Purgatorio (The Divine Comedy series Book 2)

by Dante

  128. “I know no man.” These are part of Mary’s words in answer to the angel’s announcement (Luke 1:34) that she will bear a child: “How shall this be, since I know no man?” This is Mary’s seventh appearance on the mountain as the primary exemplar of a virtue opposing the relevant vice. Edward Moore (Moor.1899.1), pp. 63 and 194, suggests that Dante may have derived his idea of having Mary represent the “antidote” to each of the seven sins from St. Bonaventure (Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis). [return to English / Italian]

  130–132. The second exemplar of Chastity is Diana, her story drawn from Ovid (Metam. II.401–530), the tale of the wood nymph Helice (Callisto), who paid for Jupiter’s seduction and impregnation of her when, at the request of outraged Juno, Diana banished her from her woodlands. She was turned into a bear by Juno, and then, by the now more kind Jupiter, into the constellation Ursa Major. [return to English / Italian]

  133–135. See Pertile (Pert.2001.1), p. 62, for discomfort with Dante’s unique use of anonymous exemplars here. Porena (1946) was perhaps the first commentator to give voice to a similar disquiet (Bosco/Reggio [1979] do also), suggesting that we expect a third example drawn from the Judeo-Christian tradition but receive instead exemplars that he rightly characterizes as being “indeterminate” and “impersonal.” John S. Carroll (1904), while not dealing with this anomaly directly, may have found a reason for Dante’s decision in a desire to champion the importance of marriage and the acceptability, indeed the desirability, of sexual concourse between husbands and wives. In this formulation Dante resorts to anonymity for his married couples in order to justify sexual pleasure for all who are married, in covert polemic against such overly zealous clerics as those who called for even marital abstinence. [return to English / Italian]

  138–139. The word piaga (wound) is used here, as it was used at Purgatorio XXIV.38 for Bonagiunta and his companions, to refer to the “wound” of sin. Does it also refer to the letter P incised on them? Those who believe that all the penitents on the mountain bear this sign would naturally believe so (see notes to Purg. IX.112, XXI.22–24, and XXII.1–6). On the other hand, if only Dante bears this letter on his forehead, the reference would be to the inner wound of sin, as would seem more natural, and as Portirelli (1804) believed, arguing that the cura (treatment) represented the external application of fire and pasti (diet), the internal process of reflection upon the exemplars of the chaste life. [return to English / Italian]

  PURGATORIO XXVI

  3. Virgil’s brief admonition will be his only utterance in this canto, which, like the twenty-fourth, is heavily involved in questions regarding vernacular poetry, thus necessarily marginalizing Virgil’s presence. [return to English / Italian]

  4–6. Dante, according to the calculations of Trucchi (1936), having begun his climb of the mountain at due east at the antipodes, has now reached a point some 25 degrees short of due west. As for the time, it has apparently taken a bit more than two hours to climb between the two terraces (see note to Purg. XXV.1–3). [return to English / Italian]

  7–9. A shadow cast upon flames does indeed make them glow a darker color. (See Abrams [Abra.1985.1] for a consideration of this image as emblematic of the themes of this canto.) Once again Dante’s presence in the body serves as a provocation to a group of penitents. [return to English / Italian]

  12. At Inferno VI.36 the poet speaks of the shades of the gluttons as “lor vanità che par persona” (their emptiness, which seems real bodies). Here the penitents remark at Dante’s condition; his body does not seem to be, like theirs, “fictitious,” airy (about which state we have just heard Statius’s lengthy disquisition). [return to English / Italian]

  15. Their impulse, reversing Dante’s, is not to leave the searing flames. Again we sense the eagerness of penitents to undergo their purgation. See the remark of Forese Donati, “I speak of pain but should say solace” (Purg. XXIII.72). [return to English / Italian]

  16–20. The speaker is Guido Guinizzelli (see note to verse 92), the previous Italian poet to whom, we will learn, Dante now feels the greatest allegiance. While Guido may or may not be correct in thinking Dante is following the two other souls out of reverence rather than from lack of zeal (or fear of the flames that he must enter), what he cannot know (and never discovers) is that these are the great shades of Virgil and Statius. We, however, do know and realize that this scene is the last in a series that began in the cantos devoted to Statius (XX–XXII), a program devoted to an exploration of the nature of Dante’s poetics in relation to those of other poets: Statius, Bonagiunta (who throws in Giacomo da Lentini and Guittone d’Arezzo for good measure), and, in this canto, Guinizzelli (adding Giraud de Borneil and poor Guittone again) and Arnaut Daniel. No other part of the poem is as extensively or as richly concerned with the purposes of poetry.

