Links to Tony Kline’s translation and commentary are in the thread http://www.booktalk.org/dante-divine-co ... 14906.html This is the translation of The Divine Comedy that I have read, and I found it excellent.cocochannel wrote:The website "http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITB ... nthome.htm" Provides an index with the names of the personages in the book. It explains who they are and what their relation to their story.
Yes, and a return to God is a sign of hope, whereas those in hell have abandoned hope. This description in full states Marcia is “noted for her integrity and nobility. For Dante (and for Chaucer) a type of the noble Roman wife. She was Cato’s second wife who yielded her to his friend Quintus Hortensius. When he died she married Cato again. Dante’s Convito http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12867/12867.txt treats her return to Cato as an allegory of the soul’s return to God. Inferno Canto IV:106-129. She is among the heroes and heroines in Limbo. Purgatorio Canto I:28-84. Virgil tells Cato so, and invokes her love for him. Purgatorio Canto I:85-111. Separated from Cato, by the stream that separates Purgatory from Hell, she can no longer move him.”cocochannel wrote: About Marcia, Cato's wife, Kline said in his notes that "Dante’s Convito treats her return to Cato as an allegory of the soul's return to God".
Dante’s Convito (The Banquet) states “Marcia returned to Cato, and entreated him that he would take her back in his fourth and Extreme Old Age, by which Marcia the Noble Soul is meant, and we can thus depict the symbol of it in all Truth. Marcia was a virgin, and in that state typifies Adolescence; she then espoused Cato, and in that state typifies Youth; she then bore sons, by whom are typified the Virtues which are becoming to young men, as previously described; and she departed from Cato and espoused Hortensius, by which it is typified that she quitted Youth and came to Old Age. She bore sons to this man also, by whom are typified the Virtues which befit Old Age, as previously said. Hortensius died, by which is typified the end of Old Age, and Marcia, made a widow, by which widowhood is typified Extreme Old Age, returned in the early days of her widowhood to Cato, whereby is typified the Noble Soul turning to God in the beginning of Extreme Old Age. And what earthly man was more worthy to typify God than Cato? None, of a certainty. And what does Marcia say to Cato? "Whilst there was blood in me [that is to say, Youth], whilst the maternal power was in me [that is, Age, which is indeed the Mother of all other Virtues or Powers, as has been previously shown or proved], I," says Marcia, "fulfilled all thy commandments [that is to say, that the Soul stood firm in obedience to the Civil Laws]." She says: "And I took two husbands," that is to say, I have been in two fruitful periods of life. "Now," says Marcia, "that I am weary, and that I am void and empty, I return to thee, being no longer able to give happiness to the other husband;" that is to say, that the Noble Soul, knowing well that it has no longer the power to produce, that is, feeling all its members to have grown feeble, turns to God, that is, to Him who has no need of members of the body. And Marcia says, "Give me the ancient covenanted privileges of the beds; give me the name alone of the Marriage Tie;" that is to say, the Noble Soul says to God, "O my Lord, give me now repose and rest;" the Soul says, "Give me at least whatsoever I may have called Thine in a life so long." And Marcia says, "Two reasons move or urge me to say this; the one is, that they may say of me, after I am dead, that I was the wife of Cato; the other is, that it may be said after me that thou didst not drive me away, but didst espouse me heartily." By these two causes the Noble Soul is stirred and desires to depart from this life as the spouse of God, and wishes to show that God was gracious to the creature that He made. O unhappy and baseborn men! you who prefer to depart from this life under the name of Hortensius rather than of Cato! From Cato's name a grace comes into the close of the discourse which it was fit to make touching the signs of Nobility; because in him Nobility reveals them all, through all the ages of his life.
