Comments to Dante's Purgatorio, Cantos XXIX to XXXIII, Part 3

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.

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.

Comments to Dante's Purgatorio, Cantos XXIX to XXXIII, Part 1

Because it’s one of the greatest moments in all of literature and the climax of Purgatorio, I wanted to do a close reading of Dante’s meeting with Beatrice.  So I’m going to step through Cantos XXX and XXXI.  

The procession that starts in Canto XXIX culminates with Beatrice’s entrance, so Dante the author would be quite a skilled movie director to lay out such a grand entrance.  No one in the entire Divine Comedy gets an entrance like that.  The closest to such an entrance would be Statius’ entrance who is preceded by the earthquake in Canto XX. 

The procession ends with a herald calling out Beatrice with “Veni, sponsa, de Libano,” from the Song of Songs, “Come from Lebanon, my bride.”  It’s a fitting moment in that we expect Dante’s love interest to make her way in, and perhaps we envision some sort of symbolic sacrament of matrimony.  But what we will get is not a sacrament of matrimony but a sacrament of confession. 

One hundred ministers rise up from the chariot (which I guess is more of a wagon than a chariot) and sing three phrases in Latin.  In English they are (1) “at the voice of so great an elder,” (2) “Blessed are you who come,” and (3) “Give lilies with full hands.”  The first phrase is Dante’s original writing but the “elder” refers back to the Song of Songs.  The second comes from the Gospels, most notably from Mark 11:9-10, and the third comes from Virgil’s Aeneid, So in just a few lines Dante the author quickly links his poetic voice, the Old and New Testaments, and Virgil together.  All three quotes seem to accentuate the bridal expectations, especially with all in the procession tossing flowers in the air.  And then we get Beatrice’s entrance:

At break of day, I have seen the sky,

its eastern parts all rosy

and the rest serene and clear

even as the sun's face rose obscured

so that through tempering mist

the eye could bear it longer,

thus, within that cloud of blossoms

rising from angelic hands and fluttering

back down into the chariot and around it,

olive-crowned above a veil of white

appeared to me a lady, beneath a green mantle,

dressed in the color of living flame.  (Purg. XXX. 22-33)

I just noticed as I quoted above, Beatrice completes her entrance on line 33, and no that is not a coincidence.  So many flowers are being tossed in the air that it is obscuring the sun, which in turn parallels the veil that obscures Beatrice’s face.  Beatrice is dressed in the colors of white, the veil over her face, green, the mantle which I assume goes over her shoulders, and red which is the main vestment.  I picture the mantle over the vestment as Dominican friars have a black cloak over white robe.  The colors of white, green, and red are the colors of the Christian virtues, faith, hope, and charity.

The veil echoes the veil in the Holy of Holies, which is to suggest that it is not a veil for modesty as say a Muslim burqa, but a means to protect those who are not ready to experience the power God’s purity.  Indeed, Beatrice takes the veil off shortly when Dante the character has undergone a confession and absolution.

When she finally makes her appearance, Beatrice stands as the focus of attention and if this were a painting she would be positioned in a posture of immense power.  She is in charge and Dante the character trembles from her “majestic force.”  The awe that projects from Beatrice makes Dante childlike in distress, and he turns to Virgil like a child “running to his mamma” and says “Not a single drop of blood/remains in me that does not tremble—/I know the signs of the ancient flame” (46-48).  And when Dante turns to look for Virgil, “the sweetest of fathers,” he is gone, and he breaks down in tears.  This is Virgil’s send off, and Dante the author gives him incredible honor here.  As the comments in your edition probably point out, the three lines he says to a vanished Virgil echo from another of Virgil’s great poems, the Georgics where the severed head of Orpheus cries out for his lost Eurydice.  But more important is the third line “I know the signs of the ancient flame” which is nearly a direct quote from Virgil’s Aeneid.  The line comes from Queen Dido when after her husband died and swearing off ever marrying again, she sees Aeneas enter her court and falls in love with him.  She says to her sister, “I feel again the traces of the ancient flame.” 

With Dante crying because he suddenly realizes he has lost his poetic father and guide, Beatrice finally speaks.

