Purgatorio (The Divine Comedy series Book 2)

by Dante

  17–18. The currently most favored reading of these lines is already found in Tozer (1901): “Burning was a mode of punishment at Florence at this period, and Dante himself had been condemned to be burnt alive at the time of his banishment.” In short, Dante, having seen human beings burned alive in the public square, and having been promised exactly such treatment should he ever attempt to return to Florence from his exile, is understandably frozen by fear. For him, a man in the flesh, the danger of the fire seems, naturally enough, far greater than it must have to those who were there in spirit only. They, to be sure, suffer mental anguish as they purge their sin of lust in the flames; Dante understandably imagines that the fire will work quite differently upon him. [return to English / Italian]

  19. Although it is Virgil who speaks, the narrator again reminds us of Statius’s continuing presence, even though he has not spoken since Canto XXV.108, when he finished his lecture on the aerial body. He will, in fact, not speak again, though his actions and presence will be recorded until a few lines from the end of the cantica (Purg. XXXIII.135). [return to English / Italian]

  21–23. Virgil is at pains to remind Dante that here in purgatory the dangers are not those encountered in Inferno. He will not perish in these flames, while he might have been destroyed by Geryon’s envenomed tail or by falling from his back (Inf. XVII.83–84; 95–96; 121). And so, Virgil asks, if Dante could trust him then, how much more can he trust him now? [return to English / Italian]

  25–27. See Luke 21:18: “Yet not a hair on your head shall perish.” Jesus is speaking of the terrible time of tribulation that awaits his followers, which they shall nonetheless survive. Scartazzini (1900) also cites Paul’s words to his followers, terrified in a storm at sea (Acts 27:34): “For not a hair shall fall from the head of any of you.” [return to English / Italian]

  28–30. Virgil, having failed to convince Dante even a little, now resorts to scientific experiment, asking him to test a hem of his clothing in this spiritual fire. As Torraca (1905) pointed out, far credenza (perform a test), was a phrase (found in the second book of Boccaccio’s Filocolo) used for the practice of having a prince’s (or other important person’s) food sampled by animals or by servants, expressly charged with this task, to be sure it had not been poisoned. [return to English / Italian]

  33. In a wonderfully wrought sequence, Virgil has given, rapid-fire, a series of convincing proposals and arguments, along with a concluding volley of encouragement (vv. 20–32). The poet’s description of the protagonist, in a single line, Dante’s version of “the soul indeed is willing but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41), shows that he is now as reluctant as he has ever been: “against my will, I stood stock still.” [return to English / Italian]

  37–42. In Ovid’s story (Metam. IV.55–166), the myth that accounts for why the fruit of the mulberry tree is red, Pyramus and Thisbe are neighbors in the Babylon of Queen Semiramis (see Inf. V.58). They are in love. Since their parents forbid them to marry, they speak to one another lovingly through a little gap in the common wall of their houses. They conspire to meet one night at the tomb of Ninus, the dead king, former husband of Semiramis. Thisbe arrives first but, as luck would have it, a lioness, fresh from the kill and covered in the blood of the cattle she had slain, seeking a fountain to slake her thirst, frightened Thisbe away. The beast, returning from her drink and finding the cloak that fleeing Thisbe had dropped on the ground, soils that garment with her bloody maw. Pyramus, arriving late for his assignation, finds the bloodied cloth and assumes the worst. Blaming himself for Thisbe’s putative death, he kills himself with his sword. His spurting blood colors the white fruit of the mulberry red. Returning, Thisbe finds the body of her beloved. In anguish she calls out his name and her own, and he opens his eyes and recognizes her just before he dies. In turn, she uses the sword of Pyramus to take her life.

  The simile that Dante contrives from this material gives the name of Beatrice the same role as that of Thisbe. Virgil speaks her name just as Thisbe had spoken her own. In Dante’s case it revives the will to continue toward salvation in a lover who has felt he was at the verge of death, while in the case of Pyramus there is no larger sense of redemption, only a moment of tragic recognition. Why does Dante construct this similetic moment out of such antithetic material? His love for Beatrice leads to life, Pyramus’s love for Thisbe, to death. When we hear Dante’s name on the lips of Beatrice (Purg. XXX.55), we are in a better position to see the complex relations between these two acts of naming and two kinds of love.

