SOURCE: “The Art of Dante's Purgatorio,” American Critical Essays on The Divine Comedy, edited by Robert J. Clements, New York University Press, 1967, pp. 64-88.

[In the following essay, originally published in 1952, Hatzfeld contends that Dante's esthetic choices are easier to understand when his style is viewed as one of magic realism.]

Il mito non è favola,
ma …
“storia vera.”
                    raffaele
pettazzoni
Not merely a story told,
but a reality lived.
                    b. malinowski

1. Introduction

The considerable amount of critical literature on Dante's Divine Comedy contains very few items which concern esthetical, structural, and stylistic problems. The Purgatorio is the most neglected and allegedly the most debatable part of the three Canticles of the Commedia. Consequently, what we need most of all in Dante criticism is an artistic, accurate analysis and appreciation of the Purgatorio. Certain random remarks on Dante's poetics in recent commented editions, particularly that of Momigliano or in refined critics like Olivero, T. S. Eliot, and Singleton, together with new insights into the problems of poetic myth, symbolism, archetypes, psychology of religion and of the human depths, mysticism, and liturgy, now enable us to make at least a sketch of the art of Dante's Purgatory with some hope of success. This attempt may receive a certain significance from the conviction of the modern literary critic that the true poetic symbol or image conveys a kind of wisdom which is irresistible¹ to the reader and transcends in his catharsis the subjective discovery of the artist, because it suggests secret affinities which must be rooted in the very nature of reality.²

Since many points, which I shall mention, have been told and retold by others, though under quite different aspects, I reluctantly suppress a list of general bibliographical items at the request of the editor. What I am adding beyond the new general synthesis is:

1. the exclusive stress on esthetical problems,

2. the identification of Dante's general style with magic realism,

3. the explanation of Dante's participation in the mystical purgation of the souls as a miraculous and not as a mystical phenomenon,

4. the artistic identification of the Purgatorio with the Suffering Church,

5. the interpretation of the purification of the souls as an analogy to the later so called passive dark night of the soul coinciding here with illuminative processes, which are in turn visionary and auditory.

2. The Foundation of the Poetical Myth

Dante's Purgatorio is first of all the artistic product³ of a myth-maker who, with selective skill, weaves together Christian, Pagan, Mohametan, and folkloric traditions, to erect his own magic seven story mountain: When Lucifer with his army of revolting angels (Par. XXIX, 49-57) was hurled from Heaven like a thunderbolt (XII, 25-27) to the very center of the Earth, masses of stone and clay, as though they had a presentiment, withdrew in horror from Satan. What Lucifer's body hollowed out appeared on the surface of the Southern hemisphere (Inf. XXIV, 121-126), opposite Jerusalem in the shape of a cone, on top of which the Earthly Paradise was placed, since this point was closest to Heaven. The rest of the hemisphere was covered with water. Thus it came to pass that an isolated mountain, high and steep (IV, 81), far removed from the lands later inhabited by the fallen men, was provided for souls to be purged and brought to salvation after the divinely foreseen Redemption.

But how should the souls get there in visible shape making possible their expiatory punishment by the pain of the senses (III, 31 ff.)? Dante, the myth-maker, having entered with his first step the poetic sphere of magic realism has no difficulty in making the second. The not as yet perfect but chosen (III, 73) Christian souls are at the moment of death miraculously (XXV, 86) “jet-propelled” by an inner urge (XXV, 85) to the mouth of the Tiber (XXV, 85 ff.). Thus they are poetically undergoing their particular judgment. As opposed to the thick, black air of Acheron out of which the bodies of the damned are formed, the thin, clear, holy Tiber air of Ostia (XXV, 89), near the Eternal City, is offered to these souls for creating their new aerial bodies (XXV, 88 ff.). This is again a magic process, comparable to that by which the sun forms a rainbow (XXV, 91 ff.).

