Purgatorio

Canto XXXIII

The River Eunoë.

“Deus venerunt gentes,” alternating¹Now three, now four, melodious psalmodyThe maidens in the midst of tears began;And Beatrice, compassionate and sighing,Listened to them with such a countenance,That scarce more changed was Mary at the cross.But when the other virgins place had given²For her to speak, uprisen to her feetWith color as of fire, she made response:“Modicum, et non videbitis me;³Et iterum, my sisters predilect,Modicum, et vos videbitis me.”Then all the seven in front of her she placed;And after her, by beckoning only, movedMe and the lady and the sage who stayed.⁴So she moved onward; and I do not thinkThat her tenth step was placed upon the ground,When with her eyes upon mine eyes she smote,And with a tranquil aspect, “Come more quickly,”To me she said, “that, if I speak with thee,To listen to me thou mayst be well placed.”As soon as I was with her as I should be,She said to me: “Why, brother, dost thou notVenture to question now, in coming with me?”As unto those who are too reverential,Speaking in presence of superiors,Who drag no living utterance to their teeth,⁵It me befell, that without perfect soundBegan I: “My necessity, Madonna,You know, and that which thereunto is good.”And she to me: “Of fear and bashfulnessHenceforward I will have thee strip thyself,So that thou speak no more as one who dreams.Know that the vessel which the serpent broke⁶Was, and is not; but let him who is guiltyThink that God’s vengeance does not fear a sop.⁷Without an heir shall not forever be⁸The Eagle that left his plumes upon the car,Whence it became a monster, then a prey;For verily I see, and hence narrate it,The stars already near to bring the time,From every hindrance safe, and every bar,Within which a Five-hundred, Ten, and Five,⁹One sent from God, shall slay the thievish womanAnd that same giant who is sinning with her.And peradventure my dark utterance,Like Themis and the Sphinx, may less persuade thee,¹⁰Since, in their mode, it clouds the intellect;But soon the facts shall be the Naiades¹¹Who shall this difficult enigma solve,Without destruction of the flocks and harvests.Note thou; and even as by me are utteredThese words, so teach them unto those who liveThat life which is a running unto death;¹²And bear in mind, whene’er thou writest them,Not to conceal what thou hast seen the plant,That twice already has been pillaged here.¹³Whoever pillages or shatters it,With blasphemy of deed offendeth God,Who made it holy for his use alone.For biting that, in pain and in desire¹⁴Five thousand years and more the first-born soulCraved Him, who punished in himself the bite.Thy genius slumbers, if it deem it notFor special reason so pre-eminentIn height, and so inverted in its summit.¹⁵And if thy vain imaginings had not beenWater of Elsa round about thy mind,¹⁶And Pyramus to the mulberry, their pleasure,¹⁷Thou by so many circumstances onlyThe justice of the interdict of GodMorally in the tree wouldst recognize.But since I see thee in thine intellectConverted into stone and stained with sin,So that the light of my discourse doth daze thee,I will too, if not written, at least painted,Thou bear it back within thee, for the reasonThat cinct with palm the pilgrim’s staff is borne.”¹⁸And I: “As by a signet is the waxWhich does not change the figure stamped upon it,My brain is now imprinted by yourself.But wherefore so beyond my power of sightSoars your desirable discourse, that ayeThe more I strive, so much the more I lose it?”“That thou mayst recognize,” she said, “the school¹⁹Which thou hast followed, and mayst see how farIts doctrine follows after my discourse,And mayst behold your path from the divineDistant as far as separated isFrom earth the heaven that highest hastens on.”Whence her I answered: “I do not rememberThat ever I estranged myself from you,Nor have I conscience of it that reproves me.”“And if thou art not able to remember,”Smiling she answered, “recollect thee nowThat thou this very day hast drunk of Lethe;And if from smoke a fire may be inferred,Such an oblivion clearly demonstratesSome error in thy will elsewhere intent.Truly from this time forward shall my wordsBe naked, so far as it is befittingTo lay them open unto thy rude gaze.”And more coruscant and with slower stepsThe sun was holding the meridian circle,²⁰Which, with the point of view, shifts here and there,When halted (as he cometh to a halt,Who goes before a squadron as its escort,If something new he find upon his way)The maidens seven at a dark shadow’s edge,Such as, beneath green leaves and branches black,The Alp upon its frigid border wears.In front of them the Tigris and Euphrates²¹Methought I saw forth issue from one fountain,And slowly part, like friends, from one another.“O light, O glory of the human race!What stream is this which here unfolds itselfFrom out one source, and from itself withdraws?”For such a prayer, ’twas said unto me, “PrayMatilda that she tell thee”; and here answered,As one does who doth free himself from blame,The beautiful lady: “This and other thingsWere told to him by me; and sure I amThe water of Lethe has not hid them from him.”And Beatrice: “Perhaps a greater care,Which oftentimes our memory takes away,Has made the vision of his mind obscure.But Eunoë behold, that yonder rises;²²Lead him to it, and, as thou art accustomed,Revive again the half-dead virtue in him.”²³Like gentle soul, that maketh no excuse,But makes its own will of another’s willAs soon as by a sign it is disclosed,Even so, when she had taken hold of me,The beautiful lady moved, and unto StatiusSaid, in her womanly manner, “Come with him.”If, Reader, I possessed a longer spaceFor writing it, I yet would sing in partOf the sweet draught that ne’er would satiate me;But inasmuch as full are all the leavesMade ready for this second canticle,The curb of art no farther lets me go.From the most holy water I returnedRegenerate, in the manner of new treesThat are renewed with a new foliage,Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars.²⁴

