Purgatorio 1: The Sapphire Sea

 the theology of Purgatory: relatively unscripted compared to the

theology of Hell and the theology of Paradise
 Dante enjoys carte blanche to invent his Purgatory: the very idea
of Purgatory as a mountain is Dante’s
 “la religïone / de la montagna” (Purg. 21.41-2): the rules and
regulations, the “administration” of Purgatory — all are Dante’s to
invent
 Dante narrates his version of the “birth of Purgatory” at the end
of Inferno 34, verses 112-26, where he connects the formation of
the mountain of Purgatory to the fall of Lucifer
 the travelers find themselves on the seashore looking out at a
sapphire sea: a world of light and beauty takes the place of the
“mar sì crudele” (cruel sea [Purg. 1.3]) on which the poet’s ship
has sailed thus far
 threads of loss are interwoven with threads of beauty to create the
new fabric of Purgatorio: the quest for freedom of the will
requires setting aside mortal goods, even the most beautiful and
worthy
 this is the place where all souls, preparing for blessedness, are
working to become “new” again: innocent as at birth, innocent as
the human race in the Garden of Eden
 the one living man who tried to reach Purgatory before Dante: the
Ulysses theme carried into Purgatorio 1
 Cato of Utica, guardian of Purgatory, and the implications of a
saved pagan for Virgilio
 the Then of Damnation and the Now of Salvation

[1] To begin our discussion of Purgatorio, we begin by introducing the

importance of the theology of Purgatory. As historian Jacques Le Goff
notes in his book The Birth of Purgatory (orig. 1981; trans. Arthur
Goldhammer for U. of Chicago Press, 1984), Purgatory as a concept was,
in Dante’s time, of much more recent vintage than Hell or Paradise,
both of which have ancient origins.

[2] The relatively unscripted theology of Purgatory is a theme to which I

will return frequently in my Commento on Purgatorio. The very idea
of Purgatory as a mountain is Dante’s own invention. Also
Dante’s are all the rules and regulations that the poet invents to
structure the experience of those dwelling on his Mount Purgatory.

[3] We could refer to the animating spirit of these rules and regulations,
which collectively organize Purgatory as an ”administrative unit” that is
much like a vast monastic order, with Dante’s own apposite phrase: “la
religïone / de la montagna” (the religion of the mountain [Purg. 21.41-
2]).

[3] Vis-à-vis the relatively uncodified second realm, Dante enjoyed an

ideological freedom that offered virtual carte blanche for his inventive
and creative genius. In The Undivine Comedy, I discuss Dante’s creation
of the space of Antepurgatory (a space that embraces Purgatorio 1 to 9)
as an example of Dante’s love of difference, which the unscripted second
realm allows him free rein to explore:

Vis-à-vis the uncodified second realm, in particular, Dante enjoys an

ideological freedom that gives him carte blanche for the creation of
difference and the consequent blurring of distinction. He exploits this
freedom to the hilt in the creation of Antepurgatory: as an authorially
invented space for which there is absolutely no constraining theological
precedent, Dante’s Antepurgatory has generated sustained critical
bewilderment, with regard, for instance, to its geographical extension
(should it include the banks of the Tiber?) and its moral taxonomy
(should its four types of sinners all be considered negligent?). The
solitary and unplaceable figure of Sordello (scholars have debated
whether he should be grouped with those who died violently or with the
princes in the Valley) is emblematic of the ambiguities raised by this
liminal space.
We are confused by Dante’s love of difference, by his cultivation of the
new: students must frequently be reminded that the souls of
Antepurgatory are indeed saved, while critics succumb to the
temptation to make the distinction between Antepurgatory and
Purgatory too hard and fast, too rigidly black and white. (Peter Armour,
for instance, makes too much of the “negative, waiting world of
Antepurgatory,” as distinct from the positive world of Purgatory
proper.) It is easy to conceive of these differences as more clear-cut than
Dante makes them, picking up suggestions that Dante does not fail to
offer, such as Vergil’s request to be directed “là dove purgatorio ha dritto
inizio” (there where Purgatory has its true beginning [Purg. 7.39]). By
the same token, much emphasis is placed on the transition from
Antepurgatory to Purgatory: the hinges of the door resound, the angel
warns the pilgrim not to look back. But all the souls in Antepurgatory,
without exception, will eventually pass this way, so that what we have is
another instance of Dante’s art of gradation: to create his newest new
beginning, his newest “dritto inizio,” the poet must institute difference,
must draw a line between what was and what is to come — the new.

And, in fact, the cantos that mark the end of Antepurgatory — the end of
the beginning of the purgatorial journey — demonstrate with peculiar
clarity Dante’s art of highlighting, institutionalizing, and exploiting
transition: while Purgatorio 8 marks the end of
Antepurgatory, Purgatorio 9 embodies transition to Purgatory,
and Purgatorio 10 provides the new beginning of Purgatory proper. The
gradations thus expressed should not be hardened into absolute moral
categories; for in fact they exist less by virtue of the moral order than by
virtue of the needs of the narrative, itself a kind of macro-terza rima that
conjoins (almost) every new beginning with the ending/beginning that
precedes it. The exception is the ending constituted by Inferno 34 and
the beginning constituted by Purgatorio 1, an ending and beginning
that correspond to the only absolute difference in this world: the
difference between damnation and salvation. The wonder is that Dante’s
art of transition makes us believe in so many other differences along the
way. (The Undivine Comedy, p. 34)
[4] The pilgrim and his guide emerge from the long climb through the
earth and Dante is greeted by “the gentle hue of oriental sapphire”:
“Dolce color d’oriental zaffiro” (Purg. 1.13). The beautiful blue sky and
the lilt of the verse tell us that everything has changed. We have left
behind ”dead poetry” — “la morta poesì” of verse 7, the poetry of the
dead — and we have come to a place of life and love and light and
laughter: “Lo bel pianeto che d’amar conforta / faceva tutto rider
l’orïente” (The lovely planet that is patroness / of love made all the
eastern heavens laugh [Purg. 1.19-20]).

[5] We are on the shore of Mount Purgatory, in the uninhabited

southern hemisphere. Though we do not yet know that the Garden of
Eden is located at the top of this mountain, we now learn that when
Dante looks up he sees four stars that have not been seen since they
were seen, at the beginning of human existence, by Adam and Eve. The
narrator makes the point that the “northern hemisphere” is “widowed”
(“vedovo”), having been “deprived” (“privato”) of the sight of those
stars: “oh settentrïonal vedovo sito, / poi che privato se’ di mirar
quelle!” (o northern hemisphere, because you were / denied that sight,
you are a widower! [Purg. 1.26-7]).

[6] These adjectives, vedovo and privato, signal the theme of loss and

privation that will haunt the beautiful music of Dante’s Purgatorio. The
second realm offers saved souls the opportunity to work toward
freedom: this is the freedom that Virgilio posits as the goal of Dante’s
quest when he says, in verse 71 of this canto, “libertà va cercando” (he
seeks freedom). But the quest for moral freedom, for freedom of the will
— the freedom to do exactly as one pleases because one’s will
can no longer err — also carries with it the specter of loss, for the
beautiful things of earth must be set aside. Indeed, they must be
willfully and programmatically set aside.

[7] To make the dialectical quest of Purgatorio more evidently

dialectical, Dante-poet emphasizes the beauty of earthly life in his
second realm. The second canticle, Purgatorio, treats a realm that is
literally situated on the same globe of earth that we live on. The souls on
Mount Purgatory, in the southern hemisphere, breathe the same air as
the souls in Italy or Jerusalem in the northern hemisphere. Most of all,
the souls on Mount Purgatory exist in time like the souls in the
inhabited part of the globe.

[8] In the Purgatorio the poet sings and caresses the beautiful

earthly things that we are leaving behind: from the beauty of the
sea and shore of Purgatorio 1, to the beauty of poetry sung to music
in Purgatorio 2, to the beauty of friendship and art and home and
family that we encounter so frequently in the pages of Purgatorio.
The Purgatorio is the part of Dante’s poem that tugs on the heartstrings
with its nostalgia for forms of beauty and solidarity that are exquisitely
human.

[9] As we embark on Purgatorio, let us bear in mind the fundamental

premise that, although Dante’s afterworld may give the appearance of
being infinitely parsed and nuanced, it is ultimately a binary world: all
souls are ultimately either saved or damned. The souls
in Purgatorio are all saved. No one, without exception, whom we meet
in Purgatorio, from Purgatorio 1 going forward, is unsaved. All will
eventually, at the Last Judgment, be among the blessed.

[10] In The Undivine Comedy I analyze “the system of orchestrated

tensions” that structure the Commedia, including the ways in which
Dante links Hell and Purgatory. So doing, he enables us to “forget” that
in fact the one absolute boundary in his universe is the one between Hell
and Purgatory/Paradise, between damnation and salvation:

Within the system of orchestrated tensions that structures

the Commedia’s narrative, Dante works to counter the theological pull
that unites purgatory to paradise, finding narrative means to link
purgatory to hell: both realms share a conical shape (in fact, Dante’s
mythography of Inferno 34 institutes an intimate bond between the two,
holding that purgatory was formed by the land that was excavated by
Lucifer’s fall) and require similar but inverted modes of travel (spirals
down and to the left in hell, up and to the right in purgatory); both share
the presence of Vergil as guide and father. These features work to
override the forces that should compel us to link purgatory and paradise
to the exclusion of hell; they belong to the Commedia‘s system of
narrative stresses, a system of checks and balances intended to create a
structure of balanced tensions. Balanced tension is achieved by
excluding each of the three realms from a system that embraces the
other two, so that each realm is the “different” realm in one of three
basic systems.

The Commedia works like an arch, sustained by stresses that are not

resolved but held in check by equal and opposing forces. Although the
third of these three narrative systems is, conceptually, the most tenuous,
from a narrative perspective it is extremely effective, to the point that I
think most naive readers naturally link the first two realms. (The
Undivine Comedy, p. 162)

[11] Here is the chart that I devised in The Undivine Comedy (p. 162) to

illustrate the three narrative systems that Dante uses to create the
balanced tensions of his narrative:

[12] In line 1 we see that Hell is different from the other two realms in
that it is the singular place of damnation. Again, the point is that the
system is fundamentally binary: souls are damned and assigned to Hell
or saved and assigned first to Purgatory and ultimately to Paradise.

[13] In line 2 we see that Purgatory is different from the other two
realms because it is the only non-eternal realm. It is not eternal because
at the Last Judgment, when all souls will be allocated to either Hell or
Paradise, Purgatory will cease to exist. Again, the point is that the
system is fundamentally binary.
[14] In line 3 we see Dante’s countervailing narrative strategy for
binding Hell and Purgatory. Both realms are situated in or on earth.
They are intimately linked because, according to the Dantean
mythography of Inferno 34, Purgatory was created with the earth
excavated by Lucifer’s fall, the fall that created Hell. Both realms are
conical in shape, both are traversed in spirals: down and to the left in
Hell, up and to the right in Purgatory.

[15] Dante further binds these two realms by making them the locus of
the most deeply human story of the Commedia, that of the love between
him and his father-guide, Virgilio. But none of these extremely
strong bonds between Dante’s Inferno and his Purgatorio can
offset the reality of the abyss that yawns between Hell and
Purgatory. This is Dante’s point and it brings us back to the
fundamental binary that structures his universe.

[16] As we shall see, the abyss between damnation and salvation will be
given poignant dramatic form in this very canto: in the words that Cato
will speak to Virgilio. One great Roman will tell the other: if you dwell
on the other side of river Acheron, there is no point in evoking our
shared past as great Romans or my wife Marcia. You are damned, while
I am not. In this way Dante brings about our first introduction to a
scandalous fact, one which upsets all that we thought we knew about
Virgilio and his fellow virtuous pagans. It turns out that, in Dante’s
universe, s
ome pagans can be saved.

***

[17] Dante refers to Adam and Eve with the periphrasis “la prima gente”
(Purg. 1.24). They are the “first people”, the first inhabitants of earth:

I’ mi volsi a man destra, e puosi mente

a l’altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle
non viste mai fuor ch’a la prima gente.
Goder pareva ’l ciel di lor fiammelle:
oh settentrional vedovo sito,
poi che privato se’ di mirar quelle!
(Purg. 1.22-27)
Then I turned to the right, setting my mind
upon the other pole, and saw four stars
not seen before except by the first people.
Heaven appeared to revel in their flames:
o northern hemisphere, because you were
denied that sight, you are a widower!
[18] The firstness of Adam and Eve — their existential newness —
speaks to an important purgatorial theme.  This is the place where
everyone is working on becoming new again. 

[19] Those who journey to the top of Mount Purgatory are engaged in a

quest to purge themselves of sin. This is a process in which humans
essentially return to a condition of first innocence, of existential
newness. The souls of Purgatorio are working on becoming Adam and
Eve as they were before the fall: the souls endure the suffering of
purgation in order to attain a state of prelapsarian innocence.

[20] Let us remember what Dante-narrator says of Ugolino’s children.

Their youth — literally their “new age” or “newness” — makes them
innocent: “Innocenti facea l’età novella” (Inf. 33.88). There are two
adjectives in the verse just cited: “innocenti” and “novella”.
In Purgatorio, we see that these two adjectives converge: as we work to
become new again, returning to the place where humans were first new
(the Garden of Eden), we also become newly innocent. At the end
of Purgatorio the self is reborn and renewed, as is Dante: “rifatto sì
come piante novelle / rinovellate di novella fronda” (remade, as new
trees are renewed when they bring forth new boughs [Purg. 33.143-4]).

[21] When Adam and Eve were new, they looked up to see the very stars
that Dante sees now, the stars that are only visible in the uninhabited
southern hemisphere. As we learned in Dante’s cosmological lesson at
the end of Inferno 34 — one that retails information that is totally
peculiar to Dante, completely invented by him — Lucifer’s fall from
heaven excavated the cone of Hell. The place where Lucifer fell and hit
the earth is the place where Christ lived and died, Jerusalem. Hell was
consequently carved out under Jerusalem by Lucifer’s falling mass.

[22] Dante goes further at the end of Inferno 34, accounting not only for
the creation of Hell and Hell’s location but also for “the birth of
Purgatory” and Purgatory’s location. Purgatory is a cone-shaped
mountain that was created by the earth that was displaced by Lucifer’s
fall. That displaced earth rose up on the other side of the globe from
Jerusalem, exactly opposite to Jerusalem, and became Mount
Purgatory.

[23] Mount Purgatory is consequently in the middle of the uninhabited

southern hemisphere. This is the description of the earth and its
contours that emerges from the cosmological narrative related at the
end of Inferno 34 and elaborated in Purgatorio 1.

[24] The southern hemisphere is completely watery, containing only one

land mass: Mount Purgatory. No living human has touched the earth of
Mount Purgatory since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, although
— as we shall see — one human navigated these waters and came close
enough to these shores to be able to see an immensely tall mountain in
the distance:

quando n’apparve una montagna, bruna

per la distanza, e parvemi alta tanto
quanto veduta non avëa alcuna. (Inf. 26.133-35)
when there before us rose a mountain, dark
because of distance, and it seemed to me
the highest mountain I had ever seen.
[25] As the above citation from Inferno 26 makes clear, the human who
briefly and illicitly glimpsed the stars of the “other pole” is Ulysses. The
phrase “altro polo” appears twice in Purgatorio 1. It appears first
in Purgatorio 1.22-23 — “e puosi mente / a l’altro polo, e vidi quattro
stelle” (I set my mind / upon the other pole, and saw four stars) — and
then it appears again a few verses later, where Dante specifies that “he
turns a little toward the other pole”: “un poco me volgendo a l’altro
polo” [Purg. 1.29]). These references to the “altro polo”
echo Inferno 26.127, where we learn that Ulysses’ voyage took him to
where all the stars of the “other pole” are visible: “Tutte le stelle già de
l’altro polo / vedea la notte, e ’l nostro tanto basso, / che non surgëa fuor
del marin suolo” (At night I now could see the other pole / and all its
stars; the star of ours had fallen / and never rose above the plain of the
ocean [Inf. 26.127-9]).

[26] The connection between Ulysses and the shore of Purgatory that he

does not reach is very strong here, since “l’altro polo” occurs in
the Commedia only three times: once in Inferno 26, when Ulysses
refers to his sighting of the other pole, and twice at the beginning
of Purgatorio 1.

[27] At the same time that Dante makes this strong connection through
the repetition of “l’altro polo”, present only in these two canti, he also
inserts an interesting disjunction, engineered by his syntax. While the
stars of the other pole are “viste” — seen — by Adam and Eve
in Purgatorio 1, technically Ulysses does not say “I saw the stars of the
other pole” but “the night saw the stars of the other pole”: “Tutte le
stelle già de l’altro polo / vedea la notte” (Inf. 26.127-8). Here I agree
with the most straightforward reading of the Italian, as in the gloss of
Natalino Sapegno: “la notte già vedeva, ci mostrava, le stelle del polo
antartico” (the night already saw, and showed us, the stars of the
antarctic pole). While there is an alternative reading which holds that
“notte” is not the subject of the verb “vedea”, it is less persuasive. If, as is
probable, “la notte” is the subject of the verb “vedea” in Inf. 26.128, then
one wonders: has Dante created a syntactical loophole that allows him
later to say that the stars of the other pole have never been seen except
by Adam and Eve? For in Inferno 26 Ulysses certainly indicates that he
too saw them.

[28] At the end of Purgatorio 1 there is a confirming allusion to Ulysses

that again uses the verb vedere to differentiate between who sees what
— or, better, between who is allowed to see what. And, again, as
in Inferno 26.128, the subject of the verb vedere is not a person but an
inanimate part of the landscape that normally does not function as the
subject of the verb “to see”. As, in Inferno 26, it is the “night” that sees
the stars of the other pole, here in Purgatorio 1 it is the “deserted shore”
(“lito diserto” [Purg. 1.130]) of Purgatory that sees. Dante writes that
the shore “never yet had seen its waters coursed / by any man who
journeyed back again”: “[il] lito diserto, / che mai non vide navicar sue
acque / omo, che di tornar sia poscia esperto” (Purg. 1.131-32). Where
Ulysses is concerned, the world itself and its component parts — the
night, the shore — are the only witnesses to his grandeur, and to his
failure.

[29] In these verses Dante is reminding us that the one previous living
human who navigated these waters, Ulysses, was not able to return
home after sighting Mount Purgatory. In his exact literal phrasing,
Dante writes that the experience of becoming esperto of the journey
home was not vouchsafed to Ulysses: the Greek hero was not granted
permission to become “omo, che di tornar sia poscia esperto” (a man,
who had expertise of the return [Purg. 1.132]). The choice of the
adjective ”esperto” in verse 132 is profound and calculated: Ulysses
states in Inferno 26 that he burned with desire to become “del mondo
esperto” (expert of the world [Inf. 26.98]).

[30] The narrator has created two sets of beings with respect to the right
and ability to reach Mount Purgatory: those who reach this shore while
alive and those who reach this shore already dead. There are
precisely two men who journeyed to Purgatory in the flesh:
these are first Ulysses and later Dante. Ulysses comes by sea, while
Dante comes by land. Ulysses’ journey is unsanctioned, while Dante’s is
sanctioned. Ulysses’ unsanctioned quest is doomed to fail, while Dante’s
quest — willed by God — succeeds. Dante is thus the only living human
who has ever been privileged to arrive on (and therefore “see”) this
shore.

[31] The dead souls who come to Purgatory journey by sea, like Ulysses.
However, these souls, who come here licitly, will arrive by a different
route. They come from the mouth of the river Tiber at Ostia, near the
Vatican in Rome, as we will learn in the next canto.

***
[32] The echo of Inferno 26’s “altro polo” in Purgatorio 1 reminds us of
the Greek hero’s unsanctioned quest beyond the pillars of Hercules and
prepares us for the spirited challenge that is issued to Dante and Virgilio
by the bearded sage who is the guardian of the second realm. The
patriarch (see the description of the “veglio” in Purg. 1.31-33) who
guards Purgatory focuses on what he presumes to be a violation of the
law: he assumes that the arrival of these travelers on this shore is illicit.
He assumes that Dante and Virgilio are escaped prisoners, damned folk
who have come to this place in defiance of the “laws” of Hell:

«Chi siete voi che contro al cieco fiume

fuggita avete la pregione etterna?»,
diss’el, movendo quelle oneste piume.
«Chi v’ha guidati, o che vi fu lucerna,
uscendo fuor de la profonda notte
che sempre nera fa la valle inferna?
Son le leggi d’abisso così rotte?
o è mutato in ciel novo consiglio,
che, dannati, venite a le mie grotte?».
(Purg. 1.40-48)
“Who are you — who, against the hidden river,
were able to escape the eternal prison?”
he said, moving those venerable plumes.
“Who was your guide? What served you both as lantern
when, from the deep night that will always keep
the hellish valley dark, you were set free?
The laws of the abyss — have they been broken?
Or has a new, a changed decree in Heaven
let you, though damned, approach my rocky slopes?”
[33] Virgilio’s reply begins “Da me non venni: / donna scese del ciel” (I
do not come through my / own self. There was a lady sent from Heaven
[Purg. 1.52-3]). Here Virgilio effectively shows the “passport” issued to
him in Inferno 2 by Beatrice. He then explains the various features of
this special journey: Dante, who is alive, was close to perdition “through
his folly” (“per la sua follia” [Purg. 1. 59]), and Virgilio was sent to save
him: “per lui campare” (for his deliverance [Purg. 1.62]). Moreover, the
path to salvation required Virgilio to lead Dante through Hell and now
through Purgatory, where he intends to show Dante the souls who purge
themselves under the governance of this patriarch: “e ora intendo
mostrar quelli spirti / che purgan sé sotto la tua balìa” (now I intend to
show to him those spirits / who, in your care, are bent on expiation
[Purg. 1.65-6]).

