The Theme in the Work
Art in Purgatory is three things at once: remedy, vanity and debt. It is a remedy on the first ledge, where the marble wall teaches humility through carved images made with such art that the poet calls them visible speech, and the floor repeats the lesson in reverse, with the falls of the proud carved like tombstones.
Colui che mai non vide cosa nova / produsse esto visibile parlare, / novello a noi perché qui non si trova., he who never saw anything new produced this visible speech, new to us because it is not found here.
It is vanity in the mouth of Oderisi, the miniaturist, who confesses that while alive he would not have been so courteous to Franco Bolognese, out of his great desire for excellence, and that the glory of human powers lasts little, like the green at the top of a tree, and one Giotto is enough to darken one Cimabue.
Oh vana gloria de l’umane posse! / com’ poco verde in su la cima dura, / se non è giunta da l’etati grosse! / Credette Cimabue ne la pittura / tener lo campo, e ora ha Giotto il grido, / sì che la fama di colui è scura., oh empty glory of human powers! how little the green lasts at the top, unless it is followed by coarse ages! Cimabue believed he held the field in painting, and now Giotto has the cry, so that the fame of the former is dimmed.
And it is debt among poets, in the longest scenes of the canticle. Statius confesses that the Aeneid was mother and nurse to his poetry, and that he would accept one more sun of punishment for having lived in the time of Virgil:
de l’Eneïda dico, la qual mamma / fummi, e fummi nutrice, poetando: / sanz’ essa non fermai peso di dramma. / E per esser vivuto di là quando / visse Virgilio, assentirei un sole / più che non deggio al mio uscir di bando, I speak of the Aeneid, which was mother to me and nurse to me in my poetry: without it I would not have weighed a dram. And for having lived there when Virgil lived, I would accept one more sun than I owe for my leaving of exile.
And Virgil, without knowing it, was the one who led him to faith, with the image of one who carries the light behind and gains nothing from it:
Facesti come quei che va di notte, / che porta il lume dietro e sé non giova, / ma dopo sé fa le persone dotte, / quando dicesti: ‘Secol si rinova; / torna giustizia e primo tempo umano, / e progenïe scende da ciel nova, you did as one who goes at night, who carries the lamp behind and does not benefit himself, but makes people learned after him, when you said: "The age is renewed; justice returns and the first human time, and a new progeny descends from heaven."
The same debt runs through the line of the poets of the vernacular. Bonagiunta of Lucca sees, in Dante's reply, the knot that held him back, and the expression that names an entire movement comes from the mouth of someone who was left outside it:
On the ledge of gluttony, the poet Bonagiunta asks Dante whether he is the author of "Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore," and hears in reply the definition of a method: to write exactly what love dictates within, without the artifice of a school. Dante answersI’ mi son un che, quando / Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo / ch’e’ ditta dentro vo significando, I am one who, when Love inspires me, takes note, and in the manner in which he dictates within I go on signifying. It is the other who names the school: Bonagiunta recognizes, in the reply, the knot that held him,O frate, issa vegg’ io [...] il nodo / che ’l Notaro e Guittone e me ritenne / di qua dal dolce stil novo ch’i’ odo!, O brother, now I see [...] the knot that held the Notary, Guittone and me back on this side of the sweet new style I hear of! The expression that names a whole movement comes from the mouth of someone who stayed outside it.
Guinizelli passes the title on and says that the other was the better craftsman of the mother tongue, and explains why those who contest it are mistaken:
fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno. / Versi d’amore e prose di romanzi / soverchiò tutti; e lascia dir li stolti / che quel di Lemosì credon ch’avanzi, he was the better craftsman of the mother tongue. In verses of love and prose of romances he surpassed them all; and let the fools say what the one from Limoges thinks he surpasses.
A voce più ch’al ver drizzan li volti, / e così ferman sua oppinïone / prima ch’arte o ragion per lor s’ascolti, they turn their faces to fame more than to truth, and so they fix their opinion before art or reason is heard by them.
The theme also has a face of craft, that of the poet who speaks of himself. Before the most difficult vision, Dante invokes the Muses on the credit of having suffered for them hunger, cold and vigils:
O sacrosante Vergini, se fami, / freddi o vigilie mai per voi soffersi, / cagion mi sprona ch’io mercé vi chiami, O sacrosanct Virgins, if ever I suffered hunger, cold or vigils for you, the cause spurs me to call on you for mercy.
In Canto XXXII he confesses that he would not know how to paint sleep, like the painter who paints from a model, and at the end of the canticle he says that the brake of art does not let him go further:
ma perché piene son tutte le carte / ordite a questa cantica seconda, / non mi lascia più ir lo fren de l’arte, but because all the pages woven for this second canticle are full, the brake of art no longer lets me go on.
Who Embodies It
The poets of fire are art as filiation. Statius is the art that saves and hides itself. Virgil is the art that guides without seeing the light. Oderisi is its vanity, and Dante is the one who writes it.
Where It Appears
- Canto II: Dante asks Casella for the love song that used to ease his sorrows, with the caution of one who does not know whether the law of the place allows it, and the festivity of the poets is interrupted by Cato.
- Canto X: The poet describes the marble wall on which the Annunciation, David's dance and Trajan's justice can be read as visible speech.
- Canto XI: Oderisi says that the honor of the art of illumination now belongs entirely to Franco Bolognese, and that the cry of fame changes its name as the wind changes its direction.
- Canto XXI: Statius tells that the Aeneid was mother and nurse to his poetry, and that he would give one more sun of punishment for having lived in the time of Virgil.
- Canto XXII: Statius tells Virgil that the light he carried behind made him a poet and a Christian, and Virgil answers where the Latin poets dwell.
- Canto XXIV: Bonagiunta recognizes, in Dante's reply, the knot that kept him short of the sweet new style, and Dante says that he writes what Love dictates within.
- Canto XXVI: Guinizelli says that the other poet was the better craftsman of the mother tongue, and Arnaut answers in Provençal.
- Canto XXIX: The poet invokes the Muses for what he suffered for them and asks for the chorus of Urania to put into verse what is hard to think.
- Canto XXXII: Dante confesses that he does not know how to paint how the eyes of Argus fell asleep, and leaves to whoever wishes the task of feigning sleep well.
- Canto XXXIII: The poet closes the canticle by saying that all the pages ordered to it are full and that the brake of art does not let him go further.
Where the Readings Diverge
Terza rima works as a protection against alteration of the poem: cutting or changing one verse would break the linked rhyme of the whole sequence.
A critical reading sees in Dante's political passion something close to an obsession, and places in the lyricism what, despite it, sustains the poem.
There are two readings of Canto XI. On the first, Oderisi speaks only of the painters and poets of his time, and the lesson that fame is a breath of wind holds for all. On the second, the reference to the two Guidos and to whoever may already have been born to take the glory of both is an allusion by the poem to its own author, which the common reading points to and the text does not name.