Summary of the cantos
In this part the mountain moves from pride to the two sins the poem treats as love turned against the other: envy, which suffers at another's good, and wrath, which attacks it. The method is that of the previous ledge, only the senses change: there the remedy passed through sight and weight, here the envious have their eyes closed with iron thread and the wrathful walk inside a smoke that blots out the world. On each ledge Dante hears voices before he sees the souls, and they teach the opposite of the vice: generosity and love of enemies against envy, examples of gentleness against wrath. Virgil's answer in XV, that divine good grows when it is shared, prepares that of Marco Lombardo in XVI, who refuses that heaven is the cause of the world's evil and places the cause in man and in bad government. At the center of the part is a question both political and theological: why is the world lost if man is free, and who answers for it?
Canto XIII: The Envious with Sewn Eyes
Summary of the canto
Dante and Virgil reach the top of the stair and enter a second ledge, which girds the mountain like the first but with a tighter arc. There is no shade or figure, only the smooth stone and the road in the same livid color as the rock. Virgil reasons aloud: if they wait for someone to ask the way, their choice may take too long. Then he fixes his gaze on the sun, makes the right side the center of the turn, turns his body to the left, and prays:
Analysis
«O dolce lume a cui fidanza i’ entro / per lo novo cammin, tu ne conduci», / dicea, «come condur si vuol quinc’ entro. / Tu scaldi il mondo, tu sovr’ esso luci; / s’altra ragione in contrario non ponta, / esser dien sempre li tuoi raggi duci».
, O sweet light, in whom I trust as I enter this new path, lead us, he said, as one wishes to be led in here. You warm the world, you shine upon it; if no other reason pulls the other way, let your rays always be our guides.
Virgil, who knew the way in Hell, does not know this one and prefers not to wait for someone to ask: he chooses the guide in sight, the sun that warms and lights. The proviso he adds, if no other reason pulls the other way, is that of one who trusts the light he has without making it absolute. Two readings: natural reason that learns its course from the light that reaches it, or the gesture of a pagan who prays to the star and not to God.
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Canto XIV: Guido del Duca and the Valley of the Arno
Summary of the canto
Two shades, seated one leaning on the other on the right, speak of Dante: who is this one who circles the mountain before death gives him wings, and opens and closes his eyes when he wants to? One says it does not know, but that he is not alone, and sends the other, nearer, to ask with gentleness. They raise their faces and one asks, out of charity, that he say where he comes from and who he is, because the grace that brings him makes them marvel as at something never seen. Dante answers without giving his name:
Analysis
Canto XV: The Angel of Mercy and the Visions of Gentleness
Summary of the canto
The sun is three hours from setting, and the rays strike head-on because the mountain was turned so that they walk toward the west. Dante feels his brow weigh under a splendor greater than before, and raises his hands to his eyebrows to cast shade; the ray, which leaps from the mirror or the water to the opposite side, as experience and art show, seems to him to come from a refracted light. He asks Virgil what it is that he cannot shield his face from, and the guide tells him not to be surprised that the family of heaven still dazzles him: it is a messenger who comes to invite them to climb, and soon seeing such things will give him pleasure, not weight. The angel receives them with a joyful voice and sends them in by a stair less steep than the others. As they climb, behind them they sing the beatitude of the merciful and a greeting to the one who conquers, that he may rejoice.
Analysis
Canto XVI: Marco Lombardo and Free Will
Summary of the canto
The smoke of the third ledge is darker than hell and than a night without a planet, under a poor sky, darkened with clouds as much as it can be, and harsher to the touch: Dante cannot keep his eyes open, and Virgil draws close and offers him his shoulder. As the blind man follows his guide so as not to lose his way or strike against anything that might wound or kill him, Dante walks through the bitter and dirty air, hearing the master tell him to take care not to be separated from him. He hears voices asking peace and mercy of the Lamb of God, all with the same word and the same manner, so that among them there seems to be complete concord. Virgil confirms that they are spirits that untie the knot of wrath.
Analysis
Reading of the block of cantos
Analysis