Dante Alighieri
* * *
LOVE THAT MOVES THE SUN AND OTHER STARS
Translated by
Robin Kirkpatrick
Contents
Canto III
Canto X
Canto XI
Canto XIV
Canto XVII
Canto XXIII
Canto XXVII
Canto XXX
Canto XXXII
Canto XXXIII
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DANTE ALIGHIERI
Born 1265, Florence, Italy
Died 1321, Ravenna, Italy
Dante wrote the Divina Commedia between 1308 and 1321. This selection of cantos is taken from Paradiso translated by Robin Kirkpatrick, Penguin Classics, 2007.
DANTE IN PENGUIN CLASSICS
Inferno
Purgatorio
Paradiso
The Divine Comedy
Vita Nuova
Canto III
She – as the sun who first in love shone warm
into my heart – had now, by proof and counterproof,
disclosed to me the lovely face of truth.
And being ready, as was only right,
to own my errors – and new certainties –
I flung my head back, and I meant to speak.
But then, it seemed, a vision came to me
and bound me up so tightly to itself
that these confessions would not come to mind.
Compare: from clear and polished panes of glass,
or else from glinting waters, calm and still
(but not so deep their depths are lost in darkness),
we see reflections that reveal a hint,
though faint, of our own looks, and reach the eye
less strongly than a pearl on some white brow.
So I saw many faces, keen to speak,
and ran now to the opposite mistake
from that which fired the love of man and stream.
No sooner had I noticed – and supposed
that these were seemings in a looking-glass –
I turned my eyes to see who these might be.
I saw there nothing, so returned my glance
straight to the shining-out of my dear guide,
who, smiling at me, blazed in her own look.
‘You baby!’ she said. ‘Don’t worry or wonder,
to see me smile at all these ponderings.
Those feet are not yet steady on the ground of truth.
Your mind, from habit, turns round to a void.
And yet those beings that you see are true,
bound here below for vows they disavowed.
So speak to them. And hear and trust their words.
The light of truth that feeds them with its peace
will never let their feet be turned awry.’
Now turning to the shadow who most yearned,
in love and pure delight, to speak to me,
I said, nearly entranced by eagerness:
‘You spirit, well created in the rays
of this eternity of life, you feel
a sweetness never known, if not by taste.
Let me, then, in your kindness, hear your name,
and tell me what your destiny has been.’
To which – eyes smiling – she at once replied:
‘We, living in God’s love, can no more lock
our doors against true-minded aims of will
than God’s love does, which wills this court like him.
I was a virgin sister in the world.
Search deep in memory. My being now
more beautiful won’t hide me from your eyes.
I am Piccarda – as you’ll know I am –
and blessed among the many who are blessed,
within this slowest moving of the spheres.
The flames of what we feel are lit in us
by pleasure purely in the Holy Spirit,
dancing for happiness in that design.
And though the part allotted us may seem
far down, the reason is that, yes, we did
neglect our vows. These were in some part void.’
‘A wonder shining in the look you have
reveals,’ I said, ‘an I-don’t-know of holiness
that alters you from how you once were seen.
So recognition did not speed to mind.
Yet all you say has helped me understand.
Your image speaks precisely to me now.
But tell me this: you are so happy here,
have you no wish to gain some higher grade,
to see and be as friends to God still more?’
Smiling a moment with the other shades,
she then, in utmost happiness, replied,
blazing, it seemed, in the first fires of love:
‘Dear brother, we in will are brought to rest
by power of caritas that makes us will
no more than what we have, nor thirst for more.
Were our desire to be more highly placed,
all our desires would then be out of tune
with His, who knows and wills where we should be.
Yet discord in these spheres cannot occur –
as you, if you reflect on this, will see –
since charity is a priori here.
In formal terms, our being in beatitude
entails in-holding to the will of God,
our own wills thus made one with the divine.
In us, therefore, there is, throughout this realm,
a placing, rung to rung, delighting all
– our king as well in-willing us in will.
In His volition is the peace we have.
That is the sea to which all being moves,
be it what that creates or Nature blends.’
Now it was clear. I saw that everywhere
in Paradise there’s Heaven, though grace may rain
in varied measure from the Highest Good.
