Some
random and concluding thoughts on the last four cantos.
When
the pageantry starts singing “Veni,
sponsa, de Lebanoí” at the beginning of Canto XXX, is this supposed to be
ironic? I don’t think it’s supposed to,
and I haven’t seen any commentary suggesting that, but it does seem odd that the
drama develops along the sacrament of confession instead of the sacrament of
marriage. It’s also interesting that the
quotes from Virgil’s work as Virgil departs here are examples of flawed
male/female relationships. Both Orpheus
and Eurydice and Dido and Aeneas are tragic love affairs. Indeed, Dido breaks a vow she made to the
gods and fails at the duty of governing her country, and ultimately commits
suicide. I can’t imagine these allusions
being an accident. Dante the author
could have picked a quote from The Aeneid
concerning Aeneas’ dutiful wife, Olivia.
I don’t know what to make of it, and none of the commentary I’ve come
across speaks to it. Dante’s
relationship to Beatrice is supposed to be platonic. Both the Orpheus and Dido examples suggest
relationships otherwise.
Dante
the author takes the beauty of his poetry to a more sublime level when he
starts describing the beauty of earthly paradise. Here the poet is reaching his poetic skill
and maturity, having learned that the only subject that rises to grand
eloquence is the subject of God and His creation. Before the fall, the earth was paradise, but
sin entered and the earth became subject to decay and disorder. God in His promise for a return to purity
preserved a portion of that paradise on top of the purgatorial mountain, and
Dante the character is awe-struck.
While I walked on among
so many first fruits,
this foretaste of eternal
beauty, enchanted
though desiring joys
still greater,
beneath the green boughs
the air before us
seemed to become a
blazing fire
and that sweet sound
could now be heard as song.
O sacred Virgins, if fasting,
cold, or sleepless nights
I've ever suffered for
your sake,
necessity drives me to
call for my reward.
Now let the springs of
Helicon pour forth
and let Urania help me
with her choir
to put in verse things
hard for thought. (Purg. XXIX. 31-42)
Here
Dante appeals to the muses once again to let him reach for language that can
match the beauty about him, the beauty where the air itself is so charged it
seems at the moment of bursting into flame and where every sound seems like the
sweet sound of song.
That
image of Dante on his knees sobbing as Beatrice reviews his sins is a special
one for me. When my time has come and I
stand or maybe fall to my knees before Christ as he reviews my sinful life, I
can’t help but think that is how I will react, sobbing and penitent and
humble. Will Christ be just as
harsh? Or will He be tender and
understanding? Measure for measure? Have mercy on me Lord.
The
pageantry in Canto XXIX is fascinating.
Narratively it creates a grand entrance for the person we have been
waiting for since the beginning of Inferno. Visually it is stunning and recreates some of
the medieval life that must have been typical in Dante’s day. Such feasts still occur in old world towns. I’m familiar with some of them from my native
Italy, but even here in the US in Italian neighborhoods we still have such
feasts. The feast of San Genaro in New
York City’s Little Italy is perhaps the most famous. My old neighborhood in Brooklyn put on the
feast of Santa Rosalia every
year. My current parish has recently
started a procession to honor Our Lady of Mount Carmel. A procession is the central element of the
feast and you carry statues and banners, and in the more elaborate ones, those participating
dress in particular costume. In Canto
XXIX, the people in the procession are analogs of saints, virtues, and
scripture itself.
Here’s
another thought on the pageant. In
Homer’s and Virgil’s epics there is usually a delineation of some central
symbol of the work. If I’m remembering
correctly, in the Illiad one such
long delineation is of Achilles’ shield.
Such delineations are part of the genre of an epic. A more recent example is found in Herman
Melville’s Moby Dick where the whale
body parts are delineated. Dante here
finds a way to delineate the fundamental elements of Christianity with the
personification of its elements.
Once
Dante the character has been absolved of his sins by the dip in the river
Lethe, he now is fully capable of seeing Beatrice’s face. When he is returned to her presence, he sees
her “second beauty” her smile. Finally
the tension built up with her scolding and inquisition is resolved. The first beauty is that of the eyes, where
one looks into another’s soul. But the
second beauty is of the welcoming look of the mouth, where one takes into one’s
heart the beloved.
As
I said to Kerstin, I have always found the allegory in Canto XXXII to be
anticlimactic. After the intense drama of
finally meeting Beatrice, her inquisition, and his confession, I’m usually too
stunned to appreciate this section. But
in this reading I finally see the significance.
The history of the Church is crucial to salvation history and reflects
the sins of mankind. The heresies and
attacks on the church are a result of the sinful people, and such people we
have encountered as characters throughout Inferno
and Purgatorio. This drama is the culmination of Dante’s
theory of sin and history.
If
the dunking into Lethe is more of an absolution than a baptism, is the dunking
into the second river, Eunoe, the baptism?
Some look at the two rivers as a sort of dual baptizing process, but I
tend to think of Lethe as the conclusion of the confessional and Eunoe as the
true baptism. Lethe flushes out the
shame of his sins, but in Eunoe he is made new, or more accurately he is remade
to be what he was intended by heaven to be.
Here’s how Beatrice describes it as she implores Matelda to take
him. In the first tercet she is referring
to Lethe, the second to Eunoe.
…“Perhaps a greater care,
which often strips us of
remembrance,
has veiled the eyes of
his mind in darkness.
'But see Eunoe streaming
forth there.
Bring him to it and, as
you are accustomed,
revive the powers that
are dead in him.' (XXXIII. 124-129)
To
“revive” is to bring back what was once there.
Interesting that Lethe is the name of a river in classical Greek myth,
also a river of forgetfulness, but Eunoe is Dante’s invention. It’s almost as if there are the Cardinal
virtues which come from the classical world and the Christian virtues that come
from the New Testament. If you break the
word “Eunoe” down into morphemes, one gets from Greek, “eu” meaning “good” and
“noe” meaning mind. So what Dante is
saying here is that the river creates “good mind.” So what happens when one enters heaven in
Christianity, one is no longer cable of choosing to sin. Being dipped in Eunoe is Dante’s process for
it. The concluding dip and rise out of
the river are worth quoting.
As a gentle spirit that
makes no excuses
but makes another's will
its own
as soon as any signal
makes that clear,
so, once she held me by
the hand, the lady moved
and, as though she were
mistress of that place,
said to Statius: 'Now
come with him.'
If, reader, I had more
ample space to write,
I should sing at least in
part the sweetness
of the drink that never
would have sated me,
but, since all the sheets
readied for this second
canticle are full,
the curb of art lets me
proceed no farther.
From those most holy
waters
I came away remade, as
are new plants
renewed with new-sprung
leaves,
pure and prepared to rise
up to the stars. (XXXIII. 130-145)
Statius
is still with him! Dante is “renewed”
like plants “with new sprung leaves.” He
is now “pure” and reinvigorated to “rise up” to heaven. His purgation has concluded. As I pointed out at the end of Inferno, all three canticles end with
the word “stars.”
With
that I have concluded my exegesis of Purgatorio. I do hope you got something out of it. If I went over your head anywhere, please ask
me questions. I tried to simplify it as
much as I could. It is such a rich work
I doubt I did it justice. If you have
read along, I hope someday you’ll reread it again, and perhaps often. Not only is it great literature—the greatest
in my opinion!—but I think it moves the Christian heart. When I came back to my faith, Dante’s Divine Comedy had a great role in
it. It really can lead you to devotion.
I
project to start reading Paradisio, the
last of the three canticles, sometime in January. So if you haven’t read any of these first two
canticles, you can start now and be ready for the January discussion.
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