[34] As verses 65-6 show, Virgilio knows the identity of the soul

to whom he is speaking. In other words, he knows enough of
Purgatory to know under whose guardianship it is. Virgilio therefore
tailors his request to his interrogator, declaring that Dante-pilgrim is on
a quest for freedom analogous to the quest for which his interrogator
gave up his life:

Or ti piaccia gradir la sua venuta:

libertà va cercando, ch’è sì cara,
come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta.
(Purg. 1.70-72)
Now may it please you to approve his coming;
he goes in search of liberty—so precious,
as he who gives his life for it must know.
[35] Virgilio here defines his interlocutor as one who gave up his life for
freedom. How does Virgilio know that the person to whom he speaks
gave his life for liberty? Apparently those in Limbo know that one who
was once one of their own — Cato of Utica, a Roman and a pagan (95
BCE-46 BCE) — is now the saved guardian of Purgatory. In Inferno 4,
Dante did not tell us of any saved pagans who departed Limbo with
Christ and the biblical worthies after the Harrowing of Hell. He
preserves suspense and creates the bombshell of this encounter, where
we — the readers who by now love Virgilio as we did not in Inferno 4 —
are forced to absorb the information that pagans can be saved.

[36] Cato of Utica committed suicide in Utica in 46 BCE rather than

submit to the dominion of Caesar. The choice of the identity of the
guardian of Purgatory shows us Dante’s willingness to embrace
complexity and nuance. Here we see Dante save a pagan who killed
himself rather than lose the freedoms of Republican Rome, freedoms
that were lost when Caesar took absolute power. And yet, in the
previous canto, Inferno 34, Dante damned as traitors those who killed
Caesar: Brutus and Cassius, who are forever masticated in two of
Lucifer’s three mouths.

[37] Cato was a Roman patriot whose story is stirringly told in

Lucan’s Pharsalia, the source of Dante’s reverence for Cato, a reverence
that Dante had already demonstrated in his philosophical
treatise Convivio. Cato killed himself rather than allow himself to be
subjected to Caesar. Dante has a more liberal construction of suicide
than we might have expected; he does not view self-sacrifice for the
cause of political liberty as a form of wanton self-destruction.

[38] In his address to Cato, Virgilio conflates the two quests for
freedom: the political quest for which Cato sacrificed his life, and the
moral quest pursued by Dante. Indeed, the moral and the political
do not truly diverge, as all readers of Dante know. And so Cato of
Utica’s decision to give up his life rather than to live un-free is a decision
that resonates with the quest of the second realm, where souls work to
become free of the vices that blind us morally and hamper us politically.

[39] The identity of the guardian of Purgatory is shocking because he is

a suicide, but most of all because he is a pagan. Indeed, the identity of
the guardian of Purgatory creates shock waves that persist long
after Purgatorio 1. The implications of the saved figure of Cato for how
we construe Dante’s relationship with classical antiquity are
immense: the presence of Cato here means that pagans can,
exceptionally, be saved. This reality has enormous and
discomforting repercussions with respect to our friend Virgilio.

[40] As discussed in the Commento on Inferno  4, Virgilio specifically

told Dante that those in Limbo are guilty only of not being baptized,
through no fault of their own, but simply because they lived before the
birth of Christ. In Inferno 4, Virgilio is very clear that the souls in Limbo
did not sin: “ch’ei non peccaro; e s’elli hanno mercedi, / non basta,
perché non ebber battesmo” (they did not sin; and yet, though they have
merits, / that’s not enough, because they lacked baptism [Inf. 4.34-
5]). According to this account, the failure of these souls to worship
Christ is due simply and only to their having lived prior to Christ’s birth:
“dinanzi al cristianesmo” (before Christianity [Inf. 4.37]). Virgilio’s
explanation cannot be quite right, because now we see that someone
who lived before the birth of Christ can be saved.

[41] Nor is the difference between damned Virgilio and saved Cato

presented in a subtle way. Virgilio seems to be believe that the special
status of Limbo — emphasized in Inferno 4 — will redeem him in Cato’s
eyes. He therefore notes that “Minos does not bind me” — “Minòs me
non lega” (Purg. 1.77) — thus indicating that he belongs to the first
circle, the circle that precedes the monster Minos who consigns the
damned to their infernal destinations. He goes so far as to specify that
he belongs to the same circle as Cato’s wife, Marcia:

ma son del cerchio ove son li occhi casti

di Marzia tua, che ’n vista ancor ti priega,
o santo petto, che per tua la tegni
but I am from the circle where the chaste
eyes of your Marcia are; and she still prays
to you, o holy breast, to keep her as your own
[Purg. 1.78-80].
[42] Indeed, Virgilio begs Cato to admit them to Purgatory for the love
of Marcia: “per lo suo amore adunque a noi ti piega” (for her love, then,
incline to us [Purg. 1.81]). But Cato harshly sweeps aside Virgilio’s very
human attempts at establishing ties of friendship and solidarity as
nothing but flattery: “lusinghe” (Purg. 1.92). Marcia pleased him once —
in the distant passato remoto, past absolute — and at that time, when
he was still alive, he did whatever she wanted:

«Marzïa piacque tanto a li occhi miei

mentre ch’i’ fu’ di là’,» diss’ elli allora,
«che quante grazie volse da me, fei».
While I was there, within the other world,
Marcia so pleased my eyes,” he then replied,
“each kindness she required, I satisfied”.
[Purg. 1.85-7].
[43] But now — in the present tense — Marcia dwells on the other side
of the evil river Acheron and therefore has no more power to move him,
by the law established when he left Limbo:

Or che di là dal mal fiume dimora,

più muover non mi può, per quella legge
che fatta fu quando me n’usci’ fora
Now that she dwells beyond the evil river,
she has no power to move me any longer,
such was the law decreed when I was freed
[Purg. 1.88-90].
[44] That was the Then of Damnation; this is the Now of Salvation. In
the Now of Salvation, all that matters is the lady who descended from
heaven. Everything else is flattery: “Ma se donna del ciel ti muove e
regge, / come tu di’ , non c’è mestier lusinghe” (But if a lady come from
Heaven speeds and helps you, as you say, / there is no need of flattery
[Purg. 1.91-2]). This is the Law, and for all the beauty of the sapphire
sea and limpid air, we cannot but feel its painful consequences.

Purgatorio 2: From Acheron to Tiber

 how to tell time in Purgatory: by relating it to time on earth

The astronomical periphrasis at the beginning of Purgatorio 2

introduces us to the “earth clock” (see the below chart). Dante-poet tells
time in Purgatory always in relation to the time at different points on
the earth’s circumference: sunrise in Purgatory is noon at the Straits of
Gibraltar, sunset in Jerusalem, and midnight at the river Ganges. In this
way, Dante positions the action of Purgatorio with respect to time on
earth, always reminding us that Purgatory is earth-like in a way that is
not true of the other two realms.
Unlike Hell and Heaven, which are eternal, Purgatory is located on the
earth, in the southern hemisphere, and exists in time, just like the lands
of the northern hemisphere. By the same token, Purgatory will cease to
exist at the end of time. At the Last Judgment all the souls who travel
through Purgatory on their way to Paradise will be saved, and there will
be no further need of a place in which saved souls must work to purify
themselves before ascending to beatitude.

As discussed in the Commento on Purgatorio 1, the apparently triune

structure of this afterworld thus overlays a fundamentally binary
structure: at the end of time, after the Last Judgment, all souls will be
either damned and in Hell for all eternity, or they will be saved and in
Paradise for all eternity. No one will any longer be making use of the
(temporary) services of Purgatory.

Let me state again: everyone who arrives in Purgatory is already saved.

However many thousands of years a given soul might require for its
purgation — for although there are particular sufferings coordinated to
particular vices, the true currency of Purgatory is time spent in the
second realm — every soul who comes to this place will be saved when
time comes to an end.

Purgatory is a way-station for saved souls, a place and a condition in

which an already saved soul works to be completely freed from the
underlying impulses that lead to sin. By means of its journey up the
mountain, a soul that is saved when it arrives in Purgatory is made, as in
the last verse of Purgatorio, “pure and prepared to climb unto the
stars”: “puro e disposto a salire alle stelle” (Purg. 33.145).

All of these fundamental principles are implied by the simple

narrative expedient of telling time on Purgatory in a way that
always coordinates with the time on earth.

We living humans share both space and time with the dead souls of
Purgatory. Spatially, living humans dwell in the land-filled northern
hemisphere of the globe that we share with Purgatory. The mountain of
Purgatory is located in the watery southern hemisphere, at the
antipodes of Jerusalem, which is at the center of the northern
hemisphere.

The air we breathe on earth is the same air that the souls of Purgatory
no longer need to breathe.

Both northern and southern hemispheres exist in time. The long

astronomical periphrasis that opens this canto is a way of
communicating that time is a constituent feature of this realm — just as
it is on earth.
Most of all, in terms of the melancholy sweetness that suffuses the
second realm, especially in the opening canti, the earth clock is a
punctual reminder of the umbilical cord that connects the souls of
Purgatory to those they left behind on earth.

The early canti of Purgatorio are awash in nostalgia for our

humanity as experienced on earth: non-sublimated,
corporeal, of the living.

Hence we encounter, in this canto, a dead soul who seeks to behave as

though he were alive. And, in canto after canto, the dead souls whom we
encounter on the lower shoulders of Mount Purgatory — in the first
eight canti of Purgatorio — remember and virtually caress their human
bodies with palpable nostalgia and affection.

***

Purgatorio 2 is a canto of intense intertextuality, focused on two very

different songs: one a biblical Psalm, the other a contemporary Italian
canzone. Dante refers to the two songs in question by citing their
incipits or first verses (the word “incipit” means “it begins” in Latin).
The incipit or first verse of a poem functioned as a title in Dante’s time.

The two poems, both sung, that are cited through their incipits
in Purgatorio 2 are: first the biblical Psalm In exitu Israel de
Aegypto and next the vernacular love poem Amor che nella mente mi
ragiona, written by Dante himself.

The psalm is sung by souls who are being sailed to purgatory by an

angel-helmsman. Dante’s friend Casella will explain later in the canto
that all souls bound for Purgatory gather and are picked up by the
angelic craft at the mouth of the Tiber (Purg. 2.100-05). The psalm’s
theme of the Exodus, the flight of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt,
clearly resonates to the theme of Purgatory as a quest to leave bondage
for freedom.
Among the souls who disembark on the shore of Purgatory is Dante’s
friend Casella. A strong Vergilian intertextuality suffuses the encounter
with Casella. The poignant language of Dante’s attempt to embrace his
friend only to find that he is an intangible shade is based on the
melancholy passages of Aeneid 6 in which Aeneas tries to embrace his
lost loved ones:

Ohi ombre vane, fuor che ne l’aspetto!

tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi,
e tante mi tornai con esse al petto.
(Purg. 2.79-81)
O shades — in all except appearance — empty!
Three times I clasped my hands behind him and
as often brought them back against my chest.
The pilgrim asks Casella to sing for him an “amoroso canto” (a song of
love [Purg. 2.107]), as was his wont on earth, and Casella complies by
singing the first verse of a canzone: “Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona”
(Love that discourses to me in my mind [Purg. 2.112]). The
canzone Amor che nella mente is a love canzone that Dante had
previously placed in his philosophical treatise Convivio, where he claims
that the lady addressed is Lady Philosophy; it is the first of three of his
own canzoni that Dante inserts into the Commedia. The first chapter
of Dante’s Poets, “Autocitation and Autobiography,” is an interpretation
of what Dante means to signify with the three self-citations or
“autocitations” of his own canzoni in the Commedia. In “Autocitation
and Autobiography”, I attempt to decode both what is intended by the
choice of canzoni and what is intended by their placement within the
overall narrative structure.

Through the figure of Casella, the poet introduces to the Purgatorio the

great theme of friendship: there is no theme that has deeper roots in
Dante’s poetry than that of male friendship, particularly friendship
among poets and artists (see the sonnet Guido, i’ vorrei che tu e Lapo ed
io and my commentary in Dante’s Lyric Poetry: Poems of Youth and of
the Vita Nuova). The theme of friendship in Purgatorio is tightly linked
to the enduring connection that the souls still feel to their bodies.
Casella beautifully expresses this connection, when he tells Dante that
the love that he felt for him “within my mortal flesh” — “nel mortal
corpo” (Purg. 2.89) — is what he feels for Dante now, “freed from his
body”:

Rispuosemi: «Così com’io t’amai

nel mortal corpo, così t’amo sciolta:
però m’arresto; ma tu perché vai?».
(Purg. 2.88-90)
He answered: “As I loved you when I was
within my mortal flesh, so, freed, I love you:
therefore I stay. But you, why do you journey?”
But the real connection between the two men does not mean that Dante
can embrace his friend. When he tries, his attempt is thwarted, for
Casella’s body is an insubstantial image that cannot be embraced. Why
is Dante able to pull the hair of Bocca degli Abati in Inferno 32 but not
able to embrace Casella in Purgatorio 2? In Inferno 32 Dante is
functioning as a deliverer of infernal torment, a minister of divine
justice, and his ability to touch Bocca is purely instrumental. The
attempt to embrace Casella, in contrast, reveals the inability
to express human love in a human fashion — in embodied
fashion — once past the threshold of death.

Those who stop to listen to Casella sing are lulled by the beauty of the
song, until Cato breaks in upon the reverie at canto’s end with a sharp
rebuke:

qual negligenza, quale stare è questo?

Correte al monte a spogliarvi lo scoglio
ch’esser non lascia a voi Dio manifesto.
(Purg. 2.121-23)
What negligence, what lingering is this?
Quick, to the mountain to cast off the slough
that will not let you see God show Himself!
This will be the dynamic of Purgatorio: the love of the two friends who
embrace each other, only to find their hands come up empty; the beauty
of the love song that the souls linger to listen to, only to find that they
are late for their appointment with paradise. Here we see the failures
and the corrections of attempts to embrace the human: this is Purgatory
after all, and there is a job to do. But before the failure and the
correction, Dante employs beautiful language to describe and indeed
caress the warmth of human affection and the beauty of human art. In
this language resides the special bitter-sweet music of Purgatorio: its
music dwells precisely in its embrace of the human, caressed in
this cantica as nowhere else in Dante’s poem.

Purgatorio 3: Blond, and Beautiful

Purgatorio 3 is one of the canti that falls into two parts: the first half is
devoted to Virgilio and virtuous pagans and the latter half to the
pilgrim’s encounter with Manfredi.

At the outset of Purgatorio 3, the poet redresses the correction of

Virgilio at the hands of Cato that occurred at the end of the previous
canto. We note how in his own voice — not as pilgrim but as Dante-poet
— he goes out of the way to deconstruct the humiliation of Virgilio that
he himself constructed:

i’ mi ristrinsi a la fida compagna:

e come sare’ io sanza lui corso?
chi m’avria tratto su per la montagna? (Purg. 3.4-6)
I drew in closer to my true companion.
For how could I have run ahead without him?
Who could have helped me as I climbed the mountain?
This is a beautiful example of the Dantean mastery of authorial
dialectic: he first pushes the reader to feel one thing, and then he pushes
the reader the other way, the better to maintain a thick and lifelike
texture in which it is difficult to pinpoint what is “wrong” and what is
“right”.

In a melancholy vein, Virgilio expounds on the mysteries that cannot be

plumbed by human reason. If reason alone could satisfy our desire to
know, he says, Dante would not have seen Aristotle and Plato
condemned to a fruitless longing to know, in the place where their
longing will never be fulfilled (Limbo):
 «e disiar vedeste sanza frutto
tai che sarebbe lor disio quetato,
ch’etternalmente è dato lor per lutto:
io dico d’Aristotile e di Plato
e di molt’altri»; e qui chinò la fronte,
e più non disse, e rimase turbato. (Purg. 3.40-45)
“You saw the fruitless longing of those men
who would—if reason could—have been content,
those whose desire eternally laments:
I speak of Aristotle and of Plato—
and many others.” Here he bent his head
and said no more, remaining with his sorrow.
These opening canti of Purgatorio, from the encounter with Cato
in Purgatorio 1 to Virgilio’s speech in Purgatorio 3 that culminates in
the fates of Aristotle and Plato, constitute a major installment in
the Commedia’s Virgilio-narrative, which is a dialectical meditation on
classical culture.

These canti also constitute an ongoing meditation on the body, treated

with pathos and nostalgia: the body of his friend that Dante tries to
embrace in Purgatorio 2, the body of Virgilio that does not cause a
shadow in Purgatorio 3 (causing Virgilio to briefly note the virtual
nature of the body that Dante sees), the body of Manfredi that still
bespeaks his erstwhile beauty and charm. A quasi-nostalgia for the body
— our bodies are the emblems of all that we lose when we lose life on
earth — is a running trope throughout Ante-Purgatory.

As noted, we are in an area called by the commentary tradition “Ante-

Purgatory.” Bearing in mind the enormous carte blanche that Dante
enjoys with respect to the creation of Purgatorio (discussed in the
Commento on Purgatorio 1), we see that Dante has invented the
concept of those who must delay their entrance into Purgatory proper
(see The Undivine Comedy, p. 34). In Purgatorio 3 we encounter a first
group of delayed souls: those who were excommunicated by the Church.

Among the excommunicates, we encounter Manfredi, the son of

Emperor Frederic II. Manfredi was a great warrior and known as the
epitome of chivalric virtues, a Christian version of Saladin
(see Inf. 4.129). As a Florentine, and hence a Guelph, Dante was raised
midst anti-imperial propaganda, and yet he shows himself receptive to
the legend of Manfredi’s princely glamor, describing his wounded
beauty thus:

Io mi volsi ver lui e guardail fiso:

biondo era e bello e di gentile aspetto,
ma l’un de’ cigli un colpo avea diviso. (Purg. 3.106-08)
I turned to look at him attentively:
he was fair-haired and handsome and his aspect
was noble—but one eyebrow had been cleft.
The two parts of Purgatorio 3 — the section on Virgilio and virtuous
pagans at the beginning and the meeting with Manfredi in the latter half
— are linked by a profound sense of pathos with respect to human
vulnerability and loss: a vulnerability captured in the literal wound that
mars Manfredi’s beauty.

The celebration of Manfredi’s “noble aspect” is all the more interesting

given that Dante’s family fought against Manfredi and the Ghibellines,
led by the exiled Florentine, Farinata (see Inferno 10) at Montaperti.

The presence of a group of saved excommunicates raises the issue of

Dante’s willingness to go against church doctrine. To be
excommunicated is to be excluded from the communion of Christians,
and to be excluded from Christian burial. And yet Dante explicitly
makes the point that an excommunicate can be saved. With respect to
Manfredi, he explicitly says that the pope who excommunicated him was
unable to read the face of God’s mercy (Purg. 3.124-26).

The issue of excommunication is not the only issue: Manfredi says that
he repented of his terrible sins at the last moment of life, and so his
story is also analogous to those of the late repentant whom we will meet
in Purgatorio 5, including Bonconte da Montefeltro. There is a nexus of
canti, going back to Inferno 27 and Bonconte’s father Guido da
Montefeltro, which pose the following questions: What constitutes true
repentance? What constitutes true conversion? In Inferno 27 we learn
that not even a papal absolution can absolve one if one has not truly
repented. Purgatorio 3 shows us that if you have truly repented, not
even a papal excommunication can damn you.

Purgatorio 4: Wings of Desire

Purgatorio 4 offers a long description of an alpine climb up the steep
rock face of the mountain. The description itself is arduous and difficult,
and I like to think of it as the narratological equivalent of the arduous
climb experienced by the pilgrim. In other words: what the pilgrim
experiences on the mountain, the reader experiences at her/his desk.