But then, as often happens over food
(though satisfied with one, we crave the next,
reaching for that while still we’re saying ‘thanks’),
so now in word and gesture I betrayed
an eagerness to hear from her what weave
her spool had not yet drawn out to the end.
‘Perfect in life, her merits raised on high,
there is a lady – more in-heavened than we –
who wrote, on earth, a Rule of dress and veil,
that lets its wearer sleep and wake till death
beside a husband who accepts those vows
that charity conforms to his delight.
To follow her, I fled – a girl, no more –
out of the world. I pulled her cowl to me,
and promised my obedience to that Rule.
Men now arrived, more set on harm than good.
They dragged me from the cloister I had loved,
and God well knows what then my life became.
But, over to my right, there shows to you
another splendour who, enkindled now
with all the light that gathers in our sphere,
knows from her own life what I say of mine.
She was our sister. And from her head, too,
was torn the shadow of her pure, white hood.
This is the light of Constance, that high queen
who bore to Swabia’s second storm a son,
the third – and ultimate – of that great line.
And yet – although against her will, against
all decency – she went back to the world,
she never let the veil fall from her he
art.’
Those were her words to me. But then ‘Ave
Maria’ began, singing. And, singing,
she went from sight, as weight sinks deep in water.
My eyes pursued as far as eyesight can,
but, as I lost her, so I turned once more
to target a desire far greater still.
Now all my thoughts were fixed on Beatrice.
But she, as lightning strikes, so stunned my gaze,
my eyes at first could not support the sight,
and this was why my question came so slow.
Canto X
Looking within his Son through that same Love
that Each breathes out eternally with Each,
the first and three-fold Worth, beyond all words,
formed all that spins through intellect or space
in such clear order it can never be,
that we, in wonder, fail to taste Him there.
Lift up your eyes, then, reader, and, along with
me, look to those wheels directed to that part
where motions – yearly and diurnal – clash.
And there, entranced, begin to view the skill
the Master demonstrates. Within Himself,
He loves it so, His looking never leaves.
Look! Where those orbits meet, there branches off
the slanting circles that the planets ride
to feed and fill the world that calls on them.
And were the path it takes not twisted so,
then many astral virtues would be wasted,
and almost all potential, down here, dead.
And were the distance any more or less
from that straight course, then much – above and here –
so ordered in the world, would be a void.
Now, reader, sit there at your lecture bench.
And, if you want not tedium but joy,
continue thinking of the sip you’ve had.
I’ve laid it out. Now feed on it yourself.
The theme of which I’m made to be scribe
drags in its own direction all my thoughts.
The greatest minister of natural life
who prints the worth of Heaven on the world,
and measures time for us in shining light,
conjoined with Aries (as we’ve called to mind),
was spinning through those spirals where, each hour,
its presence is revealed to us the sooner.
And with him I was there, but no more knew
of making that ascent than anyone
will know a thought before it first appears.
It’s she – Beatrice – who sees the way,
from good to better still, so suddenly
her actions aren’t stretched out in passing time.
How brilliant they must all, themselves, have been
seen in the sun where I now came to be,
not in mere hue but showing forth pure light.
Call as I might on training, art or wit,
no words of mine could make the image seen.
Belief, though, may conceive it, eyes still long.
In us, imagination is too mean
for such great heights. And that’s no miracle.
For no eye ever went beyond the sun.
So shining there was that fourth family
that’s always fed by one exalted Sire
with sight of what He breathes, what Son He has.
And now, ‘Give thanks,’ Beatrice began.
‘Give thanks to the Him, the Sun of all the angels.
In grace, He’s raised you to this sun of sense.’
No mortal heart was ever so well fed
to give itself devoutly to its God
so swiftly, with such gratitude and joy,
as now, to hear her words ring, I became.
I set my love so wholly on that Sun
that He, in oblivion, eclipsed even Beatrice.
This did not trouble her. She smiled at it.
And brightness from the laughter in her eyes
shared out to many things my one whole mind.
Bright beyond seeing, I saw, now, many flares
make us their centre and themselves our crown,
still sweeter even in voice than radiance.
Sometimes, in that same way, we see a zone
around Latona’s daughter – lunar rays,
held in by gravid air, which form her belt,
There in that heavenly court from which I come
are found so many jewels, so fine, so rare,
they cannot be abstracted from that realm.
