Who He Is
Dante is the pilgrim who, in the second canticle, leaves the dead air of the Inferno, reaches at dawn the deserted shore of an island and climbs the mountain of Purgatory with the body of flesh with which he was born. That body is what sets him apart from everyone: it is the only one that casts a shadow, the only one whose chest breathes when it speaks, and so every soul that sees him asks the same thing of him, that he remember them among the living so that prayers may shorten their wait. What he seeks is named by Virgil to the one who guards the shore: liberty. What the poem shows of him across the thirty-three cantos is a man who asks, who gets distracted, who is ashamed and who is learning to will. In the first canticle he learned to look at the sins of others; here the sin is also his own, and the mountain measures him by the weight he feels: it weighs at the start and eases as one climbs. Whoever writes, years later, and whoever walks in 1300 are the same person at two times, and the poem leaves this fold in view at each interruption in which the poet turns to the reader.
Trajectory
It all begins in Canto I of Purgatory. Dante comes from eyes and chest covered by the mist of Hell and, before any climbing, is washed and girded. Virgil makes him kneel before the old guardian and presents him by what he seeks, not by what he did:
Or ti piaccia gradir la sua venuta: / libertà va cercando, ch’è sì cara, / come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta, now may it please you to welcome his coming: he goes in search of liberty, which is so dear, as he knows who for its sake refuses life.
The old man orders him girded with a rush and his face washed, and Dante, who understood the art, holds out his cheeks covered with tears so that Virgil may return their color to him. What amazes him is the plant that is reborn the same in the very place from which it was uprooted:
Quivi mi cinse sì com’ altrui piacque: / oh maraviglia! ché qual elli scelse / l’umile pianta, cotal si rinacque / subitamente là onde l’avelse, there he girded me as it pleased another; oh wonder! for just as he chose the humble plant, so it was reborn at once in the very place from which he had uprooted it.
In Canto II of Purgatory the pilgrim learns, through his body, what the mountain has not yet told him. He embraces the shade of his friend Casella and closes his hands on air three times:
Ohi ombre vane, fuor che ne l’aspetto! / tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi, / e tante mi tornai con esse al petto, ah, empty shades, except in appearance! Three times I clasped my hands behind her, and as many times I brought them back to my chest.
What he asks of his friend is the consolation of one who came with a body and is distressed, and he asks with caution, not knowing whether the law of the place allows it:
E io: «Se nuova legge non ti toglie / memoria o uso a l’amoroso canto / che mi solea quetar tutte mie doglie, / di ciò ti piaccia consolare alquanto / l’anima mia, che, con la sua persona / venendo qui, è affannata tanto!», and I said: "If a new law does not take from you the memory or the practice of the love song that used to calm all my sorrows, may it please you to console for a while my soul, which, coming here with its own body, is so troubled!"
The song makes Dante, Virgil and the souls forget everything, and it is Cato who interrupts the festivity; the crowd flees and the two poets leave as quickly as it does. The same distraction returns in Canto IV of Purgatory, now as proof of a thesis: he was listening to Manfred and the sun had risen fifty degrees without his noticing, when they came to where those souls cried out together to us: "Here is what you ask."
Di ciò ebb’ io esperïenza vera, / udendo quello spirto e ammirando; / ché ben cinquanta gradi salito era / lo sole, e io non m’era accorto, quando / venimmo ove quell’ anime ad una / gridaro a noi: «Qui è vostro dimando», of this I had true experience, listening to that spirit and marveling; for the sun had climbed well over fifty degrees, and I had not noticed, when we came to where those souls, with one voice, cried out to us: "Here is what you ask."
Still in Canto IV of Purgatory the pilgrim discovers that the mountain is climbed by desire and not only by the feet, and that this climb costs feet and hands on the cracked stone:
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, one goes to Sanleo and descends to Noli, one climbs up Bismantova and Cacume with one's feet alone; but here one must fly; I mean with the swift wings and the feathers of great desire, behind that guide who gave me hope and made light.
In Canto III of Purgatory Dante fears having been abandoned when he sees only his own shadow and that of Virgil missing, and the guide rebukes him for distrusting. In Canto V of Purgatory he is rebuked for something else, dispersion: one thought sprouts upon another and pulls the aim away.
