The Weight of Pride and Fame's Fleeting Nature — Divine Comedy

Prayer on the terrace of pride ends not with the self. The souls recite the Lord's Prayer altered for their state, the last petition is made not for themselves, since that were needless now, but for their sakes who after us remain. Then they circle the first terrace beneath a dream-weight, purging the world's gross darkness as they go, unequal in anguish, asking what the living can vow and do for them. One soul speaks without showing his face, his arrogant neck tamed by the rock, he must stoop to the ground. He is Omberto of the Aldobranlesco line: old blood and forefathers' gallant deeds made him so haughty he forgot the common mother, scorned all men, fell, and not him only pride hath injured, but his kindred all involved in mischief. Dante bends his face down. Another soul, twisted under the weight, recognises him: Oderigi of Gubbio, once glory of the illuminator's art. Now Bolognian Franco's pencil lines the leaves; his all the honour. Cimabue thought to lord it over painting's field; now the cry is Giotto's. One Guido from the other snatched the lettered prize. The noise of worldly fame is but a blast of wind that shifts its name and point. Your renown is as the herb whose hue comes and goes. The soul walking before Oderigi is Provenzano, he grasped presumptuously at all Sienna's sway and still goes never-resting. Yet he reached Purgatory's terrace because at his glory's topmost height he cast dignity aside and fixed himself on Siena's plain a suitor to redeem his suffering friend in Charles's prison, trembling through every vein and not refusing. That is the work that freed him from the lower space. Dante asks how; Oderigi says the neighbours will help him to a comment on the text.