  There is some debate among the commentators about the metaphoric or literal nature of the thirst to which Guido refers: “answer me, since I burn with thirst and fire” (verse 18). While hunger and thirst were the natural penalties undergone by the penitent gluttons, there is no such contrapasso here. Further, Guido’s description of his cosufferers’ “thirst” (vv. 20–21) is surely metaphoric, thus suggesting that this first mention of thirst is also. For this view, among others, see Pertile (Pert.1993.3), p. 381. On the other hand, the fire of which he speaks is literal enough, as Dante will find out in the next canto (Purg. XXVII.49–51), and his aerial body surely allows him to feel such sensations. [return to English / Italian]

  31–36. This remarkable simile, a rare medieval manifestation of a moment of fraternal affection between heterosexuals and homosexuals, is striking. The passage probably reflects Paul’s admonition in Romans 16:16: “Greet one another with a holy kiss,” as was suggested by Scartazzini (1900). For the ants, see Virgil’s memorable simile in Aeneid IV.402–407. Aeneas’s men, preparing their ships for departure from Carthage, are described as follows: “Just so do ants, when winter’s on their mind, pillage great stores of grain and fill their houses to the beams. Over the fields moves a black column, carrying their spoil through the grass along their narrow path; some heave the huge seeds upon their shoulders, some shape up the columns, rebuking their delay. All the path fairly shines with labor.” [return to English / Italian]

  40. Those who have argued that the sin punished in Inferno XV and XVI is not homosexuality (see the endnote to Inf. XVI) are hard pressed to account for the obvious reference of the word “Sodom” repeated here, found first in Inferno XI.50 to refer to the sinners on the barren sands of homosexuality. The early commentators have no doubt whatsoever about all this. See, for example, John of Serravalle (1416): “And from this city, Sodom, the sin against nature took its name, just as simony did from Simon [Magus].” Each group cries out the appropriate exemplar(s) of its sin, the first the homosexuals, calling out the names of these two “cities of the plain” (see Genesis 19:1–28), the locus classicus for homosexual lust, where the men of Sodom ask Lot to give them for their sexual pleasure the two angels who have come to Lot and whom they take for men (Genesis 19:4–11).

  What has long been problematic is the fact that, in Inferno, we find the heterosexual lustful punished in the realm of Incontinence, while those guilty of homoerotic behavior are in that of Violence (against nature, in their case). That these two groups are now purging themselves on the same terrace may be the result of the changed ground rules for the sins of the two cantiche more than of any supposed change of heart on Dante’s part, that is, Dante no longer has the option of fitting these two different bands onto an Aristotelian/Ciceronian grid, but must associate them with one of the seven capital vices, which leaves him little choice. Nonetheless, no matter what his intentions, the effect is to make the reader feel that the poet has now softened his views. The notion of Pertile (Pert.1993.3), p. 388, that the impulse to love is the same in hetero- and homosexuals and that, since in purgatory only the impulse (or predisposition) toward sin is purged, there is no longer any need to distinguish betwee
n them, is interesting but difficult to accept. In Inferno homosexuality is treated as a sin of hardened will, and one would be hard pressed to show that this does not make the “impulse” that drives it different from that behind the sins of Incontinence. [return to English / Italian]

  41–42. The heterosexuals call out the name of Pasiphaë (see Inf. XII.12–13 and note), the wife of Minos, king of Crete, who had Daedalus build for her a wooden frame covered with a cowhide so that she could be mounted by a bull. The child of this union was the Minotaur. Pasiphaë here is clearly meant to represent the animalistic nature of unrestrained lust, not some sort of sodomy. [return to English / Italian]

  43–48. The hypothetical nature of this simile is underlined by Dante’s use of the subjunctive mood for its main verb (volasser). Cranes do not and would not migrate simultaneously in two different directions, north to the Riphean mountains and also south to the sands of the (Libyan?) desert. Dante has developed the passage on the model, perhaps, of some of Lucan’s similes concerning cranes (see note to Purg. XXIV.64–74), but the resemblance does not seem more than casual, if the closest would seem to be that found at Pharsalia VII.832–834.

