Apostrophe

The speaker addresses someone absent or dead, a thing, a place or an idea, as if they could hear.

In Purgatory

Alas, empty shades, save in appearance! Three times I clasped my hands behind her, and as many times I brought them back to my breast.

Dante addresses the shades, "Alas, empty shades," as if speaking to them and not to the reader. The vocative translates the astonishment of someone who has just discovered that the dead have a figure without weight, and the exclamation comes before the explanation of the gesture.

Cantos I to IV: The shore and Ante-Purgatory, Dante, narrator, when trying to embrace Casella's shade

Mantua..., and the shade, all gathered into itself, rose toward him from the place where it had been, saying: O Mantuan, I am Sordello of your land! and each embraced the other.

Cantos V to VIII: Those who repented late, Sordello, who rises at the name of Mantua and embraces Virgil

Sharpen your eyes here, reader, on what is true, for the veil is now indeed so thin that passing through it is certainly easy.

Cantos V to VIII: Those who repented late, Dante, narrator, who interrupts the scene to speak to the reader

O proud Christians, wretched and weary, who, sick in the sight of the mind, trust in backward steps, do you not realize that we are worms born to form the angelic butterfly, which flies unshielded to justice?

Cantos IX to XII: The gate and pride, Dante, narrator, who interrupts the scene to speak to the proud

O vain glory of human powers! how briefly the green lasts at the top, if it is not followed by coarse ages! Cimabue thought he held the field in painting, and now Giotto has the cry, so that the fame of the former is dimmed.

Cantos IX to XII: The gate and pride, Oderisi of Gubbio, the illuminator, to Dante, on the glory of the arts

Now make yourselves proud, and go with a lofty face, sons of Eve, and do not lower your face, so that you do not see your evil path!

Cantos IX to XII: The gate and pride, Dante, narrator, before the floor with the falls of the proud

my blood was so inflamed with envy that, had I seen a man rejoice, you would have seen me full of livid envy. From my seed I reap such straw; O human kind, why do you set your heart where company must be barred?

Cantos XIII to XVI: Envy and wrath, Guido del Duca, to Dante, on the ledge of the envious

cursed be you, ancient she-wolf, who have more prey than all the other beasts, through your hunger without end or bottom!

Cantos XVII to XXI: Love, sloth and avarice, Dante, narrator, in the fifth turn of the avaricious