Notable Quote: From Dante’s Purgatorio, Canto 2

Shortly I’m going to have a series of posts on my reading of Dante’s second part of his Divine Comedy, Purgatorio.  I’m going to give you a little taste of it here, a section from the second canto, where Dante and his guide Virgil, newly arrived and standing on the shores of Purgatory see an angel coming toward them on the sea hoisting a ship of newly dead souls being transported.  The angel starts as a small speck in the distance but grows as it comes closer, getting intensely brighter.  Virgil orders Dante to drop to his knees and fold his hands.  As the angel beaches the ship, Dante hears the souls on board singing, Psalm 113, “When Israel went out of Egypt,” in Latin of course, the souls experiencing the same freedom from their earthly life as the freed slaves from pharaoh. 

 

We were still alongside the sea, like people

thinking about their path, who go with the heart

and with the body remain.

And behold, as when near the morning Mars

shines red through the heavy vapors, low in the

West, over the surface of the sea:

such appeared to me—so may I see it again!—a

light coming across the sea so rapidly that no flight

equals its motion.

After I had a little withdrawn my eye from it to

question my leader, I saw it again, grown brighter

and larger.

Then on each side of it appeared I knew not

what whiteness, and below it, little by little,

another whiteness came forth.

My master still did not say a word, while the

first white things showed themselves to be wings;

then, when he had recognized the oarsman,

he cried, “See, see that you bend your knees.

Behold the angel of God: fold your hands;

henceforth you will see such ministers.

See how he disdains all human means, so that he

needs no oars nor any sail but his wings, between

shores so distant.

See how he has them stretched toward the sky,

beating the air with his eternal feathers, that do not

change like mortal hairs.”

Then, as the divine bird came closer and closer

to us, it grew brighter, so that my eyes could not

sustain it up close,

but I lowered them; and he came to shore with a

vessel so swift and light that the waters engulfed

none of it.

At the stern stood the angelic pilot, who seemed

to have blessedness inscribed on him; and more

than a hundred spirits were sitting within.

“In exitu Israel de Aegypto,” they were singing all

together with one voice, with as much of that

psalm as is written thereafter.

Then he made the sign of the holy

cross; at which they all threw themselves on the

beach; and he went away as quickly as he had

come.

                                    -ll. 10-51

I’m using the Robert M. Durling translation, Oxford University Press, 2003.

I hope you enjoyed it.  Reading Dante is such a pleasure.  I’m looking forward to my upcoming posts.