  On the relations between the mulberry and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from which Eve and then Adam ate, as well as the cross on which Christ died and hung like bloodied fruit, see Moevs (Moev.2000.1), pp. 218–19. [return to English / Italian]

  45. For a passage from Convivio (Conv. IV.xii.16), relevant here also as an indication of Virgil’s pleasure in regaining his role as Dante’s teacher and guide, see the note to Purg. XXIV.106–111. [return to English / Italian]

  47–48. We had previously known that Dante was following the two other poets (see Purg. XXVI.16–18) and now we learn that Statius has been nearest him, with Virgil in the lead. As Bosco/Reggio point out (1979), Virgil’s tactic here is reminiscent of his staying behind Dante to protect him from Geryon’s sting (Inf. XVII.83–84). Here, however, one might add, Virgil is not worried about protecting Dante, but by the possibility that he would try to flee back through the flames. And thus Statius is deployed as a rearguard, not against any enemy, but against the questionable will of the protagonist. Further, Virgil, by making Dante come closer, arranges things so that it is easier to control him. [return to English / Italian]

  54. Virgil will probably not see those eyes, since he will be dismissed from the poem just as Beatrice appears (see Purg. XXX.49), even though he had been subjected to the heat of the fire when he guided Dante through it. [return to English / Italian]

  55–57. The scene we expect, as the protagonist completes his ritual purging on a terrace, is the removal of one (in this case the seventh and last) P from his forehead. Apparently the poet decided to avoid representing this climactic moment, allowing it either to be intrinsic, or else perhaps allowing us to believe that the fire itself cleansed the protagonist of his predisposition toward lust. But this is the moment (not before the entrance to the fire, as some believe) at which the ritual act should be performed, just before the upward movement to the next area of the mountain, as it has been on the other terraces (see an associated discussion of the angels’ recitations of the Beatitudes in the note to Purg. XV.38–39).

  Trucchi (1936) counts the angels who serve God’s ends in Purgatorio and comes up with ten (the “perfect number,” as he remarks): the Christian Mercury who brings the living dead to the mountain (Purg. II.43), the angelic warder at the gate (Purg. IX.104), the seven who are associated with the virtues opposed to the vices repented at the end of the experience of each terrace, and now this one.

  This final angel of purgatory (in paradise we see Gabriel circling the Virgin [Par. XXIII.103] and then the angelic hierarchy in Paradiso XXVIII) acts as a sort of positive Siren, drawing souls away from lust and setting them free. [return to English / Italian]

  58. As, among the early commentators, only he who speaks from the pages of the Codice Cassinese pointed out, the passage reflects the words that Christ will speak to the just at the Day of Judgment: “Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, ‘Come, blessèd of my Father, take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the [time of the] foundation of the world’ ” (Matthew 25:34). In the twentieth century, notice began again to be paid to this absolutely relevant text. As Singleton reports (1973), Wilkins (Wilk. 1927.1), p. 5, pointed out that a mosaic in the Florentine Baptistery showed a gate guarded by an angel who welcomes a newly arrived soul, while a second angel leads a group of the saved and carries a banner that is inscribed “Come, blessèd of my Father, possess what has been prepared.” Dante’s second and singing angel woul
d certainly seem to be modeled on that second angel and his words. And that there are two angels on this terrace may reflect his memory of the mosaic. [return to English / Italian]

  61–63. The angel’s words, as many now note, are a sort of paraphrase of John 12:35: “Walk while you have the light, that darkness may not overtake you.” Poletto (1894) seems to have been the first commentator to notice the correlation. That it should have waited so long to be observed is comprehensible, since it is not a literal citation so much as a recasting of John’s thought. This second angel, exactly like the first on this terrace, first speaks in Latin and then in the vernacular. See, again, the note to Purgatorio XV.38–39. [return to English / Italian]