Recalling some particularly steep Italian towns that nonetheless can be

climbed with one’s feet (I have been to San Leo, and can testify that the
main street appears almost vertical as one looks up it), Dante comments
that here, on this mountain, the slope is so steep that feet are not
enough. Here we need the wings of desire:

Vassi in Sanleo e discendesi in Noli,

montasi su in Bismantova e ’n Cacume
con esso i piè; ma qui convien ch’om voli;
dico con l’ale snelle e con le piume
del gran disio, di retro a quel condotto
che speranza mi dava e facea lume. (Purg. 4.25-30)
San Leo can be climbed, one can descend
to Noli and ascend Cacume and
Bismantova with feet alone, but here
I had to fly: I mean with rapid wings
and pinions of immense desire, behind
the guide who gave me hope and was my light.
In the above verses, Dante unpacks his metaphor of flight. He tells us,
straightforwardly and almost pedagogically, that “to fly” in
the Commedia equals “to desire”. First he says, “here I had to fly”, and
then he explains that by “flying” he means metaphoric flight: he was
required to fly with the “rapid wings and pinions of immense desire”
(Purg. 4.27-29). Here Dante glosses himself, provides his own
commentary. As though we are pupils who need some help in
deciphering, he tells us, “Whenever I refer to flying, I am referring to
desiring”.

In the lexicon of the Commedia, volare = desiderare. In the verses “ma

qui convien ch’om voli; / dico con l’ale snelle e con le piume / del gran
disio” (Purg. 4.27-29), Dante glosses all the flight imagery in
the Commedia, retrospectively and prospectively. All flights are
instances of great desire: whether of great desire that goes astray, like
the desire that propelled Ulysses on his “folle volo” (Inf. 26.125), or of
great desire that leads aright, like the desire that propels Dante to climb
the steep face of Purgatory. The saturation of the Commedia with flight
imagery — Ulyssean flight imagery — is due to the importance of desire
as the impulse that governs all questing, all voyaging, all coming to
know.

All the more interesting therefore, and worthy of note, are the
mythological periphrases regarding “failed flyers” tucked into the
lengthy explanation, offered by Virgilio, of why the sun’s rays hit Dante
from the opposite direction of where they hit him on earth. Thus, to
refer to the path of the sun, Virgilio refers to “la strada / che mal non
seppe carreggiar Fetòn” (the path which Phaeton drove so poorly
[Purg. 4.71-72]). For the motion of the sun, see the “earth clock” chart
in the Commento on Purgatorio 2.

After the arduous climb, the travelers come upon the souls of another
group of Ante-Purgatorial penitents: these are the lazy souls and among
them is Dante’s old friend, Belacqua, who overhears the zealous pupil
and his teacher. Here Dante sets up an amusing and tender contrast
between the two friends: between himself, the hyper-attentive pupil,
and Belacqua, a little too “chill” in life but saved nonetheless. Belacqua
makes fun of his old friend with a friendly taunt: “Forse / che di sedere
in pria avrai distretta!” (Perhaps you will / have need to sit before you
reach the top! [Purg. 4.98-99]). He then humorously asks Dante,
picking up and condensing the metaphor of the sun’s chariot from
Virgilio’s ponderous lesson, if he has now “fathomed how the sun can
drive his chariot on your left?”: “Hai ben veduto come ’l sole / da
l’omero sinistro il carro mena? (Purg. 4.119-20).
How can we not respond to the absolute marvel of the freshness of the
dialogue between Dante and Belacqua? It is a dialogue that captures the
intimate rhythms of friends who run into each other on the street and
exchange a few words. The profundity of the affection under the
intimate banter is captured in Dante’s first words to his friend:
“Belacqua, a me non dole / di te omai” (From this time on, Belacqua, / I
need not grieve for you [Purg. 4.123-24]).

Purgatorio 5: Fluvial Blood

The travelers meet a new group of souls, who are as fast-paced and
sharp-edged as the previous group (the lazy) was relaxed and low-key.
These new souls seem anxious as they press around Dante, perhaps as a
result of their violent deaths and their last-minute barely-achieved-in-
time salvations.

One cries out to the others that Dante casts a shadow and that he walks
as though alive, but Virgilio, having learned the lesson about no
dawdling in purgatory from Cato, forbids Dante to stop and speak to the
gawkers. Again, another group notices that Dante’s body blocks the light
(he allows “no path for rays of light to cross my body” [Purg. 5.25-26])
and two messengers race over to inquire. Virgilio this time allows an
interaction with the souls, in order to confirm what they believe, that
they are looking at a living, breathing, fleshly body:

E ’l mio maestro: «Voi potete andarne

e ritrarre a color che vi mandaro
che ’l corpo di costui è vera carne.» (Purg. 5.31-33)
My master answered them: “You can return
and carry this report to those who sent you:
in truth, the body of this man is flesh.”
In the verse “’l corpo di costui è vera carne” (Purg. 5.33)—“the body of
this man is true flesh”—we find a distillation of the nostalgia for the
body that suffuses Ante-Purgatory. The emphasis on the “true flesh” of
Dante’s body is particularly apposite for this canto, where three souls
will tell of their violent deaths: two in battle, and one at the hands of her
husband.
All the souls hanging about on the lower slopes of Mount Purgatory
share a still active nostalgia for home: they still yearn for where they
lived on earth, the earth that they left behind only quite recently. (We
note that the souls we meet in Ante-Purgatory are all roughly
contemporaries of Dante; there is no one from antiquity with the
exception of the guardian, Cato.) Their nostalgia for home and life
on earth is expressed in a continuous interest in the body: our
fleshly home while we are alive.

The first to recount his violent death is Iacopo del Cassero, a political
figure and warrior, who was assassinated in 1298 by agents of Azzo VIII
d’Este, Lord of Ferrara. Iacopo acquired the enmity of Azzo while
serving as chief magistrate (podestà) of Bologna, during which time he
protected Bologna from Azzo’s expansionist aims.

Azzo subsequently had Iacopo chased down and killed in the territory of
Padova, when Iacopo was on his way to serve as podestà in Milano.
Iacopo had chosen to go from Fano to Milano by way of Venice precisely
to avoid the assassins of Azzo d’ Este, but someone betrayed him.

Assassinated only two years before he meets Dante in Purgatory, Iacopo

del Cassero speaks of the “piercing wounds from which there poured the
blood where my life lived” (73-74), and describes the pool of blood that
forms in the swamp where he dies:

Corsi al palude, e le cannucce e ’l braco

m’impigliar sì ch’i’ caddi; e lì vid’io
de le mie vene farsi in terra laco. (Purg. 5.82-84)
I hurried to the marsh. The mud, the reeds
entangled me; I fell. And there I saw
a pool, poured from my veins, form on the ground.
He is saved, and in Purgatory, but Iacopo del Cassero still relives the
experience of falling entangled in the mud and reeds of the Paduan
swamp, pursued by his successful assassins, and watching the blood
pour from his veins onto the ground.
Iacopo’s blood, violently spilled, reminds us of the river of boiling blood,
Phlegethon, in which the violent are immersed in Inferno 12. There
the tiranni are submerged to their eyebrows, since they exercised
violence both with respect to the persons of others and with respect to
their possessions. Azzo VIII’s father, Obizzo II d’Este, is immersed in
that river, in a passage where Dante suggests that the tyrant was killed
by his own son (Inf. 12.110-12). The sympathetic account of Iacopo del
Cassero’s bloody death at the hands of Obizzo’s successor is the
response of a poet who had written of tiranni that they “plunged their
hands in blood and plundering”: “E’ son tiranni / che dier nel sangue e
ne l’aver di piglio” (Inf. 12.104-05).

When I read the Commedia, I am always struck by how forcefully Dante

communicates historical pain. There is a difference between the
metaphoric pain of the afterlife torments and the historical pain
communicated by the sad circumstances of Iacopo del Cassero’s death.
Dante scholars write about the “sufferings” and “torments” of Hell, but I
do not think we respond to those “sufferings” as sufferings. The river of
blood of Inferno 12 is not something we feel; it is something we
understand. We experience it, in other words, as the metaphor that it is.
Our response to Iacopo’s description of watching his blood pool on the
ground is very different.

There is certainly physical pain in Hell, but—for me at least—it is not in

the contrapassi. It is in the simile that describes the capital punishment
meted upon paid assassins, called propagginazione, which consists of
burying the criminal head-first in a hole, filling the hole with dirt, and
creating death by suffocation (Inferno 19.49-51). Or it is in a form of
murder committed on board ships: called mazzerare, this torture
consists of putting a living man in a sack with a heavy rock, tying the
sack, and throwing it overboard (Inferno 28.80). See the discussion of
these forms of historical torture in the Commento on Inferno 27.

The second soul to speak to Dante is Bonconte da Montefeltro, who was

a warrior like his father, Guido da Montefeltro (Inferno 27). Bonconte
was killed at the battle of Campaldino on 11 June 1289, where he led the
Ghibelline cavalry; Dante, who also fought at that battle, was a Guelph
and therefore fought on the opposite side. Bonconte, whose body was
never found on the battlefield, also recounts his bloody ending, when he
was “forato ne la gola, / fuggendo a piede e sanguinando il piano” (my
throat was pierced—fleeing on foot and bloodying the plain [Purg. 5.98-
99]).

The third soul, the elliptical Pia de’ Tolomei, was killed by her husband.
Her story is suppressed, like much domestic violence. She differs in this
respect from Francesca da Rimini, who, like Pia, was killed by her
husband. Unlike Pia, who offers up so little of her personal story,
Francesca tells with gusto her scandalous tale of falling in love with her
brother-in-law.

Again, as with Manfredi in Purgatorio 3 (who also died a violent death,

at the battle of Benevento), a key theological point is God’s mercy,
extended even to those who wait until the “last hour” to “make peace”
with Him:

Noi fummo tutti già per forza morti,

e peccatori infino a l’ultima ora;
quivi lume del ciel ne fece accorti,
sì che, pentendo e perdonando, fora
di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati,
che del disio di sé veder n’accora. (Purg. 5.52-57)
We all were done to death by violence,
and we all sinned until our final hour;
then light from Heaven granted understanding,
so that, repenting and forgiving, we
came forth from life at peace with God, and He
instilled in us the longing to see Him.
Bonconte da Montefeltro ends his life with the name of Mary on his lips.
How poignant is the comparison with Bonconte’s father, Guido da
Montefeltro, who devised a sure-proof plan to guarantee salvation,
going so far as to become a Franciscan friar. And yet Guido finds himself
taken to Hell by a logic-wielding devil at the end of his life. Bonconte
gives the opposite account: in the son’s case a devil came for his soul
and was rebuffed by an angel. The devil is infuriated that “one little
tear”—“una lagrimetta” (Purg. 5.107)—is enough to deprive him of
Bonconte’s soul. But so it is.

Purgatorio 6: Digression Italy

Purgatorio 6 is the canto of Italy, as Inferno 6 is the canto of Florence
and Paradiso 6 is the canto of Empire. But this symmetry should not
delude us: the concept of “Italy” is much murkier to Dante and his
contemporaries—and much further from the modern concept—than that
of Florence and that of the Holy Roman Empire.

The idea of Italy is in great part linguistic; in his linguistic treatise De

Vulgari Eloquentia Dante describes Italians as “qui sì dicunt” (those
who say sì as their affirmative adverb), breaking this “lingua di sì” down
into various regional subgroups (DVE 1.10).

To move from language to politics, Italy is also for Dante a place of

nascent tirannia, and the analysis of tirannia in Purgatorio 6 should be
connected to the other canti where the term is present: Inferno 12
and Inferno 27.

Purgatorio 6 begins with Dante surrounded by a pressing crowd of

souls who died violently, eager to speak with him, some of whose names
are briefly indicated by the poet. One of those thus indicated by
periphrasis is the son of Marzucco Scornigiani, Gano Scornigiani, who
died at the hands of Ugolino della Gherardesca’s assassins. Thus, Gano
Scornigiani of Purgatorio 6, who was embroiled in the feud between
Ugolino della Gherardesca and his grandson Nino Visconti (see the
Commento on Inferno 33), died at the hands of a tiranno, just like
Iacopo del Cassero in Purgatorio 5.

On Gano Scornigiani, I cite a passage from Dante’s Poets, p. 183:

Among these [in Purgatorio 6] is one named by periphrasis as “quel da

Pisa / che fé parer lo buon Marzucco forte” (the one from Pisa who
made the good Marzucco show his strength [17-18]). This is most likely
Gano Scornigiani, the son of the Pisan nobleman Marzucco Scornigiani,
whom Dante had occasion to meet at Santa Croce, where Marzucco lived
as a priest after his retirement from the world; it was Gano’s death that
gave Marzucco the opportunity to display his fortitude. lnterestingly,
Gano was embroiled in the feuding between Ugolino and Nino over
control of Pisa, which was the outcome of Ugolino’s bringing Nino into
power as capitano del popolo in 1285; Gano, whose family had long ties
with the Visconti, took Nino’s side and was killed in 1287 by Ugolino’s
men.

Dante and Virgilio proceed, and see a soul sitting solitary and with great
dignity. This turns out to be Sordello, a poet from Mantova (Virgilio’s
birthplace) who wrote in Occitan. The question of linguistic identity is
thus broached through the presence of Sordello, mentioned by Dante in
the De Vulgari Eloquentia as a poet who “abandoned his native
vernacular”: “patrium vulgare deseruit” (1.15.2).

Virgilio begins to introduce himself, but gets only as far as the one word
“Mantua.” Perhaps he was going to say “Mantua me genuit” (Mantua
gave birth to me), the epitaph that the historical Vergil was believed to
have written for his own tombstone. Instead, he is impetuously
interrupted by Sordello:

ma di nostro paese e de la vita

ci ’nchiese; e ’l dolce duca incominciava
«Mantua...», e l’ombra, tutta in sé romita,
surse ver’ lui del loco ove pria stava,
dicendo: «O Mantoano, io son Sordello
de la tua terra!»; e l’un l’altro abbracciava. (Purg. 6.70-75)
but asked us what our country was and who
we were, at which my gentle guide began
“Mantua — and that spirit, who had been
so solitary, rose from his position,
saying: “O Mantuan, I am Sordello,
from your own land!” And each embraced the other.
The embrace between Virgilio and Sordello is compared by the poet to
the current state of Italy, whose citizens do not embrace each other but
rather “gnaw” upon each other (“si rode,” Purg. 6.82). This
metaphorical use of rodere, “to gnaw”, echoes the Ugolino episode
in Inferno 32-33, where one Pisan literally gnaws on the skull of another
Pisan. Given the presence in this canto of Gano Scornigiani,
assassinated at the behest of Ugolino, it is evident that for Dante
Ugolino is a character who assumes emblematic value far beyond his
own zone of hell: Ugolino is emblematic of the
tragic tirannia and family factionalism that are destroying
Italy.

Immediately after the embrace of Sordello and Virgilio, something quite

remarkable occurs, which has never occurred before for such a long
stretch in the poem. Dante interrupts the diegesis, the narrative line, as
he has in the past briefly for an address to the reader, but on this
occasion he does so for the remainder of Purgatorio 6. Toward the end
of the canto he describes what he is doing as a “digression”
(Purg. 6.128). By calling attention to the interruption of Purgatorio 6
and giving the interruption its rhetorical label “digression”, Dante
confers enormous dignity upon this singular event. The interruption
or break in the narrative is emblematic of the rupture or break in comity
and civility that is the tragic fate of Italy.

The digression is an explosion of political anxiety about the state of the

peninsula called “Italia”, and begins with an apostrophe directed at
“serva Italia”:

  Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello,

nave sanza nocchiere in gran tempesta,
non donna di province, ma bordello! (Purg. 6.76-78)
Ah, abject Italy, you inn of sorrows,
you ship without a helmsman in harsh seas,
no queen of provinces but of bordellos!
After the apostrophe to Italy, Dante poet apostrophizes the other major
actors in the tragedy of Italy, as he sees it: the clergy (Purg. 6.91), and
the Emperor (Purg. 6.97). He then calls on the Emperor to come from
Germany to Italy and see the devastation wrought by his political
negligence. In his desperation, Dante turns to God Himself
(Purg. 6.118), and asks, in the rhetorical culmination of the digression,
if God has forgotten Italy. Finally, he turns to “Fiorenza mia”
(Purg. 6.127) and sarcastically attacks his natal city.

In analyzing this explosive “digression” on “abject Italy”, it is important

to trace the poet’s strong rhetoric, especially the turbulent sequence of
his apostrophes and the string of metaphors that designate “Italia”.

Purgatorio 7: Noses and Virtue, Father to

Son
In the previous canto we saw that the encounter between Sordello and
Virgilio — their embrace based on nothing more than a shared love of a
common patria — was interrupted by the poet’s need to fulminate at the
various powers that are ruining Italy. At the beginning of Purgatorio 7
the story-line (the diegesis) resumes, picking up exactly where it left off
in Purgatorio 6.

Since Virgilio and Sordello had not yet introduced themselves to each
other when the digression of Purgatorio 6 ruptured the
narrative, Purgatorio 7 begins with these introductions, the
“accoglienze oneste e liete” that “furo iterate tre e quattro volte” (glad
and gracious welcomings . . . repeated three and four times [Purg. 7.1-
2]). Boccaccio loved these verses enough to insert them verbatim into
the story of madonna Beritola, to mark the moment after she is reunited
with the son whom she had lost decades previously (Dec. 2.6.69). Dante,
less melodramatic (when we factor out the afterworld setting), is
describing the meeting of minds of two men who have just become
friends and embraced on the basis of their shared citizenship of
Mantova. Sordello and Virgilio never met in the flesh, but as Sordello
will explain upon learning of Virgilio’s identity, he adores Virgilio for
being who he is: the greatest of Latin poets.

The expression of Virgilio’s identity — “Io son Virgilio; e per null’ altro
rio / lo ciel perdei che per non aver fé” (I am Virgil, and I am deprived of
Heaven / for no fault other than my lack of faith [Purg. 7.7-8]) — and
the subsequent expression of Sordello’s adoration comprise the
beginning of Purgatorio 7. This passage offers an important installment
in the ongoing Virgilio-narrative. We note that Virgilio states his name
(“Io son Virgilio”), and then immediately follows not with the
information that he wrote the Aeneid (as he told the pilgrim
in Inferno 1) but with information that is perhaps in his mind tailored to
meeting a soul in Purgatory: “e per null’ altro rio / lo ciel perdei che per
non aver fé” (I am deprived of Heaven / for no fault other than my lack
of faith [Purg. 7.7-8])

Here Virgilio tells Sordello that he did not actively sin, and that he “lost
Heaven” only because of his lack of Christian faith. Virgilio is making
the same claim that he made in Inferno 4, when he told the pilgrim that
the souls of Limbo did not sin, and that they are in Limbo only because
they lack baptism: “ch’ei non peccaro; e s’elli hanno mercedi, / non
basta, perché non ebber battesmo” (they did not sin; and yet, though
they have merits, / that’s not enough, because they lacked baptism
[Inf. 4.34-35]).

We can follow this thread in (at least) two directions. One regards our
ability to evaluate Virgilio’s claim. Since Inferno 4, we have received
much new information that has changed our perspective. Most recently,
we met Cato of Utica on the shores of Purgatory (in Purgatorio 1), a
pagan who is both saved and also guardian of Purgatory. Now that we
know that pagans can be saved, we can no longer simply take at face
value that Virgilio is damned only because he was not baptized.