Dante, because Virgil has departed,

do not weep, do not weep yet--

there is another sword to make you weep.'  (55-57)

As pointed out, this is the only moment where Dante’s name is spoken in the entire Commedia,” and we get Dante’s and Virgil’s names side by side in the same line, thereby honoring himself and honoring Virgil.  “Oh don’t cry Dante,” she is saying almost like a mother, “don’t cry.”  And then she turns scornful, “Because I’m going to stab you with another sword that’s going to make you really cry.”  Obviously this is not the greeting we all expected. 

And then Dante the author further emphasizes Beatrice’s position of power, standing “like an admiral” at the prow and Dante the character’s diminutive status by having him look away like a child in trouble.  “Look over here” she scornfully commands.  “I am, I truly am Beatrice./How did you dare approach the mountain?/Do you not know that here man lives in joy?” (73-75).  She uses the same phrasing as in Isaiah 43, “I am, I am the Lord,” and further echoes Moses going up Mt. Sinai and approaching God with reverence.  How did Dante dare to approach the mountain?  It was only through her intercession and God’s grace that he made it up.  And then she scornfully questions whether he realizes that up here in earthly paradise “man lives in joy.”  That is to say, not with sexual longing.  Has Dante brought his sexual desires up the holy mountain where holiness commands purity? 

I lowered my eyes to the clear water.

But when I saw myself reflected, I drew them back

toward the grass, such shame weighed on my brow.  (76-78)

Just like Adam and Eve felt shame when they had eaten of the fruit, so too Dante feels shame.  But shame for what? 

Here then the angels plead for mercy and Beatrice he must draw out sorrow.  She makes a wonderful allusion to the sower and seed parable found in all three synoptic Gospels. 

'Not only by the working of the wheels above

that urge each seed to a certain end

according to the stars that cluster with them,

'but by grace, abundant and divine,

which rains from clouds so high above

our sight cannot come near them,

'this man in his new life potentially was such

that each good disposition in him

would have come to marvelous conclusion,

'but the richer and more vigorous the soil,

when planted ill and left to go to seed,

the wilder and more noxious it becomes. (109-120)

In the parable, the seed must fall on good soil for it to bear fruit, but here Beatrice says that a bad seed on good soil yields bad fruit.  Dante, being so intelligent and gifted, is the good soil, but the philosophy that is the seed lacked faith in God, so it yielded a sinful poet.  I’ve never seen anyone turn that parable like that.  I wonder if that is original to Dante the author.  It sounds like it came from a great preacher, say like St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas.  But none of the commentaries in my possession cite anyone. 

Then Beatrice recounts how when alive she guided him with her eyes, and when she died he should have kept his focus on her. 

'For a time I let my countenance sustain him.

Guiding him with my youthful eyes,

I drew him with me in the right direction.

'Once I had reached the threshold of my second age,

when I changed lives, he took himself from me

and gave himself to others.

'When I had risen to spirit from my flesh,

as beauty and virtue in me became more rich,

to him I was less dear and less than pleasing.

'He set his steps upon an untrue way,

pursuing those false images of good

that bring no promise to fulfillment—

'useless the inspiration I sought and won for him,

as both with dreams and other means

I called him back, so little did he heed them. (121-135)

That is the crux of her indictment: he took himself away from her, “gave himself to others,” “pursuing false images of good.”  And so to save him she had to have him pass through the region of the dead to see what to see the fullness of life.

This ends Canto XXX.  Perhaps this is a good place to break since this has gotten a bit long.  I’ll conclude this shortly.  

Dante's Purgatorio Cantos XXIX – XXXIII, Summary

Canto XXIX

Walking along with Matelda, though on opposite sides of the river bank, he hears Matelda sing from Psalm 31, “Blessed whose sins are covered and forgiven,” when she stops to tell him to watch and listen.  An intense light flashed and glimmered throughout Earthly Paradise so that the air was glowing.  Dante in awe appeals to the muses to conceive the poetic language that will allow him to describe it all.  Ahead, on the other bank, he sees what first look like trees but turn out to be golden candelabra with flame lit at each of the seven tips.  He turns to Virgil, who is also struck in silent awe.  Behind the candelabra follows a parade in full pageantry, each of the people in the parade representing a book from the Bible.  First came the twenty-four representing the Old Testament.  Between the last four men, representing the four Gospels, was a chariot drawn by a Griffin, a creature half eagle, half lion, symbolizing Christ with his two natures.  Three ladies were to the chariot’s right side, representing the three Christian virtues, and four ladies, representing the Cardinal virtues were on the other side.  Seven more men, each representing Acts, the various Epistles, and the Book of Revelation, completed the pageant.  Once the chariot had reached opposite where Dante was standing, it and everyone stopped, and a sound like thunder boomed.