Vien dietro a me, e lascia dir le genti: / sta come torre ferma, che non crolla / già mai la cima per soffiar di venti, come after me, and let people talk: stand like a firm tower, whose top never sways for all the blowing of the winds.
Dante answers only with an "I go," blushing with the color that sometimes makes a man worthy of pardon. The souls of those who died by force ask him for remembrance, and he promises what he can. In Canto VI of Purgatory he is the one who asks Virgil the question that exposes a limit of the guide's reason, whether prayer bends the decree of heaven, and hears the answer and the referral to Beatrice. In Canto VIII of Purgatory, at nightfall, the pilgrim who had sought acquaintances among the condemned rejoices when he finds one outside Hell:
Ver’ me si fece, e io ver’ lui mi fei: / giudice Nin gentil, quanto mi piacque / quando ti vidi non esser tra ’ rei, he came toward me, and I toward him: gentle judge Nino, how it pleased me when I saw you were not among the guilty!
When Sordello announces the serpent, he presses himself, frozen, against his guide's back; and in the middle of the most rapid scene he confesses what he did not see:
Io non vidi, e però dicer non posso, / come mosser li astor celestïali; / ma vidi bene e l’uno e l’altro mosso, I did not see, and therefore I cannot say how the celestial hawks moved; but I saw well that both of them were moving.
Canto IX of Purgatory is the canto in which he does nothing. He sleeps, is carried by Lucia to the gate, and learns of it only from Virgil's mouth:
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 Lucia; let me take this one who sleeps; thus I will ease his way.
What falls to him is the gesture of the supplicant: he throws himself at the angel's feet, strikes his chest three times and receives seven P's on his forehead. The rule of the gate is for one already accepted, and it now applies to him:
Da Pier le tegno; e dissemi ch’i’ erri / anzi ad aprir ch’a tenerla serrata, / pur che la gente a’ piedi mi s’atterri». / Poi pinse l’uscio a la porta sacrata, / dicendo: «Intrate; ma facciovi accorti / che di fuor torna chi ’n dietro si guata»., I hold them from Peter; and he told me that I err more in opening than in keeping it shut, provided the people throw themselves at my feet. Then he pushed the leaf of the sacred gate, saying: "Enter; but I warn you that whoever looks back outside turns back."
In Canto X of Purgatory Dante hears the gate close behind him and measures what it would have meant to look back. On the first ledge his sin is in plain view: he walks bent beside Oderisi and, on hearing him speak of glory, passes judgment on himself:
Tuo vero dir m’incora / bona umiltà, e gran tumor m’appiani;, your true speech sets good humility in my heart, and levels in me a great swelling.
In Canto XII of Purgatory he is shown between two movements, the body that straightens and the thoughts that stay low, and it ends with the hand that discovers what sight did not see, the first P erased:
e con le dita de la destra scempie / trovai pur sei le lettere che ’ncise / quel da le chiavi a me sovra le tempie: / a che guardando, il mio duca sorrise., and with the fingers of my right hand spread I found only six of the letters that he who held the keys had carved on my temples; seeing this, my guide smiled.
On the ledge of envy what hurts him is the asymmetry of seeing without being seen, and he weighs in himself the two sins, saying that the punishment here will be short and that what frightens him is the one below:
«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»., my eyes, I said, will still be taken from me here, but for a short time, because the offense is small for having been turned with envy. Far greater is the fear by which my soul is held in suspense over the torment below, for already the burden of there weighs on me.
In Canto XIV of Purgatory he is silent about his own name and speaks of the river and of himself through geography. In Canto XV of Purgatory he is carried away in a vision and Virgil tells him what it was for:
Ciò che vedesti fu perché non scuse / d’aprir lo core a l’acque de la pace / che da l’etterno fonte son diffuse., what you saw was so that you have no excuse for opening your heart to the waters of peace that flow from the eternal fountain.
In Canto XVI of Purgatory, blinded by smoke, he follows the guide by the shoulder and directs to Marco Lombardo the double doubt that brought him. In Canto XVIII of Purgatory the doubt is that of a good disciple, and the objection he formulates contains the problem of the canticle:
ché, s’amore è di fuori a noi offerto / e l’anima non va con altro piede, / se dritta o torta va, non è suo merto, for, if love is offered to us from outside, and the soul goes with no other foot, walking straight or crooked is not its merit.
