Dante's Purgatorio: Canto XIX
Dante’s Dream of the Siren. The Fifth Circle: The Avaricious and Prodigal. Pope Adrian V.
It was the hour when the diurnal heat
No more can warm the coldness of the moon,
Vanquished by earth, or peradventure Saturn,
When geomancers their Fortuna Major
See in the orient before the dawn 5
Rise by a path that long remains not dim,
There came to me in dreams a stammering woman,
Squint in her eyes, and in her feet distorted,
With hands dissevered and of sallow hue.
I looked at her; and as the sun restores 10
The frigid members which the night benumbs,
Even thus my gaze did render voluble
Her tongue, and made her all erect thereafter
In little while, and the lost countenance
As love desires it so in her did colour. 15
When in this wise she had her speech unloosed,
She 'gan to sing so, that with difficulty
Could I have turned my thoughts away from her.
"I am," she sang, "I am the Siren sweet
Who mariners amid the main unman, 20
So full am I of pleasantness to hear.
I drew Ulysses from his wandering way
Unto my song, and he who dwells with me
Seldom departs so wholly I content him."
Her mouth was not yet closed again, before 25
Appeared a Lady saintly and alert
Close at my side to put her to confusion.
"Virgilius, O Virgilius! who is this?"
Sternly she said; and he was drawing near
With eyes still fixed upon that modest one. 30
She seized the other and in front laid open,
Rending her garments, and her belly showed me;
This waked me with the stench that issued from it.
I turned mine eyes, and good Virgilius said:
"At least thrice have I called thee; rise and come; 35
Find we the opening by which thou mayst enter."
I rose; and full already of high day
Were all the circles of the Sacred Mountain,
And with the new sun at our back we went.
Following behind him, I my forehead bore 40
Like unto one who has it laden with thought,
Who makes himself the half arch of a bridge,
When I heard say, "Come, here the passage is,"
Spoken in a manner gentle and benign,
Such as we hear not in this mortal region. 45
With open wings, which of a swan appeared,
Upward he turned us who thus spake to us,
Between the two walls of the solid granite.
He moved his pinions afterwards and fanned us,
Affirming those 'qui lugent' to be blessed, 50
For they shall have their souls with comfort filled.
"What aileth thee, that aye to earth thou gazest?"
To me my Guide began to say, we both
Somewhat beyond the Angel having mounted.
And I: "With such misgiving makes me go 55
A vision new, which bends me to itself,
So that I cannot from the thought withdraw me."
"Didst thou behold," he said, "that old enchantress,
Who sole above us henceforth is lamented?
Didst thou behold how man is freed from her? 60
Suffice it thee, and smite earth with thy heels,
Thine eyes lift upward to the lure, that whirls
The Eternal King with revolutions vast."
Even as the hawk, that first his feet surveys,
Then turns him to the call and stretches forward, 65
Through the desire of food that draws him thither,
Such I became, and such, as far as cleaves
The rock to give a way to him who mounts,
Went on to where the circling doth begin.
On the fifth circle when I had come forth, 70
People I saw upon it who were weeping,
Stretched prone upon the ground, all downward turned.
"Adhaesit pavimento anima mea,"
I heard them say with sighings so profound,
That hardly could the words be understood. 75
"O ye elect of God, whose sufferings
Justice and Hope both render less severe,
Direct ye us towards the high ascents."
"If ye are come secure from this prostration,
And wish to find the way most speedily, 80
Let your right hands be evermore outside."
Thus did the Poet ask, and thus was answered
By them somewhat in front of us; whence I
In what was spoken divined the rest concealed,
And unto my Lord's eyes mine eyes I turned; 85
Whence he assented with a cheerful sign
To what the sight of my desire implored.
When of myself I could dispose at will,
Above that creature did I draw myself,
Whose words before had caused me to take note, 90
Saying: "O Spirit, in whom weeping ripens
That without which to God we cannot turn,
Suspend awhile for me thy greater care.
Who wast thou, and why are your backs turned upwards,
Tell me, and if thou wouldst that I procure thee 95
Anything there whence living I departed."
And he to me: "Wherefore our backs the heaven
Turns to itself, know shalt thou; but beforehand
'Scias quod ego fui successor Petri.'
Between Siestri and Chiaveri descends 100
A river beautiful, and of its name
The title of my blood its summit makes.
