Paradiso

Canto IV

Questionings of the soul and of broken vows.

Between two viands, equally removed¹And tempting, a free man would die of hunger²Ere either he could bring unto his teeth.So would a lamb between the raveningsOf two fierce wolves stand fearing both alike;And so would stand a dog between two does.³Hence, if I held my peace, myself I blame not,Impelled in equal measure by my doubts,Since it must be so, nor do I commend.⁴I held my peace; but my desire was paintedUpon my face, and questioning with thatMore fervent far than by articulate speech.Beatrice did as Daniel had done⁵Relieving Nebuchadnezzar from the wrathWhich rendered him unjustly merciless,And said: “Well see I how attracteth theeOne and the other wish, so that thy careBinds itself so that forth it does not breathe.Thou arguest, if good will be permanent,The violence of others, for what reasonDoth it decrease the measure of my merit?Again for doubting furnish thee occasionSouls seeming to return unto the stars,According to the sentiment of Plato.⁶These are the questions which upon thy wishAre thrusting equally; and therefore first⁷Will I treat that which hath the most of gall.He of the Seraphim most absorbed in God,⁸Moses, and Samuel, and whichever JohnThou mayst select, I say, and even Mary,Have not in any other heaven their seats,Than have those spirits that just appeared to thee,Nor of existence more or fewer years;But all make beautiful the primal circle,And have sweet life in different degrees,By feeling more or less the eternal breath.They showed themselves here, not because allottedThis sphere has been to them, but to give signOf the celestial which is least exalted.To speak thus is adapted to your mind,Since only through the sense it apprehendethWhat then it worthy makes of intellect.⁹On this account the Scripture condescendsUnto your faculties, and feet and handsTo God attributes, and means something else;And Holy Church under an aspect humanGabriel and Michael represent to you,And him who made Tobias whole again.¹⁰That which Timaeus argues of the soul¹¹Doth not resemble that which here is seen,Because it seems that as he speaks he thinks.¹²He says the soul unto its star returns,Believing it to have been severed thenceWhenever nature gave it as a form.¹³Perhaps his doctrine is of other guiseThan the words sound, and possibly may beWith meaning that is not to be derided.If he doth mean that to these wheels returnThe honor of their influence and the blame,Perhaps his bow doth hit upon some truth.This principle ill understood once warpedThe whole world nearly, till it went astrayInvoking Jove and Mercury and Mars.¹⁴The other doubt which doth disquiet thee¹⁵Less venom has, for its malevolenceCould never lead thee otherwhere from me.That as unjust our justice should appearIn eyes of mortals, is an argumentOf faith, and not of sin heretical.But still, that your perception may be ableTo thoroughly penetrate this verity,As thou desirest, I will satisfy thee.If it be violence when he who suffersCooperates not with him who uses force,These souls were not on that account excused;For will is never quenched unless it will,But operates as nature doth in fireIf violence a thousand times distort it.Hence, if it yieldeth more or less, it secondsThe force; and these have done so, having powerOf turning back unto the holy place.If their will had been perfect, like to thatWhich Lawrence fast upon his gridiron held,¹⁶And Mutius made severe to his own hand,¹⁷It would have urged them back along the roadWhence they were dragged, as soon as they were free;But such a solid will is all too rare.And by these words, if thou hast gathered themAs thou shouldst do, the argument is refutedThat would have still annoyed thee many times.But now another passage runs acrossBefore thine eyes, and such that by thyselfThou couldst not thread it ere thou wouldst be weary.I have for certain put into thy mindThat soul beatified could never lie,For it is near the primal Truth,And then thou from Piccarda might’st have heardCostanza kept affection for the veil,So that she seemeth here to contradict me.Many times, brother, has it come to pass,That, to escape from peril, with reluctanceThat has been done it was not right to do,E’en as Alcmaeon (who, being by his father¹⁸Thereto entreated, his own mother slew)Not to lose pity pitiless became.At this point I desire thee to rememberThat force with will commingles, and they causeThat the offences cannot be excused.Will absolute consenteth not to evil;But in so far consenteth as it fears,If it refrain, to fall into more harm.Hence when Piccarda uses this expression,She meaneth the will absolute, and IThe other, so that both of us speak truth.”Such was the flowing of the holy riverThat issued from the fount whence springs all truth;This put to rest my wishes one and all.“O love of the first lover, O divine,”¹⁹Said I forthwith, “whose speech inundates meAnd warms me so, it more and more revives me,My own affection is not so profoundAs to suffice in rendering grace for grace;Let Him, who sees and can, thereto respond.Well I perceive that never sated isOur intellect unless the Truth illume it,Beyond which nothing true expands itself.It rests therein, as wild beast in his lair,When it attains it; and it can attain it;If not, then each desire would frustrate be.Therefore springs up, in fashion of a shoot,Doubt at the foot of truth; and this is nature,²⁰Which to the top from height to height impels us.This doth invite me, this assurance give meWith reverence, Lady, to inquire of youAnother truth, which is obscure to me.I wish to know if man can satisfy youFor broken vows with other good deeds, soThat in your balance they will not be light.”Beatrice gazed upon me with her eyes²¹Full of the sparks of love, and so divine,That, overcome my power, I turned my backAnd almost lost myself with eyes downcast.

