other heaven than those the spirits have won
Who here but now made themselves visible;
Nor more or less years to their being run.
But all make beautiful the first circle
And have sweet life, albeit of divers taste,
Since more and less the eternal breath they feel.
They showed themselves here, not because they are placed
In this allotted sphere; rather to show
The heavenly sphere that is exalted least.
Speech to your wit must needs be tempered so, [40]
Since but from things of sense it apprehends
What it makes apt for the intellect to know.
Scripture to your capacity condescends
For this cause, and a foot and hand will feign
For God, yet something other it intends.
Thus Holy Church portrays to you as men
With human look Michael and Gabriel
And the other who made Tobit whole again.[iii]48. Raphael, who cured the blindness of Tobit.
What of the souls Timaeus has to tell
Is not like that which is apparent here; [50]
For what he says it seems he thinks as well.[iv]51. Because Plato seems to understand it literally.
He says the soul returns to its own star,
Himself believing it was severed thence
When Nature made it form for flesh to wear.
Haply his opinion is of other sense
Than his words sound, and maybe has in it
Import of no derisory pretence.
If to these spheres he means the souls remit
The honour of their influence and the blame,
Perhaps his bow upon some truth may hit. [60]
Ill understood, this principle overcame
Nigh all the world; and on that erring plea
It gave to Jove, Mars, Mercury a name.
The other matter of thy perplexity
Hath the less poison, since from me to veer
Its mischief could not have perverted thee.
That heavenly justice should unjust appear
In the eyes of mortal beings is argument
Of faith; no heresy corrupteth here.
But seeing that your understanding, bent [70]
Upon this truth, can pierce to it unconfused,
Till make thee, according to thy wish, content.
If violence is, when he who is abused[v]73. Beatrice begins by establishing a definition of violence.
Nowise connives with what he is mastered by,
Then these souls were not on that count excused.
For the will cannot, if it wills not, die,
But does as in the fire’s flame nature does
Though violence wrest it thousand times awry.
Should it, then, bend, little or much, it thus
Abets the violence; and so did these, [80]
Who still might have regained the holy house.
If their will had stayed perfect in duress,
Like that which upheld Laurence on the grid,[vi]83-4. St. Laurence was a Christian martyr. Mucius Scaevola burned off his own right hand.
Or Mucius, to his own hand pitiless,
It would have driven them, soon as they were freed,
Upon the road whence they were dragged before;
But so entire a will is rare indeed.
Now by these words, if thou hast reaped their lore
As thou should’st do, the argument falls down
Which would have teased thee many a time more; [90]
But now another pass is to be won,
Fronting thine eyes, such that thou would’st' not, ere
Thou wert full weary, win through it alone.
I have set within thy mind this surety clear,
That souls in bliss never may lie, since they
Are to the primal truth forever near.[vii]96. “The primal truth”: God.
And then thou mightest hear Piccarda say
That Constance kept devotion to the veil,
So that in this she seems to say me nay.
Many times ere now, brother, it befell [100]
That to escape some danger a man was brought
To do against his wish things blameable,
Even as Alcmaeon, on whom his father wrought[viii]103. Alcmaeon, to avenge his father, killed his mother.
By his entreaties, his own mother slew:
Not to lose piety, he set pity at naught.
At this point I would have thee hold it true
That violence commingles with the will
And no excuse holds for the work these do.
Will absolute consents not to the ill,
But it consents so far as it’s in dread, [110]
If it recoil, of a wrong greater still.
When, then, Piccarda utters on this head
Her thought, she means the absolute will, and I
The other, so that both the truth have said.”[ix]114. “The other”: the relative will.
Such was the sacred stream that rippled by,
Issuing from the spring whence all truth flows,
Both one and the other desire to satisfy.
“O loved of the First Lover, O goddess, whose
Discourse,” said I then, “floods me and bathes me round
And warms my spirit till more and more it glows, [120]
My love is not to such degree profound
As to suffice to render grace for grace:
May he who sees, and can, thereto respond!
Nothing can satiate, I now see, unless
The True illumine it, the mind of men:
Beyond that, no truth can enlarge its place.
Therein it rests like wild beast in his den,
Soon as it reaches it; and reach it may:
Else every human longing were in vain;
Hence the doubt groweth, like a sucker, say, [130]
At Truth’s foot; it is nature’s urging, which
Spurs us from height to height on the upward way.
This prompts me, this emboldens, to beseech
With reverence, Lady, that of one truth yet
That is obscure to me thou deign to teach.
I would fain know if one may pay the debt
For broken vows with other deeds upright
Which may not come short, in your balance set.”
Beatrice looked on me with eyes of light
Filled so divinely with love’s spark ablaze [140]
That, vanquished, all my powers were put to flight,
And I became as lost with downcast gaze.