In this canto Dante is made to drink of the river Eunoë, the memory of things good. Psalm 79, beginning:— “O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled.” The three Evangelical and four Cardinal Virtues chant this psalm, alternately responding to each other. The Latin words must be chanted, in order to make the lines rhythmical, with an equal emphasis on each syllable. ↩
When their singing was ended. ↩
John 16:16:— “A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me; because I go to the Father.” ↩
Dante, Matilda, and Statius. ↩
As in Canto XXXI 7:— “My faculties were in so great confusion, / That the voice moved, but sooner was extinct / Than by its organs it was set at large.” ↩
Is no longer what it was. Revelation 17:8:— “The beast that thou sawest was, and is not.” ↩
In the olden time in Florence, if an assassin could contrive to eat a sop of bread and wine at the grave of the murdered man, within nine days after the murder, he was free from the vengeance of the family; and to prevent this they kept watch at the tomb. There is no evading the vengeance of God in this way. Such is the interpretation of this passage by all the old commentators. ↩
The Roman Empire shall not always be without an Emperor, as it was then in the eyes of Dante, who counted the “German Albert,” Alberto tedesco, as no Emperor, because he never came into Italy. See the appeal to him. Canto VI 96, and the malediction, because he suffered “The garden of the empire to be waste.” ↩
The Roman numerals making DVX, or Leader. The allusion is to Henry of Luxembourg, in whom Dante placed his hopes of the restoration of the Imperial power. He was the successor of the German Albert of the preceding note, after an interregnum of one year. He died in 1312, shortly after his coronation in Rome. See note 618. Villani, though a Guelf, pays this tribute of respect to his memory. Book IX Ch. 1:— “He was wise and just and gracious, valiant in arms, dignified, and catholic; and although of low estate in lineage, he was of a magnanimous heart, feared and redoubted, and if he had lived longer, he would have done great things.” When Henry entered Italy in September, 1310, Dante hastened to meet him, full of faith and hope. Whether this interview took place at Susa, Turin, or Milan, is uncertain; nor is there any record of it, except the allusion in the following extract from a letter of Dante, “written in Tuscany, at the sources of the Arno, on the 14th of May, 1311, in the first year of the happy journey of the divine Henry into Italy.” Dante was disappointed that his hero should linger so long in the Lombard towns, and wished him to march at once against Florence, the monster “that drinketh neither of the headlong Po, nor of thy Tyber.” In this letter, Mr. Greene’s Tr., he says:— “The inheritance of peace, as the immense love of God witnesseth, was left us, that in the marvellous sweetness thereof our hard warfare might be softened, and by the use thereof we might deserve the joys of our triumphant country. But the hatred of the ancient and implacable enemy, who ever and secretly layeth snares for human prosperity—disinheriting some of those who were willing—impiously, in the absence of our protector, despoiled us also, who were unwilling. Wherefore we wept long by the rivers of confusion, and incessantly implored the protection of the just king, to scatter the satellites of the cruel tyrant, and restore us to our just rights. And when thou, successor of Caesar and of Augustus, crossing the chain of the Apennines, brought back the venerable Tarpeian ensigns, our long sighings straightway ceased, the fountains of our tears were stayed, and a new hope of a better age, like a sun suddenly risen, shed its beams over Latium. Then many, breaking forth into jubilant vows, sang with Mars the Saturnian reign, and the return of the Virgin. “But since our sun (whether the fervor of desire suggests it, or the aspect of truth) is already believed to have delayed, or is supposed to be going back in his course, as if a new Joshua or the son of Amos had commanded, we are compelled in our uncertainty to doubt, and to break forth in the words of the Forerunner: ‘Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?’ And although the fury of long thirst turns into doubt, as is its wont, the things which are certain because they are near, nevertheless we believe and hope in thee, asserting thee to be the minister of God, and the son of the Church, and the promoter of the Roman glory. And I, who write as well for myself as for others, when my hands touched thy feet and my lips performed their office, saw thee most benignant, as becometh the Imperial majesty, and heard thee most clement. Then my spirit exulted within me, and I silently said to myself, ‘Behold the lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world.’ ” Dante, Paradiso XXX 133, sees the crown and throne that await the “noble Henry” in the highest heaven:— “On that great throne on which thine eyes are fixed / For the crown’s sake already placed upon it, / Before thou suppest at this wedding feast, / Shall sit the soul (that is to be Augustus / On earth) of noble Henry, who shall come / To reform Italy ere she be prepared.” ↩
