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I had a little withdrawn my eye from it to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.
