B07D11PHQL EBOK by Dante Alighieri & A to Z Classics

Author:Dante Alighieri & A to Z Classics
Language: rus
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Dante's Dream of Anger. The Fourth Circle: The Slothful. Virgil's Discourse of Love.

Remember, Reader, if e'er in the Alps

A mist o'ertook thee, through which thou couldst see

Not otherwise than through its membrane mole,

How, when the vapours humid and condensed

Begin to dissipate themselves, the sphere

Of the sun feebly enters in among them,

And thy imagination will be swift

In coming to perceive how I re-saw

The sun at first, that was already setting.

Thus, to the faithful footsteps of my Master

Mating mine own, I issued from that cloud

To rays already dead on the low shores.

O thou, Imagination, that dost steal us

So from without sometimes, that man perceives not,

Although around may sound a thousand trumpets,

Who moveth thee, if sense impel thee not?

Moves thee a light, which in the heaven takes form,

By self, or by a will that downward guides it.

Of her impiety, who changed her form

Into the bird that most delights in singing,

In my imagining appeared the trace;

And hereupon my mind was so withdrawn

Within itself, that from without there came

Nothing that then might be received by it.

Then reigned within my lofty fantasy

One crucified, disdainful and ferocious

In countenance, and even thus was dying.

Around him were the great Ahasuerus,

Esther his wife, and the just Mordecai,

Who was in word and action so entire.

And even as this image burst asunder

Of its own self, in fashion of a bubble

In which the water it was made of fails,

There rose up in my vision a young maiden

Bitterly weeping, and she said: "O queen,

Why hast thou wished in anger to be naught?

Thou'st slain thyself, Lavinia not to lose;

Now hast thou lost me; I am she who mourns,

Mother, at thine ere at another's ruin."

As sleep is broken, when upon a sudden

New light strikes in upon the eyelids closed,

And broken quivers ere it dieth wholly,

So this imagining of mine fell down

As soon as the effulgence smote my face,

Greater by far than what is in our wont.

I turned me round to see where I might be,

When said a voice, "Here is the passage up;"

Which from all other purposes removed me,

And made my wish so full of eagerness

To look and see who was it that was speaking,

It never rests till meeting face to face;

But as before the sun, which quells the sight,

And in its own excess its figure veils,

Even so my power was insufficient here.

"This is a spirit divine, who in the way

Of going up directs us without asking,

And who with his own light himself conceals.

He does with us as man doth with himself;

For he who sees the need, and waits the asking,

Malignly leans already tow'rds denial.

Accord we now our feet to such inviting,

Let us make haste to mount ere it grow dark;

For then we could not till the day return."

Thus my Conductor said; and I and he

Together turned our footsteps to a stairway;

And I, as soon as the first step I reached,

Near me perceived a motion as of wings,

And fanning in the face, and saying, "'Beati

Pacifici,' who are without ill anger."

Already over us were so uplifted

The latest sunbeams, which the night pursues,

That upon many sides the stars appeared.

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