The Theme in the Work
Redemption is what Purgatory exists to accomplish, and the poem defines it in the first canto not by a place or a punishment, but by two actions of the spirit: to purge oneself and to become worthy of climbing. The change comes before the climb and is its condition.
e canterò di quel secondo regno / dove l’umano spirito si purga / e di salire al ciel diventa degno, and I shall sing of that second realm where the human spirit purges itself and becomes worthy of climbing to heaven.
The rest of the canticle shows how this change happens, and it does so in three registers. The first is that of delay. In Ante-Purgatory, whoever came late to repentance waits outside the gate, and the wait is measured in time: Belacqua postponed his good sighs until the end and now must watch heaven turn without him for as long as his delay lasted in life, unless the prayer of a heart in grace helps him; Manfred, excommunicated, waits thirty times the length of his presumption. The second register is that of body and will. On the mountain, sin is written on the forehead in seven P's and is erased at each ledge; the weight felt at the beginning eases as one climbs, until climbing is as light as descending in a boat, and Statius says that the proof that a soul is clean is only its will, which surprises it and is worth something to it.
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 trembling and the pious spirits across the mountain rendering praise to that Lord who soon sends them up.
The third register is that of forgetting and memory. At the summit, the Lethe takes away the memory of sin and the Eunoe restores the memory of every good deed, and the second works only if the first has been proven beforehand. The redemption of Dante passes through all three: he is washed and girded on the shore, marked with the P's at the gate and freed from them at each ledge, and he ends, after the confession to Beatrice, washed again and renewed like a new plant.
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, she 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 poem also deals with the redemption that remains half-done. Virgil guides as far as he can and withdraws without climbing, and what he says of Limbo is that he lost heaven not by doing, but by not doing. The canticle leaves, at each circling, the distance between what reason carries and what only grace completes, and the last verse resolves it on Dante's side: pure and ready to rise to the stars.
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.
Who Embodies It
Dante is redemption in progress, from beginning to end. Statius is redemption just completed, and the mountain trembles for it. Manfred is redemption obtained at the last instant, and Forese Donati is redemption shortened by the prayer of the living. Beatrice demands it and leads it, and Matelda carries it out in the waters.
Where It Appears
- Canto I: The poet defines Purgatory as the second realm in which the human spirit purges itself and becomes worthy of climbing to heaven, and Cato orders Dante girded with a rush and his face washed.
- Canto III: Manfred says that he surrendered weeping to the one who forgives gladly, and that the wait of one who dies in contumacy of the Church is thirty times the length of his presumption.
- Canto IV: Belacqua explains that heaven must turn without him for as long as his delay lasted in life, unless a prayer from a heart in grace helps him.
- Canto V: Those who died by force say that a light from heaven made them aware, and that they left life repentant and forgiving, reconciled with God.
- Canto IX: The angel of the gate writes seven P's on Dante's forehead and tells him to wash them off once he is inside, and reminds him that whoever looks back goes out again.
- Canto XII: Virgil explains that when the P's are all erased, as one already is, the feet will be overcome by good will, and Dante discovers with his fingers that six remain.
- Canto XXI: Statius says that after more than five hundred years he felt free the will toward a better threshold, and that is why the mountain trembled.
- Canto XXIII: Forese tells that the prayers and tears of Nella pulled him from the slope where one waits and freed him from the other circlings.
- Canto XXVII: Virgil makes Dante cross the wall of fire by the name of Beatrice and, at the top of the stairs, declares his disciple's free will upright and whole.
- Canto XXXI: Dante confesses to Beatrice and is submerged in the Lethe by Matelda, who embraces him by the head and makes him swallow the water.
- Canto XXXIII: Dante returns from the Eunoe renewed like new plants, pure and ready to rise to the stars.
Where the Readings Diverge
Northrop Frye cites Dante's letter to Can Grande, which reads the exodus from Egypt on four levels, and the redemption of the mountain corresponds to the third, the moral sense, the conversion of the soul that moves from the weight and misery of sin to the state of grace:
If we look at the letter alone, what is set before us is the departure of the children of Israel in the time of Moses; in the allegory, it is the redemption through Christ; in the moral sense, the conversion of the soul from the weight and misery of sin to the state of grace; and in the anagogical sense, the departure of the holy soul from this corrupt slavery to the freedom of eternal glory.(ch. 8, Dante's letter to Can Grande, cited by Frye)
The text sustains two readings of what, on the mountain, does the purging. On the first, it is punishment: the weight, the fire, the hunger, the bending, and Forese calls the same thing a consolation in the verse where he names it pain. On the second, it is will: Statius says that the proof of cleansing is only the will, and Virgil, at the summit, hands Dante free choice. The poem does not decide, and it leaves pain and will side by side, as Forese does, correcting his own word in the middle of the sentence.