Only I: Dusk's Lone Ember Blazes
Franco Nembrini - Canto II - Inferno - Divine Comedy.
Canto I, therefore, serves as a prologue, introducing the entire work and clarifying the necessary condition for embarking on the journey, which is awareness of one's own evil and need. We have highlighted this with the image of blindness: it is as if man were blind in a dark forest where he cannot see, and therefore cannot love or have enough hope to live.
However, endowed by nature with the religious sense that God has granted him, and possessing a heart and mind open to the infinite, man at least senses the existence of God—the light he needs (the summit illuminated by the sun). Driven by his desire, he tries to reach the truth on his own, striving to fulfill his life with his own strength. But a panther, a lion, and a wolf prevent him from reaching his goal: an inherent illness, a structural weakness (what the Church calls original sin) prevents man from fulfilling his desire with his own strength.
But just as he is about to "slip towards the dark bottom," that is, to lose himself definitively, suddenly a presence "offered itself to my eyes: someone who, because of the long silence he maintained, seemed voiceless" [33]. An unexpected, undeserved presence, to which Dante can cry out—the first word of the character Dante in the Divine Comedy—"Miserere": man can cry out his need, his miserere, that someone have mercy on him.
This shadow, who turns out to be Virgil, replies more or less as follows: "Dear Dante, if you believed that life could be resolved so easily, with an act of good will, you were mistaken: 'You should follow another path.'" The path is another: you will have to complete the necessary journey, the journey of knowledge into the depths of your heart, to know all the evil that you and the world can commit (Hell), to know the possibility that this evil can be forgiven (Purgatory), and then, under the guidance of another figure—it will no longer be me—under the guidance of Beatrice, you will be able to achieve what you desire, the fulfillment of your life. Dante accepts the challenge, but immediately afterwards something strange happens.
A Second Beginning
In fact, Canto II ends again with the verses:
So I said to him; and when he moved, I entered the difficult and arduous path.
There is a second beginning, a second decision is necessary. What happened? Why is it necessary to revisit the decision that had already been made?
The second canto of Inferno, from this point of view, is fundamental: it continues the reasoning of the first, as if Dante wanted to thoroughly clarify the conditions that make his journey possible. These are personal conditions, but also conditions, I would say, external to the person. Ultimately, something must happen. This second canto describes what happens to man and how he must react in order to undertake the journey of life as a protagonist, so that life is worth living.
Dante, therefore, has made the decision to leave; but while we would expect to see immediately what happens next, these extraordinary verses arrive, which must be learned by heart. It is as if Dante suspends his decision while the day draws to a close.
The day was drawing to a close and the darkening air freed the living beings of the earth from their labors. Only I...
"The darkening air freed the living beings of the earth from their labors": when evening falls, men and animals return from the fields, it gets dark, and we go home. Sunset, by definition, is the moment when we take stock of the situation, look a little inside ourselves, look each other in the face. As he comes to terms with himself, Dante realizes that he has said yes without fully understanding, and it is as if he suddenly becomes frightened, because he realizes what is at stake. So he utters this extraordinary cry:
... only I was preparing myself to endure the struggle of body and soul, which the mind will faithfully narrate.
Dante suddenly understands that the journey he is about to embark on will not be a walk in the park. The life of men, the ancients said, militia est: life is a battle, it is a war. Against whom, against what? It is a battle with oneself, against one's own evil, against one's own cowardice, one's own complacency, one's own misery. It takes courage to live life.
It is as if Dante unexpectedly perceives that what he is called to live is, in fact, an enormous responsibility. And he expresses it with a dry, very short trio of words: "io sol uno," only I. Three striking terms to express a feeling of loneliness. But not loneliness because he is alone (he can count on the decisive company of Virgil, as we have seen); loneliness in the sense that it is up to me alone: it is really I who must respond! I must respond to the call of life, to the vocation of life, because all of reality demands this response. It is as if reality were calling, drawing man to itself and asking him to make a decision. Vocation (call) and responsibility (response): this is the dynamic with which man enters reality, life.
This is what frightens Dante: life as a vocation, as a responsibility. He is frightened because, suddenly, he feels the decisive weight of this call, with that determination that all of us—sooner or later—have felt at least once: "it's up to me to respond," with a sense of gravity, as if for a moment you had the impression that the fate of the world depended on your yes or no, on the decisions you make. As if for a moment what a poster I saw recently said became clear: "The forces that change history are the same ones that change the heart of man" [34]. It is as if for a moment you perceive that the salvation of the world depends on your yes or no, and you realize that in reality this is so.