The Heaven of the Moon continued. ↩
Montaigne says:— “If any one should place us between the bottle and the bacon (entre la bouteille et le jambon), with an equal appetite for food and drink, there would doubtless be no remedy but to die of thirst and hunger.” ↩
Ovid, Metamorphoses, V, Maynwaring’s Tr.:— “As when a hungry tiger near him hears / Two lowing herds, awhile he both forbears; / Nor can his hopes of this or that renounce, / So strong he lusts to prey on both at once.” ↩
“A similitude,” says Venturi, “of great poetic beauty, but of little philosophic soundness.” ↩
When he recalled and interpreted the forgotten dream of Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel 2:10:— “The Chaldeans answered before the king, and said, There is not a man upon the earth that can show the king’s matter; therefore there is no king, lord, nor ruler, that asked such things at any magician, or astrologer, or Chaldean. And it is a rare thing that the king requireth: and there is none other that can show it before the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.” ↩
Plato, Timaeus, Davis’s Tr., says:— “And after having thus framed the universe, he allotted to it souls equal in number to the stars, inserting each in each. … And he declared also, that after living well for the time appointed to him, each one should once more return to the habitation of his associate star, and spend a blessed and suitable existence.” ↩
The word “thrust,” pontano, is here used in its architectural sense, as in Inferno XXXII 3. There it is literal, here figurative. ↩
Che più s’ india, that most in-God’s himself. As in Canto IX 81, S’ io m’ intuassi come tu t’ immii, “if I could in-thee myself as thou dost in-me thyself”; and other expressions of a similar kind. ↩
The dogma of the Peripatetics, that nothing is in Intellect which was not first in Sense. ↩
Raphael, “the affable archangel,” of whom Milton says, Paradise Lost, V 220:— “Raphael, the sociable spirit, that deigned / To travel with Tobias, and secured / His marriage with the seven-times-wedded maid.” See Tobit 12:14:— “And now God hath sent me to heal thee and Sara thy daughter-in-law. I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One.” It must be remarked, however, that it was Tobit, and not Tobias, who was cured of his blindness. ↩
Plato’s Dialogue, entitled Timaeus, the name of the philosopher of Locri. ↩
Plato means it literally, and the Scriptures figuratively. ↩
When it was infused into the body, or the body became informed with it. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Quaest. LXXVI I, says:— “Form is that by which a thing is … This principle therefore, by which we first think, whether it be called intellect, or intellectual soul, is the form of the body.” And Spenser, “Hymne in Honour of Beautie,” says:— “For of the soule the bodie forme doth take, / For soule is forme and doth the bodie make.” ↩
Joachim di Flora, Dante’s “Calabrian Abbot Joachim,” the mystic of the twelfth century, says in his Exposition of the Apocalypse:— “The deceived Gentiles believed that the planets to which they gave the names of Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Mars, the Moon, and the Sun, were gods.” ↩
Stated in line 20:— “The violence of others, for what reason / Doth it decrease the measure of my merit?” ↩
St. Lawrence. In Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art, II 156, his martyrdom is thus described:— “The satellites of the tyrant, hearing that the treasures of the church had been confided to Lawrence, carried him before the tribunal, and he was questioned, but replied not one word; therefore he was put into a dungeon, under the charge of a man named Hippolytus, whom with his whole family he converted to the faith of Christ, and baptized; and when he was called again before the Prefect, and required to say where the treasures were concealed, he answered that in three days he would show them. The third day being come, St. Lawrence gathered together the sick and the poor, to whom he had dispensed alms, and, placing them before the Prefect, said, ‘Behold, here are the treasures of Christ’s Church.’ Upon this the Prefect, thinking he was mocked, fell into a great rage, and ordered St. Lawrence to be tortured till he had made known where the treasures were concealed; but no suffering could subdue the patience and constancy of the holy martyr. Then the Prefect commanded that he should be carried by night to the baths of Olympias, near the villa of Sallust the historian, and that a new kind of torture should be prepared for him, more strange and cruel than had ever entered into the heart of a tyrant to conceive; for he ordered him to be stretched on a sort of bed, formed of iron bars in the manner of a gridiron, and a fire to be lighted beneath, which should gradually consume his body to ashes: and the executioners did as they were commanded, kindling the fire and adding coals from time to time, so that the victim was in a manner roasted alive; and those who were present looked on with horror, and wondered at the cruelty of the Prefect, who could condemn to such torments a youth of such fair person and courteous and gentle bearing, and all for the lust of gold.” ↩
Plutarch thus relates the story of Mutius Scaevola, Dryden’s Tr.:— “The story of Mutius is variously given; we, like others, must follow the commonly received statement. He was a man endowed with every virtue, but most eminent in war; and resolving to kill Porsenna, attired himself in the Tuscan habit, and using the Tuscan language, came to the camp, and approaching the seat where the king sat amongst his nobles, but not certainly knowing the king, and fearful to inquire, drew out his sword, and stabbed one who he thought had most the appearance of king. Mutius was taken in the act, and whilst he was under examination, a pan of fire was brought to the king, who intended to sacrifice; Mutius thrust his right hand into the flame, and whilst it burnt stood looking at Porsenna with a steadfast and undaunted countenance; Porsenna at last in admiration dismissed him, and returned his sword, reaching it from his seat; Mutius received it in his left hand, which occasioned the name of Scaevola, left-handed, and said, ‘I have overcome the terrors of Porsenna, yet am vanquished by his generosity, and gratitude obliges me to disclose what no punishment could extort’; and assured him then, that three hundred Romans, all of the same resolution, lurked about his camp only waiting for an opportunity; he, by lot appointed to the enterprise, was not sorry that he had miscarried in it, because so brave and good a man deserved rather to be a friend to the Romans than an enemy.” ↩
Alcmaeon, who slew his mother Eriphyle to avenge his father Amphiaraüs the soothsayer. See note 749. Ovid, Metamorphoses, IX:— “The son shall bathe his hands in parent’s blood / And in one act be both unjust and good.” ↩
Beatrice, beloved of God; “that blessed Beatrice, who lives in heaven with the angels and on earth with my soul.” ↩
Lessing, Theol. Schrift., I 108:— “If God held all Truth shut up in his right hand, and in his left only the ever restless instinct for Truth, … and said to me, Choose! I should humbly fall down at his left, and say, Father, give! Pure Truth is for Thee alone!” ↩
It must not be forgotten, that Beatrice is the symbol of Divine Wisdom. Dante says, Convito, III 15:— “In her countenance appear things which display some of the pleasures of Paradise”; and notes particularly “the eyes and smile.” He then adds:— “And here it should be known that the eyes of Wisdom are its demonstrations, by which the truth is most clearly seen; and its smile the persuasions, in which is displayed the interior light of Wisdom under a veil; and in these two things is felt the exceeding pleasure of beatitude, which is the chief good in Paradise. This pleasure cannot exist in anything here below, except in beholding these eyes and this smile.” ↩