  The “former song” of the penitents is the hymn “Summae Deus clementiae” punctuated by the words of Mary at the Annunciation and those regarding Diana’s chaste anger at Callisto (Purg. XXV.121–132). Each subgroup also then sends up “the cry that most befits” it, that is, either “Sodom and Gomorrah” or “Pasiphaë.” [return to English / Italian]

  55–66. Dante at last responds to the request of the penitents, if only to some degree, since he does not fully identify himself, in keeping with his avoidance of doing so on other terraces. He defines himself in terms of his intermediate age (neither youthful and unripe nor ancient and ripe), tells them what they suspected (he is here in the flesh, not in the aerial body), and that Beatrice (not named, and decidedly not the sort of woman penitents here “do time” for) draws him heavenward. Thus he admits to his miraculous presence among them, but gives no information that might genuinely satisfy their curiosity. In return for relatively little he asks to know the identity of those with whom he speaks and the condition of the group that has moved away from them.

  His evasive behavior here allows him to avoid naming himself uselessly to those who do not know him (see his similar avoidance with Sapia [Purg. XIII.133–138], Guido del Duca [Purg. XIV.20–21], and Marco the Lombard [Purg. XVI.37–42]). Those who recognize Dante in purgatory are as follows: Casella (Purg. II.76–78); Belacqua (recognized by Dante at Purg. IV.109–123; it would seem that he knows Dante but does not, in his laconic, sardonic way, reveal that he does); Nino Visconti (Purg. VIII.46–57); Oderisi (Purg. XI.76); Forese (Purg. XXIII.40–42); and Bonagiunta (Purg. XXIV.35–36). [return to English / Italian]

  64–65. See Benvenuto’s (1380) paraphrase: “as though to say, so that I may write of you souls and give your true reputation, in case there should remain in the world infamous word of your lust.” Dante’s way of promising to record the penitents’ presence on the road to salvation (we must remember that his charitable offer is made without knowing the identity of any of the souls whom he here addresses) so that it may draw prayers from the living and thus hasten their passage to bliss will be enlarged in Guido’s final request of Dante (vv. 130–132), where he hopes for prayers of intercession on his behalf in Heaven itself.

  The language here reflects the mode of preparing a manuscript for inscription, the penciling in of guidelines that can be erased once ink is set to vellum or paper. Dante imagines, from the vantage point of his progress through the second kingdom of the afterworld, the preparation, by his own hand, of the manuscript of the Comedy once he is back in the world. Here the preparation of the page equates with its completion, the inscription of Guido Guinizzelli in the Book of Life. See Inferno XXIX.54–57 and note; see also the less generous, but similar, offer made to Bocca degli Abati at Inferno XXXII.93. Bocca is also recorded, but in the Book of the Dead. [return to English / Italian]

  75. Guido uses a nautical metaphor to praise Dante’s on-loading of this precious cargo of knowledge, paraphrased by Benvenuto (1380) as follows: Dante is one who “gathers and assembles in the bark of his wit” the mountain’s source of knowledge that will allow him a better chance for salvation. [return to English / Italian]

  76. Guido now addresses Dante’s question (vv. 65–66), brought on by the sight of the second group of penitents that had caught his attention (vv. 25–27). [return to English / Italian]

  77–78. As part of his rather cruel treatment of Julius Caesar, who has already been put forward as a positive exemplary figure of zeal (see Purg. XVIII.101–102 and note), Dante now makes him an “informal exemplar” (this practice is observable elsewhere only once on the mountain: see note to Purg. XXIII.25–30) of homosexual lust (that is, he is not a part of the “official” program of those who are presented to all penitents, but is mentioned only to Dante by Guido). This makes him perhaps the only exemplary figure in Purgatorio to have both positive and negative valences. Again we can see how complex, troubling, and unremitting Dante’s response to Julius was.

