Purgatorio (79 page)

111.
   Dante’s soul, wearied by his bodily weight, remembers his condition at the beginning of
Inferno
(I.22): in simile, his mind, in stress, is like the breath of a man escaping from death by drowning,
affannata
(laboring). If he seems better off now than he was then, he is still in considerable difficulty.
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112.
   Casella’s song is Dante’s song, the second
canzone
found in
Convivio
. It was composed in celebration of Lady Philosophy. That sounds innocent or even positive. On the other hand, she is, early on in
Convivio
, specifically designated as having replaced Beatrice in Dante’s affections. Within the confines of
Convivio
this is not problematic. In the
Commedia
, in which Beatrice is the moving force for so much, it is.

For discussions of the possibility that Casella actually set this
canzone
of Dante see Marti (Mart.1962.1), pp. 81–88, and Bisogni (Biso.1971.1).
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113–114.
   The sweetness of the song is memorable even now, says the poet. One can see why most readers of this scene take these words as confirming the poet’s approval of a positive feeling. But see
Inferno
XXVI.19–24, where the poet “grieves again” as he “grieved then” for the lost Ulysses. Both Ulysses and his own Convivial ode are marked as temptations the strength of which are both still vividly felt by him, even though he now knows better than to accede to them.
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118–121.
   Cato’s return was not in the program, as is clear from verse 106 in the previous canto. He evidently believed that this specially privileged Christian visitor to purgatory would know how to behave better than he does. But now he has not only backslid himself, but is involving the whole new contingent of the saved into behaving similarly. Cato sounds exactly like St. Paul, urging them all to “put off the old man and put on the new” (Ephesians 4:22; Colossians 3:9). For the closeness of Dante’s thought here to Colossians 2 and 3 see Holl.1975.1, p. 357. See also Hollander (Holl.1990.1), pp. 40–41: “And Cato’s identity here is not only Pauline, for the scene is clearly reminiscent of Moses’s discovery of the falsely worshipping Hebrews before that golden calf (Exodus 32:18–19—see Kaske [Kask.1971.1]) which the text of Psalm 113 had already set before the minds of all who listened to what their own lips were singing only moments before. Echoing God’s command and Moses’s compliance (‘neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount’—Exodus 34:3), Cato sends the music-lovers flying.” For the Pauline references see also Rigo (Rigo.1994.1), pp. 93–94.
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123.
   Those who argue that Cato is being overzealous should pay closer attention to this strong charge he makes against the negligent spirits. Whatever the “slough”
(scoglio)
signifies, their adherence to it prevents their seeing God. In the world of the
Commedia
that can never be a slight problem.
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124–132.
   This third and final simile of the canto likens the new pilgrims to doves (for the three programmatic references to these birds in the
Commedia
, here and in
Inf.
V.82 and
Par.
XXV.19, see Shoaf [Shoa.1975.1]). See Hollander (Holl.1990.1), p. 41: “Their saved souls hunger on high, but their appetitive natures are not yet wrung dry of earthly longing. Thus they are careless in their ingestion (see Matthew 13:36–43 for the parable of the wheat and the tares alluded to in their failure to make a decision between ‘biado o loglio’). If music be the food of love, there is also a heavenly music. We and the pilgrims know that this is true. They have sung it themselves in this very place.”
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133.
   The final verse, in its understated brevity, conveys a feeling for the two travelers’ guilty acceptance of Cato’s command and their hasty departure in shame.

“The second canto of the
Purgatorio
dramatizes the need for interpretation by presenting two songs to its audience, the arriving pilgrims. It is clear that we comprise a still more crucial audience. Most of us have chosen to follow the lead of the one whom we take to be our leader, Dante himself. (His several intellectually or morally flawed responses as he moved through Inferno have not, apparently, been cogent enough sign of his frequent inadequacy as guide to our reactions.) He, lost in the beauty of his own old song, either fails to understand or else forgets the message of the new song which he has heard first, and which should have served as a rein on his enthusiasm. It is as old as Exodus and as new as the dawn which brings it, this Easter Sunday morning on the shore of the mountain” (Holl.1990.1, p. 41).
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1–6.
   The two “companions” are running, but not as quickly as the souls who precede them, while Virgil considers his previous inappropriate behavior and Dante his own (as we shall learn in vv. 7–9, 12–13). The poet, as though apologizing for what he is putting Virgil through in these scenes, reminds the reader of his enduring debt to the pagan poet, without whom this journey through the afterworld would have been impossible.