  64–66. Bosco/Reggio (1979) point out that, since this stair runs from due west to due east and since at the outset of the ascent (Purg. III.16–18) Dante had his back to the east, he has now gone exactly halfway around the mountain’s circumference, or 180 degrees. Naturally the actual circumference keeps decreasing as the mountain goes higher, like that of a snail’s shell. [return to English / Italian]

  67. Dante’s phrase levare i saggi (tried) suggests a literal sense of taking a sample of rock, as in geological studies. [return to English / Italian]

  76–87. Dante’s playfulness is for some reason particularly evident in his similes, which often and deliberately have “something wrong” in them, incomplete grammatical relations, mixtures of styles, and other apparent “defects.” Here, on the other hand, we have a perfectly developed and complex “classical” simile: “Just as … and just as … so.” Anyone examining the passage closely is likely to perceive that there are things “wrong” here as well. Let us consider the components of the simile:

  Dante (singular) Virgil and Statius (plural)

  76–81 goats (plural) shepherd (singular)

  82–84 flock (plural) herdsman (singular)

  85–87 goat (singular) shepherds (plural)

  Several things are worth remarking. This simile is mainly unadulterated vernacular pastoral with a few Latinate words (and perhaps a phrase from Virgil at line 77 from Georgics IV.10, according to Daniello [1568] and many of those who followed him). But why does Dante not get his singulars and plurals straight in the first two elements, only to correct them in the third? Why does he include the second element at all, since he excludes it from his summarizing and concluding third element? And why, as Torraca (1905) wondered, is the shepherd standing up (if leaning on his stick) while Virgil and Statius are lying down? Is that why, Torraca continued to wonder, Dante included the second element, in which the herdsman is at least closer to lying down? The purpose of these questions is to focus attention on how much Dante expects of his reader. These little touches, reminding us of his artistic freedom, make us aware of that. [return to English / Italian]

  77. The phrase rapide e proterve in verse 77 (which we have translated as “quick and reckless”), according to some commentators, beginning with Benvenuto (1380), means “rapaces et temerariae” (rapacious and bold). Others have objected to the first of these terms, more fitting to describe the appetite of a wolf, as being inapplicable to goats. On the other hand, if we understood the word to mean “voracious,” there would be no such problem. We, however, believe that Dante is referring to the way a free-roaming goat moves, rather than to the way it eats, but have no quarrel with those who follow Benvenuto. [return to English / Italian]

  89–90. The stars look bigger and brighter because Dante is higher up and closer to them than he has ever been in his life. There may be a moral atmosphere at work here as well, in that he has lost the obscuring mantle of sin that is our normal lot (see Purg. XXX.3), and that also would make them seem brighter. For exactly such a twofold understanding see John of Serravalle (1416). [return to English / Italian]

  94–99. It is now before dawn on Wednesday morning, the last day on the mountain, from which Dante will depart at noon.

  “Cytherea” is a proper noun formed from the epithet used of the “maritime” Venus, the lustful goddess born of the spume of the sea near the island Cythera. Dante here presents her as the morning star, as she was seen at the opening of the cantica. However, and as has been pointed out in recent years with increasing insistence, in 1300, Venus was the evening star at this period of the year, and the morning star only in 1301. See the discussion in Vescovini [Vesc.2002.1], pp. 292, 300n., who resists the temptation to “redate” the poem to 1301, believing that Dante is merely taking advantage of poetic license. And see the note to Purgatorio I.19–21.