The other thread is the one that Dante-poet will exploit immediately. It
is this: Sordello does not care a whit about Virgilio’s status in the
Christian afterworld. All that Sordello cares about in this moment is that
before him stands the greatest of Latin poets, the “glory of the Latins”,
the poet who was able to reveal in his poetry the power of “our
language”. By “la lingua nostra” (our language [Purg. 7.17]), Sordello
means the common language that binds Virgilio’s Latin and Sordello’s
Occitan. He feels himself to belong to the same linguistic and poetic
tradition that Virgilio inaugurated.
Sordello’s tribute also has important implications for Dante’s linguistic
theory as expressed in De Vulgari Eloquentia and for his sense of
political unity forged on a common linguistic base:

«O gloria di Latin», disse, «per cui

mostrò ciò che potea la lingua nostra,
o pregio etterno del loco ond’io fui...» (Purg. 7.16-18)
He said: “O glory of the Latins, you
through whom our tongue revealed its power, you,
eternal honor of my native city . . . ”
In his linguistic treatise De Vulgari Eloquentia, Dante had referred to
Sordello as a “man of unusual eloquence, who abandoned the vernacular
of his home town not only when writing poetry but on every other
occasion”: “[Sordellus de Mantua] qui, tantus eloquentie vir existens,
non solum in poetando, sed quomodocunque loquendo patrium vulgare
deseruit” (DVE 1.15.2; trans. Steven Botterill,  De Vulgari Eloquentia,
Cambridge U. Press, 1996). Dante, in other words, sees in Sordello an
embodiment of a kind of linguistic de-provincialism. As I write
in Dante’s Poets:

No one has a better right than Sordello to speak of “Latins” or of “our”

tongue; in his crossing of linguistic boundaries he showed himself to be
a true cosmopolitan, or “Latin,” aware of the common heritage that
underlies all the languages of
Romania and makes them interchangeable, “ours” as it were. It is not
because he is as great a poet as Vergil that Sordello is chosen to eulogize
him but because he demonstrates in his own person the unity of a
linguistic tradition that is rooted in Latin language and literature and
that cannot be divorced from a political tradition rooted in the Roman
Empire. (Dante’s Poets, p. 163)

Virgilio melts at Sordello’s genuine adoration. He now adds to our store

of information about Limbo, following up on his discourse
in Purgatorio 3.37-45, and recalibrating the balance between virtuous
pagans and unbaptized children with respect to Inferno 4:

Non per far, ma per non fare ho perduto

a veder l’alto Sol che tu disiri
e che fu tardi per me conosciuto.
Luogo è là giù non tristo di martìri,
ma di tenebre solo, ove i lamenti
non suonan come guai, ma son sospiri.
Quivi sto io coi pargoli innocenti
dai denti morsi de la morte avante
che fosser da l’umana colpa essenti;
quivi sto io con quei che le tre sante
virtù non si vestiro, e sanza vizio
conobber l’altre e seguir tutte quante. (Purg. 7.25-36)
Not for the having — but not having — done,
I lost the sight that you desire, the Sun —
that high Sun I was late in recognizing.
There is a place below that only shadows —
not torments — have assigned to sadness; there,
lament is not an outcry, but a sigh.
There I am with the infant innocents,
those whom the teeth of death had seized before
they were set free from human sinfulness;
there I am with those souls who were not clothed
in the three holy virtues — but who knew
and followed after all the other virtues.
The above description of Virgilio as having sinned only through
omission (“non fare”), not commission (“fare”) — “Non per far, ma per
non fare” (Not for the having — but not having — done [Purg. 7.25]) —
might have fully satisfied us before we encountered Cato
in Purgatorio 1. But now have to contend in our minds with the
question: if Cato can be saved, why not Virgilio?

The above description of Limbo is also noteworthy for giving equal

attention to “innocent children” and “virtuous pagans”: here each of the
two groups receives a terzina of description and the children are
mentioned first. In comparison, in Inferno 4 the narrator pays no
attention to the children other than to mention their existence in one
word, telling us that he saw vast crowds “d’infanti e di femmine e di viri”
(of infants and of women and of men [Inf. 4.30]).
Purgatorio 7.39, “là dove purgatorio ha dritto inizio” (“there where
purgatory has its true beginning”) is Dante’s own language for what
critics have labeled the distinction between “Ante-Purgatory” (a term
Dante does not use) and “Purgatory proper”.

Nighttime has come: a time when the travelers might well “err” because
climbing up the mountain is not possible without the light of the sun.
Sordello therefore proposes to the travelers that they can pass the night
safely in The Valley of the Princes and that he will be their guide to this
safe haven.

In his Occitan poem, the planh (lament) for Blacatz (for which

see Dante’s Poets, p. 156), the historical Sordello listed the various lords
of Europe, whom he cites for their deficiencies in courage with respect
to his dead lord, Blacatz. Similarly, the purgatorial Sordello now points
out and comments on the various negligent princes who await purgation
in the Valley.

Purgatorio 8: Elegy and Ritual

Purgatorio 8 is the last canto of Ante-Purgatory, the last full canto
devoted to this elegiac, nostalgic waiting place. Purgatorio 8 begins with
a passage that fully captures the backward-turning affect-laden tonality
of this section of Purgatorio. In order to say that it is dusk the poet says
that it is that time of day that makes travelers think of home, and that
makes them turn their thoughts back to the day when they bid farewell
to their sweet friends. The melancholy sweetness, the sweet
melancholia, of these verses is palpable:

Era già l’ora che volge il disio

ai navicanti e ’ntenerisce il core
lo dì c’han detto ai dolci amici addio;
e che lo novo peregrin d’amore
punge, se ode squilla di lontano
che paia il giorno pianger che si more...(Purg. 8.1-6)
It was the hour that turns seafarers’ longings
homeward—the hour that makes their hearts grow tender
upon the day they bid sweet friends farewell;
the hour that pierces the new traveler
with love when he has heard, far off, the bell
that seems to mourn the dying of the day...
The narrator then moves on to recount a ritual event in which the
temptation of Adam and Eve (“la prima gente” of Purgatorio 1.24) is
performed for the saved souls in the Valley of Princes. There is,
however, a radically different outcome to this ritual from that which
originally occurred in the Garden of Eden: angels appear with swords
and drive away the tempter snake.

The angels’ garments are the color of “leaves just-now-born” (“fogliette

pur mo nate”), a color that we can try very hard to see in the early
spring, before the leaves darken, as they begin to do almost
immediately:

Verdi come fogliette pur mo nate

erano in veste, che da verdi penne
percosse traean dietro e ventilate. (Purg. 8.28-30)
Their garments, just as green as newborn leaves,
were agitated, fanned by their green wings,
and trailed behind them.
I call this performance a ritual event because it occurs, as far as we can
tell, every evening, affording these souls an opportunity to meditate
continuously on the temptation that they were able to defeat. It is,
effectively, a kind of evening Mass that reminds the souls what they
overcame to achieve salvation. Binding the pilgrim with a reed at the
foot of Mount Purgatory in Purgatorio 1 is also ritualistic behavior, but
it is focused on an individual. This is a ritual that, like a Mass in church,
is engaged in by a group at the same time every day.

The inclusion of a ritual is important: it underscores the ecclesiastical

nature of Dante’s Purgatory and it also constitutes a narratological
challenge for the poet. How is a poet to narrate ritual action that
repeats, in the same format, over and over in time? The ritual is
signposted by the poet with an address to the reader (Purg. 8.19-21).
For some of the narrative complexities raised by the representation of
this ritual, see The Undivine Comedy, pp. 85-86.

The complex narrative structure of Purgatorio 8 interweaves the ritual

of the angels and the snake with two encounters: an encounter with
Nino Visconti and an encounter with Currado Malaspina. The narrator
begins to recount the ritual, focusing on the angels who guard the Valley
(Purg. 8.1-42); he then interrupts to narrate the meeting between Dante
and his friend “Giudice Nin” (43-84); he then returns to the account of
the ritual and completes the story (85-108); and finally he narrates the
meeting of Dante with Currado Malaspina (109-39). We could outline
the canto in the following manner:

Nino Visconti, grandson of Ugolino della Gherardesca, hailed by Dante

as “giudice Nin gentil” (Purg. 8.53) — “Noble Judge Nino” — is another
in the fraternity of friends whom Dante meets in Purgatory. As occurred
when Dante met Belacqua, Dante signals his relief at his friend’s
salvation:
 Ver’ me si fece, e io ver’ lui mi fei:
giudice Nin gentil, quanto mi piacque
quando ti vidi non esser tra ’ rei! (Purg. 8.52-54)
He moved toward me, and I advanced toward him.
Noble Judge Nino—what delight was mine
when I saw you were not among the damned!
In the above outline of the canto’s four narrative sections, I have added
only the basic thematic connectors between sections; there are many
other thematic recalls between the four narrative building blocks.

Women and gender issues abound in this canto, on a spectrum that runs
from Mary to Eve. Featured, in between those extremes, are the female
relatives of Nino Visconti, in particular his remarried wife Beatrice
d’Este. Nino indulges in essentializing regret for the fickleness of
females, who forget a man once he is no longer present to touch her:

Per lei assai di lieve si comprende

quanto in femmina foco d’amor dura,
se l’occhio o ’l tatto spesso non l’accende. (Purg. 8.76-78)
Through her, one understands so easily
how brief, in woman, is love's fire—when not
rekindled frequently by eye or touch. 
In response one could cite Shakespeare’s “Sigh No More” from Much
Ado About Nothing (“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, / Men were
deceivers ever”) as well as Anne Elliot’s speech on the greater fidelity of
women at the end of Jane Austen’s great novel, Persuasion.

The question of what we inherit from our parents — and what makes us
noble — is kept alive in this canto, having been initiated in the previous
canto. It now finds expression in a discussion of the noble traits of the
Malaspina family.

The encounter with Currado Malaspina highlights Dante’s abiding

interest in the virtues of cortesia. Dante praises the Malaspina family,
which will host him during his exile, saying that they possess the two
great chivalric virtues, demonstrating both “the glory of the purse and of
the sword”: “[il] pregio de la borsa e de la spada” (Purg. 8.129). Dante’s
celebration of the Malaspina family shows us his nostalgic
entertainment of the idea of a certain kind of feudal nobility, endowed
with chivalric pregio (Occitan pretz) as displayed by their liberality and
courage. The Malaspina family embodies pregio not only as warriors but
in their liberality — in their enlightened handling of their wealth. See
the Commento on Inferno  16 for Dante’s evolving ideas on society and
wealth management, and also the essay “Dante and Wealth, Between
Aristotle and Cortesia”, cited in Coordinated Reading.

The Malaspina family come by their virtues as a result of the good

offices of both “habit” and “nature”: “Uso e natura sì la privilegia”
(Habit and nature so privileges them [Purg. 8.130]). In other words,
they have good habits and are also well disposed by nature, through
heredity. Dante is in this way engaging in a version of what we would
call a Nature versus Nurture (habit) debate. Through the distinction
between uso and natura, Dante touches on the theme of heredity
broached in the previous canto, and gives us an example of the “rare”
passing on of virtue from father to son.
There are various links between these princes and those who were so
fiercely indicted one canto prior in Purgatorio 6. Here too Dante begins
to delineate his theory of heredity, of what we can inherit from our
parents (mostly from our fathers, in this telling). We note Sordello’s
emphasis on the physical features of the princes, at times amusing: the
“nasetto” or “small-nosed” prince of Purgatorio 7.103 versus “colui dal
maschio naso” — he of “manly nose” — in Purgatorio 7.113 and the
“nasuto” or “large-nosed” man of Purgatorio 7.124.
I am reminded of the novelist Paul Auster on the singularity of noses:
“For Paul Auster, New York is ‘the singularity of each person’s nose’ on
the subway” (“Let Us Count the Ways” in The New York Times of
December 2, 2001).

The distinct noses of Purgatorio 7 play into the discussion of heredity

and indirectly address issues regarding the construction of masculinity.

Physical characteristics notwithstanding, Dante’s theory of heredity is

quite radical for his time in its insistence that nobility is not passed on
from father to son:

Rade volte risurge per li rami

l’umana probitate; e questo vole
quei che la dà, perché da lui si chiami. (Purg. 121-23)
How seldom human worth ascends from branch to branch,
and this is willed by Him who grants
that gift, that one may pray to Him for it!
Dante had long been interested in this question, and had expounded at
length on the nature of true nobility (“gentilezza”) in Book 4 of
the Convivio. In the Commedia he does more than expound:
he shows us how he views this matter by showing us fathers who are
damned while their sons are saved. For instance, Frederick II is damned
and his son Manfredi is saved, Guido da Montefeltro is damned and his
son Bonconte is saved, and Ugolino della Gherardesca is damned and
his grandson Nino Visconti is saved.

Purgatorio 9: Raptus
Purgatorio 9 is the canto where the pilgrim transitions to the place
where Purgatory truly begins: “là dove purgatorio ha dritto inizio” (to
the true entry point of Purgatory [Purg. 7.39]). The existence of a “true
entry point” was thus revealed in Purgatorio 7. In Purgatorio 9, Virgilio
tells Dante that he has “now arrived in Purgatory”: “Tu se’ omai al
purgatorio giunto” (Purg. 9.49).
How does Dante get to the gate of Purgatory? One answer is: through
dreaming. Night falls at the beginning of Purgatorio 9, and Dante
sleeps. He dreams that he is “rapt” (“ratto” in Purg. 9.24, “rapisse”
in Purg. 9.30) by an eagle that carries him up, as Ganymede was carried
by Jove:

Poi mi parea che, poi rotata un poco,

terribil come folgor discendesse,
e me rapisse suso infino al foco. (Purg. 9.28-30)
Then it seemed to me that, wheeling
slightly and terrible as lightning, it
swooped, snatching me up to the fire’s orbit.
This dream sequence weaves together mythological figures like
Ganymede in Purg. 9.23 and Achilles in Purg. 9.34 with echoes of 2
Corinthians 12:1-4, where St. Paul recounts being “caught up into
paradise” (“raptus est in paradisum”):

 It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and
1

revelations of the Lord.

2
 I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body,
I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)
such an one caught up to the third heaven.

3
 And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I
cannot tell: God knoweth;)

 How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable

4

words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.

Dante had established St. Paul as a model for himself in Inferno 2, when
he worries that this journey is not for him, since after all he
is not Aeneas and not Paul: “Io non Enea, io non Paulo sono” (Inf.
2.32). Now Pauline raptus is explicitly evoked in the language that
recounts the first dream of Purgatorio.
Dante conjures the violence of raptus and visionary experience through
the many frightening details in the description of the eagle, as it hangs
in the air preparing to strike, and then as it swoops down “terribil come
folgor” (terrible as lightning [Purg. 9.29]). St. Thomas notes the
violence that is implicit in raptus: “Rapture adds something to ecstasy.
For ecstasy implies simply ‘standing outside oneself’ as when a person is
placed outside his usual disposition. But rapture (‘being caught up’)
adds a note of violence to this” (ST 2a2ae 175.2, in the Blackfriars
translation, vol. 45, p. 101).

The divinatory and prophetic nature of the dream is established before

it is narrated:

e che la mente nostra, peregrina

più da la carne e men da’ pensier presa,
a le sue vision quasi è divina...(Purg. 9.16-18)
when, free to wander farther from the flesh
and less held fast by cares, our intellect's
envisionings become almost divine...
After the dream is narrated, Virgilio tells Dante “what really happened”:
beginning in Purgatorio 9.55, Virgilio effectively translates Dante’s
experience from one order of reality — heightened, visionary, a mystical
conflation of mythological with biblical — to a more normative order of
reality. In this “translation” of what the dream recounts in mystical
form, Saint Lucy (see Inf. 2.97-108) came and picked up Dante while he
was sleeping and transported him up the mountain to the gate of
Purgatory. It speaks volumes of the world that Dante creates that the
second account seems like an everyday occurrence!

The dream of Purgatorio 9 and its “interpretation” by Virgilio are

important for my analysis of different kinds of narrative discourse
in The Undivine Comedy. I argue that “Dante forges a new ‘jumping’
discourse for the moments in which the narrative line cannot be
sustained, when the narrative cammino is fractured by ineffability” (p.
163). This new discourse will be particularly evident in Paradiso but
Dante begins to present examples of it in Purgatorio, especially in
visionary contexts. Purgatorio 9 is a primer with respect to the
alternative styles that will come to dominate Paradiso: it showcases the
special discourse manufactured for the “fantastic” event, the dream
sequence, and then the return to sustained “normal” discourse in
Virgilio’s translation.

This dream in Purgatorio 9 is a way of communicating the nature of

visionary experience within the vision that is the Commedia: it is a
vision within the Vision. It is the first of three dreams in Purgatorio,
which occur at moments of transition: dream 1 in Purgatorio 9, where
the pilgrim transitions to “Purgatory proper”; dream 2 in Purgatorio 19,
where the pilgrim transitions from the lower four terraces of Purgatory
to the upper three terraces; dream 3 in Purgatorio 27, where the
pilgrim leaves the terraces behind and transitions to the Earthly
Paradise.

In the second part of Purgatorio 9, Dante faces the angel who guards
the gate of Purgatory and undergoes a ritual confession. I call this a
“ritual confession” because this is not the personal confession that
Dante makes later to Beatrice, when he meets her in the Earthly
Paradise.

Purgatorio 10: Visible Speech

Purgatory consists of seven ledges or terraces carved into the rockface of
the mountain, each of which is devoted to purging one of the seven
capital vices: pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, lust. I refer to
“vices” rather than “sins” because, properly speaking, vices are
the inclinations that spur humans to engage in sinful action (see the
discussion in the Commento on Inferno 12). In other words, vices are
psychological inclinations of a given soul, the personality traits that
goad us to sin, whereas sins are specific actions. Sin, unrepented, is
punished in Hell. Purgatory is the realm where souls who have repented
their sins and are saved now purge themselves of the inclinations that
caused the sins for which they repented, thus gaining admittance to this
place and to this process.
In the Commento on Purgatorio 1, I discuss the fact that Purgatory was
a relatively recent doctrinal acquisition compared to Heaven and Hell
and therefore much less developed in both theological and popular
conception. As a result, Dante enjoyed great freedom in creating his
Purgatory. We have already seen that he devotes the first nine canti
of Purgatorio to a waiting area where souls who are not yet ready to
begin the process of purgation on the seven terraces prepare themselves.

Once we reach the terraces of “Purgatory proper”, Dante has new

inventions for us. He makes the experience of
reading Purgatorio markedly different from the experience of
reading Inferno by creating a uniform template that is imposed onto
each of the seven terraces.

Dante treats the first terrace of Mount Purgatory, the terrace of pride, as
a formal teaching tool. He divides his major narrative building blocks by
canto, thus making them discrete and recognizable: the biblical and
classical examples of humility, the virtue that corresponds to the vice
being purged, are allocated to Purgatorio 10; the encounters with
purging prideful souls are allocated to Purgatorio 11; the biblical and
classical examples of the vice being purged, followed by the components
that consistently signal departure from a terrace (the encounter with an
angel who removes a P from Dante’s brow and the recitation of a
Beatitude), are allocated to Purgatorio 12.

As we progress in Purgatorio, these narrative elements, common to

each of the seven terraces, will not again be so neatly and usefully
segregated. A narrative feature that aligns with the beginning of a
terrace (the examples of the virtue) may be situated at the end of a canto
(e.g., the examples of meekness in Purgatorio 15), while a narrative
feature that aligns with the end of a terrace (the encounter with the
angel) may be situated toward a canto’s beginning (e.g. the angel
in Purgatorio 17).

Dante’s implied message to the reader suggests that we take the lay-out
of the first terrace as a reference-point: we should get our bearings here,
he seems to be telling us, where the purgatorial terrace is parsed by the
canto delimiters in such a way as to render its narrative elements and
their sequential unfolding extremely clear. We need to hold on to that
reference-point as we navigate the subsequent six terraces, where the
same liturgically repetitive narrative building blocks are artfully, and at
times confusingly, arranged.

As noted above, the template for each terrace of Dante’s Purgatory

involves: 1) examples of the virtue that corresponds to the vice being
purged (these examples of virtue always begin with a story from the life
of Mary, followed by biblical and classical vignettes); 2) encounters with
souls; 3) examples of the vice being purged; 4) the recitation of a
Beatitude and an angel who takes a “P” off the pilgrim’s brow at the end
of each terrace and speeds him on his way:

We remember the straightforward quality of the first circles of Hell, with

a canto assigned to each circle: one canto for Limbo (Inferno 4), one
canto for lust (Inferno 5), and one canto for gluttony (Inferno 6). In the
same way, on the first terrace of Purgatory the components of the
template are arranged in the clearest possible way, one component to a
canto: examples of the corresponding virtue (humility)
in Purgatorio 10, encounters with souls in Purgatorio 11, and examples
of the vice being purged (pride) in Purgatorio 12. Below is a chart of the
structural components of Purgatorio 10-12.
As he moves on from the first terrace, Dante finds ways to
create variatio around this fixed template, and thus to create a reading
experience that is particular to Purgatorio. The repetition of the
template confers a repetitive, ritualistic, and liturgical nature to the
narration of Purgatorio, absent from the narration of Inferno. The
anchoring effect of the repeated template is especially interesting and
valuable in Purgatorio, the one cantica where everyone is on the move,
thus adding a sense of reliability and steadiness to a domain that
otherwise is all fluidity.

***

The travelers enter through the “porta / che ’l mal amor dell’anime
disusa” (Purg. 10.1-2): literally, the “gate that the evil love of the souls
dis-uses”, the gate that the souls’ evil love — “mal amor” — renders less
used than it should be. In other words, our evil love, our propensity to
love the wrong things, to love aberrantly, causes us humans to fail to use
this gate, to fail to reach Purgatory. And, in the third verse of the
opening tercet, we learn that this happens because our evil love is
capable of making the twisted way seem like the straight way: “perché fa
parer dritta la via torta” (Purg. 10.3).

The first issue that we need to unpack is the concept of “evil love”: “mal
amor”. Augustine provides the language of bonus amor versus malus
amor that is so important for Dante’s Purgatorio, the most Augustinian
of Dante’s three realms. For instance, in City of God 14.7 Augustine
writes that “a right will is good love and a wrong will is bad love”: “recta
itaque voluntas est bonus amor et voluntas perversa malus amor”. The
concept of malus amor points forward to Dante’s analysis of vice
in Purgatorio 17, where he shows that all human behavior — good or
evil — is rooted in love. Bad behavior can be rooted in love because we
can love in the wrong way, or love the wrong objects.