A month and little more essayed I how
Weighs the great cloak on him from mire who keeps it,
For all the other burdens seem a feather. 105
Tardy, ah woe is me! was my conversion;
But when the Roman Shepherd I was made,
Then I discovered life to be a lie.
I saw that there the heart was not at rest,
Nor farther in that life could one ascend; 110
Whereby the love of this was kindled in me.
Until that time a wretched soul and parted
From God was I, and wholly avaricious;
Now, as thou seest, I here am punished for it.
What avarice does is here made manifest 115
In the purgation of these souls converted,
And no more bitter pain the Mountain has.
Even as our eye did not uplift itself
Aloft, being fastened upon earthly things,
So justice here has merged it in the earth. 120
As avarice had extinguished our affection
For every good, whereby was action lost,
So justice here doth hold us in restraint,
Bound and imprisoned by the feet and hands;
And so long as it pleases the just Lord 125
Shall we remain immovable and prostrate."
I on my knees had fallen, and wished to speak;
But even as I began, and he was 'ware,
Only by listening, of my reverence,
"What cause," he said, "has downward bent thee thus?" 130
And I to him: "For your own dignity,
Standing, my conscience stung me with remorse."
"Straighten thy legs, and upward raise thee, brother,"
He answered: "Err not, fellow-servant am I
With thee and with the others to one power. 135
If e'er that holy, evangelic sound,
Which sayeth 'neque nubent,' thou hast heard,
Well canst thou see why in this wise I speak.
Now go; no longer will I have thee linger,
Because thy stay doth incommode my weeping, 140
With which I ripen that which thou hast said.
On earth I have a grandchild named Alagia,
Good in herself, unless indeed our house
Malevolent may make her by example,
And she alone remains to me on earth." 145
NOTES
1 - 1
The ascent to the Fifth Circle, where Avarice is punished. It is the dawn of the Third Day.
3 - 3
Brunetto Latini, Tresor, Ch. CXI. “Saturn, who is sovereign over all, is cruel and malign and of a cold nature.”
4 - 4
Geomancy is divination by points in the ground, or pebbles arranged in certain figures, which have peculiar names. Among these is the figure called the Fortuna Major, which is thus drawn: –
and which by an effort of imagination can also be formed out of some of the last stars of Aquarius, and some of the first of Pisces.
Chaucer, Troil. and Cres., III. 1415: –
“But whan the cocke, commune astrologer,
Gan on his brest to bete and after crowe,
And Lucifer, the dayes messanger,
Gan for to rise and out his bemes throwe,
And estward rose, to him that could it knowe,
Fortuna Major.”6 - 6
Because the sun is following close behind.
7 - 7
This “stammering woman” of Dante's dream is Sensual Pleasure, which the imagination of the beholder adorns with a thousand charms. The “lady saintly and alert” is Reason, the same that tied Ulysses to the mast, and stopped the ears of his sailors with wax that they might not hear the song of the Sirens.
Gower, Conf. Amant., I.: –
“Of such nature They ben, that with so swete a steven Like to the melodie of heven In womannishe vois they singe With notes of so great likinge, Of suche mesure, of suche musike, Whereof the shippes they beswike That passen by the costes there. For whan the shipmen lay an ere Unto the vois, in here airs They wene it be a paradis, Which after is to hem an helle.”
51 - 51
“That is,” says Buti, “they shall have the gift of comforting their souls.”
Matthew v. 4: “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”
59 - 59
The three remaining sins to be purged away are Avarice, Gluttony, and Lust.
61 - 61
See Canto XIV. 148.
73 - 73
Psalms cxix. 25: “My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according to thy word.”
99 - 99
Know that I am the successor of Peter. It is Pope Adrian the Fifth who speaks. He was of the family of the Counts of Lavagna, the family taking its title from the river Lavagna, flowing between Siestri and Chiaveri, towns on the Riviera di Genova. He was Pope only thirty-nine days, and died in 1276. When his kindred came to congratulate him on his election, he said, “Would that ye came to a Cardinal in good health, and not to a dying Pope.”
134 - 134
Revelation xix. 10: “And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not, I am thy fellow-servant.”
137 - 137
Matthew xxii. 30: “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven.” He reminds Dante that here all earthly distinctions and relations are laid aside. He is no longer “the Spouse of the Church.”
141 - 141
Penitence; line 92:–
“In whom weeping ripens That without which to God we cannot turn.”
142 - 142
Madonna Alagia was the wife of Marcello Malespini, that friend of Dante with whom, during his wanderings he took refuge in the Lunigiana, in 1307.