Summary of the cantos
Purgatory is the second canticle of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, in 33 cantos of terza rima, and the first canto says in six lines what it is going to sing: the second realm, where the human spirit is purged and becomes worthy to rise to heaven. Dante leaves the dead air of the Inferno and arrives, at dawn, at the deserted shore of an island in the hemisphere opposite Jerusalem, at the foot of a mountain that is heavy at first and grows lighter with each step. To the one who receives him, an old guardian whom tradition identifies with Cato, Virgil explains that a request from heaven brought them, and that the pilgrim seeks liberty. The souls who arrive by boat sing the psalm of the exodus from Egypt, and the rule of the place appears at once: to purge is to take from oneself what keeps one from seeing God, and the first reproach one hears is for delay. The four cantos of this part run from the shore (I and II) to the foot of the mountain (III) and to the first wait of the Ante-Purgatory (IV), and the question that runs through them is how much lost time weighs.
Canto I: Cato guards the shore
Summary of the canto
The canticle opens by changing seas, and the poet, before reaching the old guardian of the shore and the reed that girds Dante, says at once what he is going to sing:
Analysis
e canterò di quel secondo regno / dove l’umano spirito si purga / e di salire al ciel diventa degno
, and I will sing of that second realm where the human spirit purges itself and becomes worthy to rise to heaven.
The line defines Purgatory by two actions of the spirit, purging itself and becoming worthy to rise, and not by a place or by a punishment as such. The change comes before the ascent and is its condition. How long it takes the poet does not say here, and the following cantos will measure it in the waiting of the souls.
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Canto II: The angel's boat and Casella's song
Summary of the canto
The sun has reached the horizon whose meridian covers Jerusalem with its highest point, and the night comes out of the Ganges with the Scales, so that the faces of Dawn, there on the shore, pass from white and rose to orange. Dante and Virgil are still at the water's edge, like someone thinking about the way: he goes with his heart and stays with his body. Across the sea comes a swift light, red like Mars in the vapors of morning, which grows larger and brighter and soon shows white wings on either side. Virgil recognizes the boatman and bids Dante kneel with hands joined: it is the angel of God, who scorns human means and wants no oar or sail, only his wings. The boat is so light that the water does not swallow it, and in it travel more than a hundred spirits, who sing together:
Analysis
Canto III: Manfred and infinite goodness
Summary of the canto
With the souls' flight, Dante presses close to his guide: how could he have run without him, and who would have led him up the mountain? Virgil seems vexed with himself, because the haste took the dignity from his step, and his conscience, worthy and clean, finds a small error bitter. The sun, which was shining behind them, is broken before Dante by his figure, and he, seeing only the dark earth ahead of him, turns back in fear of having been abandoned. The guide rebukes him for his distrust and explains that the body in which he cast a shadow is buried in Naples, brought from Brindisi, and that shades suffer heat and cold in bodies that the Virtue disposes without saying how. From this he draws the rule:
Analysis
Canto IV: The climb and Belacqua
Summary of the canto
The canto opens with a thesis about the soul: when a pleasure or a pain holds one of our faculties, the soul gathers itself into it and seems not to attend to any other, and this holds against the error of those who believe that one soul is kindled upon another within us. Dante says he has proved this in himself:
Analysis
Reading of the block of cantos
Analysis