We come back to the issue of human errancy and to the very beginning
of the Commedia: at the beginning the pilgrim finds himself in a dark
wood, where the “straight way” (“dritta via” in the poem’s third verse) is
lost. Now we learn that our misplaced love causes the non-straight way,
the twisted way — the “via torta” of Purgatorio 10.3 — to appear to be
straight. This concept, that we can mislead ourselves into believing that
the twisted way is the straight way, will be a theme of Purgatorio, most
dramatically reprised in the dream of the Siren in Purgatorio 19.

The second issue that we need to unpack is the verb disusare, which

forcefully communicates the importance of habit — uso for Dante — in
the pursuit of virtue. Evil love dishabituates us from following the
straight path. Our habits need to be retrained. Purgatory is the place
where humans are rehabituated to the straight path. Once they finish
the process of purgation, the crooked path will never again be confused
with the straight path.

The entrance to the gate of Purgatory, the beginning of “Purgatory

proper”, is thus inaugurated with a tercet that reprises the most
fundamental themes of the Commedia.

***
Dante and Virgilio climb onto the first terrace of Purgatory, the terrace
of pride, where they are confronted with marvelous artwork in the form
of engravings sculpted into the mountain.

Much of the terrace of pride will consist of Dante’s descriptions of the

artwork that he sees. These descriptions are lengthy ekphrases:
ekphrasis is the rhetorical trope whereby one form of representation,
such as poetry or verbal representation, reproduces another, in this case
sculpted engravings. Ekphrasis is an inherently metapoetic trope, in that
it is a trope that enacts a meditation on representation itself, as one
form of representation is charged with the attempt to reproduce another
form of representation.

The intensely metapoetic nature of the terrace of pride is analyzed at

length in Chapter 6 of The Undivine Comedy; indeed, Purgatorio‘s
terrace of pride is one of only two units to receive a chapter to itself in a
book that is a metapoetic analysis of the Commedia (the other is
chapter 9, on the metapoetic implications of the biographies of Saint
Francis and Saint Dominic). In Chapter 6, “Re-Presenting What God
Presented: The Arachnean Art of the Terrace of Pride,” I consider the
paradoxes inherent in putting oneself in the position of “re-presenting”
God’s art in one’s human language. What does it mean for the poet to
rival God as artifex in the context of a treatment of humility?

Onto the marble sides of the mountain are engraved three scenes, re-
presented so wondrously that they seem not “re-presented” but
“presented”: in other words, they seem not art but life. They are so
lifelike that not only the greatest of classical sculptors, Polycletus, would
have been defeated by their artistry, but nature herself would be put to
scorn:

esser di marmo candido e addorno

d’intagli sì, che non pur Policleto,
ma la natura lì avrebbe scorno. (Purg. 10.31-33)
was of white marble and adorned with carvings
so accurate — not only Polycletus
but even Nature, there, would feel defeated.
Dante instructed us with respect to the hierarchy of mimesis/imitation
at the end of Inferno 11, where we learned that God is Artifex, that
nature imitates God, and that human art imitates nature. Therefore,
Dante has already informed us indirectly that these engravings are
God’s work, since only God is a superior artist to nature.

Dante comes back to defining the miraculous nature of the engravings

later in Purgatorio 10, where he states explicitly that they are God’s
handiwork, and gives them the wonderful label “visibile parlare”: visible
speech (Purg. 10.95). Dante has effectively come up with the idea of
“moving pictures”, as cinema was called in its early days. These
engravings are so lifelike that they are capable of making speech itself
visible to the onlooker. Only God, it turns out, can produce “esto visibile
parlare”, this visible speech:

Colui che mai non vide cosa nova

produsse esto visibile parlare,
novello a noi perché qui non si trova. (Purg. 10.94-96)
This was the speech made visible by One
within whose sight no thing is new — but we,
who lack its likeness here, find novelty.
These engravings depict three examples of humility: the virtue that is
the antithesis of the vice being purged on this terrace. The first example
is from the life of Mary, and recounts the Annunciation; the second, also
biblical, is the story of King David, “the humble psalmist”
of Purg. 10.65, who dances before the Ark of the Covenant and
scandalizes his proud wife; the third example is classical and recounts
how the emperor Trajan is moved by the needs of a poor widow to
interrupt his campaign. See The Undivine Comedy, pp. 123-26, for the
narrative techniques used in representing these representations.

These examples spur the purging souls to emulate humility, and in this
way — as announced in the canto’s second verse — the examples work to
“dishabituate” the souls from the “evil love” of pride. How pride can be
considered a perverted form of love is something we will learn
in Purgatorio 17.
Toward the end of Purgatorio 10 the pilgrim sees shapes coming toward
him bent over under grievous weights. These are the purging prideful.
Now that we are in Purgatory proper each vice is punished not just by
the duration of time that is spent purging it but also by a specific
physical torment: the prideful souls on this terrace are bent over
beneath heavy stones, whose weight is greater or lesser depending on
the degree of pride to be purged.

Once more pride is connected to artistry, as the bent souls are compared
to sculpted caryatids, stone figures on medieval cathedrals whose knees
are drawn up to their chests (Purg. 10.130-32).

Purgatorio 11: After 1000 Years?

As discussed in the Commento on Purgatorio 10, there are three canti
devoted to the terrace of pride and they are symmetrically and neatly
arranged: Purgatorio 10 treats the examples of the virtue of
humility; Purgatorio 11 treats meetings with three souls who exemplify
three kinds of pride; and Purgatorio 12 treats the examples of the vice
of pride.

As the central of the three canti devoted to pride, Purgatorio 11 begins

with the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, the only prayer inscribed fully
into the Commedia. It is interesting to note the ways in which Dante
effectively “rewrites” the Lord’s prayer, making it in some way a
Dantean gloss of the Scriptural verses. Although the glosses are
exhortations to humility, the poet’s act of rewriting the Lord’s Prayer
seems precariously close to prideful, another form of the “Arachnean art
of the terrace of pride” discussed in Chapter 6 of The Undivine Comedy.

The pilgrim meets three souls in Purgatorio 11, who exemplify three

kinds of pride: Omberto Aldobrandeschi, a great noble from the
Maremma region who exemplifies pride of family and lineage
(see Purgatorio 8 and especially the encounter with Currado Malaspina
for these issues); Oderisi da Gubbio, a miniaturist who exemplifies pride
in art and in human endeavor; and Provenzan Salvani, a Sienese man of
power and head of the Ghibellines, who exemplifies pride of power.

The below chart of the terrace of pride maps the three types of pride —
pride of family, pride of art, and pride of power — onto the three
structural components: the examples of the virtues, the souls, and the
examples of the vices.

There are three canti devoted to the terrace of pride, and there are three
prideful souls purging the sin of pride in the central
canto, Purgatorio 11. Thus, the core of the terrace of pride is the core of
the central canto, Purgatorio 11. At the core of the terrace of pride, we
find the artist Oderisi da Gubbio, who is the second of the three souls
who are featured in the second  canto of the triad devoted to this vice.
Pride in art or vainglory is thus the poet’s central concern.

Before considering what Oderisi has to say, let us note that he

constitutes another of the friends whom Dante places in his Purgatory:
Oderisi follows Casella, Belacqua, and Nino Visconti in this group, and
looks forward to Forese Donati. Oderisi sees Dante and recognizes him,
displaying his passionate desire to speak with him:

e videmi e conobbemi e chiamava,

tenendo li occhi con fatica fisi
a me che tutto chin con loro andava. (Purg. 11.76-78)
he saw and knew me and called out to me,
fixing his eyes on me laboriously
as I, completely hunched, walked on with them.
Oderisi speaks on the vanity of all earthly things, including artistic
supremacy. There is no point in being prideful as an artist, he says,
because ultimately everything passes, no human art endures, and all
great artists are eclipsed by their successors. As his examples of
surpassed artists, Oderisi offers first visual artists, Cimabue who is
eclipsed by Giotto, and then verbal artists, Guido Guinizzelli who is
eclipsed by Guido Cavalcanti in the “gloria de la lingua” (glory of our
tongue [Purg. 11.98]). And both Guidos will in turn be eclipsed by one
“who will chase both out of the nest”:

Credette Cimabue ne la pittura

tener lo campo, e ora ha Giotto il grido,
sì che la fama di colui è scura:
così ha tolto l’uno a l’altro Guido
la gloria de la lingua; e forse è nato
chi l’uno e l’altro caccerà del nido. (Purg. 11.94-99)
In painting Cimabue thought he held
the field, and now it’s Giotto they acclaim —
the former only keeps a shadowed fame.
So did one Guido, from the other, wrest
the glory of our tongue—and he perhaps
is born who will chase both out of the nest.
Who is the one who will chase Guido Guinizzelli and Guido Cavalcanti
from the nest? Oderisi’s lesson in humility is here compromised by what
is certainly a veiled reference to Dante himself: the poet who will
supersede and surpass both Guido Guinizzelli and Guido Cavalcanti.
And so, matters are not quite so simple as a straightforward lesson in
humility. The dialectical thrust of the above passage is replicated in this
next passage, where the vanity of all earthly achievements is proposed
again, framed in a linguistic fashion this time, through the following
rhetorical question:

Che voce avrai tu più, se vecchia scindi

da te la carne, che se fossi morto
anzi che tu lasciassi il ‘pappo’ e ’l ‘dindi’,
pria che passin mill’anni? ch’è più corto
spazio a l’etterno, ch’un muover di ciglia
al cerchio che più tardi in cielo è torto. (Purg. 11.103-08)
Before a thousand years have passed — a span
that, for eternity, is less space than
an eyeblink for the slowest sphere in heaven —
would you find greater glory if you left
your flesh when it was old than if your death
had come before your infant words were spent?
To the question — what glory will you have in 1000 years? — the correct
answer in the key of humility is “none”: in 1000 years it will no longer
matter whether you die an infant, whose only words are “pappo” and
“dindi” (Purg. 11.105), or whether you live to old age.

And yet, and yet . . . I write this on the verge of 2015, which will be the
750th anniversary of Dante’s birth in 1265: already three-quarters of the
way to 1000 years. And Dante’s words still live. And, despite Oderisi’s
claim that “La vostra nominanza è color d’erba, / che viene e va” (Your
glory wears the color of the grass that comes and goes [Purg. 11.115-16]),
Dante’s nominanza — his name, his cultural Q score — remains, in
Ovid’s word, indelebile.

Purgatorio 12: God’s Acrostic

We recall from Purgatorio 10 that the sculptural art the pilgrim sees
engraved on the walls of purgatory is so “real” that it seems alive: Dante
feels the wind moving in Trajan’s banners, he smells the incense, he
hears the spoken words exchanged between Trajan and the widow.
Ultimately Dante confirms that this is God’s art, and calls it “visibile
parlare” — visible speech — in Purgatorio 10.95.

Essentially Dante devises in Purgatorio 10 a way of describing moving

images in words: he is describing moving pictures/movies/film, though
the medium does not yet exist. The same miraculous medium is used for
the thirteen examples of punished pride that are described
in Purgatorio 12. While the carved examples of the virtue of humility
are on the wall of the terrace, the examples of the vice of pride are on its
pavement, like pavement tombs the pilgrim has seen on earth, but more
lifelike due to the “artificio” — artifice (Purg. 12.23) — of their maker.

A spectacular acrostic displays the thirteen examples of pride almost

“visually”: letters are deployed as a kind of artwork. The examples are
arranged in the following pattern: four sets of terzine begin with the
word “Vedea”; four sets of terzine begin with the word “O”; four sets of
terzine begin with the word “Mostrava”. Thus twelve examples of pride
spell out VOM or UOM, “man” in Italian, signifying that pride is
mankind’s besetting sin. Here is an attached chart that offers a list of all
the examples.
The thirteenth terzina offers the final example, which sums up all the
others by referring to a city rather than to a person and by replicating in
one terzina all three of the letters that spell the acrostic:

Vedeva Troia in cenere e in caverne;

o Ilión, come te basso e vile
mostrava il segno che lì si discerne! (Purg. 12.61-63)
I saw Troy turned to caverns and to ashes;
O Ilium, your effigy in stone—
it showed you there so squalid, so cast down!
The characters featured as examples of pride would repay lengthy
discussion. Here we find Nembrot, he who built the tower of Babel and
who spoke gibberish — non-sense — to Dante and Virgilio in Inferno 31.
Nembrot, with Ulysses, is an avatar of transgression whose name is
rehearsed in each of the three cantiche:

Vedea Nembròt a piè del gran lavoro

quasi smarrito, e riguardar le genti
che ’n Sennaàr con lui superbi fuoro. (Purg. 12.34-36)
I saw bewildered Nimrod at the foot
of his great labor; watching him were those
of Shinar who had shared his arrogance.
Most important to my reading of the terrace of pride is the mythological
figure of Arachne, marked by the Ulyssean adjective “folle”:

O folle Aragne, sì vedea io te

già mezza ragna, trista in su li stracci
de l’opera che mal per te si fé. (Purg. 12.43-45)
O mad Arachne, I saw you already
half spider, wretched on the ragged remnants
of work that you had wrought to your own hurt!
Arachne was famous for her weavings that were so lifelike that they
seemed alive. The passage describing her work in
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, discussed in Chapter 6 of The Undivine
Comedy, nourished Dante in conceptualizing representational
arrogance as the cornerstone of his terrace of pride. Again, as
in Purgatorio 10’s depiction of the “visibile parlare” of the sculpted
virtues, in Purgatorio 12 the point is hammered home that this art is
not just “life-like”. It is “life” itself:

Morti li morti e i vivi parean vivi:

non vide mei di me chi vide il vero,
quant’io calcai, fin che chinato givi. (Purg. 12.67-69)
The dead seemed dead and the alive, alive:
I saw, head bent, treading those effigies,
as well as those who’d seen those scenes directly.
At the end of the canto we encounter another of the ritual components
of the purgatorial experience, repeated on each terrace: Dante meets an
angel and a “P” (for peccato, sin) is removed from his brow, signifying
his successful participation in the process of purgation. As a result of his
time on the terrace of pride, the pilgrim has purged one of the seven
deadly sins (more properly, vices). We note that he does not need to
participate in the suffering assigned to the souls on this terrace: he is
not bent under heavy rocks. As in Hell, his participation is a form of
observation and meditation. Unlike Hell, he will return to Purgatory,
and so will have the opportunity to participate more fully than he does
now.

The travelers climb toward the next terrace, and as they climb they hear
a shortened form of the first Beatitude: “Beati pauperes spiritu”
(Matthew 5:3). The eight Beatitudes are from Christ’s Sermon on the
Mount (Matthew 5:3-10) and will be featured on the purgatorial
terraces. In full, this Beatitude is: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” It is featured on the terrace of pride to
celebrate the soul’s new acquisition of a pride-less “poverty of spirit.”

Purgatorio 13: Eyes Sewn Shut

Purgatorio 13 begins with the arrival at the second terrace: “dove
secondamente si risega” (where for a second time the mountain is
indented [Purg. 13.2]). Here we see another reminder that the job of the
mountain of Purgatory is to perform a kind of aggressive cognitive
behavioral therapy, with the goal of dishabituating us from vice, the
inclination toward sin.

In the exordium of Purgatorio 13 we learn that this is the mountain that

“dis-evils” us (verse 3), or “unsins us” in the Hollander translation. In
other words, Mount Purgatory dishabituates those who climb it from
evil:

Noi eravamo al sommo de la scala,

dove secondamente si risega
lo monte che salendo altrui dismala. (Purg. 13.1-3)
 We now had reached the summit of the stairs
where once again the mountain whose ascent
delivers man from sin has been indented.
Dante’s coinage “dismala” is a verb formed from the privative prefix dis
+ verb malare, based on the noun male, evil, and therefore with the
sense that the mountain “dis-evils” us or purifies us from vice. It recalls
a previous coinage formed with the prefix dis + verb, also in the context
of defining the work of purgation: “disusa” in the exordium
of Purgatorio 10, formed from dis + verb usare. Here the gate of
Purgatory is that which “’l mal amor de l’anime disusa” (the evil love of
the souls dishabituates us from using [Purg. 10.2]).

Both definitional moments share a verb formed on the privative

prefix dis (“disusa”, “dismala”), reminding us that the work of Purgatory
is to remove from our selves that which is not suitable for Paradise. In
the Purgatorio 13 passage we do not find any form of “amore” — love —
although the new coinage “dismala” recalls the “malo amor”
of Purgatorio 10.

These coinages look forward to the critical discussion in Purgatorio 17

where Virgilio explains to his charge that all human behavior — both
good and evil — is rooted in love: love that inclines toward the good, or
love that inclines toward the bad (“malo amor”). Augustine provides the
language of bonus amor versus malus amor. In City of God 14.7 he
writes that “a right will is good love and a wrong will is bad love” (“recta
itaque voluntas est bonus amor et voluntas perversa malus amor”).
Augustinian bonus amor versus malus amor underwrites Dante’s
characterization of the entrance to Purgatory as ‘‘la porta / che ’l mal
amor de l’anime disusa” (Purg. 10.2). Further discussion may be found
in “Medieval Multiculturalism and Dante’s Theology of Hell”, cited in
Coordinated Reading.

As discussed in the Commenti on Purgatorio 10-12, the canti of the

terrace of pride, a governing narrative template is imposed on each of
the seven terraces of Purgatory. On each terrace we will find the
following narrative building blocks: examples of the virtue that
corresponds to the vice being purged (of which the first is always taken
from the life of Mary), encounters with souls, examples of the vice being
purged, the pardon executed by the angel, and the recitation of a
Beatitude upon departure.

Within this template, Dante demonstrates great variatio, for instance in

coming up with different media for the performance of the examples.
On the terrace of pride the examples are engraved in stone, a visual
medium, whereas on the terrace of envy Dante will have recourse to an
aural medium for the exempla: sound bites take over the terrace’s
airwaves, as disembodied spirits call out a kind of anti-envy rap,
always in direct discourse.

The sound bites are all examples of love, based on the idea
that caritas (love) is the virtue that is the opposite of envy. Yet the
correspondence is not so clear-cut as it might seem, and merits greater
atttention from the commentary tradition.

The choice of “amore” as the virtue corresponding to the vice of envy

suggests some strain in Dante’s conceptual scheme, given the
foundational importance of love as the basis for all human behavior (see
the Commento on Purgatorio 17) How can “amore” be the specific
virtue opposed to the vice of envy, when, as Virgilio will explain
in Purgatorio 17, every single vice is itself a deformation of “amore”?

By the same token, each of the virtues, not just the virtue corresponding
to envy, but the others as well (humility, gentleness, liberality, and so
forth) might be seen as inflections of “amore”. The borrowing of the
large category “love”, which holds all the virtues, as the specific virtue
that corresponds to a specific vice, betrays some instability in the
scheme. More work needs to be done on the ethical paradigms that
Dante is using and how he may have modified them in ways that are at
times idiosyncratic and perhaps not fully under his control.

Conversely, one could claim that the insertion of love so prominently

into his ethical scheme now, in Purgatorio 13, is precisely what Dante
wants to achieve. In this way, he is already beginning the build-up to the
revelation, in Purgatorio 17, that all human conduct is rooted in love.

The spirits in Purgatorio 13 shout out exemples of caritas, which are

described as “courteous invitations to love’s table” :

e verso noi volar furon sentiti,

non però visti, spiriti parlando
a la mensa d’amor cortesi inviti. (Purg. 13.25-27)
we heard spirits as they flew toward us,
though they could not be seen—spirits pronouncing
courteous invitations to love's table.
These “courteous invitations to love’s table” come, first, from the life of
Mary, and then from classical and biblical sources. The first voice that
Dante hears calls out the words spoken by Mary at the wedding of Cana
to indicate that the guests are lacking wine. The voice flies by, loudly
reiterating its sound bite as it distances itself:

La prima voce che passò volando

‘Vinum non habent’ altamente disse,
e dietro a noi l’andò reiterando. (Purg. 13.28-30)
The first voice that flew by called out aloud:
“Vinum non habent,” and behind us that
same voice reiterated its example.
The classical example is that of Orestes, who announces his identity so
that his best friend Pylades cannot sacrifice himself in his place. This
example of true friendship between men, known to Dante from
Cicero’s De amicitia, is interesting also in the context of the Titus and
Gisippus story in the Decameron (10.8).

