Poetry And Prayer by Francesca Bugliani Knox & John Took

Author:Francesca Bugliani Knox & John Took
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited
Published: 2015-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Prayerful Moment: Purgatorio XI and Paradiso XXXIII

When it comes to prayer and prayerfulness in the Commedia, there are two main moments to consider: the moment represented by the Lord’s Prayer as spoken by the penitent spirits on the circle of pride in Canto XI of the Purgatorio and that represented by the great prayer of supplication on the threshold of Paradiso XXXIII and preparatory to a final, consummate moment of intellection. As far, then, as the first of these is concerned, it is a question not simply of the soul’s intoning the words of a prayer designed, precisely, to deflect attention away from self towards the other and greater than self, but by way of the most exquisite kind of ‘re-flection’, or turning back upon its successive clauses, of its assimilating that prayer as an inwardly operative principle of self-interpretation:

O Padre nostro, che ne’ cieli stai,

non circunscritto, ma per più amore

ch’ai primi effetti di là sù tu hai,

laudato sia ’l tuo nome e ’l tuo valore

da ogne creatura, com’ è degno

di render grazie al tuo dolce vapore.

Vegna ver’ noi la pace del tuo regno,

ché noi ad essa non potem da noi,

s’ella non vien, con tutto nostro ingegno.

Come del suo voler li angeli tuoi

fan sacrificio a te, cantando osanna,

così facciano li uomini de’ suoi.

Dà oggi a noi la cotidiana manna,

sanza la qual per questo aspro diserto

a retro va chi più di gir s’affanna.

E come noi lo mal ch’avem sofferto

perdoniamo a ciascuno, e tu perdona

benigno, e non guardar lo nostro merto.

Nostra virtù che di legger s’adona,

non spermentar con l’antico avversaro,

ma libera da lui che sì la sprona.

[Our Father which art in heaven, not circumscribed, but through the greater love thou hast for thy first works on high, praised be thy name and thy worth by every creature, as it is meet to render thanks to thy sweet beneficence. May the peace of thy kingdom come to us, for we cannot reach it of ourselves, if it come not, for all our striving. As thine angels make sacrifice to thee of their will, singing hosanna, so let men make of theirs. Give us this day our daily manna, without which he backward goes through this harsh desert who most labours to advance. As we forgive everyone the wrong we have suffered, even do thou in thy loving kindness pardon, and regard not our desert. Our strength which is easily overcome put not to trial with the old adversary, but deliver us from him, who so spurs it.] (Purgatorio XI.1–24)

The prayer itself, as Christ’s response to the wordiness of the religious of his time, needs, of course, no glossing, for it is precisely in its focus, its economy and, dare we say it, its particular kind of religionlessness that both its power and its persuasiveness lie. But then again, it does, for each successive clause stands in a now fully transitive sense of the term to be ‘thought’ as a property of spirit, this and this alone ensuring its efficacy as a principle

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