from the deep mind: Of God. The Sphere of the Fixed Stars receives its power from God (through the Primum Mobile) and taking His image from above, makes itself the seal that impresses that image on the spheres below (as a seal impresses its given image upon wax).

135. shaped to its own end: As the eye to sight, the ear to sound, etc.

140. the precious body: Of the Sphere of the Fixed Stars, here compared to the human body, because its unity comprises so many varied organs.

142. the glad nature: Of God.

147. formal principle: (See also note to line 71.) The power of the Divine and Angelic Intelligence is the intrinsic and substantial cause which produces the effect of dark and clear according to the various ways in which it enters into conjunction with the stars.

CANTO III

THE FIRST SPHERE: THE MOON

The Inconstant
Piccarda, Constance

AS DANTE IS ABOUT TO SPEAK to Beatrice he sees the dim traceries of human faces and taking them to be reflections, he turns to see what souls are being so reflected. Beatrice, as ever, explains that these pallid images are the souls themselves. They are THE INCONSTANT, the souls of those who registered holy vows in Heaven, but who broke or scanted them.

Among them PICCARDA DONATI identifies herself, and then identifies THE EMPRESS CONSTANCE. Both, according to Dante’s beliefs, had taken vows as nuns but were forced to break them in order to contract a political marriage. Not all the souls about them need have failed in the same vows, however. Any failure to fulfill a holy vow (of holy orders, to go on a pilgrimage, to offer special services to God) might place the soul in this lowest class of the blessed.

Piccarda explains that every soul in Heaven rejoices in the entire will of God and cannot wish for a higher place, for to do so would be to come into conflict with the will of God. In the perfect harmony of bliss, everywhere in Heaven is Paradise.

That sun that breathed love’s fire into my youth
had thus resolved for me, feature by feature-proving,
disproving—the sweet face of truth.

I, raising my eyes to her eyes to announce
myself resolved of error, and well assured,
was about to speak; but before I could pronounce

my first word, there appeared to me a vision.
It seized and held me so that I forgot
to offer her my thanks and my confession.

As in clear glass when it is polished bright,
or in a still and limpid pool whose waters
are not so deep that the bottom is lost from sight,

a footnote of our lineaments will show,
so pallid that our pupils could as soon
make out a pearl upon a milk-white brow—

so I saw many faces eager to speak,
and fell to the error opposite the one
that kindled love for a pool in the smitten Greek.

And thinking the pale traces I saw there
were reflected images, I turned around
to face the source—but my eyes met empty air.

I turned around again like one beguiled,
and took my line of sight from my sweet guide
whose sacred eyes grew radiant as she smiled.

“Are you surprised that I smile at this childish act
of reasoning?” she said, “since even now
you dare not trust your sense of the true fact,

but turn, as usual, back to vacancy?
These are true substances you see before you.
They are assigned here for inconstancy

to holy vows. Greet them. Heed what they say,
and so believe; for the True Light that fills them
permits no soul to wander from its ray.”

So urged, I spoke to those pale spirits, turning
to one who seemed most eager, and began
like one whose mind goes almost blank with yearning.

“O well created soul, who in the sun
of the eternal life drinks in the sweetness
which, until tasted, is beyond conception;

great would be my joy would you confide
to my eager mind your earthly name and fate.”
That soul with smiling eyes, at once replied:

“The love that fills us will no more permit
hindrance to a just wish than does that Love
that wills all of Its court to be like It.

I was a virgin sister there below,
and if you search your memory with care,
despite my greater beauty, you will know

I am Piccarda, and I am placed here
among these other souls of blessedness
to find my blessedness in the slowest sphere.

Our wishes, which can have no wish to be
but in the pleasure of the Holy Ghost,
rejoice in being formed to His decree.

And this low-seeming post which we are given
is ours because we broke, or, in some part,
slighted the vows we offered up to Heaven.“

And I then: “Something inexpressibly
divine shines in your face, subliming you
beyond your image in my memory:

therefore I found you difficult to place;
but now, with the assistance of your words,
I find the memory easier to retrace.

But tell me, please: do you who are happy here
have any wish to rise to higher station,
to see more, or to make yourselves more dear?”

She smiled, as did the spirits at her side;
then, turning to me with such joy she seemed
to bum with the first fire of love, replied:

“Brother, the power of love, which is our bliss,
calms all our will. What we desire, we have.
There is in us no other thirst than this.

Were we to wish for any higher sphere,
then our desires would not be in accord
with the high will of Him who wills us here;

and if love is our whole being, and if you weigh
love’s nature well, then you will see that discord
can have no place among these circles. Nay,

the essence of this blessed state of being
is to hold all our will within His will,
whereby our wills are one and all-agreeing.

And so the posts we stand from sill to sill
throughout this realm, please all the realm as much
as they please Him who wills us to His will.

In His will is our peace. It is that sea
to which all moves, all that Itself creates
and Nature bears through all Eternity. ”

Then was it clear to me that everywhere
in Heaven is Paradise, though the Perfect Grace
does not rain down alike on all souls there.

But as at times when we have had our fill
of one food and still hunger for another,
we put this by with gratitude, while still

asking for that—just so I begged to know,
by word and sign, through what warp she had not
entirely passed the shuttle of her vow.

“The perfection of her life and her great worth
enshrine a lady hereabove,” she said,
“in whose rule some go cloaked and veiled on earth,

that till their death they may live day and night
with that sweet Bridegroom who accepts of love
all vows it makes that add to His delight.

As a girl, I fled the world to walk the way
she walked, and closed myself into her habit,
pledged to her sisterhood till my last day.

Then men came, men more used to hate than love.
They tore me away by force from the sweet cloister.
What my life then became is known above.

This other splendor who lets herself appear
here to my right to please you, shining full
of every blessedness that lights this sphere,

understands in herself all that I say.
She, too, was a nun. From her head as from mine
the shadow of the veil was ripped away.

Against her will and all propriety
she was forced back to the world. Yet even there
her heart was ever veiled in sanctity.

She is the radiance of the Empress Constance,
who by the second blast of Swabia
conceived and bore its third and final puissance.”

She finished, and at once began to sing
Ave Maria, and singing, sank from view
like a weight into deep water, plummeting

out of my sight, which followed while it could,
and then, having lost her, turned about once more
to the target of its greater wish and good,

and wholly gave itself to the delight
of the sweet vision of Beatrice. But she
flashed so radiantly upon my sight

that I, at first, was blinded, and thus was slow
to ask of her what I most wished to know.

Notes

1. That sun: Beatrice. It was she who first breathed love’s fire into Dante’s youth. (See also Purgatorio, XXX, 40-42 and Paradiso, XXX, 75.)

3. proving: Her views, the truth. and disproving: My views, error.

9. my confession: Of the error Dante now recognizes (concerning the markings of the moon).

13. a footnote of our lineaments: The figure seems oddly out of context but its intent is clear: Dante is suggesting that the image is related to the face as a footnote is related to the text.

15. a pearl upon a milk-white brow: The brow would have to be death-pale as marble, but perhaps Dante intends these spirits to be chalky-white.

16. THE INCONSTANT.