The singing of the lights was one of these.
So minds who don’t, self-winged, coming flying here,
must wait to gather news from tongues struck mute.
And when, still singing, all these burning suns
had spun three turns around us where we were –
as stars more swift the closer to fixed poles –
girl-like in formal dance they looked to me,
in figure still but silent, pausing now,
listening until they caught the next new note.
And deep in one of these I heard begin: ‘When
rays of grace igniting love in truth –
those rays through which, in loving, love still grows –
reflect in you so multiplied that you
are led along with them to climb this stair,
which none descends who will not rise again,
whoever, seeing this, should then withhold
the wine flask that you thirst for counts as free
no more than rain not streaming to the ocean.
You wish to know what plants these are – enflowered,
entranced – a garland round that donna who,
in beauty, strengthens you to dare the skies.
I was a lamb within that holy flock
that Dominic conducts along the road
where “All grow fat who do not go astray”.
This one, who here is nearest on my right,
was master to me, and a brother, too –
Albert of Köln. I’m Thomas Aquinas.
And if you wish to know the rest as well,
then follow with your eyes the words I speak,
circling around this interwoven string.
The next flame blazes out from Gratian’s smile.
He’s loved in Paradise for having served
both civil and ecclesial courts so well.
Then next, that Peter ornaments our choir
who, like the widow in Saint Luke’s account,
offered his treasured all to Holy Church.
The fifth light, and the loveliest of us all,
breathes with such love that everyone down there
hungers to have fresh word if he is saved.
A mind so high is there, to which was sent
knowledge so deep that, if the truth is true,
no second ever rose who saw so much.
You see a candle shining by him there
that saw, while in the flesh, most inwardly
the nature of the angels and their works.
Then in the very smallest of these lights
there smiles the one who spoke for Christian times.
Augustine cited him in what he wrote.
Now if, to track my words of praise, you draw
the eye of intellect from light to light,
already you’ll be thirsting for the eighth.
Rejoicing, deep within, to see all good,
the blessèd soul is there who made quite plain
the world’s fallaciousness – to all who’d hear.
The body he was driven from lies, now,
below in Golden Heaven Church. He came
to peace from exile, from his martyrdom.
Burning beyond, you see the breathing fires
of Bede, then Isidore and Richard, too –
in contemplation
he was more than man.
The one from whom your glance returns to me
is light born of that spirit who, oppressed
in thought, saw death, it seemed, come all too slow.
This is the everlasting light of Siger,
whose lectures, given in Straw Alleyway,
argued for truths that won him envious hate.’
And now, like clocks that call us at the hour
in which the Bride of God will leave her bed
to win the Bridegroom’s love with morning song,
where, working, one part drives, the other draws –
its ‘ting-ting’ sounding with so sweet a note
that now the spirit, well and ready, swells –
so in its glory I beheld that wheel
go moving round and answer, voice to voice,
tuned to a sweetness that cannot be known,
except up there where joy in-evers all.
Canto XI
Those idiotic strivings of the human mind!
How flawed their arguments and logic are,
driving our wings to flap in downward flight.
Some follow Law. Some drift (great tomes in hand)
to Medicine, others train in priestly craft.
Some rule by force, as others do by tricks.
Some choose to steal, some trade in politics,
some toil, engrossed in pleasures of the flesh,
and others concentrate their minds on ease,
while I, released from all that sort of thing,
was gathered up on high with Beatrice
in glorious triumph to the heavenly spheres.
When each soul, dancing, had returned to that
position on the circle where it once had been,
all paused, like candles in a chandelier.
And in that flare which spoke to me at first,
I, hearing, sensed these words begin, smiling
as in their brilliance they became more pure.
‘As I am here a mirror to the radiance
of everlasting light, so, looking back,
I grasp, in that, the wherefore of your thoughts.
You have your doubts. You want me to define –
with sharper and more open explanations,
directed at your human ear – the words
I uttered earlier: “Where all grow fat …”
and where I said: “No second ever rose.”
We need to make distinctions as to that.
The providence that rules the universe,
in counsels so profound that all created
countenance will yield before it finds its depth,
intended that the Bride of Christ (He wooed her