After looking at the distortions and their process (as being crushed/transformed under the big boulders), Virgil’s starts speaking with a question about how one might quicken or ease the whole process to reach beyond it.
The passage is:
«Deh, se giustizia e pietà vi disgrievi
tosto, sì che possiate muover l’ala,
che secondo il disio vostro vi lievi,
mostrate da qual mano inver’ la scala
si va più corto; e se c’è più d’un varco,
quel ne ‘nsegnate che men erto cala;
ché questi che vien meco, per lo ‘ncarco
de la carne d’Adamo onde si veste,
al montar sù, contra sua voglia, è parco».
So reason starts with recognizing the angelic potential, as in wings, that exists in the deeper faculties/elements/”points” in oneself, that might have become distorted. And then he respectfully asks for teachings, on how to find the fastest or easiest way.
This shift is in many ways extraordinary. Reason is already learning to be humble and open, and also to appreciate the spiritual wisdom and aspect/dimension of reality itself. This is rapidly becoming a very different and healthy rationality, vs. one that is self-contained, closed, and trapped inside its own web of constructs and models about the world.
And Virgil ends with this (roughly): “as the one who is with me here is clothed in the flesh of Adam, that slows him down in the ascent, counter to his own wishes and aim.” This might in many ways also resonate with the Reader too, and likely Dante the Writer: even when the spiritual part is found and started, and to some extent understood, there is still a slowness to the process that could be frustrating. And it is partly because of this, that Reason here wants to know from the healing and transforming distortions: how do we get this done as fast as possible, and move on?
So reason “clicks” back into its efficiency and analytical mode here, but still, it is much more open and matured, and realizes the value and necessity of learning from the process that is in many ways reshaping the foundations from which reason is often operating. And yet still, first of all: how to get through this faster?
What strikes me profoundly here is this paradox: Reason seeks efficiency in the very process designed to transform Reason itself. Can we truly accelerate our own metamorphosis without undermining the depth of change required? Perhaps this impatience – wanting to shed the weight of Adam’s flesh more quickly – is itself part of what must be purged, transformed under those very boulders we seek to escape. Che interessante how even our spiritual ascent can become captured by the calculating mind’s desire for optimization!