In Canto XIX of Purgatory it is his gaze that makes the dream woman, and it is Virgil who orders him to look at the lure that the eternal King turns:
Vedesti», disse, «quell’antica strega / che sola sovr’ a noi omai si piagne; / vedesti come l’uom da lei si slega. / Bastiti, e batti a terra le calcagne; / li occhi rivolgi al logoro che gira / lo rege etterno con le rote magne, you saw, he said, that ancient witch, whom alone now weeps over us above; you saw how a man frees himself from her. Be enough for you, and beat your heels on the ground; turn your eyes to the lure that the eternal King turns with the great wheels.
In Canto XX of Purgatory he stops his march to curse the she-wolf, the same beast of the first canto of Hell, and in Canto XXI of Purgatory he names the thirst that afflicts him through a scene from the Gospel:
La sete natural che mai non sazia / se non con l’acqua onde la femminetta / samaritana domandò la grazia, the natural thirst that is never satisfied except with the water for which the little Samaritan woman asked the grace.
In that canto the laugh he cannot hold back nearly reveals to Statius who the guide is: Virgil looks at him asking for silence, Statius asks why he laughed, and Dante, caught between the one who makes him be silent and the one who entreats him to speak, sighs until the master orders him to speak. Statius hears the name and bows at the feet of the master, who prevents him, because they are shades. In the following cantos he learns to write poetry by listening to the two converse, recognizes Forese by his voice when his face says nothing more, and answers Bonagiunta with the method of one who writes only what Love dictates within. To Forese's request that he show himself, he replies with an appeal to shared memory:
Se tu riduci a mente / qual fosti meco, e qual io teco fui, / ancor fia grave il memorar presente, if you bring to mind what you were with me, and what I was with you, the remembering will still be heavy in the present.
In Canto XXV of Purgatory it is a young stork that does not dare leave the nest, and the question he finally releases, how one grows thin where one does not eat, is what gives Statius the occasion to explain the generation of the soul.
Allor sicuramente apri’ la bocca / e cominciai: «Come si può far magro / là dove l’uopo di nodrir non tocca, then I boldly opened my mouth and began: "How can one grow thin where the need to nourish does not reach?"
The Canto XXVII of Purgatory is the canto of resistance. Before the wall of fire, Dante stands like one put into a grave, and none of the three arguments of reason moves him; the only word that moves him is the name of a person:
Or vedi, figlio: / tra Bëatrice e te è questo muro, now see, son: between Beatrice and you stands this wall.
After the dream of Leah and Rachel and the stairs that give him wings, Virgil withdraws with the speech in which he calls him free, upright and whole:
Tratto t’ho qui con ingegno e con arte; / lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce; / fuor se’ de l’erte vie, fuor se’ de l’arte, I have brought you here with wit and with art; now take your pleasure for your guide; you are out of the steep paths, you are out of the narrows.
In Canto XXVIII of Purgatory Dante speaks with Matelda as with a stranger, comparing her to Proserpina; in Canto XXIX of Purgatory he complains about Eve, invokes the Muses for what he suffered for them, and is rebuked for looking only at the lights:
che là dove ubidia la terra e ’l cielo, / femmina, sola e pur testé formata, / non sofferse di star sotto alcun velo, for there, where earth and heaven obeyed, a woman, alone and only just formed, did not endure to stand under any veil.
In Canto XXX of Purgatory the power of the old love seizes him before his eyes recognize the woman, and he turns to his master to say so and finds the place empty:
sanza de li occhi aver più conoscenza, / per occulta virtù che da lei mosse, / d’antico amor sentì la gran potenza, without his eyes having any more knowledge, through a hidden virtue that moved from her, he felt the great power of the old love.
Ma Virgilio n’avea lasciati scemi / di sé, Virgilio dolcissimo patre, / Virgilio a cui per mia salute die’mi, but Virgil had left us bereft of himself, Virgil my sweetest father, Virgil to whom I gave myself for my salvation.