Canto XXX

As the procession stops, a herald sings out “Come forth from Lebanon, my bride,” and the voices of those in the parade respond with “Blessed are you who come.”  Flowers are then cast up in the air and the voices now sing, “Oh give the lilies with full hands.”  All this is for the dramatic entrance of a veiled woman dressed in white, green, and red, the colors of the Christian virtues.  Dante recognizes her as Beatrice and is in awe.  He turns to speak to Virgil but finds Virgil gone and suddenly feels a panic as a child does when he can’t find his parents.  In distress he starts to weep.  And Beatrice speaks, “Dante, because Virgil has departed/do not weep, do not weep yet—there is another sword to make you weep.”  She stands in the chariot as an admiral on his ship.  Her voice is hard and scornful.  She announces she is Beatrice, and upon further reproaching him, Dante lowers his eyes onto the stream and sees his reflection and feels shame.  The angels about plead for her to have mercy for him.  In response Beatrice tells them that she can only do so when “sin and sorrow be of equal measure.”  She accounts how having inspired him through her eyes when young, he strayed and sinned when she no longer was near.  He had sunk so low that only through this pilgrimage through the supernatural life could he be reformed.

Canto XXXI

Completing her response to the angels, she turns “the sword point of her speech” back toward Dante and demands whether all she has described be true.  Dante, confused and trembling, cannot speak.  Again she demands a response.  All he could force out of his throat was a mumbled “yes,” and then fell down and bawling tears.  She asks him why he had so strayed.  Through tears he admits that false pleasures lured him away when she was no longer in his sight.  This is the confession she was after but she digs the sword once more by telling him he had so much talent that went astray.  Ashamed and sorrowful he gets himself up, and she mocks his manhood by telling him to lift his beard.  Lifting his head up, he sees the Griffon, the symbol of Christ, and feels the sting of conscience in his heart and collapses in a feint.  When he awakes he feels Matelda drawing him into the river and while holding him dunks him below.  After the dunking Matelda sends Dante to dance with the ladies who represent the four Cardinal Virtues.  Shortly they lead him toward the Griffon and Beatrice where the three ladies representing the Christian virtues sing to turn her “holy eyes” toward him and reveal her “second beauty.”

Canto XXXII

Dante now sees Beatrice’s second beauty, her smile, as now the veil has been lifted from her face.  The first beauty was her eyes, but now her second beauty dazzles like the sun.  The Griffon then swings the chariot around so that he is facing east and the entire procession turns with it.  Everyone takes their place but mow Matelda, Statius, and Dante follows with the three Christian virtues on the right side.  Passing through the woods with angelic song in the air they come to a barren tree where Beatrice descends from the chariot.  The music and moment overcomes him, so that he falls asleep and when he wakes he asks where Beatrice is. Matelda points her out as sitting alone on the tree’s root beside the chariot which is now unhinged from the Griffon.  Dante and Statius then witness an allegorical drama of an assault upon the chariot, which represents the Church.  The beasts include an eagle, representing the Roman Empire, both as pre-Christina and post Christian, and then the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne, the fox, representing heresies, a seven headed beast, a harlot, and a giant, all representing various corruptions within the Church. 

Canto XXXIII

The allegorical drama now complete, all seven virtues in tears sing Psalm 79, “O God the heathen have come into your inheritance.”  Beatrice, rising, responds, “A little while and you shall not see me.”  Rearranging the procession, Beatrice now has Dante follow closely to her and entices him to ask questions.  He responds shyly, and she insists he break free of fear and shame.  She warns that those who broke God’s vessel (the Church) will suffer Divine wrath, and prophesies that one will come to restore church and earthly order.  She tells him to write this prophesy down for those still living and to not forget to mention how the tree of knowledge has now been despoiled twice.  She sees that he cannot fully understand what she is prophesying but asks him nonetheless to take it back.  Dante acknowledges but asks why her words are so hard for him to understand.  She responds that the school of thought he had been following prevents him from understanding the divine purpose.  But he cannot remember being estranged from her, and she says that is because he has drunk from Lethe, and that now to fully be reborn he must be doused into the river Eunoe.  She has Matelda bring him over and once dunked he feels remade, pure, and prepared to now “rise up to the stars.”