One
of the first things we should notice as we enter Dante's Purgatory is how
different in texture and tone this is from hell.
Sweet color of oriental
sapphire,
hovering in the calm and
peaceful aspect
of intervening air, pure
to the horizon,
pleased my eyes once more
as soon as I had left the
morbid air t
that had afflicted both
my chest and eyes.
The fair planet that
emboldens love,
smiling, lit up the east,
veiling the Fishes in her
train.
I turned to the right
and, fixing my attention
on the other pole, I saw
four stars
not seen but by those
first on earth.
The very sky seemed to
rejoice
in their bright
glittering. O widowed
region of the north,
denied that sight! (Pur, I, 13-27)
(Quotes
are taken from the Hollander and Hollander translation.)
We
have color, we have light; we have stars and calm and peace. The planet of love smiles; the sky
rejoices. When Cato approaches, “the
rays of those four holy stars/adorned his face with so much light/he seemed to
shine with the brightness of the sun” (37-39).
The guardian of purgatory—if you could consider him a guardian, he seems
more of a glorified usher—is a venerable old man, not some demonic creature
with a whip or other instrument of torture.
He doesn’t condemn or harass the pilgrims. He essential asks how they got there. He doesn’t assume some sort of trespassing
but wonders if the divine laws have been altered, and once Virgil explains the
situation he accepts it without assuming deception. He treats them with dignity.
Unlike
the dark, claustrophobic passages of hell, purgatory has space and sight. The sun shines. There is a constant reference to the sun’s
position. Time is very important in
purgatory—it is a temporal place—and the sun’s position in the sky is a cue to
the pilgrim’s as to the time of day.
Also as they go up the corkscrew path, the sun shifts position as they
circle, either in front of them or behind.
They have sight to the horizon, out into the ocean, what must be a
lovely view. Look at this lovely passage
toward the end of Canto I:
Dawn was overtaking the
darkness of the hour,
which fled before it, and
I saw and knew
the distant trembling of
the sea.
We went along the lonely
plain,
like someone who has lost
the way
and thinks he strays
until he finds the road.
When we came to a place
where the dew
can hold its own against
the sun
because it is protected
by a breeze,
my master spread his
hands
gently upon the grass. (I. 115-125)
There
is dew, there is a breeze, there is grass.
Perhaps we take these things for granted, but after traversing hell,
these are sweetness on the lips. At the
end of the canto, notice when Virgil pulls out a reed to use as a belt to
adjust Dante’s tunic (134-6), another reed instantaneously grows in its place. And so there is also fertility. By the way that reminds me of how things grow
in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia, which represents heaven in his fictional series, The Chronicles of Narnia. I bet he got the idea from here.
In
addition to the natural loveliness, there is song in purgatory. Remember in hell the only musical note was
supposed to be the demon’s fart. In
purgatory the penitents sing psalms and hymns.
Coming off the boat the souls in Canto II, they sing 'In exitu Isräel de Aegypto' “with one
voice.” That’s the combined Psalms 114
and 115 in modern bibles, Psalm 113 in the Vulgate of Dante’s day. In every section of purgatory, there is at
least one psalm, and the one Dante selects accentuates the theme of that
canto. In Canto V, the section where the
penitents are those who have been saved by being repentant just before their
violent death, the souls sing the Miserere,
Psalm 51 (50 in the Vulgate), “Have mercy on me, O God.” Later on in the Purgatorio, there will also be art work, so purgatory is a place of
beauty. But note, the songs and the art
are there for the therapy of the penitents.
They all work toward the training of the soul toward virtue.
Which
brings us to the humorous scene in Canto II where off the boat of newly arrived
penitents is Dante’s friend Casella.
After trying to hug each other—which they can’t do because one is a
spirit and one has a body—Dante asks Casella to sing for him like old
times. Apparently Casella has a
beautiful singing voice, and he holds Dante and the other penitents around them
spell bound with a secular song. But
despite the beauty of the song, Cato pops out of nowhere to chastise them. He calls them “laggards,” procrastinating
when they should be focused on making progress toward their purgation. So while a secular song may not be taboo, it
is not productive toward one’s soul.
