The Solitary Lombard Spirit — Divine Comedy

Dante pushes through the pressing crowd of souls like a gambler leaving the tables, each soul grabs at him, one after another, all asking to be remembered to the living. He notices several among them: a man from Arezzo killed by Ghino's cruel arm; one swallowed by a stream during his chase; Frederic Novello; a Pisan who tested Marzuco's constancy; Count Orso; and Peter de la Brosse, dismissed for spite and envy, with a pointed warning that the Lady of Brabant had better look to herself. Free of the crowd, Dante puts a theological problem to Virgil: how can prayers change God's decree when Virgil himself wrote that heaven's supreme judgment cannot bend? Virgil answers carefully: the sacred height of judgment does not stoop, but love's flame fulfils in a short moment what the soul would otherwise need time to satisfy; and when he wrote that prayer had no access to God, he meant souls outside grace entirely, not these. For any remaining doubt, he says, ask Beatrice: you will see her at the mountain's crown. Virgil then checks their progress: the sun will not get them higher today; it must come round again. But ahead stands a solitary spirit watching them with leonine stillness, it neither speaks nor moves as they approach. Virgil asks the way; the spirit asks instead where they are from. When Virgil says 'Mantua,' the shadow leaps up: Mantuan! I am Sordello! The two poets embrace. The reunion breaks open into Dante's long lament: slavish Italy, vessel without a pilot, inn of grief, brothel-house, look how one word from a countrymen kindles joy, while city tears at city within the same wall. He rails at Emperor Albert for abandoning Italy to its savagery, names the Capulets and Montagues, then turns his sarcasm on Florence: rich, wise, at peace, sick as a woman who can find no rest in her bed, changing laws and leaders before October's thread reaches November.