Purgatorio (3 page)

(3)  
Purgatory.

The mountain’s seven terraces reflect the tradition of the seven capital vices, also referred to as “mortal sins,” or “deadly sins.”
¹¹
Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice (and, in at least one case, Prodigality), Gluttony, Lust: these supply the seven terraces with their crowds. All terraces include the following features, mainly in the same order, as though part of a liturgical ritual for this churchlike place: (1) description of the physical aspect of the terrace, (2) exemplars of the virtue that counters the sin repented here, (3) description of the penitents, (4) recitation of their sins by particular penitents, (5) exemplars of the vice, (6) appearance to Dante of the angel representing the countering virtue. However, not only are there some subtle shifts and changes in the ordering of these elements, but there seems to be an individuated program of involvement for the protagonist. On four of the terraces he is untouched by the physical elements of penitence: he observes the envious, the slothful, the avaricious, and the gluttons without feeling their pain directly. However, among the prideful he himself bends down alongside them, thereby experiencing some of their condition; the smoke of Wrath stings his eyes, not only those of the penitents; and the flames of Lust burn him. Are we to understand that these sins are significantly his? Perhaps so. He is explicit about his pridefulness while claiming the merest touch of envious behavior (
Purg
. XIII.133–138), but those two other details—the blinding smoke and the afflicting flames—may associate him with Wrath and Lust, as what we know of his life and personality would lead us to believe.

Dante uses exemplary figures to represent both the virtue that directly opposes the vice repented and, ultimately, as
exempla
of the vice itself, the second a technique we are familiar with from
Inferno
. Thus the penitents are at first encouraged to love virtue and finally forced to confront the shame of their former vice. As Wenzel
¹²
and Delcorno
¹³
have established, Dante is heavily indebted to the writings of Peraldus on exemplary figures drawn from biblical texts.
¹⁴
This middle part of the canticle is the locus of the poem most dedicated to the use of exemplification, a technique of representation associated with ecclesiastical instruction and broadened by Dante to include classical literature and art.

The experience of purgation centers on a ritual performance of the final act of the sacrament of confession,
¹⁵
the giving of satisfaction on the part of the penitent sinner, the
satisfactio operis
(satisfaction by works) that alone may lead to absolution. It is of course true that each sinner who is saved has already, in one way or another, made amends to God for his former sinfulness. Salvation is certainly to be understood as impossible without that. Yet it would seem that Dante considered some amendment as having been tentative (thus accounting for such things as delays at Ostia and stays in ante-purgatory). In any case, the only souls who would seem to be exempt from atonement now are those who were utterly untouched by a given sin and thus do not need to purge themselves on that particular terrace. An individual’s presence in penitence on any terrace indicates that person’s need to proceed in an act of self-reproach, reflecting the contrition and confession that marked his or her freedom from sin on earth, as well as the words spoken to God’s priest in promise of good works to come. And it seems to be only this last element that requires urgent attention here on the seven-storied mountain. Perhaps one way to think of this is that the offer of satisfaction, at least for some sinners, was more of a promise than an accomplishment, and that, for such as them, purgatory offers the opportunity for the fulfillment of that promise.

Unlike the denizens of
Inferno
and
Paradiso
, those in
Purgatorio
exist in real, present time. Inhabitants of the other two
cantiche
are in their eternal condition with one major exception: in both realms souls will receive their bodies to wear for eternity only at the Last Judgment. They are aware of time, but do not act in it (and those in hell are denied knowledge of the present—see
Inf.
X.97–108). All in ante-purgatory or purgatory are timebound
¹⁶
until such time as their penance is completed. This accounts for the leisurely sense—they are passing the time—we find in the characters in ante-purgatory, awaiting their turn for expiation, as well as for the intense and concentrated effort we observe in all those who are in active purgation higher up the mountain, pressing against the limits of time in their urgency.

At the core of this theological epic lies insistence on the free will’s directing itself to the proper form of love. That will be the subject of the speeches of Marco the Lombard and of Virgil in the sixteenth and seventeenth cantos of this
cantica
. Our natural goodness, mirrored in our loving natures, is easily diverted from praiseworthy objects of affection. It is here in purgatory that the free will rediscovers its better affections.

(4)  
The Earthly Paradise.

Once Dante’s will “is free, upright, and sound” (
Purg
. XXVII.140), he is allowed to enter the sacred space “chosen for mankind as its nest” (
Purg
. XXVIII.78). The long process that accounts for the correction (initiated in the opening cantos of
Inferno
) and perfection of his will (announced by Virgil in the closing lines of the previous canto) is finally complete. The rest of the poem will have, at its dramatic center, the correction and perfection of his intellect,
¹⁷
overseen by Beatrice and finally by St. Bernard. How much his intellect is in need of correction is immediately made clear by his failure to understand the kind of affection offered by Matelda, who, as a modern Leah, represents the active life of virtue, but is misconstrued by the protagonist, who frames her offer of brotherly love in inappropriately carnal terms.

The climax of
Purgatorio
and, for many readers, of the entire poem occurs in the thirtieth canto when Beatrice, whose presence has been anticipated from the second canto of
Inferno
onward, finally appears. This scene seems to have been prepared as a kind of prothalamium, the preparation for a ceremony of marriage. But instead of preceding a wedding, it heralds a dressing down of the harshest kind. And now it is the living Dante’s turn to do some urgent ritual purging of his sins, involving the rite of confession, contrition, and satisfaction. It is only then, having owned up to his sins against Beatrice (the nature of these remains less than clear to most readers, but they seem to have involved both sexual and intellectual transgressions), that he is allowed to proceed, under the guidance of the mysterious Matelda, toward his ritual absolution, which is accomplished in the final lines of the final canto of the poem called
Purgatory
. In this place where “the root of humankind was innocent” (
Purg
. XXVIII.142), Dante has regained his own lost innocence and is only now prepared to ascend to the stars.

