"Love follows knowledge."
"Beauty above all beauty!"
– St. Catherine of Siena

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Comments to Dante's Purgatorio, Cantos XXIX to XXXIII, Part 2

Canto XXX can be seen as Dante’s moment of reckoning, and in Christian theological terms a day of judgement.  And while Beatrice is not Christ, Dante is not dead and will return to the land of the living.  But the situation is constructed to run analogous.  Just as Christ would lay out the case for the nature of our soul from our earthly journey at judgement, Beatrice lays out the case for Dante’s soul from his journey toward her. 

How Dante reacts is critical.  If he reacts with denials, he will be lying.  If he reacts with pride, say as a poet who needed to seek greater experiences like Ulysses in Inferno, he will not be worthy.  But he reacts with humility, and that is what a contrite sinner does.  Dante the author structures Cato XXXI to be analogous to a Catholic sacrament of confession.  This consists of three parts, confessing, contrition, and absolution.  He starts off the canto picking up from where he left off in XXX, with Beatrice sharply concluding her case:

'O you on the far side of the sacred stream,'
turning the point of her words on me
had seemed sharp enough with their edge,

she then went on without a pause: 'Say it,
say if this is true. To such an accusation
your confession must be joined.'  (XXXI. 1-6)

This time she does not even call him by his name, but calls to him with an indirect locution, and she forces the moment.  He cannot be allowed to evade because the fate of his soul is at stake.  While her words may seem sharp, there is purpose to their edge.  Here Dante’s emotions overwhelm him. 

My faculties were so confounded
that my voice struggled up but spent itself
before it made its way out of my mouth.

For a moment she held back, then asked:
'What are you thinking? Speak, for your memories
of sin have not been washed away by water yet.'

Confusion and fear, mixed together,
drove from my mouth a yes--
but one had need of eyes to hear it.  (7-15)

She is drawing him to reach a confession.  And he does.  All he can muster is a mouthed, inaudible “yes.”  Now recall Canto V of Purgatorio when Manfred with an arrow in his throat, knowing that he will die, inaudibly appeals to the Blessed Mother for salvation.  All it took was the smallest of efforts for God’s grace to pull Manfred into salvation.  Dante the character here gives the same sort of simple but sincere effort, overwhelmed by the complications of the situation.  The parallel is noticeable and certainly intended.  Then comes one of Dante’s incredible similes.

As a crossbow breaks with too much tension
from the pulling taut of cord and bow
so that the arrow strikes the target with less force,

thus I collapsed beneath that heavy load
and, with a flood of tears and sighs,
my voice came strangled from my throat.  (16-21)

He breaks like a crumpled crossbow and his body falls over like the loaded arrow that impotently flops.  But he hasn’t fully confessed.  The mouthed “yes” was just an acknowledgment.  She needs him to plainly state his sin.  She continues the inquisition.  She asks him what was it that drew him away from her (22-30).  Dante struggles to speak.

After heaving a bitter sigh
I hardly had the voice to give the answer
my lips were laboring to shape.

In tears, I said: 'Things set in front of me,
with their false delights, turned back my steps
the moment that Your countenance was hidden.' (31-36)

That is directly stating his sin.  Next in the confessional process is true contrition.  She continues, satisfied with what he has said, drawing out what is truly in his heart.

'And if the highest beauty failed you
in my death, what mortal thing
should then have drawn you to desire it?

'Indeed, at the very first arrow
of deceitful things, you should have risen up
and followed me who was no longer of them.

'You should not have allowed your wings to droop,
            leaving you to other darts from some young girl
or other novelty of such brief use.

'The fledgling may allow even a third attempt,
but all in vain is the net flung or arrow shot
in sight of a full-fledged bird.' (52-63)

The key words in her speech there are “you should have” and “you should not have.”  She uses “should” three times in three tercets and concludes with a metaphor of an immature bird.  Three times he could have followed her, and even a fledgling learns before three attempts.  At this shame burns in Dante’s heart.

