Metaphor

Saying one thing through another, without a word of comparison: instead of saying that something is like another thing, one says that it is. The image transfers to the subject the qualities of the thing with which it has been identified.

In Purgatory

What good is it that Justinian mended your bridle, if the saddle is empty? Without it, the shame would be less.

Italy becomes a horse, the Empire becomes the saddle, and the laws become the bridle. The image of riding condenses the political accusation: laws exist, but no one governs, and the empty power is what leaves the animal without an owner.

Cantos V to VIII: Those who repented late, Dante, narrator, in the invective against Italy and the Empire

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

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

and I saw him bend toward the earth under the death that already weighed on him, but with his eyes he always made doors toward heaven, praying to the high Lord, amid so much war, that he forgive his persecutors, with that look that opens pity.

Cantos XIII to XVI: Envy and wrath, Dante, narrator, describing the third vision of meekness

the heavens initiate your movements; I do not say all of them, but, supposing I did, light is given you for good and for evil, and free will; which, if it suffers fatigue in the first battles with the heavens, afterward conquers all, if well nourished.

Cantos XIII to XVI: Envy and wrath, Marco Lombardo, to Dante, in the smoke of wrath

Rome, which made the good world, used to have two suns, which let one see both paths, the world's and God's. One extinguished the other; and the sword was joined to the crozier, and the one with the other, joined together by living force, necessarily go astray.

Cantos XIII to XVI: Envy and wrath, Marco Lombardo, to Dante, on Rome's two powers

for if love is offered to us from outside, and the soul does not walk with another foot, whether it walks straight or crooked is not its merit.

Cantos XVII to XXI: Love, sloth and avarice, Dante, to Virgil, after hearing where love is born

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

Of the Aeneid I speak, which was a mother to me and a nurse, as a poet: without it I would not have fixed a weight of a drachma. And for having lived there when Virgil lived, I would accept one more sun beyond what I owe to my departure from exile.

Cantos XVII to XXI: Love, sloth and avarice, Statius, to Virgil and Dante, not knowing who is listening

the sockets looked like rings without gems; whoever could read "omo" in men's faces would have recognized the M there.

Cantos XXII to XXV: Gluttony and the generation of the soul, Dante, narrator, before the thin shades of the sixth turn

he was the better craftsman of the mother tongue. In verses of love and prose romances he surpassed them all; and let the fools who believe the one from Limoges surpasses him say what they will.

Cantos XXVI to XXIX: The fire and Eden, Guido Guinizelli, to Dante, pointing to Arnaut Daniel

see now, son: between Beatrice and you stands this wall.

Cantos XXVI to XXIX: The fire and Eden, Virgil, to Dante, before the wall of fire

the ice that was tight around my heart turned to breath and water, and with anguish it came out of my chest through my mouth and eyes.

Cantos XXX to XXXIII: Beatrice, Dante, narrator, when the angels sing and he weeps

here you will be a forest dweller for a short time, and you will be with me, without end, a citizen of that Rome of which Christ is Roman. For this reason, for the good of a world that lives badly, keep your eyes now on the chariot, and what you see, when you return there, make sure you write it down.

Cantos XXX to XXXIII: Beatrice, Beatrice, to Dante, seated at the root of the new tree