Lucia's rebuke of love
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Disse:— Beatrice, loda di Dio vera, ché non soccorri quei che t’ amò tanto, ch’ uscì per te de la volgare schiera?
She said: Beatrice, true praise of God, why do you not help the one who loved you so, who for you left the common throng?
Lucia said: Beatrice, true praise of God, why do you not succor the one who loved you so, who for you left the common throng?
Lucia's appeal is the emotional core of the rescue. She reminds Beatrice of Dante's love — the love that, in his youth, lifted him out of <i>la volgare schiera</i>, the crowd, toward higher things.
The whole descending ladder of grace turns here on a human devotion. Dante's early love for Beatrice, transformed, becomes the very hook by which Heaven pulls him back from the wood. Salvation, in this poem, reaches down along the line of an actual, remembered love.
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Inferno 2.103 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/dante-inferno/2.103/