The only image that comes to mind to explain this better is that of Jesus: the fate of the world, the possibility that salvation would enter the world, depended on his yes or no. But even before that, thirty years earlier, it depended on the yes or no of a fifteen-year-old girl faced with an utterly mysterious and incomprehensible announcement; with that yes, with that fiat, the story that brought salvation to the world began. Imagine if the Virgin had said no. A fifteen-year-old girl took on, with joy and with all the responsibility and weight that this yes would entail, the responsibility for the salvation of the world.
Similarly, the same thing happens to each of us: there comes a time in life when you realize that you have to take a stand, you have to decide, you have to choose between truth and falsehood, you have to choose between living up to your desires or settling for a mediocre life, giving up on fully pursuing the appeal of things by listening to the devil's lies. For a moment, it is as if everything depends on you: there is a moment in life when no one can support you; there is no husband or wife or child or friends or church or party that can replace you in a decision that is yours alone.
In this sense, Dante uses this extraordinary formula: "solo io" (only I). It is a decision that only you can make, on which much of world history may depend, but on which your life undoubtedly depends. There is a level in the response you must give to reality, to the life that calls you, in which nothing and no one can replace you.
In what? What are you called to? To war. I learned this, to tell the truth, already in catechism, when they taught me that Confirmation makes us soldiers of Christ: I have always liked the idea that in life we are soldiers. Dante's idea of life is absolutely virile: it is a battle, though not a battle with fire and sword, but a "war both of the journey and of piety," a struggle "both of the body and of the soul." Life is a yes or a no, a battle of "the journey and of piety."
Firstly, it is a struggle for "the journey"; that is, the decision to take a direction, to participate in something, to take part in something, not to remain seated. It is not true that everything is the same: freedom moves by choosing a path, deciding to belong to something or someone (we will see in the slothful how not deciding which side to be on, who you are, who you belong to, destroys life).
Secondly, living life armed with "pity": a deep pity for oneself and for one's fellow men. A great mercy and therefore an enormous responsibility, feeling the destiny of the world as one's own, feeling that the good one does contributes to saving the whole world, feeling how the evil one does worsens, feeling that it is not indifferent to the destiny of the world whether one says yes or no.
Oh muses! Oh high ingenuity! Help me! [For the Greeks, the muses were the goddesses who inspired the arts] Oh mind that has written what I have seen! Here your nobility will be noticed.
The mind that writes what it sees is the memory that remembers, imprinting what it sees: "Here your nobility will be noticed," here you will see what you are capable of. Dante realizes that he is undertaking an exceptional undertaking and asks for the help of the muses. Then he expresses his doubts to Virgil.
I began by saying: "Poet who guides me: see if my breath is sufficient before you venture into such an arduous undertaking."
"Virgil, do the math. You are making me a promise, but... look me straight in the face! I do not know if my virtue is so powerful as to travel such a path, to undertake such a war. Before dragging me into this extraordinary adventure, consider it carefully; I realize that it takes great virtue—in the Latin sense of the term: great strength—so one must be up to the task. Are you sure I can undertake the task?"
You say that Silvio's father, being still alive, went immaterially into the immortal kingdom;
"It is true," continues Dante, "in the Aeneid you tell that Aeneas (Silvio's father is Aeneas) had the special grace of making a leap into Hades while he was still alive to seek his father and some other souls, etc.; but Aeneas was Aeneas, don't forget...".
But if the adversary of all evil [God, the adversary of all evil] granted him this concession, thinking of the great effect [he allowed him this extraordinary adventure of going to the afterlife while still alive] that it would produce, it does not seem unworthy of such a great man.
"If we think about it for a moment," says Dante, "anyone with a little sense, anyone who is sensible, understands why God granted this special favor to someone of Aeneas's caliber; for all that was to come from him, since he would be the founder of Rome, the city that God's providence had destined to be the future seat of the papacy, caput mundi, the center of the Church. It is understandable," Dante explains to Virgil, as if Virgil did not already know! "why he descended into the underworld."
who was chosen in the empyrean heaven as father of Rome and of his Empire [Aeneas had been chosen, destined to be the founder of Rome, and therefore of the Empire and all that came from it], in which, to tell the truth, was established the holy place, seat of Peter's successor. On this journey that you have sung, he heard things that were the beginning of his victory and of his papal mantle.
