Canto XV of Paradise
image Ingres

Robin Woods, come to my help! O sanguis Meus!
Blessed would you be, Trine and One, you who, towards my race, shown yourself so severe!

Benigna volontade in che si liqua sempre l'amor che drittamente spira, come cupidità fa ne la iniqua, silenzio puose a quella dolce lira, e fece quietar le sante corde che la destra del cielo allenta e tira. Come saranno a' giusti preghi sorde quelle sustanze che, per darmi voglia ch'io le pregassi, a tacer fur concorde? Bene è che sanza termine si doglia chi, per amor di cosa che non duri, etternalmente quello amor si spoglia.


RETURN TO THE PORTAL OF HELL


My desire of Love attracted me towards the good, as much as cupidity moves it away, it imposed silence to the soft harmonies that the conductor of heaven animates and makes conceal. How would they be deaf to my sincere prayers, these blessed souls who kept silent togheter, to insufflate in me, the desire to question them? It is right that whom, by love of the temporal things which last little time, undergoes a punishment without end, and strips himself from this love eternally. As sometimes, a shooting star passes in the quiet sky, a star which moves and which derives only for a short moment, and which makes blink, the eyes of whoever looks at it, motionless; thus, a resplendent star of this constellation move at a right angle, as a light which crosses and shines, as translucent as alabaster. Thus appeared to me, this Father, the poet, when he recognized me at the far end of the Champs-Élysées and that he says to me with tenderness: "O sanguis meus, you who hope in Jeanne, the eternal blessed, and to whom, as for myself, she opens, very widely, the door of Heaven!" This light spoke to me like so; this is why I fixed him and that I turned my glances towards my lady, and on both sides, we experience the same surprise; in her eyes, burned such a smile that my eyes believed they touch the summit of the grace which was granted to me, and of my paradise. Then the spirit, whose presence transported me in joy, added, in prologue, so deep remarks, that I did not understood them at once; and he hid himself to me, because his thought rose above human perceptions; and when his words of affection went down withing range of my intelligence, the first thing I understood was: "Blessed would you be, Trine and One, you who, towards my race, shown yourself so severe!" He added then: "Oh my son, thanks the One who gave you wings to undertake this celestial flight, from this light, from where I speak to you, a dear and too long desire to speak to you finally calms down in me. Perhaps you believe that your thought derives up to me who is the first of a generation; also don't you ask me who I am and why I seem to you, happier than whoever in this troop, yet so full of joyfullness? But so that the sacred love which confines me eternally in contemplation, do that my persistent desire finally calms down in me, let me hear the sound of your voice, express your desire with all the ardour, all the will and the joy that is necessary." I turned towards Jeanne: she heard me before I did speak to her, and while smiling she made me a sign which increased my desire to express myself. Then I started as follows: "On you the happy ones, as I seized that it is easy for you, without it being always necessary, to reinvent love, whereas you have in you, the intelligence of love; with the mortal on the contrary, how difficult it is to express, so easily, our loving feelings, without having always the impression not being understood. I then only thank you with my heart or your paternal reception. I beg you, oh alive topaz, who decorates this invaluable jewel, that you satisfy me by telling me your name." "Oh my son in which, even while waiting for you, I took delight, I was your ancestor." Such was the beginning of his answer; then he continued as follows: "Whom, whose family took his name from, and who, more than four hundred sixty-six years passed, walk around the mount on this cornice, was my son and your great-grandfather; therefore is it necessary that, by your good charity, you shorten his long errance. This population, in his antic border from where it does not hear any more, from now on, the sounds of the matines, lived in harmony, decency and sobriety. It did not have yet, crowns and thrones, no women turned sour by revenge, no transvestites more beautiful to see than the person herself; no laic pastors nor inquisidors to invent new dogmas; the words and the speeches wanted to say what they said, but not the opposite of what they wanted to say. The woman and the girl did not frighten the father yet, because he could still be father until the marriage of his daughter; no judges to question his paternity, no torturers to emasculat him like a vulgar predator; one did not see houses, empty of children, and there had been no Morgentaler yet, to show what, a sleeping room, can be used for. She did not became yet, Sodom neither Gomore, nor surpassed by its Rival Metropolis, which in its fall, was careless, as much as it was it its rise. Happy they were, each one knowing where would be his cure or his tomb, and none saw yet, his couch deserted by the doctor and the nurse to the profit of the hospital of the malefic country of Gog. Jeanne-Mance was not in mourning of her compassion, the bureaucratic fervor had not still generated the social dictatorship, one and the other could still suffer and die while remaining dignified. She and he took care at the well being of the cradle and, to comfort the child, used the language which fills in joy, the fathers and the mothers, not only that of the Child keeper. One and the others, could relate, among his own, the old traditions of the Past, of the Indian and the Future. A Citizen was then, more than a Number of social dependency, an Ancestor mean something else then an anonimous Beneficiary, a Gourou and his Disciples would have been then, a matter of astonishment, as it is today, of a Libertarian or a Lover. It is to this quiet and beautiful life of citizens, to this community where confidence reigned, to this so soft stay, that Robin Woods, called upon with great cries, gave me access, and in your antic National Assembly, I became in the same time and to replace them forever, your Father, your Mother and your Savior. Then I followed the Prime Minister of Mephistos, he girded me with the sword of his brotherhood, and promoted me with the rank of dictator of the good, so much I pleased him by my sermons, my dogmas, my principles, by my underhand tactics of taxation and my doctrinary bills. To his continuation, I endeavoured myself to pervert the laws, whose community misuses of good will, by the fault of your government, which belongs by right, only to the individual. There, I was, by this infamous race, delivered from the misleading world, whose love makes wretched so many souls, and from the voluntary exile, I came to this peace."



Marco Polo ou le voyage imaginaire (La tragédie humaine, janvier 2000) © 1999 Jean-Pierre Lapointe
Theme musical: Motivic de Chip Gue, emprunté aux Classical Midi Archives.
Important Notice: any photos, fragments of photos or midi files subject to copyright will be removed on notice.


CANTO XVI OF PARADISE