The biblical example is anomalous in that it does not feature a particular

person or event; rather, this is Jesus’ exhortation in his Sermon on the
Mount to “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44). Again, we see how a
hugely important concept, that of of loving one’s enemies, a concept that
is foundational to Christianity, is yoked into the terrace of envy. On the
one hand, it almost seems out of place and disproportionate, as
discussed above.
On the other hand, as I suggested above, the use as an example of envy
of a foundational Christian concept opens the door to a much broader
meditation with respect to envy and vice in general. The example/sound
bite “Amate da cui male aveste” (“Love those by whom you have been
hurt” [Purg. 14.36]) comes from no less a text than Christ’s Sermon on
the Mount:

43 You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your
enemy.” 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those
who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in
heaven (Matthew 5:43-45)

Here we see how the discourse on the terrace of envy broadens into a
profound meditation on the relationship of the self and the other.

The use of direct discourse in these examples — “Vinum non habent”

(Purg. 13.29), “I’ sono Oreste” (Purg. 13.32), and “Amate da cui male
aveste” (Purg. 13.36) — gives a role-playing and performance value to
each utterance: these words are theatrically performed by the voices,
whose origins we never see. The lack of a visual source will be connected
to the gruesome form of punishment exacted from the souls who purge
envy on this terrace.

Purgatorio 13 is the first of two and one-third canti devoted to the

terrace of envy; the rest of this canto introduces us to the souls and their
punishment. The torment inflicted on the envious is particularly
gruesome, and is borrowed from the practice of falconry: their eyes are
sewn shut with wire, to prevent them from seeing and envying the good
fortune of others.

Again, we see that the thread that runs through this analysis is
the relationship of self to other.

Dante asks whether any of the blinded souls is Italian and consequently
strikes up a conversation with a Sienese lady, Sapìa, the aunt of
Provenzan Salvani (whom we met in Purgatorio 11). She rejects his
characterization of her as “Italian” however, beginning her reply with a
typically purgatorial refusal to embrace the earthly values that yet still
mean so much to these souls:

O frate mio, ciascuna è cittadina

d’una vera città; ma tu vuo’ dire
che vivesse in Italia peregrina. (Purg. 13.94-96)
My brother, each of us is citizen
of one true city: what you meant to say
was “one who lived in Italy as pilgrim.” 
Sapìa’s continued attachment to her earthly self is apparent in her
animated account of how she rejoiced in the defeat of her fellow Sienese
at the hands of the Florentines at the battle of Colle di Val d’Elsa (8 June
1269). Her nephew Provenzan Salvani led the Sienese troops and was
killed in this battle. At witnessing the rout of the Sienese, Sapìa was so
overcome by happiness that she raised her face to heaven and called out
to God “Omai più non ti temo!” (Now I fear you no more! [Purg.
13.122]). In other words, she has experienced such extremes of joy that
now she fears nothing else that can happen to her.

Dante here teases out the implications of envy with respect to the self’s
relation to the other. Beginning with envy as the desire for what
others have, Dante moves in the case of Sapìa to envy as
extreme joy at witnessing what others lose.  As though taking a
cue from the framework regarding the self and others, Dante-pilgrim
distances himself from the envious souls. In reply to Sapìa’s question
about his own identity, he acknowledges being alive but claims that he
has little fear of spending future time on the terrace of envy. Rather, he
almost boasts, his concern is focused on the terrace of pride:

«Li occhi», diss’io, «mi fieno ancor qui tolti,

ma picciol tempo, ché poca è l’offesa
fatta per esser con invidia vòlti.
Troppa è più la paura ond’è sospesa
l’anima mia del tormento di sotto,
che già lo ’ncarco di là giù mi pesa». (Purg. 13.133-38)
 “My eyes,” I said, “will be denied me here,
but only briefly; the offense of envy
was not committed often by their gaze.
I fear much more the punishment below;
my soul is anxious, in suspense; already
I feel the heavy weights of the first terrace.” 
Envy is such a déclassé vice compared to pride!

Purgatorio 14: Valley of the Beasts

Purgatorio 14 begins dramatically, with an interrogative in direct
discourse, as one spirit queries another. Later in the canto we learn the
names of these spirits; they are Guido del Duca and Rinieri da Calboli.
They are wondering about the identity of the man who has come among
them while still alive:

«Chi è costui che ’l nostro monte cerchia

prima che morte li abbia dato il volo,
e apre li occhi a sua voglia e coverchia?». (Purg. 14.1-3)
“Who is this man who, although death has yet
to grant him flight, can circle round our mountain,
and can, at will, open and shut his eyes?”
This opening “Chi è costui?” — “Who is this man?” — continues the
theme of names and the withholding of names that we have been tracing
since Purgatorio 11’s mystery poet who will chase the first and second
Guido from the nest, the unnamed name at the core of the terrace of
pride: “e forse è nato / che l’uno e l’altro caccerà dal nido” (and he
perhaps is born who will chase both out of the nest [Purg. 11.98-99]).
We recall that Oderisi told the pilgrim that all nominanza — glory, but
literally the recognition that accrues to one’s name — is fleeting like the
color of grass: “La vostra nominanza è color d’erba, / che viene e va”
(Your glory wears the color of the grass that comes and goes [Purg.
11.115-16]). And now Dante declines to give his name to his
interlocutors, because, he says, he is not yet famous enough! The
pilgrim says:

dirvi ch’i’ sia, saria parlare indarno,

ché ’l nome mio ancor molto non suona. (Purg. 14.20-21)
to tell you who I am would be to speak
in vain — my name has not yet gained much fame.
Without saying his name, Dante indicates that he comes from the valley
of the river Arno. The name of the Arno river is also at first withheld,
like Dante’s own: described as a “fiumicel” (little river [Purg. 14.17]),
and then ostentatiously intuited by one of the souls in verse 24, “Arno”
is finally labeled a name that should perish in verse 30. The mention of
the Arno river and its valley triggers a meditation on the corrupted cities
that are situated along the Arno’s banks.

This is an account of human “decadence”: the inhabitants of each city

situated on the shores of the Arno as it flows from the mountains to the
sea are presented as beasts. The Arno flows from the mountains of the
Casentino region in the Appenines down, down down . . . until it
empties into the sea at Pisa. In Dante’s telling, as the river falls, so do
the inhabitants of the cities that line its banks become more degraded.
Thus, the river begins among foul hogs in the mountains, and then
descends to the snarling curs of Arezzo; the curs become wolves when
the Arno reaches Florence, and ultimately, when the river comes to the
end of its fall, the wolves are foxes, in Pisa.

Dante subscribed to a worldview current through the Renaissance,

whereby there is a hierarchy of created beings that places humans in
between angels (above) and beasts (below). Therefore, from a
fourteenth-century perspective, to describe humans as beasts is to
describe humans who have literally “fallen” — “decadence” derives from
the verb cadere, to fall — from their prescribed place in the order of
being.

Dante highlights the idea of a “falling” in his dramatic presentation of

the corrupt valley of the Arno: the phrases “venendo giuso” (coming
downward [Purg. 14.46]), “Vassi caggendo” ([it goes on falling
[Purg. 14.49]), and “Discesa poi” (having thus descended [Purg. 14.52])
are all markers of the river’s falling flow. This passage is reminiscent of
another evocative description of human decadence, found in the parallel
canto 14 of Inferno: namely, the statue of the Old Man of Crete.
The speaker in Purgatorio 14’s discourse on the Arno, Guido del Duca,
moves into a prophetic mode, speaking of the future brutalities that will
be committed against the Florentines by the nephew of his purgatorial
companion, Rinieri da Calboli. Rinieri’s nephew is Fulcieri da Calboli.
As podestà (chief magistrate) of Florence in 1303, Fulcieri da Calboli
carried out persecutions against the enemies of the Blacks, who were
newly come to power.

As a White, Dante was exiled in consequence of this same Black

takeover; in fact, in this passage, Dante is speaking about the time that
immediately succeeds his own exile in 1302. As the Bosco-Reggio
commentary points out, Fulcieri da Calboli became podestà in Florence
right after the magistrate who signed Dante’s own condemnation, whose
name is Cante de’ Gabrielli da Gubbio.

Guido del Duca’s meditation moves from Tuscany to his home region of
Romagna, and from a fiery prophetic mode into an elegiac mode, as he
conjures the great noble casati of Romagna that have decayed or have
disappeared. Notable in this section is the melancholy with which Guido
del Duca conjures not just families that have withered, but families in
which cortesia and onore no longer hold sway. The cortesia of past
times brings out a nostalgic melancholy in Dante, but also the analytic
insistence that virtue is not often passed on from parent to child. This is
the theme of heredity, first raised in the Valley of the Princes
(Purgatorio 8), whose inhabitants frequently embody Dante’s thesis
that the courtly values of old are not sustained.

Here, on the terrace of envy, Guido del Duca is able to point to his
comrade, Rinieri da Calboli, whose nephew disgraces himself through
his butchery in Florence: “molti di vita e sé di pregio priva” (depriving
many of life, himself of honor [Purg. 14.63]). Fulcieri da Calboli
deprives others of life (he kills them, butcher that he is), but he deprives
himself of honor: “sé di pregio priva”. The word here is “pregio”, derived
from Occitan pretz. This is the honor that instead the Malaspina family
still possesses, given that they are continue to be ornamented by pretz:
“del pregio de la borsa e de la spada” (the glory of the purse and of the
sword [Purg. 8.129]).
Guido del Duca in this way connects his friend Rinieri directly and
forcibly to the discourse about heredity. Reusing the word “pregio”, he
tells his friend Rinieri that his own pregio and onore, his own human
worth, have not been passed on to his heirs:

Questi è Rinier; questi è ’l pregio e l’onore

de la casa da Calboli, ove nullo
fatto s’è reda poi del suo valore. (Purg. 14.88-90)
This is Rinieri, this is he — the glory,
the honor of the house of Calboli;
but no one has inherited his worth.
Purgatorio 14 is a canto of a certain willed opacity, whose emblem could
well be Dante’s refusal to give his name in verses 20-21. Another
example is the dark and obscure prophetic language used by Guido del
Duca in speaking of Florence. Yet another is the opaque language used
by Guido del Duca on two additional occasions, one that will be recalled
in Purgatorio 15 and the other in Purgatorio 16. The opaque language
of Purgatorio 14 thus textually “seeds” the next two canti, where it will
bear illuminating fruit.

Dante sows discursive “seeds” in Purgatorio 14. Guido del Duca’s

opaque language will bear fruit in Purgatorio 15 and
16. Purgatorio 14.86-87 will be reprised in Purgatorio 15.44-45.
And Purgatorio 14.37-39 will be reprised in Purgatorio 16.59-63.

Let us begin with the passage that is reprised in Purgatorio 15:

 Di mia semente cotal paglia mieto;
o gente umana, perché poni ’l core
là ’v’è mestier di consorte divieto? (Purg. 14.85-87)
From what I’ve sown, this is the straw I reap:
o humankind, why do you set your hearts
there where our sharing cannot have a part?
In these verses Guido del Duca gives a synthetic and profound definition
of envy, explaining it in terms of the dialectic between self and other.
Envy occurs because we desire to possess things that cannot be shared
with others: things that diminish when shared, material things. This
synthetic definition will lead to Virgilio’s explanation of the difference
between material goods and spiritual goods in the next canto.

Guido del Duca’s synthetic definition also becomes part of the story-line
of these canti of Purgatorio, for it turns out that the pilgrim did not
understand them. In the next canto Dante asks Virgilio to explain what
Guido del Duca’s words mean:

Che volse dir lo spirto di Romagna,

e ‘divieto’ e ‘consorte’ menzionando?  (Purg. 15.44-45)
What did the spirit of Romagna mean
when he said, ‘Sharing cannot have a part’?
The pilgrim has certainly shown confusion to Virgilio before now, and
has solicited explanations; he has also asked for his teacher’s feedback
on comments that were unclear and threatening to him, like Farinata’s
prophecy of his exile (Inferno 10). Here Dante-pilgrim goes so far as to
cite verbatim from what was said to him by a soul, asking for a gloss of
opaque and unclear words. Given that the pilgrim puts this question to
his guide, and that Dante-poet thematizes the difficulty of the language
in Purgatorio 14.86-87, we too will await Virgilio’s explanation.

The second instance of a structural and productive opacity in Guido del

Duca’s discourse is less lexical (what do “divieto” and “consorte” mean?)
and more conceptual. There is an either-or in the presentation of the
vicious Arno valley: is the viciousness of the inhabitants the result of
bad luck or bad habit? To pose this question, Guido del Duca describes
the Arno valley as a place in which everyone flees virtue as though it
were a snake, an enemy. They do this — and here is the part that will
generate a need for clarification in Purgatorio 16 — either because of
the “ill fortune of the place” (“sventura / del luogo”) or because of the
“evil habit” (“mal uso”) that goads them:

vertù così per nimica si fuga

da tutti come biscia, o per sventura
del luogo, o per mal uso che li fruga... (Purg. 14.37-39)
virtue is seen as serpent, and all flee
from it as if it were an enemy,
either because the site is ill-starred or
their evil custom goads them so...
The little subordinate either/or clause, expressed in passing in a verse
and a half, poses the fundamental issue of free will. Does Dante expect
us to fail to notice the subordinate clause that holds so much theological
potential? Or have there been readers through the centuries in which
these easily bypassed words have worked as they work on the pilgrim,
who in Purgatorio 16 will express a profound need to address them?

The problem that they pose, between sventura (bad luck or bad fortune)

and mal uso (bad habit), will come to a head in Purgatorio 16, where
the pilgrim formulates the question that troubles him. The reply will be
the Commedia‘s first great discourse on free will. The absence
in Inferno of an explicit theology of free will is part of what I call Dante’s
“backward pedagogy” (see “Dante, Teacher of his Reader” in
Coordinated Reading).

In many ways, Purgatorio 14 continues to meditate on the

binary sventura versus mal uso, without however openly addressing the
theological issue here posed. Guido del Duca refers to the Arno as “la
maladetta e sventurata fossa” (ill-fated and accursed ditch [Purg.
14.51]), thus reprising the word sventura from verse 38, and suggesting
that the valley of the Arno is indeed a place of evil fortune. On the other
hand, Purgatorio 14 ends with Virgilio’s strong denunciation of human
laxness and lack of vigilance, as we defiantly take the bait offered by the
devil and ignore the heavens that call out to us.
The concluding portrait of a human race focused on earthly things,
those things that cause envy as Guido del Duca has explained, and
thereby ignoring the celestial beauties that call out to us, definitely
suggests that our mal uso is at fault. And, indeed, we know that the gate
of Purgatory is dis-used because of humanity’s evil ways: “la porta / che
’l mal amor de l’anime disusa” (the gate that our evil love dishabituates
us from using [Purg. 10.1-2]).

Purgatorio 15: Divine Multiplication

The “splendore” (splendor [Purg. 15.11]) with which Purgatorio 15
begins is an introduction to the “luce rifratta” (reflected light
[Purg. 15.22]) of Paradise, where all the souls reflect the light of God —
literally. Here, the pilgrim is struck so forcefully by the light that he has
to look away:

così mi parve da luce rifratta

quivi dinanzi a me esser percosso;
per che a fuggir la mia vista fu ratta. (Purg. 15.22-24)
so did it seem to me that I had been
struck there by light reflected, facing me,
at which my eyes turned elsewhere rapidly.
The first segment of Purgatorio 15 is the conclusion of the terrace of
envy: the light by which the pilgrim is struck comes from the angel who
removes the second “P” from Dante’s brow. There follows the recitation
of a Beatitude and the passage upwards to the third terrace, the terrace
of anger.

To pass the time while climbing the pilgrim asks his guide in verses 44-
45 what the “spirit of Romagna” (Guido del Duca) meant when he used
the terms “divieto” and “consorte”:

Che volse dir lo spirto di Romagna,

e ‘divieto’ e ‘consorte’ menzionando?  (Purg. 15.44-45)
What did the spirit of Romagna mean
when he said, ‘Sharing cannot have a part’?
The pilgrim is referring to Guido del Duca’s bitter rhetorical question
from the preceding canto:

o gente umana, perché poni ’l core

là ’v’è mestier di consorte divieto? (Purg. 14.86-87)
o humankind, why do you set your hearts
there where our sharing cannot have a part?
Humans, Virgilio explains, insist on directing their love and desire
“there where sharing cannot have a part”. In other words, we humans
desire objects that are diminished when shared:

Perché s’appuntano i vostri disiri

dove per compagnia parte si scema,
invidia move il mantaco a’ sospiri. (Purg. 15.49-51)
For when your longings center on things such
that sharing them apportions less to each,
then envy stirs the bellows of your sighs. 
If only we would direct our longings upward, toward heaven, we would
find that there would be no need for envy. This is so because in heaven,
the more there are who share (“the more there are who say ‘ours’”
[Purg. 15.55]), the more that each one possesses of the good, and the
more love there is altogether:

ché, per quanti si dice più lì “nostro”,

tanto possiede più di ben ciascuno,
e più di caritate arde in quel chiostro. (Purg. 15.55-57)
for there, the more there are who would say “ours,”
so much the greater is the good possessed
by each—so much more love burns in that cloister.
Guido del Duca’s rather cryptic statement in Purgatorio 14 frames envy
as the natural consequence of human desire for earthly goods that are
necessarily diminished by sharing. Nor is he wrong, in material terms:
as a piece of material pie is diminished if I share it with you, so the
metaphoric pie chart used by economists to demonstrate proportional
distribution is all about divvying up and thereby diminishing.
In Purgatorio 15, Virgilio reframes the issue as a discussion of spiritual
goods that are increased by sharing.
Spiritual goods follow a principle of divine multiplication rather
than terrestrial division: the more that everyone loves the more love
there is to go around.

But the pilgrim is resistant. He restates his skeptical question with even
more emphasis on the logical and mathematical certainty that a good
divided among many possessors is necessarily distributed into smaller
parts than if it were divided among fewer possessors, thus making each
possessor less rich:

Com’esser puote ch’un ben, distributo

in più posseditor, faccia più ricchi
di sé, che se da pochi è posseduto? (Purg. 15.61-63)
How can a good that’s shared by more possessors
enable each to be more rich in it
than if that good had been possessed by few? 
Having formulated the distinction between the material viewpoint and
the spiritual viewpoint as clearly and sharply as possible, the poet has
Virgilio reconfirm the spiritual calculus, whereby the more souls there
are who love each other, the more love there is overall for them to enjoy:

E quanta gente più là sù s’intende,

più v’è da bene amare, e più vi s'ama,
e come specchio l’uno a l’altro rende. (Purg. 15.73-75)
And when there are more souls above who love,
there's more to love well there, and they love more,
and, mirror-like, each soul reflects the other.
After the discourse on the distribution of love come the examples of the
virtue, gentleness or meekness, that corresponds to the vice of anger.
The three examples of gentleness are, as always, taken first from the life
of the Virgin Mary, followed by a classical/biblical mix: Mary’s
gentleness with her son, the classical Pisistratus’ gentleness with his
daughter’s suitor (these two examples are both very interesting as
windows into thinking about the family and normative interactions
within it), and the biblical St. Stephen’s meek acceptance of his
martyrdom.
The examples on the terrace of anger are experienced by Dante not as
visual art (the terrace of pride) or sound-bites flying through the air (the
terrace of envy) but, remarkably, as “ecstatic visions”: visions that he
sees inside his mind but that are not thereby lessened in their truth-
value. In this way the author of the Commedia, a great visionary poem,
thematizes the visionary experience itself: what it is to be “caught up”
like St. Paul (“tratto” in Purgatorio 15.86, analogous to “ratto”
in Purgatorio 9.24).

Chapter 7 of The Undivine Comedy tackles the fundamental issue of

visionary experience, which Dante thematizes in the Purgatorio: in the
three dreams that punctuate his climb up the mountain
(Purgatorio 9, Purgatorio 19, Purgatorio 27), in the ecstatic visions of
the terrace of wrath at the center of the Commedia (Purgatorio 15 and
17), and in the vision he is afforded of all Christian history at the end of
this cantica. The expression “non false errors” of the title of Chapter 7
comes from Purgatorio 15, where Dante describes the ecstatic visions
he experiences on the terrace of wrath as “non falsi errori” (117).

As I write in The Undivine Comedy: “The hallmarks of the visionary

style are never more in evidence than in the rendering of the apparitions
of the terrace of wrath, which appear and disappear like bubbles within
water” (p. 151). The section of Purgatorio 15 devoted to the ecstatic
visions that afford examples of humility, along with the section
of Purgatorio 17 devoted to the ecstatic visions that afford examples of
wrath, offer a veritable phenomenology of visionary experience. Here we
find the only use of the word “ecstatic” in all Dante’s work:

Ivi mi parve in una visione

estatica di sùbito esser tratto
e vedere in un tempio più persone . . . (Purg. 15.85-87)
There I seemed, suddenly, to be caught up
in an ecstatic vision and to see
some people in a temple...
In this “phenonmenology of vision” Dante offers insight into how he
perceived visionary experience, an experience that after all underlies the
entire Commedia:
 Quando l’anima mia tornò di fori
a le cose che son fuor di lei vere,
io riconobbi i miei non falsi errori. (Purg. 15.115-17)
And when my soul returned outside itself
and met the things outside it that are real,
I then could recognize my not false errors.
The Undivine Comedy treats the concept of “non falsi errori”
from Purgatorio 15.117 as a foundational index of Dante’s overall
textual strategies: see Chapter 1, p. 13, and Chapter 7, “Nonfalse Errors
and the True Dreams of the Evangelist.” The Evangelist of the chapter
title is St. John, writer of the Apocalypse (in Dante’s time the St. John
who wrote the Apocalpyse was not distinguished from St. John the
Evangelist, who wrote the Gospel of John): the Apocalypse is precisely a
“true dream” or “vision”, one that Dante references in Inferno 19 and
that is the key intertext of the visionary procession at the end
of Purgatorio.