"Even more, on his journey to the afterlife, he came to know things that allowed him to do what he had to do, and therefore his journey was justified."
Another who, according to medieval tradition, had gone to the afterlife while still alive was St. Paul; he too, evidently, an absolutely exceptional character.
The vessel of choice was then there [St. Paul] to comfort that faith for which one enters the path of salvation.
Ultimately, Dante, overcome by fear of life and the responsibility it entails—this is the theme of this canto—what does he do? He invents the excuse that we all invent to hide our cowardice in the face of life: false humility.
"I am not worthy, I am not capable, perhaps in other circumstances, if I did not have this family, this class, if I did not work in this school, if I had another husband, if circumstances allowed me to, but I, in these circumstances, come on, don't make me laugh."
And he asks Virgil:
But why should I go? Who allows me to? I am neither Aeneas nor Paul. Neither I nor anyone else considers me worthy of this.
"Why should I make this journey? Who allows me to? I am not a great man like Aeneas, nor a saint like Paul; I don't think anyone, neither I nor anyone else, considers me worthy of such an undertaking."
If I embark on such a journey, I fear that it will prove to be a mad endeavor [I am afraid of doing something crazy by following you; what you are asking me to do is absurd]. You are a wise man: you understand what I cannot say.
However, at least you have the humility to say: "Perhaps you see more clearly than I do, try to explain it to me, because I don't understand how you can bet on someone like me..."
The greatness of every friendship and every true love is the ability to bet on the other person; love is characterized by this ability to bet on the other person's freedom, to say to them, "You can do it." The endemic evil of our century, of the current generation, of today's young people (the source of many pathologies, strictly speaking), is this: they begin to look at each other and say constantly, "I can't, I'm not capable." No doubt they are arrogant, thuggish, violent, but they behave this way for this reason; they react this way to this sort of self-doubt. Instead, if you start to trust them, to bet on them, you can reestablish your relationship with them, accompany them on their journey.
It is as if Dante were saying: "Why are you betting on me? Who would be so magnanimous as to bet on a poor man like me? It's not possible."
And like someone who no longer wants what he wanted before and, moved by new thoughts, changes his mind, to such an extent that everything about him changes completely [once again a magnificent comparison expressed in two tercets], I was on that dark beach, because, on second thoughts, I abandoned the undertaking that I had so suddenly begun.
And like someone who no longer wants (dis-wants—changes his mind) what he wanted five minutes earlier, "and, moved by new thoughts, changes his own purpose," mulling it over, reflecting on it and rethinking it, "to such an extent that everything changes completely," he ends up radically changing his position with respect to what he had already decided. So "on that dark beach," in the gloomy place where I found myself, so did I: "thinking it over carefully, I abandoned the undertaking." I consumed all my energy brooding over it, so I abandoned the undertaking: the decision I had made at the end of the first canto was firm, and now it vanishes completely. Cowardice, fear, the awareness of having to fight a battle, the awareness of responsibility completely consume the energy necessary to embark on the journey of life.
It is interesting to note that Dante uses the word 'think' both in the first term of the comparison and when referring to himself in the second: first "and, moved by new thoughts, changes his mind," and then he says of himself: "on second thought, I abandoned the undertaking."
Many considerations come to mind about this 'thinking', which I will summarize by quoting a great figure who said: "Little observation and much reasoning lead to error. Much observation and little reasoning lead to truth" [35]. Because we are accustomed to reasoning badly, to deviant reasoning: instead of observing the facts, looking at things, accepting the blow of reality, recording an experience, and then thinking on the basis of what happens, reflecting on the basis of experience, we let our ideas prevail. Thus, we kill experience, we impose our thoughts—that is, our prejudices—on reality, and we close ourselves off to the possibility of learning from it. However, reality always surpasses our thoughts and always has something new to tell us. Therefore, the truly reasonable person is one who does not put his ideas before reality with the pretense of reducing everything to his own mind; on the contrary, he looks at reality with wonderand, reflecting on what he sees, on what happens to him, he constructs his ideas.
The fact is that our Dante says, "I've changed my mind." And Virgil cuts him short and throws the truth in his face.
