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Purgatory · Cantos IX to XII

The gate and pride

ArtPrideRedemption

Summary of the cantos

These four cantos make the passage from the place where the souls wait to the place where they begin to work, and the first thing the poem shows of that passage is that it does not depend on who climbs. In IX, Dante sleeps, is carried to the gate by Lucia, and receives from an angel seven P's engraved on his forehead, one for each sin the mountain will wash away. The rest of the part attends to the first of them, pride, in three movements: in X, images of humility that are read on the stone like spoken words; in XI, the shades bent under blocks of rock, among them the illuminator Oderisi; in XII, the floor of the ledge, where the falls of the proud are figured and where one treads, head bowed, upon the memory of those who fell. The contrast with the Inferno organizes the reading: there the souls are what they did, here they are ceasing to be it, and that is why here they sing. The question the part leaves is why the cure of pride passes as much through the gaze, in the images and on the floor, as through the body, in the weight and the bending, and whether such a remedy is enough for someone who, like Dante himself, enters there already suspecting that he deserves it.

Canto IX: Lucia, the gate and the seven P's

PrideRedemption

Summary of the canto

Dante sleeps on the grass of the valley where night overtook him, and at the hour of dawn when the mind, less bound to the flesh, has almost divine visions, he dreams of an eagle with golden feathers that descends like a bolt and carries him up to the fire, where both burn, until the dream's heat wakes him. He wakes like Achilles when his mother, Thetis, carried him sleeping from the house of Chiron to Scyros: not knowing where he is, chilled with fright. The sun is already past two hours, the sea is before his eyes, and beside him there is only Virgil, who bids him not to fear: they have arrived at Purgatory, and the entrance is the opening in the wall that surrounds it.

Analysis

Virgil tells what sleep had hidden. At daybreak a woman came, who said her name was Lucy and asked to carry off the one who slept, to make his journey easier; Sordello and the other shades stayed in the valley, she took Dante in her arms and climbed, and the guide followed in her footsteps:

venne una donna, e disse: “I’ son Lucia; / lasciatemi pigliar costui che dorme; / sì l’agevolerò per la sua via”., a woman came and said: I am Lucy; let me take this one who sleeps, for so I will ease his way.

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Canto X: The speaking stone and the bowed proud

ArtPride

Summary of the canto

Inside the gate, Dante hears the gate shut behind him, and the climb through a crack in the stone brings him to a terrace of carved marble, where the examples of humility begin:

Analysis

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Canto XI: The Our Father, Omberto and Oderisi

ArtPrideForgiveness

Summary of the canto

The canto begins with the mouths of the souls, who walk under the weight and pray an Our Father in tercets: they ask that the name of God be praised by every creature, that the bread of each day be given to them, because without it he who strives most to advance goes back the most, and that he forgive as they forgive. One passage of the prayer states what the ledge teaches:

Analysis

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Canto XII: The floor of the proud and the first P that fades

PrideRedemption

Summary of the canto

Dante walks beside the soul of Oderisi, bowed as it is, so close that the poet compares them to two oxen under the same yoke:

Analysis

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Reading of the block of cantos

Analysis

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