Visionary experience is framed and defined by Dante in the above tercet

that coins the idea of “not false errors”: an order of reality that is in
error with respect to “ordinary” reality but that is nonetheless not false.
A phenomenology of visionary experience is presented via the examples
of meekness in Purgatorio 15 and of anger in Purgatorio 17.

Purgatorio 16: The Fault Is Not In Our Stars

 from the darkness of hell to angelic light in the space of one

canto: a recapitulation of the journey as a whole in
the 50th canto
 Dante’s exceptionalism
 are the stars to blame for our lack of virtue or are we? The
question of astrological determinism: we return to Cecco
d’Ascoli and to the debate about Inferno 7.89 (see the
Appendix to the Commento on Inferno 7), also to Dante’s
programmatic deflecting of astrology in Inferno 20
 Dante’s conditional contrary-to-fact framing of the central
ideological premise of his universe and of his poem
  the journey of the soul on the path of life, a poetic retelling
of Convivio 4.12

Purgatorio 16 begins in darkness likened to that of Hell (“Buio

d’inferno” or “darkness of Hell” are the canto’s first words) and ends
with the travelers’ emergence into light, as though they have passed in
the space of one canto through a distilled version of the journey of
the Commedia as a whole. Such signposts befit a canto that is the 50 th of
the Commedia’s one-hundred canti.

The darkness into which Dante and Virgilio are plunged is caused by the
dense smoke that envelops and clouds the terrace of wrath. The pilgrim
is now blinded and stays close behind his guide, in order not to “lose
himself”: “Sì come cieco va dietro a sua guida / per non smarrirsi” (Just
as a blind man moves behind his guide, / that he not stray [Purg. 16.10-
11]). Smarrire here is the verb used in Inferno’s opening terzina to
indicate that “the straight way was lost”: “ché la diritta via era smarrita”
(Inf. 1.3) The idea that anger is a kind of blindness is here made literal
by the poet, who enfolds the third terrace in blinding smoke. This idea is
one that we still use today when we say that anger clouds our judgment
and thereby makes it difficult for us to discern the correct course of
action.

The blindness-causing darkness of this terrace also permits the trope

that the soul T will use when he, who is literally blinded, indicts the
living for being intellectually blind: “Frate, / lo mondo è cieco, e tu vien
ben da lui” (Brother, / the world is blind, and you come from the
world [Purg. 16.65-66]). “The world is blind” is Marco Lombardo’s first
reply to Dante’s query about the role of the stars in human life.

Marco Lombardo’s discourse rebuts the role of the stars and

is therefore a key rebuttal of astrological determinism. I will
come back to Marco’s lengthy and important discourse on determinism
versus free will and right versus faulty governance on earth, stopping
first to treat some of the opening gambits of the conversation between
the pilgrim and the soul whom he has met.
Upon meeting, Dante speaks to Marco of his own exceptional status,
first discussed in Inferno 2. He promises to tell of the wonders that have
befallen him: “maraviglia udirai, se mi secondi” (you shall hear wonders
if you follow me [Purg. 16.33]). He then characterizes himself as graced
to see the divine court in a manner not vouchsafed to any other in
modern times:

E se Dio m’ha in sua grazia rinchiuso,

tanto che vuol ch’i’ veggia la sua corte
per modo tutto fuor del moderno uso...(Purg. 16.40-42)
since God’s so gathered me into His grace
that He would have me, in a manner most
unusual for moderns, see His court . . .
On this terrace, where the pilgrim experiences “ecstatic visions” that are
a mise-en-abyme of the visionary Commedia as a whole, he speaks with
unusual candor of his exceptionalism.

The idea that his experience is completely unheard of in modern times

— “per modo tutto fuor del moderno uso” (in a manner completely
outside of modern usage [Purg. 16.42]) — testifies to the distance that
Dante places between himself and the myriads of contemporary
claimants to visionary insight. As I wrote in “Why Did Dante Write
the Commedia? Dante and the Visionary Tradition,” Dante’s claim to
Marco Lombardo is somewhat disingenuous, in that Dante wrote in a
time of great visionary fervor.

Dante here constructs his visionary genealogy with the same

connection to antiquity and the same bypassing of vernacular
models that in Inferno 1 and Inferno 4 he uses to construct
his poetic genealogy.

We remember that in Inferno 2 Dante-pilgrim chose for himself two

visionary role models from antiquity: Aeneas and St. Paul. Similarly,
in Inferno 1 Dante-pilgrim tells Virgilio that Virgilio is the only source
of his poetic genius: “tu se’ solo colui da cu’ io tolsi / lo bello stilo che
m’ha fatto onore” (you, the only one from whom I drew / the noble style
that has brought me honor [Inf. 1.86-7]). And in Inferno 4 Dante
constructs a poetic genealogy that makes him sixth in a “bella scola”
(beautiful school [Inf. 4.94]) that includes Homer, Vergil, Ovid, Horace,
and Lucan (Inf. 4.100-2).

Moreover, Dante was indeed unique in his mode of representation of his

vision:

When Dante pilgrim says to Marco Lombardo that ‘‘Dio m’ha in sua
grazia rinchiuso, / tanto che vuol ch’i’ veggia la sua corte / per modo
tutto fuor del moderno uso’’ (God has so enclosed me in his grace / that
he wants me to see his court / in a manner altogether outside of modern
use [Purg. 16.40–42]), the poet is suggesting that the mode of seeing
vouchsafed him is entirely unique in modern times. Reading other
visions prevents us from passing over this verse, forces us to query the
pilgrim’s claim to see God’s court ‘‘per modo tutto fuor del moderno
uso.’’ On the one hand, this statement is historically untrue (and most
likely disingenuous): Dante lived at a time of great visionary fervor. On
the other hand, if we take ‘‘modo’’ to refer not only to the act of seeing
but also to the act of representing, which is — for this tradition —
essentially inseparable from the sight itself, how can we challenge the
truth of Dante’s assertion? For visionary authors, from the humblest to
the most sublime, it is not the ‘‘why’’ of the writing that is problematic
but always the ‘‘how.’’ And with respect to the ‘‘how’’ there is no doubt
that Dante’s text is indeed del tutto fuor del moderno uso. (“Why Did
Dante Write the Commedia? Dante and the Visionary Tradition,” p. 131)

While in the Inferno it was Virgilio who most often explained the special
nature of the journey that he and his charge are undertaking, in
speaking to Marco Lombardo Dante is forthright in owning his own
exceptionalism.

***

Marco Lombardo tells Dante who he is, leading with the place,
Lombardy, whose disintegration absent imperial rule will furnish the
topic of discussion in the latter part of Purgatorio 16: “Lombardo fui, e
fu’ chiamato Marco” (I was a Lombard and I was called Marco [Purg.
16.46]). He describes himself as one who knew the world and loved
virtue, which he calls that “valor toward which today all have slackened
the bow”:

del mondo seppi, e quel valore amai

al quale ha or ciascun disteso l’arco. (Purg. 16.47-48)
I knew the world’s ways, and I loved those goods
for which the bows of all men now grow slack.
Marco’s words, which indicate that virtue is not prized in the world
today, couple in the pilgrim’s mind with words previously expressed by
Guido del Duca. Given that Guido del Duca’s words are found
in Purgatorio 14, Dante here places great demands on his reader: to
understand what the pilgrim is saying to Marco Lombardo at this point,
the reader is required to remember or to consult the previous passage
in Purgatorio 14 and to link it with the discussion in Purgatorio 16.

Dante here fosters a kind of hyper-literacy that, while present in the

long history of glossing and commenting on the Bible and certain
classical texts, is relatively new to the sphere of vernacular textuality.
This is one of the features of the Commedia that is responsible for the
immediate flourishing of a commentary tradition, beginning in the
fourteenth century.

The pilgrim’s desire to clarify the doubt caused in him by the two
statements coupled in his mind, Marco’s with Guido del Duca’s,
escalates his need to know. He will burst, he says, if he cannot secure for
himself the explanation: “ma io scoppio / dentro ad un dubbio, s’io non
me ne spiego (and yet a doubt / will burst in me if it finds no way out
[Purg. 16.53-4]).

As we saw, Marco remarked that while alive he loved those values that
are no longer valued on earth: that valor toward which no one any
longer aims his metaphorical bow. Dante remembers that Guido del
Duca had described the Arno valley in similar terms, as a place whose
inhabitants flee virtue as though virtue were a snake. Guido had added
an either/or corollary to his statement about the inhabitants of the Arno
valley, noting that they flee virtue either because of the place being ill-
starred or because they have evil habits:

vertù così per nimica si fuga

da tutti come biscia, o per sventura
del luogo, o per mal uso che li fruga... (Purg. 14.37-39)
virtue is seen as serpent, and all flee
from it as if it were an enemy,
either because the site is ill-starred or
their evil custom goads them so...
The conundrum arises from the unresolved either/or of the above
verses: yes, we understand that the inhabitants of the Arno valley flee
virtue; but do they do so because the place is ill-fated or because of their
own evil customs? Which one of these two possible causes for the
decadence of the Arno valley is to be considered correct? The one that is
external to the inhabitants, a product of the ill-starred nature of the
place, the “sventura / del luogo” (the enjambment at the end
of Purg. 14.38 emphasizes the impending “misfortune” that hangs over
this luogo), or the one that is internal to the inhabitants, a product of
their own evil customs and habits — their “mal uso”?

This is the question that Dante now poses to Marco Lombardo, restating
the two terms from Purgatorio 14 in more explicitly astrological terms,
so that “sventura / del luogo” becomes “nel cielo” (in heaven) and “mal
uso” becomes “qua giù” (down here):

Lo mondo è ben così tutto diserto

d’ogne virtute, come tu mi sone,
e di malizia gravido e coverto;
ma priego che m’addite la cagione,
sì ch’i’ la veggia e ch’i’ la mostri altrui;
ché nel cielo uno, e un qua giù la pone. (Purg. 16.58-63)
The world indeed has been stripped utterly
of every virtue; as you said to me,
it cloaks — and is cloaked by — perversity.
Some place the cause in heaven, some, below;
but I beseech you to define the cause,
that, seeing it, I may show it to others.
Is the fault for our lack of virtue to be found in the “stars” (“nel cielo”
[63]) or in ourselves, “down here” (“qua giù” [63])? In other words, are
we to blame for our sinful behavior? Or is our behavior determined by
the stars and therefore not in our control?

The answer, in a Shakespearean nutshell, is that the fault is

not in our stars, but in ourselves: “The fault, dear Brutus, is
not in our stars, / But in ourselves” (Julius Caesar I, ii, 140-
41).

Dante’s answer is rather more prolix and complicated than

Shakespeare’s straightforward declarative, for Dante frames Marco
Lombardo’s all-important answer as a convoluted conditional contrary-
to-fact. The stakes at this point are very high, involving the very
integrity of the enterprise of allotting punishment for evil and reward
for good.

The answer encompasses the Commedia’s central discourse on free will,

a statement of the principles that hold up the entire ideological edifice of
the Divine Comedy.

Marco tackles immediately and aggressively the danger of determinism

in our thinking about causation in our lives. He claims that humans
insist on assigning all their actions to heaven for their causes, as if all
motion occurred by necessity (we recall, as discussed in the Appendix
on Cecco d’Ascoli in the Commento on Inferno 7, that “necessità” is a
code word for determinism). If it were thus, states Marco, then free will
would be destroyed in you — in humans. And, if free will were destroyed
in humans, then there would be no justice in our receiving happiness for
doing good and grief for doing evil:

Voi che vivete ogne cagion recate

pur suso al cielo, pur come se tutto
movesse seco di necessitate.
Se così fosse, in voi fora distrutto
libero arbitrio, e non fora giustizia
per ben letizia, e per male aver lutto. (Purg. 16.67-72)
You living ones continue to assign
to heaven every cause, as if it were
the necessary source of every motion.
If this were so, then your free will would be
destroyed, and there would be no justice
in joy for doing good, in grief for evil. 
If we were not acting freely, there would be no basis for assigning some
souls to Heaven and others to Hell. If we were not acting freely, there
would be no possibility of writing a poem like the one in which this
discussion is taking place: a poem that is based on the justice —
“giustizia” — of apportioning happiness — “letizia” — for good behavior
(“per ben”) and grief — “lutto” — for evil behavior (“per male”).

Finally, Dante fills the philosophical void that has been present since the
words on Hell’s gate: “Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore” (Justice
moved my high maker [Inf. 3.4]). For, indeed, as Marco Lombardo
stipulates, there can be no justice without free will: “e non fora
giustizia / per ben letizia, e per male aver lutto” (and there would be no
justice / in joy for doing good, in grief for evil [Purg. 16.71-2]).

Marco Lombardo’s discourse juxtaposes “libero arbitrio” (free will) with

“giustizia” (justice) in verse 71 for good reason: justice can only exist if
the will is free. If the will were not free, if we were constrained to flee
virtue because of the ill-starred nature of the place where we live, there
would be no justice in condemning our actions. The universe would then
be arbitrary and capricious.

What are we to make of Dante’s syntax here, of his conditional

contrary-to-fact framing of the central ideological premise of
his poem and of his universe? He both formulates and staves
off the most terrifying of thoughts, namely that the universe
may be capricious and arbitrary, that it may not be governed
by justice.
Chiavacci Leonardi characterizes Dante’s argument as a reductio ad
absurdum: “La dimostrazione è fatta per assurdo (dalla premessa si
giunge ad una conclusione assurda, l’ingiustizia di Dio)” (The
demonstration is conducted as a reductio ad absurdum: from the
premise one arrives at an absurd conclusion, the injustice of God
[Purgatorio, p. 475]). But her statement that the injustice of God is an
absurd conclusion seems a little too pat, given that Dante has a habit of
questioning God’s justice. For instance, in Purgatorio 6, he asks: “son li
giusti occhi tuoi rivolti altrove?” (have you turned elsewhere Your just
eyes? [Purg. 6.120]). And Paradiso 19 contains a prolonged — and
searing — meditation on God’s injustice, leading me to title my
Commento on that canto “Injustice on the Banks of the Indus”.

In truth, for Dante the ideological order of the universe demands that it
be ruled justly. If it is ruled justly, then those who are making choices
within it and whose choices are being evaluated are doing so freely.
Here, then, is the unpacking of the words on the gate of Hell
in Inferno 3. Hell is just because the will is free. And here too is the
reason that there can be no pity in Hell: “Qui vive la pietà quand’è ben
morta” (Here pity lives when it is dead [Inf. 20.28]). The presence of
pity would signal the presence of injustice.

If there is justice at work in the world, then the will is free.

Dante restates this fundamental principle in a remarkable
oxymoron that highlights the paradoxical idea of a will that is
free but that exists in a world governed by an omnipotent and
omniscient God: “liberi soggiacete” (you, who are free, are
subject [Purg. 16.80]).

How can we be free if God, for Whom nothing is ever new, knows
everything that we are going to do before we do it? We recall that God is
“Colui che mai non vide cosa nova” — the One who never saw a new
thing (Purg. 10.94) — meaning that He knows everything before it
happens. This problem remains to be tackled in Paradiso. For now it is
enough to state the paradox: “liberi soggiacete” (Purg. 16.80). The
Italian is remarkably condensed. When we unpack, we arrive at
formulations like these: You who are free are subject. You are freely
subject. You are free and at the same time you are subject to God’s will.

Before leaving this central passage of Purgatorio 16 and the question of

free will and the stars, I will return to the story of the astrologer Cecco
d’Ascoli’s attack on Inferno 7.89, “necessità la fa esser veloce” (necessity
makes her [Fortuna] swift), discussed in my Commento on Inferno 7.
Cecco the astrologer accused Dante of subscribing to astral
determinism, based on the code word “necessità” in Inferno 7.89.
Benvenuto da Imola defended Dante on the basis of Purgatorio 16:

Sed parcat mihi reverentia sua, si fuisset tam bonus poeta ut astrologus
erat, non invexisset ita temere contra autorem. Debebat enim imaginari
quod autor non contradixisset expresse sibi ipsi, qui dicit Purgatorii cap.
XVI: El cielo i vostri movimenti initia, Non dico tutti, ma posto ch’io ’l
dica, Dato v’è lume a bene et a malitia.(Benevenuti de Rambaldis de
Imola, Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam, ed. J. P.
Lacaita, Firenze: Barbèra, 1887)

But may his reverence spare me, if he were as good a poet as he was an
astrologer, he would not have inveighed so boldly against the author.
For he ought to imagine that the author clearly did not contradict
himself, who says in chapter XVI of Purgatorio: The heavens initiate
your movements; I don’t say all of them, but, were I to say it, you have
been given light to discern good and evil. (Translation mine)

There are two points I would like to make in this little coda to the story
told in the Commento on Inferno 7. The first is that Dante himself uses
“necessità” as a code word for determinism in Purgatorio 16, accusing
humans of constantly referring their actions to the heavens as though
everything happens “by necessity”: “Voi che vivete ogne cagion
recate / pur suso al cielo, pur come se tutto / movesse seco di
necessitate” (You living ones continue to assign / to heaven every cause,
as if it were / the necessary source of every motion [Purg. 16.67-69]).
The second is that Benvenuto, in furnishing Purgatorio 16 as his answer
to Cecco d’Ascoli, does not cite the reductio ad absurdum argument
discussed above. Rather he cites the passage that follows, of which
Chiavacci Leonardi writes “alla dimostrazione per assurdo, segue la
spiegazione di come veramente stanno le cose” (after the reductio ad
absurdum, there follows the explanation of how things really stand
[Purgatorio, p. 476]). Thus Benvenuto cites the following verses: “Lo
cielo i vostri movimenti inizia; / non dico tutti, ma, posto ch’i’ ’l
dica, / lume v’è dato a bene e a malizia” (The heavens set your appetites
in motion — / not all your appetites, but even if  that were the case, /
you have received light on good and evil [Purg. 16.73-75]).

The verses cited by Benvenuto are straightforward declarative

statements: you have received light that allows you to discern good and
evil. Perhaps, like me, Benvenuto thought the convoluted conditional
contrary-to-fact that precedes raises as many questions as it resolves.

***

After the discussion of free will and its culmination in “liberi soggiacete”
(You who are free are subject [80]), Purgatorio 16 pivots to the
question of governance: “Però, se ’l mondo presente disvia, / in voi è la
cagione, in voi si cheggia” (Thus, if the present world has gone
astray, / in you is the cause, in you it’s to be sought [Purg. 16.82-83]).

There follows the beautiful description of the newborn soul as a young

female child setting forth on the path of life (Purg. 16.85–90), which
echoes the voyage parable in Convivio 4.12:

The pilgrim passage of Convivio 4.12 is translated into verse at the very

heart of the Purgatorio, in canto 16’s description of the newborn soul
which, sent forth by a happy maker upon the path of life — “mossa da
lieto fattore” (Purg. 16.89) — willingly turns toward all that brings
delight: “volontier torna a ciò che la trastulla” (90). The voyage is
perilous, and the simple little soul that knows nothing, “l’anima
semplicetta che sa nulla” (Purg. 16.88), is distracted by the very desire
that also serves as necessary catalyst and propeller for its forward
motion: “Di picciol bene in pria sente sapore; / quivi s’inganna, e dietro
ad esso corre, / se guida o fren non torce suo amore” (First the soul
tastes the savor of a small good; / there it deceives itself and runs after, /
if guide or curb does not twist its love [91-93]). (The Undivine Comedy,
p. 104)

The issue of governance leads to the question: where are the institutions
— the laws, the rulers — that can guide us toward the towers of the true
city? The institutions once existed, indeed there were once (in a bold
and wonderful metaphor) “two suns” — Empire and Church — to guide
us along our two paths, the path of the world and the path of God:
“Soleva Roma, che ’l buon mondo feo, / due soli aver, che l’una e l’altra
strada / facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo” (For Rome, which made
the world good, used to have / two suns; and they made visible two
paths — / the world’s path and the pathway that is God’s [Purg. 16.106-
08]).

The metaphor of the two suns makes the Emperor and the Pope equal,
and is a refutation of the typical metaphor used by political theorists at
the time, in which the Pope is the sun and the Emperor is the moon,
deriving his light from the Pope. This is the metaphor that Dante
himself uses at the end of his political treatise, Monarchia.