From then on the pilgrim is guilty. He hears from Beatrice that he fell so deep that all that was left to him was to see the lost people, and he answers, with voice and lips with difficulty, with a single sentence:
Le presenti cose / col falso lor piacer volser miei passi, / tosto che ’l vostro viso si nascose, present things, with their false pleasure, turned my steps as soon as your face was hidden.
Repentance is described as a wound that hurts most where love was greatest. Dante falls defeated, is gathered up by Matelda and submerged in the Lethe.
Di penter sì mi punse ivi l’ortica, / che di tutte altre cose qual mi torse / più nel suo amor, più mi si fé nemica, repentance pricked me there so sharply that, of all the other things that turned me most toward its love, the more it became my enemy.
In Canto XXXII of Purgatory, on waking, the first question is about the absent one, and the first order he receives is to write:
E tutto in dubbio dissi: «Ov’ è Beatrice?». / Ond’ ella: «Vedi lei sotto la fronda / nova sedere in su la sua radice, and all in doubt I said: "Where is Beatrice?" Then she: "See her under the new foliage, seated on its root."
Qui sarai tu poco tempo silvano; / e sarai meco sanza fine cive / di quella Roma onde Cristo è romano. / Però, in pro del mondo che mal vive, / al carro tieni or li occhi, e quel che vedi, / ritornato di là, fa che tu scrive, here you will be a silvan for a short time, and with me you will be without end a citizen of that Rome of which Christ is Roman. Therefore, for the good of the world that lives badly, keep your eyes now on the chariot, and what you see, once returned there, take care to write.
In Canto XXXIII of Purgatory Dante tries to defend himself and hears that forgetting itself proves the fault. After the bath in the Eunoe, the poet closes the canticle with him renewed:
E se tu ricordar non te ne puoi», / sorridendo rispuose, «or ti rammenta / come bevesti di Letè ancoi; / e se dal fummo foco s’argomenta, / cotesta oblivïon chiaro conchiude / colpa ne la tua voglia altrove attenta, and if you cannot remember it, he answered smiling, now recall how today you drank of Lethe; and if fire is inferred from smoke, that forgetting clearly concludes fault in your will, which was attentive elsewhere.
The last verse in the original, which closes the canticle on the same word with which the other two close:
puro e disposto a salire a le stelle., pure and ready to rise to the stars.
Themes Embodied
Dante embodies Redemption as a change of will. The first canto defines the canticle by two actions of the spirit, to purge oneself and to become worthy of climbing, and the pilgrim fulfills them in layers: the washed face and the rush (Canto I), the seven P's that are erased one by one (Canto IX, Canto XII), the will that Virgil gives as guide (Canto XXVII), the confession and the Lethe (Canto XXXI), and the Eunoe (Canto XXXIII). Pride is the sin he measures in himself on the first ledge, and misdirected desire is what Beatrice charges him with: present things with their false pleasure. Art belongs to the one who writes, and the order to write what he saw is the pilgrim's last charge.
The Dante of this Purgatory errs little and learns slowly: he gets distracted, hesitates, resists, falls. The poem does not spare him, and it does not humiliate him. Each failure appears at the moment the mountain can teach something through it: the distraction of Canto II that Cato cuts short, the fear of Canto III that Virgil undoes, the resistance of Canto XXVII that Beatrice overcomes. The question of who leads whom remains: Virgil takes him to the fire, Beatrice's name makes him enter, and Canto XXXII puts him back in the service of the one who had him write.
Divergent Readings
The text sustains two readings of the pilgrim. On the first, he is chosen for merit and love, and Beatrice saves him because she loves him. On the second, he is taken because he fell: Beatrice says so in Canto XXX, and the journey is the last resort. The poem does not decide between the two, and the confession of Canto XXXI fits within them.
Relationships
- Virgil: the guide who leads him from the shore to the fire and withdraws with the word that he is free, upright and whole (Canto XXVII of Purgatory).
- Beatrice: the woman who accuses him, hears him and has him write, in Cantos XXX to XXXIII.
- Statius: the poet who joins the group in Canto XXI and from whom Dante learns the explanation of the soul.
- Matelda: the one who gathers him up and submerges him after the confession.
- Cato: the guardian of the shore, who approves him and interrupts Casella's song.
- Forese Donati: the friend of youth whom Dante recognizes only by his voice.