  Benvenuto (1380) dutifully and ashamedly reports Caesar’s one known homosexual experience but surrounds it, in his perplexity and discomfort, with a list of Julius’s (at times outrageous) sexual encounters with women. In a similar mode, John of Serravalle (1416) insists that Julius was a mere fourteen years old at the time of this misadventure. Dante’s source for poor Julius’s escapade in Bithynia may eventually be found in Suetonius’s Life of the Caesars (chapter 49), as Daniello reports (1568), citing the lines that were supposedly cried out against him when he returned from Gaul in triumph: “See how Caesar triumphs, having conquered Gaul; Nicomedes triumphs not, but he made Caesar fall.” What had happened? Apparently, when Julius was young and serving in Bithynia, the king, who admired him, got him drunk and had sexual relations with him. Other tales make Caesar a more willing accomplice to the king’s desire, e.g., Suetonius, attributing the story to Cicero, cites the report that he was dressed in purple as the queen of the realm at a wild party that ended in his “deflowering,” etc. Later Dante commentators (e.g., Oelsner [1899]) suggest that Dante’s source was a much condensed version of the events in Bithynia found in Uguccione of Pisa’s entry for “triumph” in his Magnae derivationes, which adverts to Bithynia and to Caesar’s being called both “king” and “queen” during one of his triumphs. [return to English / Italian]

  82. The word “hermaphrodite” here doubtless means (and only means) “heterosexual” (from Ovid’s tale of Salmacis and the son of Hermes [Mercury] and Aphrodite [Venus], Hermaphroditus [Metam. IV.285–388], in which their two genders are eventually included in a single double-sexed human being). If “hermaphrodite” here means other than that, the only souls saved from the sin of Lust would have been homosexual and bisexual, that is, there would be no heterosexual penitents on the mountain. The commentary tradition yields some hilarious missteps on this subject. Francesco da Buti (1385), selecting “hermaphrodite” (in the sense of bisexual) as the second category of the penitent lustful on the mountain, tells the tale of a person he had seen, while he was a youth, who dressed as a man but who sat at the distaff and spun wool, using the name “Mistress Piera.” It is only with Gabriele (1525) and Daniello (1568) that commentators get the problem cleared up: these are the penitent heterosexual lovers. There was still so much confusion three centuries later that even Scartazzini (1900) felt that he had to do a full review of the question. It should be said that it was provocative for Dante to have used the myth as he chose to. Ovid’s original tale is quite startling in its sexual role reversals: Salmacis behaving like a traditional slavering male while Hermaphroditus behaves like a traditional inviting female (even performing an unintended striptease before the excited Salmacis, peeping from her hiding place in the woods). The tale seems fully intended to serve as the foundation myth of hermaphroditism. That was not enough, however, to protect it from Da
nte’s by now unsurprisingly elastic and eclectic reading of classical material. His meaning for the word is clear: “heterosexual”; to arrive at that unriddling, he probably foresaw, would cause his readers some exertion. [return to English / Italian]

  83–87. These lines themselves possess the capacity to settle a problem that some readers prefer to keep open. How can the name of Pasiphaë, who was involved not in heterosexual lust between humans, but in sodomy (sexual contact between human and beast), be used here to indicate the former? He and his companions, Guido makes plain, did not commit “unnatural” sexual acts, but broke the laws that govern human sexual concourse, specifically those of marriage, and did so with an untamed energy that is more fit for beasts than humans, and is thus symbolized by a woman who conspired to be entered by a bull. [return to English / Italian]

  90. The large number of those who repine their former lust seems to be commensurate with those who are condemned forever to relive it; see Inferno V.67–69, where Virgil points out to Dante a vast number of identifiable sinners—and this after we have already seen huge flocks of essentially anonymous lovers (Inf. V.40–42). And these sinners here, like those among whom we find Francesca and Paolo, are also compared to cranes (vv. 43–45; Inf. V.46–49). [return to English / Italian]