What It Is
The last torment of the mountain is a fire. The edge of the ledge of lust gives off flames, and a wind blows from the ground upward and reflects and drives them back, so that the pilgrims must go along the free side, one at a time, with the fire on one side and the drop on the other. Within it they sing, and the spirits walk in the flame crying out examples of chastity. Then, at the end of the day, the fire becomes a wall: the angel of God appears, joyful, outside the flame, singing Beati mundo corde, and says that one may not go further unless the fire first bites. Dante stands like one placed in the grave, bends over his clasped hands and imagines with force human bodies already seen burning. Virgil tells him that there is torment there, not death, and tries to win him over by three ways. None works.
Where It Appears
The fire is presented in Canto XXV of Purgatory, with the hymn and the cry of the shades:
Appresso il fine ch’a quell’ inno fassi, / gridavano alto: ‘Virum non cognosco’; / indi ricominciavan l’inno bassi, At the end of the hymn that is sung, they cried aloud: I do not know a man; then they began the hymn again, softly.
In Canto XXVI of Purgatory the penalty of the lustful is the fire plus the shame, which adds to the burn. One of the shades explains:
Nostro peccato fu ermafrodito; / ma perché non servammo umana legge, / seguendo come bestie l’appetito, Our sin was hermaphroditic; but because we did not observe human law, following appetite like beasts.
The wall is in Canto XXVII of Purgatory. After three arguments of reason, Virgil turns to the only one he had not yet tried:
Or vedi, figlio: / tra Bëatrice e te è questo muro, Now see, son: between Beatrice and you stands this wall.
Inside the fire, Dante would throw himself into molten glass to cool himself, so immense is the flame without measure, and Virgil keeps talking of Beatrice. The way out is by a voice that sings on the other side, and the stair that follows is where the day ends and sleep comes. In the morning, Virgil promises:
Quel dolce pome che per tanti rami / cercando va la cura de’ mortali, / oggi porrà in pace le tue fami, That sweet fruit which the care of mortals goes seeking through so many branches will today bring peace to your hungers.
And he closes the lesson:
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 ingenuity and with art; now take your pleasure as your guide; you are outside the steep ways, you are outside the narrow ones.
What It Means
The fire is the last corrective of disordered will, and the wall is the threshold that separates Purgatory from Eden. The symbol repeats, in a small space, what the whole mountain repeats: the passage is obligatory, the fear is human, and what moves the pilgrim is not the argument, it is a name.
The text supports two readings of Virgil's irritation. One is that of someone who sees reason lose to affection, and the other is that of someone who had kept the last card. The effect is immediate and does not decide: Dante turns to the name of Beatrice as dying Pyramus does, and Virgil, with a smile like one who wins a child over with an apple, goes ahead into the fire. It falls to Virgil, who can no longer accompany him, to tell Dante that his pleasure is now his guide, and the fire is the point where the poem hands over that word.
Relationships
- Default themes: Love, Redemption, Fate and free will.
- Themes of the work: Love, Redemption, Fate and free will.
- Characters: Dante, Virgil, Beatrice, Statius.
- Neighboring symbols: Lethe and Eunoe, the waters on the other side of the fire, and the serpent of the vale of the princes, the other trial the poem places at the end of the day.