"If I have understood your words correctly – replied the shadow of that magnanimous man – your soul has been attacked by cowardice,"
You are a coward! "If I understand correctly what you are saying to me, cowardice attacks your soul." It is truly remarkable that Dante accuses himself of cowardice.
which weighs heavily on man, in such a way as to restrain him from any honest endeavour, just as false appearances frighten beasts.
Cowardice is the evil that all men suffer when faced with responsibility. How often do men shirk their responsibilities, changing their minds about the initial intuition that led them to say, "This is the way." How many things in life do we lose because of cowardice, because we looked back and said, "No, maybe I exaggerated, I got carried away, let's not exaggerate..." Cowardice, many times, often, "weighs on man," in such a way that it "holds him back," makes him turn back, makes him change his mind about the "honest," honorable, dignified undertaking he had decided on, "as false appearances frighten beasts," as when, in the twilight, at nightfall, we can barely see, and we think we sense things that do not exist and that cause unjustified fear.
Virgil then says: "Look, this is a cowardice you must overcome. I will give you a hand, I will help you overcome the cowardice that prevents you from living." Because to shy away from the struggle is to shy away from life. The responsibility we are talking about is not the responsibility of a single step, but of the entire journey; what is at stake is the yes or no to the entire journey, that is, to living life for what it is.
To free you from this fear [to free you, to rid you of this fear], I will tell you why I came and what I felt in the first moment I felt compassion for you [I will tell you why I came and what I heard said about you when I set out on my journey, grieving for your fate, worried about your destiny].
I was among those who live without pain or glory [let us leave open the question raised by this verse, because Virgil finds himself "among those who live without pain or glory," that is, in limbo; we will return to this topic at the appropriate time], when a woman so pure and so beautiful called me that I asked her to command me.
"I was in limbo," says Virgil, "and a beautiful girl arrived, so beautiful that, impetuously, carried away by her beauty, I begged her to lead me to her, and I placed myself at her disposal."
Her eyes shone brighter than the stars and she began to speak to me in her language with an angelic voice, clear and sweet: Oh soul of Mantua most pitiful [Virgil is from Mantua], whose fame still lasts in the world and will live as long as the world lives!
This beautiful girl, with eyes as bright as stars, very sweetly, with an angelic voice, addresses Virgil with a courteous greeting: "Oh most compassionate soul, whose fame still endures in the world and will endure as long as the world endures"; and she immediately gets to the heart of the matter, referring to Dante:
My friend, and not by chance [and not by chance, he is not just anyone], finds himself on a deserted beach with many obstacles on his path, that he has turned back out of fear.
"I have a friend whom I truly admire (she does not specify: 'I am his ex-girlfriend,' but the weight of the relationship between the two is clear) who is risking his life; he is so hindered on his path (by the three beasts) that fear has caused him to turn back" ("many times I have fled to return many more" [36]).
I fear that he is already so lost, because of what I have heard said about him in heaven, that my help will come too late.
"I am afraid that it is already too late, that the worst has already happened; if what I have heard said in heaven is true, perhaps it is already too late."
Go, and with your elegant words and with what is necessary ["what is necessary" means what is needed] for his salvation, help him so that I may be consoled.
Finally, the wonderful creature with bright eyes and an angelic voice introduces herself:
I am Beatrice who orders you to go; I come from the place where I wish to return and it is love that moves me and makes me speak.
An extraordinary trio. I am Beatrice. "I come from the place where I wish to return": because she comes from paradise; something incredible has happened, a soul from paradise has descended into hell, and the characteristic that most defines her is the desire to return to the bliss of paradise, because that is the end of desio, of desire.
"It is love that moves me and makes me speak": this verse contains the entire concept—which Dante will explain at length in Paradise—of what man is and the nature of things. "Love moves me": not in the narrow sense of being in love or the passion between a man and a woman, but in its true sense, the love that moves our infinite desire, that makes us strive for the good, for the infinite that is reflected in all things. Everything is moved by love: the nine heavens are moved by it, and a leaf falling from a tree is moved by it; from it springs the passion for my wife, and from it springs the friendship between you and me. Everything that moves in life is driven by love.