In Purgatory 1 Cato says “.Marcia was so pleasing to my eyes while I was over there, that I performed every grace she asked of me. Now that she is beyond the evil stream, she can move me no longer, by the law that was made when I issued out.”cocochannel wrote: The statement by Cato saying that Marcia doesn't move him anymore weakens the analogy of her return to Cato to the return of a soul to God? She's in hell and will never see God again. Dante's in purgatory preparing himself for heaven. Surely, we can't just look at her life before death without analyzing it postmortem.
For some reason Cato despite living before Christ is not in hell, but his good wife Marcia is. Tony Kline comments as follows when Cato is mentioned in Inferno 14: “Cato, the republican and lawgiver, type of the virtuous pagan. Cato who committed suicide rather than fall into enemy hands. Cato the champion of liberty. Cato, whom we will meet again, since the Mount of Purgatory is in his care. Dante accepts, it would appear, that Cato’s virtue outweighed his suicide, and perhaps that his suicide was a positive act in favour of freedom rather than a negative one of violence against the self. And he follows Virgil (Aeneid VIII) in placing Cato amongst the virtuous. His other source of information being Lucan (Pharsalia II).
And here is Kline’s comment on Cato in Purgatory
“Dante makes Cato the guardian of the Mount of Purgatory. Though a Republican, Dante treats him as a precursor of the moral Empire under Augustus: as a man who deliberately laid down his life in honour, Dante treats him as an exemplar of free will, his suicide for moral reasons being an exception to the rule that suicide is contrary to the teachings of the Church and a relinquishment or evasion of free will: and as a moral pagan, Dante treats him as an exemplar of the best in human moral practice and ancient philosophy. Cato is therefore sharply contrasted with Brutus and Cassius whom we left in the mouths of Satan, equally Republican enemies of Caesar but treacherous in their intent. The Republic is unimportant to Dante, whose emphasis is on a powerful sole ruler in temporal matters, mirroring God’s authority over the Universe, and the Pope’s over the Church. Dante is a thorough Imperialist, and prefers the rule of the single monarch, as God rules the whole Creation. It is rather Cato’s moral integrity he is celebrating, and the contrast of the honourable man who chooses his own death, in defeat, rather than the treacherous man who chooses malicious deceit and murder. It indicates Dante’s view that treachery and murder is not acceptable however justified the cause, and that suicide (but not murder or treachery) is acceptable if the cause is honourable enough. The one is an abuse of free will, the other a fulfilment of it. The first harms others: the second liberates the self.
Cato questions who they are, surprised at their exit from Hell, and Virgil, quickly and courteously, recapitulates Dante’s prior state, Beatrice’s intervention, and his own role as Guide. Dante, he says ‘seeks freedom’, while he Virgil has come from Limbo where Cato’s Marcia is, and Virgil affirms her love for Cato. She is a type of the noble and chaste Roman wife. Cato is unmoved, since inexorable Divine Justice has placed her the other side of Lethe, and the lower realm cannot influence the higher, but Beatrice’s wishes are enough. Cato it seems is worthy, though a Pagan, to be placed at the foot of the Mount he can never climb, because of his own nobility of spirit, moral worth, and supreme sacrifice. Marcia, like Virgil, despite her worth, must remain in Limbo. (Dante’s knowledge of Cato came from Virgil’s Aeneid VIII where as lawgiver, he is among the righteous, and Lucan’s Pharsalia II.)
Cato now tells Virgil to cleanse Dante of Hell’s foulness. After they have walked a little, like lost travellers returning to the path, he does so, wetting his hands in the dew and wiping Dante’s face, stained with tears of Pity, and then ties a rush around him, as instructed, the pliant marsh-plant, a symbol of humility, which is replaced as it is plucked, as the humble are replenished on the earth, those meek who shall inherit. The whole canto is full of natural beauty, the ‘eastern sapphire’ colour of the sky, ‘the tremor of the sea’, the stars and the dawn light, and is also full of the language of hope, with its planet of love, its reverend figure of Cato, its brightness, its feeling of purification, and with Dante’s inner relief and delight at exiting Hell.”
