DANTE'S SUBLIME COMEDY: PURGATORY, Chapter 11

                         Chapter 11: The Proud

“Our Father in Heaven, unlimited

            except by your great love for all you made,

            for everything you’ve given us on earth                                              3     

we praise your name as angels do above.

            Teach us to find your House of Peace on high

            which by our strength alone we cannot reach                                     6

however hard and painfully we try.

            Give everyone the nourishment we need

            to rightly follow in the steps of Christ                                               9

and not slide backwards into sinful ways.

Forgive our sins as we also forgive

those who have hurt us. Dear Lord, most of all           12                 

 do not let enemies become so strong

            they drive the virtuous to doing wrong.

         Lord God, you know that prayer is not for us,      15                                  

but souls alive whose state is not redeemed.”

            Yes, those ghosts prayed for us while toiling on

            beneath such weight as we have never dreamed.       18                           

Let we with any goodness pray that they

            are quicker lightened, raised above the moon

            to their appointed place in Paradise.                               21                       

Reading my mind I heard kind Virgil say,

            “May all who stoop here be unburdened soon

             and wing their upward flight. I lead a man                                           24

            

still clad in Adam’s flesh, so we need stairs

            to climb this cliff.  Can any of you say

if the nearest way is to left or right?”                                               27

We could not see who spoke but heard a voice.

           “Go with us to the right, where there’s a place

             a man may climb. Were I not bent so low                                           30

I might see his face, recognize a friend              

            who pitied me. I was Italian,

            my father great Bill Aldobrandesco­–                                                    33

surely you know his name? Pride in my birth

and famous ancestors made me forget         

all of us share one common Mother Earth.                                    36

Arrogance killed me, dragged to infamy

my name and kin.  In Compagnatico                                     

            children know this and in Sienna too.                                                39

I am Umberto, whose excessive pride

            will crush me until God is satisfied.”                                     

            To hear him I’d bent low and so saw one                                           42

who did not speak but twisted round his neck

            to see me, knew me, kept his eyes on me                              

            as he crept onward very painfully.                                                      45

Bent almost double at his side I cried,

            “You, Oderisi! Pride of Gubbio                                 

         for illustrating books, or as they say           48                                                                 

in Paris, for illuminating them.”

            “Brother,” said he, “Franco of Bologna                                 

             does that better now.  His claim to fame                                           51

is partly due to what he learned from me.

            When living I denied how good he was.                                 

            Here I am purging all that pettiness.                                                  54     

The emptiness of glory in a name

is obvious. Florence once gloried in                                                   

            the radiance of Cimabue’s art.                                                           57

Giotto’s fame has cast a shade on it.

            Guido Guinizelli’s verse was once                                        

            the splendour of our tongue. Cavalcanti’s                                         60

is now more highly sung. Who’s next? Are you?

            Who cares? A thousand years, two thousand, ten                

            are eye-blinks to the slowly turning spheres                                      63

of the universe. Fame is a brief noise.

            He crawling before me once had a name                                

            shouted through Tuscany, and adored                                              66

in Sienna, where it’s now ignored, though

            he helped it smash a mad Florentine horde.”                         

           “Your true words humble me, but tell me more,”                               69

I said, “about that lord who crawls before.”

            “He, Provenzan Salvani, tried to be                                       

             Sienna’s tyrant prince and so creeps thus                                         72 

like all of us who raised ourselves far too

            presumptuously high.” Said I, “But why,

            is he not below with other princes                                                      75

not yet fit for your purifying pain?”

             Orsini said, “He earned this higher place

 because once, when a despot but not rich,                                        78

he begged for money in the public square

            to ransom a dear friend, though his proud soul

            found this humiliation agony.                                                             81

You too will know the pain of beggary.”