But
notice also what song Casella chooses.
He sets to song a poem that Dante the author wrote outside of the Divine
Comedy. As I said in one of my
commentaries on Inferno, modern
metafiction has nothing on Dante. But
why does Casella pick that song? Besides
the philosophic implications, which I won’t get into here, he picks it out of
kindness. He picks it because Dante is
his friend and he wants to please him.
Here too then is another contrast to hell. The spirits in purgatory care for each other,
pray for each other, act kindly to each other.
In hell, souls were either irritated with other souls or even feasted on
the pain of other souls. In purgatory,
souls offer each other help and kindly touch.
####
Another
thing I’d like to bring up are the various characters that Dante and Virgil
encounter in these first five cantos.
These characters and their situations I think provide insight to the Purgatrio.
Let’s
start with Cato, the venerable old man who is the guardian of Purgatory. Marcus Porcius Cato (95 BC to 46 BC),
also known as Cato of Utica or Cato the Younger. He was the great opponent to Julius Caesar
and did everything humanly possible to prevent Caesar from becoming a
dictator. Ultimately, rather than live
under Caesar’s dictatorship, he committed suicide as a public statement against
tyranny. The question that has beguiled
critics is what a pagan, who committed suicide no less, is doing in purgatory,
a region for saved souls? That he is the
very first soul the pilgrims encounter is a statement that God is not
constrained to the letter of the law if there is a valid reason. (There has to be reason behind it, or God
would be just an impulsive sovereign rather than a loving father.) So what is the reason that Cato is there and
in charge? First, Dante considers him
one of the most virtuous men to ever have lived. The four stars that shine off is face in Purgatorio represent the four cardinal
virtues of prudence, temperance, courage, and justice. These come from the classical world, and
Christianity would later add three more—faith, hope, and charity—to form the
seven virtues. The process of purgatory
is to form these virtues into the soul if one did not form them in life. Cato was a great example of the four in life.
But
what about the suicide? Doesn’t that
prevent him from being saved? Inferno had a section in circle seven
set aside for suicides. But Cato didn’t
commit suicide out of despair. In
essence he did it as a statement of resistance.
He did it as a virtuous act. I
don’t think the Church makes such a distinction, but Dante does here. Notice when Virgil speaks to him about
Dante’s journey, he frames it in terms of freedom: “May if please you to
welcome his arrival,/since he’s in search of liberty, which is so dear, as he
well knows who gives his life for it” (I. 70-72). Virgil is appealing to Cato to give Dante a
break because, like Cato who gave his life for freedom—not just his personal
freedom, but that of his countrymen—Dante is searching for freedom too. Recall what the newly arriving souls are
singing in Canto II: 'In exitu Isräel de
Aegypto' a song of freedom from Egyptian slavery. Another way to look at purgatory is as a
journey from the human bondage of sin to the freedom of a perfected soul, a
virtuous soul. And while Cato didn’t
have the grace of Christianity to achieve the three Christian virtues, he did
perfect his sol to the four cardinal virtues.
He will not get to Paradise, but he is a worthy guardian of purgatory’s
shores.
Another
fascinating and insightful character in these early cantos is Manfred, the
excommunicated son of the emperor Frederick II (who was briefly identified in
hell) and appointed governing lord in southern Italy. You can read about the political details in
the notes, but what is important is that he died on the battlefield and
everyone thought he was damned in hell because of a lifetime of grave
sins. Manfred speaks of what happened:
'After my body was riven
by two mortal blows, I
turned
in tears to Him who
freely pardons.
Horrible were my sins,
but Infinite Goodness
with wide-open arms
receives whoever turns to
it.