The word “ragione” in verse 3 does not mean “reason” but “justice,” as is attested by Dante’s earlier usage in
Convivio
(where it nine times refers to law, especially Justinian’s codification of Roman statutes—see Vasoli’s analytical index to
Convivio
[Vaso.1988.1], pp. 1011–12), and the entire commentary tradition (even if a small subset of commentators believes the word here means “conscience”). See also Marta Cristiani, “ragione,”
ED
IV (1973), pp. 831–41, esp. 841. In this context it nearly certainly refers to divine justice.
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7–9.
   Virgil’s remorse is self-caused. As Venturi (1732) remarked, Virgil rebukes himself even though he could not have been a target of Cato’s anger, since he was not a soul on the way to purgation. And thus the little fault applies to him alone, not to Dante and the others (for all of whom it is considerably more serious).
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10–11.
   Virgil, here momentarily lacking
onestade
(dignity), is bracketed by the figures of Cato and the group containing Manfred; both of these are referred to as
onesto
(
Purg
. II.119; III.87).
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12–13.
   As Virgil is preoccupied with his minor failing, so Dante is troubled by his own guilty thoughts. Daniello (1568) points to Cato’s rebuke (
Purg
. II.120–121) as the cause of his shame when he considers his hesitation in moving toward the necessary mountain.
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15.
   The verb
dislagarsi
(literally meaning “to unlake itself”) is a Dantean coinage, a phenomenon that will grow as the poem progresses and flower in profusion in
Paradiso
.
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16–18.
   Dante’s presence here in the body is a double-edged proposition, as it both emphasizes his extraordinary state of grace in being here in the flesh and his debilitated status, resulting from his fleshly view of things. For a study of this phenomenon and its development through the
cantica
see Berk (Berk.1979.1), who points out that, while we may feel that Dante in
Purgatorio
all too frequently presents himself as casting a shadow, he in fact does so only six times: here; later in this canto (vv. 88–90); then in
Purgatorio
V.4–6 and 25–27; XXVI.4–8; XXVII.64–69. Berk also makes the point that Dante’s corporeal shadow finds a correspondence, later in the canto, in Manfred’s wounds (vv. 108, 111), the signs of that soul’s former mortality.
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19–21.
   Having noted his own shadow, the protagonist now is struck by the absence of Virgil’s, and momentarily thinks he has been abandoned by his guide. While, as soon as the travelers reached the shore of the mount of purgatory and reentered the sunlight, the protagonist might have noted that none of the immortal denizens of this new place casts a shadow—not Cato, none of the pilgrims, not his guide—the poet reserves that recognition for this canto, so filled with reminiscence of the death of Virgil.
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22–24.
   Benvenuto da Imola’s paraphrase of Virgil’s rebuke begins with the words “modicae fidei”: (“
you of little faith
, why have you so easily lost the faith and the hope that you ought and may have in me, who never left you behind in the city of the demons?”). Benvenuto is clearly thinking of the words of Christ in the Gospels (in the Latin Bible the phrase “modicae fidei” is found four times and only in Matthew [6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8]). If Benvenuto has correctly heard that echo, its effect is noteworthy, for then the faithless Virgil is reproving his pupil, modeling his speech on the words of Christ, for
his
lack of faith, evident on occasion from the first canto of the
Inferno
until Virgil leaves the poem in
Purgatorio
XXX. Whether Virgil is citing Scripture or having Scripture placed in his mouth by his Christian author is a problem the reader has already encountered (see
Inf
. VIII.45 and note to VIII.40–45).
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25–26.
   Since it is shortly after dawn here in purgatory, it is shortly after sunset at the antipodes, Jerusalem. And since Italy, in Dante’s geography, lies midway between Jerusalem and Gibraltar, it is sometime after 3
PM
there, as evening
(vespero)
begins with the sun’s last quarter, between 3
PM
and 6
PM
.
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27.
   Virgil died on 21 September 19
B
.
C
. at Brindisi, a city in Apulia that still serves as a port for maritime travelers to and from Greece. Augustus was responsible for the transfer of his body from Brindisi to Naples, or actually, Pozzuoli, some ten miles distant, where it was interred in a grotto in the vast tunnel, built by the ancient Romans, connecting Pozzuoli and the road to Naples. John of Serravalle (1416) records his having visited the site on 30 August 1413 and having held bones of Virgil in his hands. This passage begins what has been called “an antepurgatorial preoccupation with the body and its place of burial” (Heil.1972.1, p. 44).

Pietro di Dante was perhaps the first to cite Virgil’s versified epitaph, as found in the
Vitae
of Virgil by Suetonius and Donatus:

Virgil “sang” his
Eclogues, Georgics
, and
Aeneid
. For the possible reference to the three Virgilian subjects in the final hundred verses of the canto, see Hollander (Holl.1984.4), p. 114:

In this experimental formulation Dante would, in exactly one hundred lines, have deployed the three “spokes” of the stylistic
rota Vergilii
(the wheel of Virgil).

Carroll (1904) cites Plumptre for the opinion that this scene reflects the (unverified) tradition that St. Paul visited Virgil’s grave at Naples and wept for the great poet, whom, had he but known him, he might have led to salvation.
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28–30.
   Dante’s heavens include the nine celestial spheres containing the Moon and, as they move higher, eventually no stellar bodies of any kind (the
primum mobile
). In
Paradiso
we will learn that, while they are material, they are also translucent. Something similar is also the case with respect to the shades here.
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31–33.
   Virgil here touches on the nature of the “aerial bodies” of the dead in
Inferno
and
Purgatorio
. The Roman poet Statius will elaborate on the “physical” nature of shades in
Purgatorio
XXV.34–108.
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34–36.
   The “posthumous Christian” ruefully acknowledges, by pointing to reason as his means for attempting to know the essence of things, his failure to have had faith. The reference to reason does not indicate, as some commentators insist, that Virgil embodies or personifies Reason, especially since, in this context, Reason would then be commenting on the shortcomings of reason. Reason is a property (or, in Scholastic terms, an “accident”) of the Roman poet, not his essence.
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