What It Is
The mountain of Purgatory rises from an island on the hemisphere opposite that of Jerusalem, and the rush is the only plant the island allows on the edge of the shore. Both images open the canticle. The mountain is a road measured by weight and not by ground: it weighs at the beginning and lightens as one climbs, so that the end of the road comes when climbing is as light as descending a boat with the current. The rush is the plant that yields to the blows of the water and for that reason endures, while every other that puts out leaves or hardens is overcome. Cato orders Virgil to gird Dante with a smooth rush and to wash his face, and the pilgrim sees the plant spring back at once, the same, in the very place from which it was torn.
Where It Appears
The island and the rush appear in Canto I of Purgatory, when the old guardian gives the gesture and Virgil carries it out. Dante's astonishment is at the plant that does not run out:
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 marvel! for just as he chose the humble plant, so it sprang up again at once in the place from which he tore it.
The mountain is measured in Canto IV of Purgatory, in Virgil's answer to the question of how much is left:
Ed elli a me: «Questa montagna è tale, / che sempre al cominciar di sotto è grave; / e quant’ om più va sù, e men fa male. / Però, quand’ ella ti parrà soave / tanto, che sù andar ti fia leggero / com’ a seconda giù andar per nave, And he to me: This mountain is such that it is always hard at the beginning from below; and the more one goes up, the less it hurts. Therefore, when it seems so gentle to you that going up will be light for you, as going down a boat with the current.
The same canto says that the ascent requires flight and not only feet, desire as wing:
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 the feet alone; but here one must fly, I mean with the swift wings and the feathers of great desire, behind him who led me, who gave me hope and made a light.
In Canto XII of Purgatory the same law appears in Dante's body, which climbs light and discovers with his fingers that one of the seven P's is no longer on his forehead:
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 open fingers of my right hand I found only six of the letters that he who holds the keys had carved upon my temples; seeing this, my guide smiled.
In Canto XXI of Purgatory the mountain trembles when a soul feels itself cleansed and rises to climb, and Statius explains that the proof is only the will:
E io, che son giaciuto a questa doglia / cinquecent’ anni e più, pur mo sentii / libera volontà di miglior soglia: / però sentisti il tremoto e li pii / spiriti per lo monte render lode / a quel Segnor, che tosto sù li ’nvii, And I, who have lain in this pain five hundred years and more, only now felt free will of a better threshold: therefore you felt the earthquake and the pious spirits on the mountain giving praise to that Lord, who soon sends them up.
What It Means
The rush is humility, in the reading that tradition makes of it, and the text says so in the adjective, umile pianta, the humble plant. The mountain is the very process of purgation: the weight felt at the beginning is that of the vice, the relief is that of the vice that comes undone, and its limit, climbing without cost, is the whole will.
Two readings coexist for the gesture of the first canto. In the first, humility is the first condition of the ascent, and so Dante is girded before he sets foot on the mountain. In the second, the rush is the first sign that the mountain heals by what yields, not by what resists, and the lesson of lightness in Canto IV is the same on another scale. The text gives the fact, the rush that springs back, and leaves the explanation to the reader.
Relationships
- Default themes: Redemption, Pride.
- Themes of the work: Redemption, Pride.
- Characters: Dante, Virgil, Cato.
- Neighboring symbols: the seven P's on the forehead, which fade as the mountain lightens.