As children in their shame stand mute, their eyes
upon the ground, listening,
acknowledging their fault, repentant,
just so I stood… (64-67)

Indeed, she continues to harp on the childishness of actions, telling him “to lift up his beard” as to show the disconnection between his mature state and his immature actions.  Isn’t that what sin is, an immature action?  It reminds me of St. Paul’s great observation from First Corinthians: “When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.  At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known (1 Cor 11-12).  When Beatrice died and was removed from his sight, Dante failed to fully see as a man.  That is at the heart of his sin.  With Beatrice having now completed her indictment, Dante the character’s emotions overtake him and his sight blurs.  As he collapses, he does see her turn to the Griffin, which stands for Christ, and then he feels complete contrition.

The nettle of remorse so stung me then
that whatever else had lured me most to loving
had now become for me most hateful.

Such knowledge of my fault was gnawing at my heart
that I was overcome, and what I then became
she knows who was the reason for my state.  (85-90)

The contrition is unstated; it is purely in his heart.  We don’t even know exactly what he is contrite about.  Whatever the fault that gnaws at his heart, it is left unsaid.  Some have speculated there was another woman or women; some have speculated a loss of faith; some have speculated the turn toward philosophy without incorporation the three Christian virtues.  But the contrition is sincere, and that is what counts.

Finally there is the absolution.  In a typical Catholic confession, absolution is the prayer the priest prays over you at the end.  Sometimes it is said in Latin, but here is what is typically said in English:

God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

There is no priest to say the words of absolution, but when Dante comes to from passing out, he being held by Matelda, and is promptly submersed into the river Lethe.  Those all around him sing from the great penitential Psalm 51, “Asperges me,” “purge me.”  The NAB translates the line as such, “Cleanse me with hyssop, that I may be pure; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow (Ps. 51:9).  Some might consider this submersion a baptism instead of the sacrament of reconciliation, and it is of sorts.  But if you think about it, a confession is a sort of baptizing, but instead of the cleansing of original sin, it cleans temporal sins.

It is interesting and fitting that the fifty-first psalm is sung at this moment.  I have had a priest require me to read Psalm 51 as part of my satisfaction, the small prayer penance we are given after confession.  Here Dante doesn’t pray a penance, but he is sort of incapacitated, and so we can consider those in the pageant pray the penance for him.


With the submersion, absolution is complete, and not only are sins forgiven, but they are forgotten.  At least that’s how most commentators read it.  Anthony Esolen, though, reads it as the sins are not forgotten but as if they were now committed by another person.  This makes sense to me since Dante the character has to return home and write of this experience.  Plus, isn’t that how it feels when one comes out of a confession?  You feel like a new person, and that it was another you who committed those sins.  Of course, within a half hour we’re probably sinning again, but that’s a different matter.

I think this completes the close reading of the meet up between Dante the character and Beatrice.  I’ll have one more set of random comments on these last cantos to make before I complete my thoughts on Purgatorio. 

###

Kerstin at Catholic Thought book club asked:
What I am not clear about, and this puzzled me already when I read it, why is Beatrice's reaction to Dante so strong regarding the fact that he didn't stay true to her? He had a youthful infatuation, they were never betrothed or married. And, once you enter heavenly paradise, aren't earthly attachments no longer of import? Why is she bringing this up?

My response:
It's even less than never betrothed. They saw each other a grand total of two times in their lives, once when Dante was nine years old and the other when he was eighteen. Dante the real life person has made her into something of a conglomeration of a love, a muse, and a spiritual guide. When I gave an introduction for Inferno I said Dante's devotion to Beatrice was hard to understand. The best analogy I could come up with was how some people have a devotion to a saint or the Blessed Mother. But it's actually more than that too.


As to the situation in the Divine Comedy, if Beatrice is that spiritual soul mate, then Dante the character has betrayed that spiritual bond by looking toward philosophy or other women or whatever the sin was. Beatrice is quite right to scold him, not so much to express her anger but to draw out the contrition for the sake of Dante's soul.

No comments:

Post a Comment