The Steep Path and Patient Waiting — Divine Comedy

The mind can only truly hold one thing at a time. Dante opens this chapter proving it: while absorbed in Casella's music at the shore, the sun moved fifty steps without his noticing. Full absorption is not distraction but the opposite, the faculties collect into a single point, and time moves without announcement. The path up the mountain is narrower than a gap a farmer blocks with a thorn-fork. Sanleo's road, the descent to Noli, the climb of Bismantua, all those hard paths would be stairs by comparison. Here a man needs to fly on the swift wing and plumes of high desire. They pull themselves up broken rock with hands and feet. Near the top, Dante cries out 'Parent beloved, turn and see how I remain alone', Virgil points a ledge circling the hill and they sit to face east. Dante notices the sun striking from the left; Virgil explains the southern-hemisphere geometry. Dante grasps it immediately and asks how much further. Virgil answers with the one truth he can offer: the climb is hardest at the start and eases as it goes, like a boat finding the downstream current, when ascending feels pleasant, they will have reached the end. A voice calls out that they may be led to rest sooner than planned. They find souls sheltering behind a large rock; one sits with knees pulled up and face bent to the ground, folded entirely inward. Dante calls him out as lazier than laziness itself. The figure looks up, it is Belacqua, a Florentine Dante knew in life. His lazy posture and broken words move Dante to laughter. Belacqua explains: he delayed repentance until the very end, so he must wait here as long as he lived before the angel at the gate admits him, unless prayer from a heart in grace shortens it. Virgil calls Dante away: the sun has reached its meridian and the night already covers Morocco's shore.