"Love, love, omne cosa conclama," said Jacopone da Todi [37]. Love is the law that sets things in motion, that governs the universe. "The love that moves the sun and the other stars" [38] is the same love that moves me, Beatrice, towards Dante. In other words, modern, but saying the same thing: "The forces that change history are the same that change the heart of man." Everything participates in this love.
When I return to be before my lord, I will often praise you [if you do me this service, I will speak well of you before God]. Then Tazzò and then I began: Oh virtuous woman, the only one for whom mankind surpasses what is contained under the lesser sphere of heaven!
I like your order so much that it would take me some time to obey it even if I had already carried it out. It is enough that you have told me your desire.
"Oh virtuous woman," woman whose virtue causes mankind, men, to surpass "all that is contained under the lesser sphere of heaven," any other being ("all that is contained") on earth. "Under the lesser sphere of the sky": according to Ptolemaic cosmology, on which Dante bases himself, nine heavens are contained within each other; the lesser sphere of the sky is the sky of the moon, the smallest, which contains the earth within it. That is: "O woman for whom mankind surpasses any other created being on earth," "so much do I like your command," I am so happy with what you ask of me that, even if I were already obeying you, it would seem too late: "it is enough that you have told me your desire," it is not necessary for you to reveal your desire to me, to explain what you want.
However, Virgil stops and asks Beatrice something that fills him with curiosity:
But tell me the reason why you did not hesitate to descend into this deep center from that spacious place where you wish to return.
Virgil knows something that, as we shall discover, is decisive. He says: "You are a soul of paradise, how can you not be afraid to descend into hell, how can you not be afraid of evil?" [39]. This is the meaning of Virgil's question: "You, who are all good, all light, who share in the life of God, how is it that you are not afraid of evil, do you not fear us, are you not afraid of becoming dirty, of harming yourself by descending among us?"
Since you want to understand so deeply – he replied – I will tell you briefly why I was not afraid to descend here. [Since you want to know so deeply, I will tell you briefly why I am not afraid to come among you] One must fear only those things that can harm one's neighbor; the others no, because they do not inspire fear.
One must fear only true evil, which is the betrayal of the desire that constitutes us. Only this should be feared: "Only those things that can harm others should be feared": one should fear the betrayal of oneself; the rest does not inspire fear.
God created me by his grace as I am [by the grace of God I am made this way], so that your misery does not affect me nor can a flame from this fire assail me.
"Your misery does not reach me, nor can a flame from this fire assail me": we are faced with an idea that governs the entire work and the entire Catholic religion, namely the idea of incarnation. That God may continue to be God, totally God, totally himself, and at the same time become man, participate in human nature. Taking on the poverty, fragility, carnality of men, their suffering, their pain, their anguish, that which makes man truly man, does not diminish him in any way as God.
It seems to me that this image of Beatrice among the damned, smiling and saying, "The flames of this fire do not harm me," portrays all the saints, all the great souls I have known in my life: think of Mother Teresa of Calcutta gathering the dying in the sewers, and how this misery paradoxically makes her greater, more luminous. This is how children are educated, because we bow to the fact that they fall, to their wounds, to their whims, to their needs.
This image of Beatrice is a figure, a photograph, a frame of mercy. Miseri cor dare—to give one's heart, to give oneself, to the miserable: going to look for them where they are, where they may be doing harm, where there is need, where they show all their wounds; which does not imply accepting evil, renouncing the truth and the greatness that one lives. It seems to me that it is also a way of describing love, when it pushes you towards the other, "it is love that moves me and makes me speak": that is why I am not afraid to come down here, you do not repulse me. This is mercy, this is God, education implies this; this is why you can say to the other: "Come on, we can do it! I will give you a hand, because I am not disgusted by your evil, your need."
Beatrice continues:
There is a sublime woman in heaven who is moved by the situation in which the one I am sending you finds himself, and she mitigates every harsh judgment there.
There is a kind woman in heaven who weeps, who suffers for "the situation in which the one I am sending you to finds himself," who intercedes for this matter in which I am asking you to help me: she is the Virgin. There is a woman in heaven who weeps for Dante's fate, who is moved by Dante, who is concerned for him, who has compassion for him, who has pity on him.
She sent for Lucia and said to her: "Your faithful servant needs you, and I entrust him to you."
