Virgil is not going to put up with Dante’s alleged self-doubt! The old poet is going to change the terms of the debate. (Or how’s this? Classical literature is going to change the terms of the medieval debate—hello, the Renaissance.)

In this passage from Canto II, Virgil knocks some sense into Dante-the-pilgrim (and maybe Dante-the-poet, too). And he does so by bringing Beatrice into COMEDY for the first time.

Beatrice: the love of Dante’s life. She comes on the scene in the second canto of INFERNO. Dante’s journey isn’t just willed by God or controlled by classical poetry or justified by epic or Biblical characters. No, the journey is instigated by love, that human ideal, that human passion, that human failing, that human triumph.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for this slow walk across the cosmos, a passage-by-passage exploration of Dante’s COMEDY (or THE DIVINE COMEDY, as others are wont to call it). Canto II of INFERNO is about the important business that has to go down in this passage before we can get fully underway.

Here’s my rough English translation of the passage. If you want to get serious, get a facing page translation with the medieval Tuscan on one side and the English on the other, such as Stanley Lombardo’s excellent translation of INFERNO.

“If I fully understand your words,”

Replied that shade of that great one [Virgil],

“Your spirit is struck with cowardice,

 

“Which so often constrains a man

That he turns back from his honorable business,

Like an animal that shies away when darkness falls.

 

“To free yourself from this fear, I will tell you

Why I came and what I heard

When I first felt your sorrow.

 

“I was with those who are suspended

When a lady called me, so blessed and beautiful

That I begged her to command me.

 

“Her eyes beamed brighter than the morning star,

And when she started in with her gentle and soft words,

Like an angel’s voice, she told me:

 

“’O courteous Mantuan spirit,

Whose fame endures in the world,

And will endure while the world lasts,

 

“’My friend, not the friend of fortune,

Is so blocked on a barren slope

That he has turned back because of fear.

 

“’From what I hear of him in heaven

I am afraid he has so lost his way

That I have risen too late to help him.

 

“’Get going, and with your ornate words

And anything else you need for his deliverance,

Help him, so that I may be consoled.

 

“’I am Beatrice, who sends you out—

I am come from where I desire to return.

Love moved me and makes me speak.

 

“’When I am again before my lord,

I will often praise you to him.’

She fell silent, and then I [Virgil] started off by saying. . . .”