Returning to Purgatorio 16, we now learn that the institutions of

earthly governance have been corrupted. How? By the pernicious
intermingling of secular and spiritual, of Empire and Church, a state of
affairs for which the Church is primarily to blame:

Dì oggimai che la Chiesa di Roma,

per confondere in sé due reggimenti,
cade nel fango e sé brutta e la soma. (Purg. 16.127-29)
You can conclude: the Church of Rome confounds
two powers in itself; into the filth,
it falls and fouls itself and its new burden.
Marco Lombardo’s long speech can be divided thus:
I. Free will (verses 67-84): Human behavior is not determined by the
stars. A transitional terzina (verses 82-84): the problem is therefore in
humans and may be understood as follows:

II.  1. Humans are created good (verses 85-93): the parable of the birth
of the soul and how it then goes astray (see Convivio 4.12).

     2. Humans need guidance in order not to go astray (verses 94-114):

guidance comes in both spiritual and temporal domains, through the
Church and the Emperor. Very important is the metaphor of the “two
suns” (“due soli” [107]) that used to light the world before the Church
and Empire became enmeshed and corrupted.

III. Marco concludes by offering the example of corruption in

Lombardia (verses 115-29): the cause is the Church.

The central canti of the Purgatorio respond to the following queries,

which will be tackled in canti 16-18:

1. To whom is the blame of the soul’s self-deception, as it

chases after the “picciol bene” of Purgatorio 16.91, to be
charged, to the stars or to itself?
2. And is there any guidance to help it on its way? (canto 16)
3. In what different forms can the soul’s self-deception
manifest itself, i.e., what forms can misdirected desire
assume? (canto 17)
4. What is the process whereby such self-deception occurs,
i.e., what is the process whereby the soul falls in love?
(canto 18)

Purgatorio 18: Love Is All There Is

[1] We are still on the terrace of wrath, which began in Purgatorio 15
with the examples of the virtue of meekness or gentleness (the virtue
that corresponds to the vice of wrath). Purgatorio 17 begins with a
dramatic two-pronged apostrophe. First Dante addresses the reader — a
dramatic event in itself, for this is the only address to the reader in the
exordium of a canto. Dante then addresses our imaginative faculty or
power of imagination. The poet asks the reader — you and me — if ever
we had the experience of being caught in a fog in the mountains, to
remember what it was like when the vapors begin to melt and the sun to
shine through (Purg. 16.1-12). Dante-poet is describing the dissipation
of the black fog that envelops the terrace of anger, as Dante-pilgrim and
Virgilio leave the third terrace behind.

[2] The evocative recall of a mountain experience — “Ricorditi, lettor, se

mai ne l’alpe (Remember, reader, if ever in the mountains [Purg. 17.1])
— is a leitmotif of Dante’s imagination. I’m thinking of his extraordinary
canzone Amor, da che convien pur ch’io mi doglia, likely written circa
1306 when the poet was in the mountainous Casentino area, whose
congedo begins: “O montanina mia canzon, tu, vai” (My mountain song,
go your way [Amor, da che convien, 76]).

The apostrophe to the imagination (Purg. 17.13-18) is a meditation on

the relationship between what we can imagine and our sense
perception: can we imagine only that which we experience through our
senses? This is an extraordinarily important point, especially for a poet
who records mystical experiences and who was simultaneously a
committed realist and a committed Aristotelian. The question posed to
the imaginativa — “chi move te, se ’l senso non ti porge?” (who moves
you when the senses do not spur you? [Purg. 17.16]) — is of enormous
relevance to understanding how Dante understood the imaginative act
that resulted in his own creation: this simultaneously mystical and
realistic poem, the Divina Commedia.

The examples of the vice of anger follow, experienced by the pilgrim as

ecstatic visions. Again, the way in which these visions are represented is
of great relevance to thinking through how Dante thinks about the
problems inherent in representing visionary experience. As discussed in
the Commento on Purgatorio 15, vis-à-vis the ecstatic visions that are
there called by the poet “non falsi errori” (nonfalse errors
[Purg. 15.117]), these ecstatic visions are the micro-vision analogues to
the macro-vision that is this poem.

Next is the final section of the terrace of anger: the encounter with the
angel, the recital of the Beatitude, the removal of the “P” from Dante’s
brow, and the climb to the next terrace. The travelers have reached the
top of the stairs but cannot proceed to the next terrace; the sun has set,
and the pilgrim is becalmed like a ship that has reached the shore. While
perforce unable to move on to the “new things that his eyes desire”
(“novitadi ond’e’ son vaghi” [Purg. 10.104]), the pilgrim slakes his
curiosity (his insatiable curiosity, like that of Kipling’s Elephant’s Child)
by asking Virgilio to tell him about what lies ahead: “quale offensione /
si purga qui nel giro dove semo?” (what offense is purged within the
circle we have reached? [Purg. 17.82-83]).

Although the pilgrim’s query is restricted to the next terrace, Virgilio

takes an expansive route in his reply, offering the purgatorial equivalent
of Inferno 11. There, while adjusting their olfactory senses to the stench
wafting out of the abyss, Virgilio explained the moral structure of Hell.
Here, while waiting for the sun to rise, Virgilio explains the moral
structure of Purgatory.

We learned in Inferno 11 that Dante bases the moral structure of Hell on

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. We also learned in Inferno 11 that the
circles of Hell prior to arriving at the city of Dis hold sinners guilty of
“incontinence” (“incontenenza” in Inf. 11.82 and 83): those who lacked
moderation and self-control, who desired immoderately and excessively.
Once we have read Inferno 11 we have a better understanding of
why Inferno 7 contains not just misers but misers and prodigals: Dante
is not, after all, following the system of the seven capital vices in Hell.
Dante is using Aristotle’s system, whereby, with respect to avarice, the
virtue (liberality) is the mean between the vices of avarice and
prodigality.
But what happens if we try to apply the idea of “incontenenza” to the
other sins of upper Hell? The presence of souls carrying within
themselves an “accidioso fummo” (slothful smoke [Inf. 7.123]),
submerged in the Styx below the wrathful, suggests the possibility of an
Aristotelian understanding of anger in Hell, with sloth (accidia) at one
extreme, anger (ira) at the other extreme, and righteous anger  as the
virtuous mean. We certainly see many signs of anger formulated
according to the doctrine of the mean in Purgatory. The idea of a
righteous versus a non-righteous wrath is embedded in Nino Visconti’s
“dritto zelo / che misuratamente in core avvampa” (righteous anger that
burns with misura in the heart [Purg. 8.83–84]). Even the Beatitude
that marks the departure from the terrace of wrath is formulated
according to the doctrine of the mean: “Beati / pacifici, che son sanz’ ira
mala!” (Beati pacifici, who are without sinful wrath [Purg. 17.68–69]).
The phrase “evil anger” — “ira mala” in Purgatorio 17.69 — with its
implied counterpart, “good anger” or “ira buona”, rewrites the
Beatitude. In this way Dante works to align the Bible with the more
Aristotelian idea of a measured wrath, as previously encountered in
Giudice Nin’s “dritto zelo” (zelo is always positive in the Commedia; see
also “buon zelo” in Purgatorio 29.23 and Paradiso 22.9).

With respect to the lustful, however, Inferno offers only one kind of lack

of misura; there is no insufficient love punished in the second circle of
Hell. For that idea we have to await Purgatorio. In the second realm,
based on the Christian system of the seven capital vices, Dante finds a
way of superimposing the Aristotelian idea of continence/incontinence
(in vernacular terms: misura and dismisura) through the idea of loving
with too much vigor and with too little.

Virgilio proceeds by distinctions, breaking down love in such a way as to

enable it to account for everything we do. I will follow Virgilio’s
distinctions and gloss them in the subsequent analysis. Here is an
overview of what we will be discussing in a chart that distills the logical
argument of Virgilio’s discourse:
First he distinguishes between natural love that cannot err, instilled in
us, which he puts aside for the purpose of his analysis, turning rather to
elective love, which can err in three possible ways. Elective love can
choose an evil object, it can love with too little vigor, or it can love with
too much vigor:

Lo naturale è sempre sanza errore,

ma l’altro puote errar per malo obietto
o per troppo o per poco di vigore. (Purg. 17.94-96)
The natural is always without error,
but mental love may choose an evil object
or err through too much or too little vigor.
Love for the wrong object will express itself in pride, envy, and anger:
these are the vices purged on the lower three terraces of Purgatory. Love
for the right object that is expressed with insufficient vigor is sloth
or accidia: this is the vice purged on the fourth terrace. Love for the
right object that is expressed with excessive vigor is purged on the top
three terraces; such love takes the form of avarice, gluttony, and lust.
The seven capital vices therefore are distorted forms of love.

In effect, this division is not tripartite, for there are two basic modalities
for loving in the wrong way. The first way, as we have seen, is to love the
wrong object. After eliminating the possibility that loving the wrong
object can involve the self or God, Dante settles on loving the wrong
object with respect to  one’s neighbor: “’l mal che s’ama è del prossimo”
(ill love must mean to wish one’s neighbor ill [Purg. 17.113]). In this
way, the category of loving the wrong object is not about the self in a
vacuum in Dante’s analysis. Rather, it paves the way for an analysis of
the self in its dealings with the other, and a meditation on the golden
rule, which is violated in Dante’s definitions of pride, envy, and anger.

If the first large category in Virgilio’s analysis is love of the wrong object,
the second category is love of the right object that expresses itself in the
wrong way: “o per troppo o per poco di vigore” (with too much or too
little vigor [Purg. 17.96]). In this way, we see that the two categories are
love of the wrong object and love of the right object incorrectly
expressed.

It is the second of these two categories that captures Dante’s

imagination more fully.

Another important corollary to this analysis is: all our actions stem

from love. Whatever we do, good or bad, is motivated by love:

Quinci comprender puoi ch’esser convene

amor sementa in voi d’ogne virtute
e d’ogne operazion che merta pene. (Purg. 19.103-05)
From this you see that—of necessity—
love is the seed in you of every virtue
and of all acts deserving punishment.
I have emphasized Aristotle in this commentary, because I am
fascinated by Dante’s attempts throughout the Commedia to suture the
non-binary system of the Greek philosopher onto the Christian binary
system, one that is fundamentally Augustinian. Augustine provides the
language of bonus amor versus malus amor: “a right will is good love
and a wrong will is bad love” (“recta itaque voluntas est bonus amor et
voluntas perversa malus amor”), he writes in City of God 14.7.

The idea that all our behavior is rooted in love takes us to Aquinas’s
treatise on the passions, which contains a precept frequently cited by
commentaries on Purgatorio 17: “Unde manifestum est quod omne
agens, quodcumque sit, agit quamcumque actionem ex aliquo amore”
(every agent whatsoever, therefore, performs every action out of love of
some kind [ST 1a2ae.28.6; Blackfriars 1967, vol. 19, pp. 106–07]). While
cited in commentaries on this canto, it seems to me that we do not take
Aquinas’s words seriously enough. If we are to take seriously Dante’s
insistence that all behavior is rooted in love then we have to consider
extending this challenging idea in a more systematic way to our reading
of Inferno. For instance, I tried to apply this principle to Inferno 10 in
“Medieval Multiculturalism and Dante’s Theology of Hell,” where I
discuss from this perspective the love of Farinata for Florence and of
Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti for his son Guido.

Purgatorio 18: Love and Free Will: The Lyric

Ethicized
Purgatorio 18 is a very important canto, particularly to those readers
who cherish Dante’s origins as a lyric poet, which Dante-poet here
evokes in loving detail. He not only evokes his lyric origins, but makes
clear once more — as he already had in Inferno 5 — that the lyric
tradition is ethically challenged in one absolutely fundamental tenet.
Love is not an irresistible force that removes our free will, as love poets
have claimed since time immemorial: think of Vergil’s Eclogue 10 with
its “omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori” (love conquers all things,
and we too succumb to love).

This view is the default view of the lyric tradition that Dante embraced
in his youth, and it is a view that he himself expressed. One famous
example of Dante’s expression of the deterministic position with respect
to love is the late sonnet Io sono stato con Amore insieme, written circa
1306. Here the poet declares that in the arena of Love, free will is never
free, and counsel is vain: “Però nel cerchio della sua palestra / libero
albitrio già mai non fu franco, /  sì che consiglio invan vi si balestra”
(Thus within his arena’s bounds free will was never free, so that counsel
looses its shafts in vain there [Io sono stato, 9-11; Foster-Boyde trans.).
The “consiglio” that in the sonnet Io sono stato is completely ineffective
will become in Purgatorio 18 the “power that gives counsel”, namely
free will: “innata v’è la virtù che consiglia” (innate in you is the power
that gives counsel).

Reiterating the lesson learned in the previous canto, whereby love is the
root cause of all human behavior, of our “operare” both good and evil,
Dante-pilgrim asks Virgilio to explain love:

Però ti prego, dolce padre caro,

che mi dimostri amore, a cui reduce
ogne buono operare e ’l suo contraro. (Purg. 18.13-15)
Therefore, I pray you, gentle father dear,
to teach me what love is: you have reduced
to love both each good and its opposite.
The question is “che mi dimostri amore” — teach me what love is — and
there is no better primer on this subject of love than the one provided by
the great tradition of the courtly love lyric, a tradition that is seriously
explored in the Commedia, and particularly in Purgatorio. The classical
Roman Virgilio therefore offers an explanation of love that is rooted in
the vernacular lyric tradition that began with the Occitan poets in the
South of France and moved to Italy via the Sicilian poets in the court of
Frederic II. This is a tradition that we first encounter in this
commentary in glossing Inferno 2 and Inferno 5.

Virgilio explains as follows. The soul is created quick to love — “creato

ad amar presto” (19) — and is susceptible to that pleasure — “piacere”
(21) — that awakens the capacity to love in it, moving the soul from
potency to act: “atto” (21). Activated, the soul responds to and “is mobile
with respect to” — “è mobile a” (20) — everything that pleases it: “ogne
cosa . . . che piace” (20):

L’animo, ch’è creato ad amar presto,

ad ogne cosa è mobile che piace,
tosto che dal piacere in atto è desto. (Purg. 18.19-21)
The soul, which is created quick to love,
responds to everything that pleases, just
as soon as beauty wakens it to act. 
In the next step of the process of “falling in love,” our cognitive faculty
(“apprensiva” [22]) takes the image (“intenzione” [23]) of a “true being”
— “esser verace” (22) — and unfolds that image within the soul: “dentro
a voi la spiega” (23). The “esser verace” is an real ontological being that
exists independent of our ability to know it, in the external world.
Effectively, our cognitive faculty “takes a picture” of a pleasurable object
and then posts that image on an internal memory board, recreating the
object internally:

Vostra apprensiva da esser verace

tragge intenzione, e dentro a voi la spiega,
sì che l’animo ad essa volger face (Purg. 18.22-24)
Your apprehension draws an image from
a real object and expands upon
that object until soul has turned toward it
The apprensiva acts in three distinct ways in the above terzina, and is
the subject of three distinct verbs: “tragge”, “spiega”, and “face”. The
three actions of the apprensiva are: 1) it draws an image  from a real
object; 2) it unfolds that image within the soul; 3) it causes the soul to
turn toward that image. This third action is expressed in the last verse of
the above terzina: “sì che l’animo ad essa volger face” (so that it causes
the soul to turn toward it [24]).

The verb volgere, “to turn”, will be picked up and amplified in the past
participle “rivolto”, “to have turned”, in the next terzina. Volgere is a
verb of conversion.
The next two steps in the behavior of the soul as it “falls in love” are very
precisely delineated, and involve 1) the turning of the soul, an action
already stipulated in verse 24, and now repeated and confirmed as
having occurred by the past participle “rivolto” of verse 25; and 2) the
bending or inclining of the soul. We know that the animo/soul of verse
24 has “turned” toward the image: “volger” in verse 24. That turning is a
prerequisite of such importance that the poet repeats it in the past tense
— “rivolto” (25) — before moving to the next step. If, having turned
toward the image of the pleasing object, the animo/soul should incline
toward it, then that inclination — “quel piegare” (26) — is love:

e se, rivolto, inver’ di lei si piega,

quel piegare è amor, quell’è natura
che per piacer di novo in voi si lega. (Purg. 18.25-27)
and if, so turned, the soul tends steadfastly,
then that propensity is love — it’s nature
that joins the soul in you, anew, through beauty.
Love is thus the soul’s inclination toward another being.

The soul has now, in this manner described above, been seized by love:
it is taken, “preso” in verse 31. The past
participle preso in Purgatorio 18.31 is a quintessentially lyric word,
used in the incipit of Dante’s sonnet Ciascun’alma presa e gentil
core and by Francesca da Rimini, echoing the lyric usage, in Inferno 5.
Seized by love, conquered by love, the soul enters on a quest of desire.
Desire, Dante tells us, is spiritual motion: “disire, / ch’è moto spiritale”
(Purg. 18.31-32). The soul sets off on its quest to possess the beloved,
and never rests until the beloved object gives it joy:

così l’animo preso entra in disire,

ch’è moto spiritale, e mai non posa
fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire. (Purg. 18.31-33)
so does the soul, when seized, move into longing,
a motion of the spirit, never resting
till the beloved thing has made it joyous.
This definition of desire as spiritual motion, as that which moves us
along the path of our life (the “cammin di nostra vita” in the first verse
of the Commedia), is the bedrock of the analysis of The Undivine
Comedy, as you can see from the opening section of Chapter 2,
culminating on page 26.

But the pilgrim has a rejoinder for his guide. Primed by the lesson he
learned from Marco Lombardo on the freedom of the will, he sees a
pitfall in the description of the soul in motion, pursuing the beloved
object until it gives the soul joy. If love is a natural response to
something that is proffered to us from outside, how can there be merit
in choosing a good or bad object of desire (Purg. 18.43-45)? In other
words, how can we be blamed if we choose to love a bad object?

Here we see the lyric tradition collide with ethics: what happens if we
incline in love toward something bad? Are we justified in saying that
love forced us (as Francesa says)? Or do we still have a choice, even in
what Dante — in the deterministic sonnet Io sono stato — calls the
“palestra d’amore”? Is love deterministic, as poets have averred forever?
Does determinism therefore exist? Is the fault really in our stars after
all?

The collision that Dante dramatizes in Purgatorio 18 is one that he lived

over the course of his youth as a poet, as he worked out the ethical
implications inherent in the courtly love lyric. The story of how he
moved from the answer that he gives to Dante da Maiano in the early
1280s, when he says that there is no way to oppose love, to the poet who
can dramatize the problem itself in Purgatorio 18 is the story that I tell
in my commentary to his lyric poetry. This is not an issue that Dante
ethicizes only now, in the Commedia, for the first time. Rather, Dante
here dramatizes the process of bringing an ethically-attuned
philosophical mind into confrontation with the lyric tradition, an
experience at the heart of his own intellectual formation.

The pilgrim’s question leads to a discussion of free will (see Marco

Lombardo’s discourse in Purgatorio 16). Virgilio uses the beautiful
metaphor of free will as that which guards the threshold of assent:
 Or perché a questa ogn’altra si raccoglia,
innata v’è la virtù che consiglia,
e de l’assenso de’ tener la soglia. (Purg. 18.61-63)
Now, that all other longings may conform
to this first will, there is in you, inborn,
the power that counsels, keeper of the threshold
of your assent.
As in the sonnet Per quella via che la Bellezza corre (circa 1292), free
will metaphorically stands guard at the doorway of the mansion of the
soul and prevents evil desire from entering. It follows that if evil desire
should cross the threshold and gain entry, our free will has failed to
deploy our free will to combat it.

This passage also leads to one of Virgilio’s confessions of his limitations

as guide, and to his conjuring of Beatrice as the one who can better
answer Dante’s query:

La nobile virtù Beatrice intende

per lo libero arbitrio, e però guarda
che l’abbi a mente, s’a parlar ten prende. (Purg. 18.73-75)
This noble power is what Beatrice
means by free will; therefore, remember it,
if she should ever speak of it to you.
The latter half of Purgatorio 18 is devoted to the accidiosi, those whose
sin is accidia: a kind of moral sloth, despair, lack of commitment to the
good. Remarkably, Dante compresses the whole fourth terrace into half
a canto. The baseline measure for a terrace is provided by the first
terrace, pride, which takes up three canti: Purgatorio 10-12.

The compressed narrative is a textual analogue to the “holy haste” that

motivates the once negligent and tardy souls on this terrace. No longer
slow and torpid in their pursuit of love of the good, they are so busy
running that they cannot stop to talk to Dante. The souls call out the
examples of zeal and of its opposite, moral torpor, as they run by. The
result is that there are no encounters with souls, no conversations that
require textual expenditure, and the poet “runs through” the terrace of
sloth.