Only the Virgin realized Dante's need. That is why she is the Mother of the Church. Mother of Christians, Mother of each one of us: only she is a mother to the point of caring for each one of us. Beatrice explains:
"You did not see him, great poet; I did not see him, I who was his former fiancée," not even Saint Lucia, to whom he had a special devotion (Saint Lucia, patron saint of sight, of the act of seeing—we return to the question of blindness and light), saw him. No one had really noticed, no one had understood the extent of his need, the drama he was experiencing; the Virgin did. So she calls Saint Lucy and says to her: "Lucy, your devotee, that Dante who has never stopped trusting in you, is in danger, run!" And Saint Lucy
came to see me – me, Beatrice – and did the same: "Look, run!" And I ran to find you, says Beatrice to Virgil.
An impressive movement! I always tell the children in my class that when something like this happens to us, we are no longer able to go out and look at the starry sky without thinking that the heavens are moving for me. This is what Virgil explains to Dante: the heavens moved for you, there was all this commotion for you; and the Virgin was the first to move. I am reminded of the wisdom of the Church that makes us recite the rosary, makes us recite the Hail Mary, which ends with: "now and at the hour of our death." Because the Church teaches us to say with these words: "When we are at the end, when that moment arrives that the dictionary calls with a very Christian word agony (agon means battle, struggle, war, because that moment will be the last battle), when we have to fight that last battle... how wonderful it would be if Mary were there with us, how much security she would give us." Why do we ask the Virgin to be present at the hour of our death? Because only she could look at us like that, only she would look at us like a mother: it is what mothers know—even if only as a slight reflection—when they look at their grown-up child; they look at him as if they still had in their eyes the child he was, their newborn, full of desire and without any guilt, without a stain of sin, full of desire, full of desire for belonging, purity, and truth. The Virgin looks at us like this, which is why we ask her to be present at that moment, because she looks at us like this, as when she saw Dante and called Saint Lucy to help him.
Lucy, enemy of all cruelty, was where I was sitting, next to the ancient Raquel,
Even Beatrice had not noticed anything, she was chatting quietly. But Lucy arrives and says to her:
and exclaimed: "Beatrice, praise of the true God, why do you not help the one who loved you so much that he left the vulgar sphere for you? Do you not feel the anguish of his weeping? Do you not see the death against which he is fighting on the most impetuous lake of the sea?"
"Beatrice, will you not help the one who, for love of you, left the vulgar sphere," as we have already seen in the Vita Nuova? Do you not hear him, do you not feel pity for his weeping, do you not see that he is about to lose his life in the dark forest?"
There has never been in the world a person who ran to gain his advantage or flee from his harm as much as I did after hearing those words to come here from my high seat trusting in your eloquence, which honors you and those who listen to you."
There has never been a person in the world so ready, so quick, "to gain his advantage," to gain a benefit for himself or to escape danger like me after these words. Which is a way of saying: I came running, after hearing this, I rushed to you, "trusting in your eloquence, which honors you and those who listen to it," knowing that I could count on you.
Then Virgil, having finished Beatrice's speech, returns to referring to himself.
As soon as she had explained her reasons to me, she turned her shining eyes full of tears away from me, which prompted me to come to you as soon as possible, as she wished.
"As soon as she explained all this to me, she turned away and began to weep. Mary wept, Lucy wept, Beatrice weeps: this sight of women full of compassion prompted me to hurry and run to your aid."
I have freed you from that beast that blocks the shortcut to the beautiful mountain.
"And I came to find you, as I was asked: just when you were in danger, I freed you from the wolf. Now, if you have the courage, repeat that you are not worthy!"
What is happening, then? Why are you hesitating? Why do you harbor such meanness in your heart? Why are you not animated by courage and loyalty, when three blessed women are taking care of you in heaven and my words promise you so much good?
"Why, why must you be so cowardly? Why do you harbor and cultivate such cowardice within yourself? Why do you hesitate, why do you remain still? Why don't you move, why don't you take responsibility, why don't you make up your mind, why don't you have courage and loyalty? Frankness, loyalty to oneself and to all other things; and therefore the ardor, the courage to leave, to begin the journey. Why do you have neither loyalty nor true sincerity towards yourself, nor the courage to decide, when similar women, three blessed women (the Virgin, Saint Lucy, and Beatrice) take care of you in heaven, worry about you, and my words promise you so much good? I told you that we will succeed, that you can get out of here, that evil does not win, it will not have the last word, you can save your life, it can be good, it can be the life you want, come on! Come on, you can do it!"
