Hell, I: 32

At the close of the thirteenth century, from the twilight of day to the twilight of night, a leopard gazed at wooden planks, vertical iron bars, men and women coming and going, a wall, and perhaps a stone gutter choked with dead leaves. The creature did not know, could not know, that it yearned for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing into flesh and the scent of deer on the wind, but something in it smouldered and rebelled, and in a dream God spoke to the animal, saying, 'You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may look on you a prescribed number of times and not forget you and put you and what you represent into a poem, which has its exact place in the tapestry of the universe. You suffer captivity but you will have given the poem a word.'

In the dream, God enlightened the animal's savage state, and the leopard understood the reasoning and accepted this destiny, but when it awoke it felt only dark resignation, dauntless ignorance, because the mechanism of the world is somewhat complex for the simple nature of a wild beast.

Years later, Dante lay dying in Ravenna, as unjustified and alone as any other man. In a dream, God explained to him the secret purpose of his life and labours; Dante, awestruck, knew at last who he was and what he was, and he blessed his bitter fate. The story goes that, on wakening, he felt he had gained and lost something infinite, something he would never recover or glimpse again, because the mechanism of the world is somewhat complex for the simple nature of a man.

[1955]