'If the pastor of
Cosenza, sent by Clement
on the hunt to take me
down,
had read that page in God
with greater care,
'my body's bones would
still be sheltered
at the head of the bridge
near Benevento
under the cairn of heavy
stones. (III. 118-129)
Though
excommunicated and having lived a lifetime of “horrible” sins, at the moment of
death he turned to Christ, “Infinnite Goodness,” who received him with open
arms. While excommunication delays
purgation—we are told that for every year excommunicated a soul will have to
spend thirty in ante-purgatory—it does not damn one. The human heart’s embrace of Christ is still
the governing factor. [Side note. My name of Manny is not short for Manuel as
some tend to think. It’s actually short
for Manfredi, which is what is in Dante’s Italian. Manfredi is the Italian version of the
Germanic/English Manfred. This is
probably the only place in literature where I have found my name. Also, that city of Benevento where Manfred
dies is not far from the little town where my family is from. I’ve actually been to Benevento. As you can imagine, I have a soft spot for this
character.]
Another
character that provides insight is Buonconte da Montefeltro in Canto V. We met his father, Guido da Montefeltro in
Canto XXVII of Inferno as one of the
false councilors. I think at the time in
my commentaries I said I would hold off providing any analysis of his condition
because it makes a nice comparison and contrast with his son. So let’s look at them both now. Guido was a Ghibelline ruler who was a
devious commander and shrewd in a Machiavellian way. Toward the end of his life, knowing he had
lived a life of sin, he entered a friary and became a Franciscan in order to
make up for his sins. But Pope Boniface
faced with a difficult battle in the siege of Palistrina asked Guido for
advice. Guido gave him some
Machiavellian council with the provision the pope would absolve him of that
sin. The pope absolved him. At his death Guido tells us in hell that St.
Francis of Assisi came to take his soul to heaven, but a devil’s angel came
with greater rights, and so Guido was bound to hell.
His
son Buonconte was also a devious ruler and military strategist. He fought and died a violent death at the Battle
of Campaldino, a battle Dante himself was supposed to have participated in for
the opposite side. Buonconte’s body was
never found, and when asked how he ended so far from the battlefield, Buonconte
describes his last hours:
'Ah,' he replied, 'at Casentino's border
runs a stream called
Archiano
that springs above the
Hermitage among the Apennines.
'To where its name is
lost I made my way,
wounded in the throat,
fleeing on foot,
and dripping blood across
the plain.
'There I lost sight and
speech.
I ended on the name of
Mary and there I fell,
and only my flesh
remained. (V. 94-102)
So
we have an almost parallel situation between father and son, but the difference
is that at the moment of death Buonconte murmurs the name of the Blessed Mother
and is saved. Guido tried to sly over
God, but his heart wasn’t sincerely penitent, and so was doomed to hell. Buonconte with an arrow in his throat, so he
couldn’t even speak, sincerely appealed to Mary with just the bare minimum of mumbling
on the lips, was saved. And to continue
the parallels further, Bunconte tells of two angels, one good and one evil,
also coming for his soul, but this time the good angel has the winning
rights.
As
with Manfred, here we again see how a sincere last moment of contrition alters
the nature of salvation. There is one
other thing here that’s worth pointing out, and that is the cross textural
integration within the Divine Comedy. The
Montefeltros cross texturally exchange themes between the two canticas. That’s one example. Here’s another. At the end of Canto V we meet a humble lady
named Pia who we know almost nothing about except that she too was killed and
repented at the moment of death, killed by her husband. Wait a second, didn’t we meet a lady in Canto
V of the Inferno who was also
murdered by her husband? Yes, we heard
the love story of Francesca and Paulo, where Francesca’s husband caught them in
infidelity and murdered them.
Francesca’s heart was hardened toward her sin, but Pia apparently was
contrite. The cross textural integration
isn’t always as obvious as this or corresponds from numerical canto to the same
numerical canto, but it is there between the canticas. The cross textural integration involves
characters, themes, theology, poetry, history, and everything Dante is using to
tell this story. Such incredible
virtuosity of storytelling is one of several reasons I consider this the
greatest work in all of literature.