Themis, the daughter of Coelus and Terra, whose oracle was famous in Attica, and who puzzled Deucalion and Pyrrha by telling them that, in order to repeople the earth after the deluge, they must throw “their mother’s bones behind them.” The Sphinx, the famous monster born of Chimaera, and having the head of a woman, the wings of a bird, the body of a dog, and the paws of a lion; and whose riddle, “What animal walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, and on three at night?” so puzzled the Thebans, that King Creon offered his crown and his daughter Jocasta to any one who should solve it, and so free the land of the uncomfortable monster; a feat accomplished by Oedipus apparently without much difficulty. ↩
The Naiades having undertaken to solve the enigmas of oracles, Themis, offended, sent forth a wild beast to ravage the flocks and fields of the Thebans; though why they should have been held accountable for the doings of the Naiades is not very obvious. The tradition is founded on a passage in Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII 757:— “Carmina Naïades non intellecta priorum / Solvunt.” Heinsius and other critics say that the lines should read, “Carmina Laïades non intellecta priorum / Solverat”; referring to Oedipus, son of Laius. But Rosa Moranda maintains the old reading, and says there is authority in Pausanias for making the Naiades interpreters of oracles. ↩
Coplas de Manrique:— “Our cradle is the starting place, / Life is the running of the race.” ↩
First by the Eagle, who rent its bark and leaves; then by the giant, who bore away the chariot which had been bound to it. ↩
The sin of Adam, and the death of Christ. ↩
Widening at the top, instead of diminishing upward like other trees. ↩
The Elsa is a river in Tuscany, rising in the mountains near Colle, and flowing northward into the Arno, between Florence and Pisa. Its waters have the power of incrusting or petrifying anything left in them. “This power of incrustation,” says Covino, Descriz. Geog. dell’ Italia, “is especially manifest a little above Colle, where a great pool rushes impetuously from the ground.” ↩
If the vain thoughts thou hast been immersed in had not petrified thee, and the pleasure of them stained thee; if thou hadst not been “Converted into stone and stained with sin.” ↩
The staff wreathed with palm, the cockleshell in the hat, and the sandal-shoon were all marks of the pilgrim, showing he had been beyond sea and in the Holy Land. Thus in the old ballad of “The Friar of Orders Gray”:— “And how should I your truelove know / From many another one? / O by his cockle-hat and staff, / And by his sandal-shoone.” In the Vita Nuova, Mr. Norton’s Tr., p. 71, is this passage:— “Moreover, it is to be known that the people who travel in the service of the Most High are called by three distinct terms. Those who go beyond the sea, whence often they bring back the palm, are called palmers. Those who go to the house of Galicia are called pilgrims, because the burial-place of St. James was more distant from his country than that of any other of the Apostles. And those are called romei who go to Rome.” ↩
How far Philosophy differs from Religion. Isaiah 4:8:— “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” ↩
Noon of the Fourth Day of Purgatory. ↩
Two of the four rivers that watered Paradise. Here they are the same as Lethe and Eunoë, the oblivion of evil, and the memory of good. ↩
Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress:— “I saw then, that they went on their way to a pleasant river, which David the king called ‘the river of God’; but John, ‘the river of the water of life.’ Now their way lay just upon the bank of the river: here therefore Christian and his companion walked with great delight: they drank also of the water of the river, which was pleasant, and enlivening to their weary spirits. Besides, on the banks of this river, on either side, were green trees for all manner of fruit; and the leaves they ate to prevent surfeits and other diseases that are incident to those that heat their blood by travels. On either side of the river was also a meadow, curiously beautified with lilies; and it was green all the year long. In this meadow they lay down and slept; for here they might lie down safely. When they awoke, they gathered again of the fruits of the trees, and drank again of the water of the river, and then lay down again to sleep.” ↩
Sir John Denham says:— “The sweetest cordial we receive at last / Is conscience of our virtuous actions past.” ↩
The last word in this division of the poem, as in the other two, is the suggestive word “Stars.” ↩