(5)  
Measurement of Time in Purgatorio.

The opening of this three-part poem shows us its protagonist, lost in sin, coming back to his senses on a Thursday night in late March or early April of the year 1300. He began his descent, led by Virgil, twenty-four hours later, on Friday evening. The journey to the depths of
Inferno
takes exactly twenty-four hours, while the ascent back to the surface of the earth requires still another full day. The travelers thus arrive at the shore of purgatory at 6
PM
on Sunday, Jerusalem time, or at 6
AM
as time is reckoned at the antipodes. Telling the time in the heavenly regions of
Paradiso
is a less certain enterprise. The poet and his new guide, Beatrice, depart from the earthly paradise at noon of the following Wednesday and seem to spend, as we reckon time on earth, some thirty hours traversing the heavens, with the implicit return to this world occurring roughly one week after the scene in the dark wood with which this theological epic began. Time in purgatory, on the other hand, is frequently measured with elaborate precision.

In the fourteenth century the day was divided into readily remembered large periods, which may seem arbitrary to modern readers equipped with chronometers that are precise to the second. Dawn arrives at 6
AM
; “tierce” is the third hour of the day, or 9
AM
; the “sixth hour” is noon; “nones,” the ninth hour, falls at 3
PM
; the hour of Vespers arrives with the declining sun, between 3
PM
and 6
PM
(depending on the season); and evening arrives at 6
PM
. Most of Dante’s time indications are based on these convenient units.

The opening scene is played against the backdrop of the rising sun of Easter Sunday. In Canto III the early hours of morning brighten the landscape as the poets begin to climb. The meeting with Manfred is over by about 9
AM
(
Purg
. III.15–16) and that with Belacqua at noon (IV.137–139). Virgil’s conversation with Sordello concludes as the sun is moving downward, i.e., after 3
PM
(VII.43). It is sunset in the Valley of the Princes (VIII.1–3) and 8:30
PM
when Dante falls asleep. His dream occurs just before the dawn of Monday (IX.13) and he awakens just after 8
AM
(IX.44). He and Virgil set out upon the first terrace a little after 9
AM
(X.14–15) and reach the stairway to the second at noon (XII.81). They reach the third terrace at 3
PM
(XV.1–6) and leave it just after nightfall (XVII.70–72). Their stay on the fourth terrace (Sloth) includes time for Virgil’s lengthy discourse on love, which concludes at midnight (XVIII.76–78). Dante’s second night’s sleep and his second dream also occur on this terrace, the latter just before Tuesday’s dawn (XIX.1–6). The dream is ended in the light of the sun, in which the two poets make their way toward the fifth terrace (XIX.38–39), where they stay, witnesses to Statius’s completion of his purgation, until after ten o’clock (XXII.115–120). Since they reach the stairway to the seventh terrace at 2
PM
(XXV.1–3), we realize that they have spent four hours among the penitents of Gluttony. Their stay on the seventh and final terrace (Lust) lasts approximately four hours as well, since the sun is setting (XXVII.61–68) as they leave it. They spend their final night in purgatory on the steps between the final terrace and the garden of Eden. It is on these steps that Dante has his third dream, again just before dawn, on Wednesday morning; he awakens with the dawn (XXVII.109). It is noon (XXXIII.103–105) as the description of the events observed in the garden of Eden comes to a close.

Robert Hollander
            
Tortola,
2
February
2002

1.
Jacques Le Goff,
The Birth of Purgatory
, tr. A. Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984 [1981]).

2.
See citations and discussion in the introduction to
Purgatorio
by Nicola Fosca in the commentary to the
Commedia
that he is currently preparing.

3.
Pio Rajna,
La materia e la forma della “Divina Commedia”: I mondi oltraterreni nelle letterature classiche e nelle medievali
, ed. Claudia Di Fonzo (Florence: Le Lettere, 1998 [1874]).

4.
Alison Morgan,
Dante and the Medieval Other World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 144–65. Morgan’s book also contains two useful appendices: a “Chronological table of principal representations of the other world,” pp. 196–200, and “Written representations of the other world—summaries with background and bibliographical information,” pp. 201–33.

5.
Le Goff, pp. 163–65.

6.
Ibid., pp. 334–55.

7.
Paolo Cherchi, “Gervase of Tillbury and the Birth of Purgatory,”
Medioevo romanzo
14 (1989): 97–110.

8.
Francesco D’Ovidio,
Nuovi studii danteschi: Il “Purgatorio” e il suo preludio
(Milan: Hoepli, 1906), pp. 404–12.

9.
See
Purg
. XI.74–78 and note.

10.
See
Par
. III.70–85.

11.
See Morton W. Bloomfield,
The Seven Deadly Sins
(East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1952).

12.
Siegfried Wenzel, “Dante’s Rationale for the Seven Deadly Sins (
Purgatorio
XVII),”
Modern Language Review
60 (1965): 529–33.

13.
Carlo Delcorno,
Exemplum e letteratura: Tra Medioevo e Rinascimento
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989).

14.
See note to
Purg
. XII.13–15.

15.
See note to
Purg
. IX.94–102.

16.
See Francis Fergusson,
Dante’s Drama of the Mind
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 110–11.

17.
See Robert Hollander, “The Invocations of the
Commedia
,”
Yearbook of Italian Studies
3 (1976): 235–40.

Introduction

I. The setting at the shore