How they rise and open when the sun kisses them, the little flowers closed and bent by the night frost,
Like those little country flowers (another beautiful and remarkable comparison) that bend at night with the darkness, the cold, and under the weight of the frost, but at the first break of dawn, at the first ray of sunshine, they rise again, they reopen in the sunlight,
it happened to me, who was without strength, and my heart was filled with such ardor that I began to say, feeling confident:
this is what happened to me: my virtue, which was completely bent, crushed by cowardice, was restored, ardor and loyalty returned to me, my strength returned to me, and I revived, I raised my head. Virgil had just said to him, "You lack courage and loyalty," and Dante replied, "No, I have just found them again. Your words, your testimony, what you have told me have put me back on my feet; if things are as you have told me, I feel that I do not lack the courage, valor, and loyalty I need."
Dante replies, now with certainty, like a resolute person ("feeling confident"):
"Oh piadosa donna che mi soccorri, what pity Destiny has had for my nothingness, my poverty, my inconsistency! How wonderful that Destiny, heaven, has pity on me, lets me be, lets me live, comes to meet me, comes to take me! And you, who kindly have obeyed the sincerity of the prayer that was addressed to you!**"
Thank you too, dear friend, who has been the mediator of this mercy. Because through the chain of goodness, of holiness, of the communion of saints, God intervenes in history and reaches each of us: through a friend, a teacher, a greeting, a book, a kind word, forgiveness. Through something, through someone, God comes to gather us, one by one, just as he did with Dante. And what gratitude we feel then for the friend, for the woman, for the teacher who allows us to begin this journey.
You have given me so much courage with your words [you have rekindled in me the desire—once again desire takes first place—to follow you with these words] that I have returned to my first intention.
I have regained my strength, my decision has been renewed, the possibility of living up to my desire, which I had at the beginning. Thanks to you, for having known you, I stand before the challenge, I accept it, I am able to live up to my desire, because someone supports it, because someone accompanies it, clarifies it, educates it, and saves it. The great adventure can begin.
Let's go, then. A single will unites us. Lead us, sir and master." So I said to him; and when he set off on his way, I entered the difficult and rugged path.
Now my will coincides with yours, now I know that we have the same desire, that we have the same object of desire and that together we can achieve it, because the path is marked out and you are my guide.
"Lead you, sir and master": Dante uses all possible terms to express the function and greatness of the witness, the witness of truth. For this is how Virgil presents himself: I am a witness of truth for you who has decided to come to meet you. Finally, Dante can truly begin his journey.
Conclusion: The Real Battle
In conclusion: the idea around which this canto revolves is that the evil we carry within us is a piece of the evil in the world, and that the only true battle against evil and falsehood is the one we must fight within ourselves. This reminded me of the film Of Gods and Men (2010). I strongly urge you to see it: it is the story of seven Trappist monks killed in Algeria a decade ago by Islamic terrorists. At one point, the film focuses on the will left by the prior, and I was struck by the sentence in which he says: "My life no longer has the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I am complicit in the evil that seems, alas, to prevail in the world and also in the evil that can strike me blindly. I am complicit in this evil." Let us reflect calmly on this sentence: "I have lived long enough to know that I am complicit in the evil that seems to prevail in the world and that could strike me at any moment, for no reason. I am an accomplice to this evil."
It is a sentence that fully expresses the truth and depth of what Dante affirms: the real battle is not to dream of changing the world. "The poor will always be with you," said Jesus (Mk 14:7), and in any case, if there is anyone capable of changing the world, it is the Eternal Father. But the battle truly belongs to each of us: to recognize that there is a weakness in us that must keep us alert every day. Alert means being able to cry out every day that "Miserere!" we have spoken of.
And the elderly know this better than anyone else. The Gospel says (when they bring the adulteress to Jesus to compromise him, and he replies, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone") that they all left, "beginning with the elders" (Jn 8:7, 9). Because life, unless we are totally foolish or false, makes us more aware of our weakness, of our evil; it should make us so humble, so vigilant, so full of supplication, so in need of forgiveness, that we can create a good reality, as the monk in the film did in his life.
In this sense, I think we can speak of a battle that is always open and full of pity for ourselves: "only I was willing to fight the battle of the body and the soul."
Translation from Dante, poeta del deseo. Infierno - Encuentro.
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