  For the formulaic nature of Dante’s preparation of his three dream narratives in Purgatorio see Hollander (Holl.1969.1), p. 149. All the dreams are preceded by “an astronomical reference to the hour of the morning at which the dream occurs” and then by the distinct vocabulary of dream vision, as in the second of these tercets: “in sogno mi parea / donna vedere” (in a dream I seemed to see a lady). [return to English / Italian]

  100–108. The dream of Leah and Rachel is the most transparent of the three dreams in Purgatorio (see Purg. IX.13–33 and XIX.1–33). Leah and Rachel, the daughters of Laban in Genesis, were understood by Christian interpreters to represent, respectively, the active life and the contemplative life (and thus Rachel’s staring into the mirror is not to be taken as narcissistic self-admiration but contemplation in a positive sense). It is clear that Dante is making use of that tradition here. However, he is also making use of biblical typology in his treatment of Leah, who is related to Eve in her as yet unfallen condition in that she is doing what Adam and Eve were told to do, “ut operaretur et custodiret illum” (to dress [the garden] and keep it—Genesis 2:15). Dante’s verb in the last line of Leah’s speech, which concludes the dream, remembers the biblical verb in his ovrare, the working in this garden that points back to the tasks of that one before the Fall (see Holl.1969.1, p. 153). For the balanced relationships between the pair Leah and Rachel and a second pair, Matelda and Beatrice, the two central female presences in the earthly paradise, see Pacchioni (Pacc.2001.1).

  It is probably also fair to say that the text intrinsically presents Dante as a new Jacob: “As Jacob toiled for seven years in order to gain the hand of Rachel, only to be given that of Leah (Genesis 29:10f.), so Dante has toiled up seven terraces of purgation with the promise of Beatrice, only to find Matelda” (Holl.1969.1, pp. 151–52). Pascoli (Pasc.1902.1), p. 462, had much earlier suggested that Dante, “the new Aeneas,” was also the “new Jacob.” [return to English / Italian]

  110–111. Awakening, the protagonist (and Statius, but Virgil only problematically so) is associated with travelers who are getting nearer home. It is quite clear that “home” now is at the very least the garden of Eden, and perhaps the true paradise that lies above. There are no thoughts of Florence here. In these lines the true pilgrimage becomes a journey from God, into the world, and back to God. It is interesting to compare the beautiful and sad opening of the eighth canto of this cantica, with its traveler whose thoughts are on friends left behind in the world. This pilgrim/traveler has apparently learned a good deal on the mountain. [return to English / Italian]

  112. For the resonance of a phrase found in the Song of Songs in this verse, “le tenebre fuggian da tutti lati” [the shadows all around were being put to flight]: “Donec aspiret dies et inclinentur umbrae” [Until the day break and the shadows flee away] (Canticle 2:17 and 4:6), see Eleanor Cook (Cook.1999.1), p. 5. [return to English / Italian]

  122–123. This is as close as the poet comes to telling us that the protagonist’s last P has been removed. He feels as light as his “feathers.” [return to English / Italian]

  125. Since the garden of Eden seems to be just slightly below the level to which the travelers have now climbed (see Purg. XXVIII.4), this topmost step of the stair is the highest point on earth attained by Dante, and by Virgil as well, but he has no further rising to do. [return to English / Italian]

  127. Beginning with Scartazzini (1900), commentators have cited St. Thomas to the effect t
hat the pains of the damned are eternal while the fire of purgatory is temporary. [return to English / Italian]

  131. If Dante’s will is as good as Virgil will shortly say it is, he can take pleasure as his guide because he will only want that which reason will want. Nothing sinful would any longer tempt him. [return to English / Italian]

  135. The self-sufficient nature of the vegetation of the garden will be insisted on at Purgatorio XXVIII.109–120. [return to English / Italian]

  139–141. It is perhaps useful to consider an attempt to see how the poem may be divided into four large units, as follows:

  Dante’s development locus guide

  I. correction of the will Inf. I–XXXIV Virgil

  II. perfection of the will Purg. I–XXIX Virgil

  III. correction of the intellect Purg. XXX–Par. XXX Beatrice

  IV. perfection of the intellect Par. XXX–end Bernard

  See Hollander (Holl.1976.2). And for the possible contribution of St. Bernard to this schema, see note to Paradiso XXXIII.127–132.

  It is at this moment that Virgil gives over the instructional task that has been his since Inferno I, presiding over the correction and perfection of Dante’s will. [return to English / Italian]