Purgatorio
Canto XVIII
Dante, still not satisfied, asks Virgil to explain more fully the nature of love, to which his argument had reduced every good work and also its opposite. Virgil discourses on this theme, and solves Dante’s further doubt as to what moral merit and demerit consist in, explaining the function of free will. It is now near midnight, and the moon has appeared from behind the mountain. Dante begins to drowse, when he is startled by a throng of spirits who overtake them, running at full speed. These are the Slothful, expiating their sins in the hurry of their zeal. Two of them run in front, proclaiming examples of zeal. A spirit who was Abbot of San Zeno in Verona tells the poets to follow and they will find the passage upward. He condemns Albert della Scala for appointing his depraved son to the abbacy; then rushes on. Last come two shades, proclaiming examples of sloth. Dante, again drowsy, falls asleep.
THE profound Teacher of his argument
Had made an end, and with an earnest look
Searched in my face if I appeared content;
And I, whom a new thirsting overtook,
Kept silent outwardly but said within:
“Perhaps with too much questioning I provoke.”
But that most truthful Father, who had seen
The wish too timid to disclose its thought,
By speaking heartened my speech to begin.
Wherefore I: “Master, clearly do I note [10]
(So quickened is my vision in thy light)
All that thy discourse hath described or taught.
Therefore, sweet Father, make more explicit
To me, I pray thee, what this love is, whence
Thou draw’st each good deed and its opposite.”
“Direct the keen eyes of the intelligence
Toward me,” he said, “and the error thou wilt prove
Of those, blind, who of leading make pretence.
The mind which is created apt to love,
Soon as by pleasure it is stirred to act, [20]
To every pleasing thing is quick to move.
Your apprehension from a thing of fact
Draweth an image, shown to the inward view,
So that perforce it doth the mind attract.[i]24-29. The senses convey to the mind the impression of some attractive object in the material world; the understanding then develops this impression in such a way that it is brought to the notice of the will.
And if, being turned, it is inclined thereto,
The inclination is love: nature it is,
Which is through pleasure knit within ye anew.
Then, just as fire to the upper region flies
By reason of its form which, where it best
Endureth in its matter, is born to rise, [30]
Even so the mind is with desire possessed,
Which is a motion of spirit, and cannot be,
Till the thing loved rejoiceth it, at rest.
Now how the truth is hidden thou canst see
Plainly, from all those people who aver[ii]35. “Those people . . .”: the Epicureans, who overlook the fact that the object of desire may be evil.
That each love in itself is praiseworthy
Because perhaps its matter may appear
To be good always; but not every seal
Is good, however good the pressed wax were.”
“Thy words and my wit following at their heel” [40]
I answered him, “do love to me disclose,
But the more big with doubt this makes me feel;
For if love from without is offered us,
And with no other foot the soul proceed,
No merit it is if straight or not she goes.”
And he to me: “So far as reason plead
Can I instruct thee; beyond that point, wait
For Beatrice; for faith is here thy need.
Every substantial form which, separate[iii]49-62. In scholastic language, a “substantial form” means the particular basic principle, which gives an object its separate existence; and the substantial form of mankind is the intellective soul, whose “faculty peculiar” is an instinct which comprises innate knowledge and the inborn disposition to love. Hence we are not aware of the source of our natural inclination toward all that seems good. Judgment (“the power that judges”) tells us which desires are tight and which are wrong.
From matter, is knitted up with it, doth own [50]
A faculty peculiar and innate,
Which only in its activity is known
Nor save by its effect manifested,
As a plant’s life is by the green leaves shown.
Therefore man knows not either whence is bred
The understanding of first hints of thought
Nor the impulse to desire’s first objects led,
Which are in you as the instinct that hath taught
Bees to make honey; and this original bent
Desert of praise or blame admitteth not. [60]
Now, that with this will all wills else consent,
The power that judges is inborn in you
And ought to guard the threshold of assent.
This is the principle that holds the clue
To merit in you, according as it can
Good loves and guilty garner and winnow true.
Those reasoners who sought the Founder’s plan
Have recognized this inborn liberty,
And therefore Ethic have they left to man.
Wherefore suppose that from necessity [70]
Arises every love that in you stirs,
You have the power to curb it in your fee.
The noble virtue Beatrice avers
To be Free Will, and therefore look that thou
Have this in mind if she thereof converse.”
The Moon, almost to midnight moving slow,
Made the stars seem to us more rare and wan,
Shaped like a bucket that were all aglow,
As ’gainst the heaven upon those paths she ran
Which the sun kindles when the man of Rome [80]
Sees him at set “twixt Sard and Corsican;
And since that noble shade, because of whom
Pietola is more famed than Mantua town,[iv]83. Virgil was born at Pietola, near Mantua.
Had freed me of that which was so burdensome,
I now, who from the questions I had sown
Had reaped his candid and clear argument,
Stood like a man who wanders, drowsy grown.
But suddenly this drowsiness was rent
From off me by a throng of people, who
Behind our shoulders were to us-ward bent. [90]
As once Ismenus and Asopus knew[v]91. “Ismenus” and “Asopus” are rivers in Boeotia.
By night a fury and trampling down their side,
If but the Thebans did to Bacchus sue,
Such forms, by what of them I now descried,
Were coming round that circle, forward bowed
With speed, whom good will and a just love ride.
Soon were they on us, because that great crowd
Moved at a run, as each the other chased;
And two in front with weeping cried aloud:
“Mary to the hill country ran in haste, [100]
And Caesar, that Ilerda be subdued,
To Spain, when he had stabbed Massilia, raced.”
“On, on!” the others cried as they pursued.
“Through faint love O let not a moment lapse,
That grace by zeal for good may be renewed.”
“O people, whose present ardour doth perhaps
Redress the loitering ways begotten by
Lukewarmness in you that well-doing saps,
This one who lives, and surely I do not lie,
Would mount, if but the sun’s light be restored. [110]
Tell us then where the opening may be nigh.”
These were the words addressed them by my Lord.
Then spoke one of those spirits: “Where we go,
Follow, and of the passage be assured.
We with desire to move are smitten so
That stay we cannot; therefore pardon us
If as discourtesy this our duty show.
Verona’s Abbot of San Zeno I was
Under the rule of Barbarossa brave,
Of whom Milan still talks and says Alas! [120][vi]120. The Emperor Barbarossa destroyed Milan in 1162.
There’s one with foot already in the grave
Who soon shall rue that monastery’s case
And will lament that there to power he clave,
Because his son, in his whole body base,[vii]124. “His son”: Giuseppe, the son of Albert della Scala (see the Argument).
And worse in mind, and his birth also bad,
He has set up there in the true shepherd’s place.”
I know not if more words or none he had,
So far already he had pressed beyond;
But this I heard and to retain was glad.
He who in all need was my succour fond [130]
Bade me to turn and “See, these two,” he said.
“Come biting at the sin of sloth’s despond.”
In rear of all they cried: “The folk were dead[viii]133-138. All the Hebrews who had crossed the Red Sea perished, except Caleb and Joshua. Some of Aeneas’s companions, weary of hardship, stayed behind in Sicily.
For whom the sea divided and made way
Ere Jordan saw those who inherited.
And they who chose not to endure the day
To the last labours of Anchises’ son
To life inglorious gave their souls away.”
Then when those shades so far from us had run
That they could now be seen no more, arose [140]
A new thought in me and then another one,
And many and divers others sprang from those,
And I so wandered in and out of them
That all the wandering made mine eyes to close,
And thinking was transmuted into dream.