As soon as a sufficiently large group has gathered, an angel will arrive with a very light and swift boat to take these fine “soul-bodies” preshaped for the halleluia of the resurrection⁴ (XXX, 15), to the shores of the purgatorial island (II, 13-57). In spiritual profundity this magic isle is as different from Pindar's island of the Blessed and Homer's Ogygia and all the Atlantic types of mythical Western islands, as it is different in poetical beauty from the Earthly paradise islands of Peter Lombard and St. Thomas,⁵ not to speak of the prosaic purgatory of St. Patrick on Station Island in Ireland.

Dante's poetic genius furthermore has understood that to climb a mountain step by step over rocks, narrow paths, and crooked terraces was the ideal symbolic setting for a painful purgation. His sense of magic landscape makes these terraces appear as though hewn into steep declivities in fantastic altitudes. Dante's poetic instinct also saw clearly that an island in distant waters (VIII, 57) could best give the vague sensation of limitless space and of a place in which the finite world would fuse with the metaphysical infinite. At this point a new idea, the third one to be poetized, surges in Dante's mind, namely the fact that in the spiritual life on Earth the great purgatorial sufferings start only after a time of a more consoling expectation. To work in this concept he creates an Ante-Purgatorio, consisting of a beach, a colorful meadow (VII, 73-84), and a blooming valley at the foot of this very steep mountain. It is there that certain souls, now called shades (VIII, 45), gentle forms (IX, 58), but also vanities (XXI, 135) are destined to delay their purgatorial sufferings, because they have not developed any spirituality in their earthly life. These souls are worldlings who died in excommunication with only a last sigh of contrition, or elegant gentlemen and ladies who hoped for a long life, but were killed in their youth, and princes who, having yielded to trifles, neglected their duties, or conversely, lost themselves entirely in the affairs of State. Again Dante poeticizes everything, even canon law. He knew that the threat of excommunication gave to the person warned thirty days for a possible resipiscence before the excommunication itself took place. Consequently, as in a fairy tale, though with an unusual reverence for the power of the Keys (IV, 135), Dante makes the excommunicated stay in his Ante-Purgatorio thirty times the period which elapsed between the beginning of their exclusion from the Church and their death.

3. The Poetization of Theology

Of course, if we are well aware of Dante's keen psychology of these aerial creatures, the respite in this Ante-Purgatorio is only an external boon. These souls are unhappy because their eagerly awaited, though feared, purgation is delayed. They feel like accused persons who have been released on bond and have a certain freedom of movement (VII, 41) but who are none the less worried in view of the threat of the penitentiary. These and all the other souls finally will go through all the seven terraces of Purgatory, to atone for and become entirely purged of pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lust, with a different length of time, of course, on the different terraces, according to the individual case. Again, Dante's poetic instinct is at work when he chooses among the many systems of the seven capital sins that of Hughes of St. Victor and Saint Bonaventure. Only with this system at hand could he drastically reduce his distribution of the penitents to the principle of the whole Commedia, namely to that Love which moves the sun and all the stars. Actually, on the middle circle of sloth the shades are atoning for their lack of vigor in explicit love of God, higher up for too much inordinate vigor in love for persons or things, lower down for too little implicit love of God by definite forms of erroneous love of self. These latter forms are almost identical with forms of hatred of one's neighbor.

Dante's next problem was the poetization of the “spirits to be ripened by weeping” (XIX, 91) with their single corrective pains in harmony with the concept of the magic mountain. How was Dante to symbolize what the theologian would call their tribute or debt to be paid (X, 108; XI, 188; XIII, 126), the money to be restored by them (XI, 125)? Dante rejected at the outset the prosaic solution of the Middle Ages that the souls are tortured by devils or angels. Dante's penitential souls carry with and in themselves a divinely supported, organic system of painful correction just as they carried their particular judgment in themselves. That means in terms of Dante's poetic symbolism that the proud must moan under the heavy stones they carry, in order to learn humility, that the envious must weep bitter tears from their closed eyes with which they used to squint at their neighbors. Now their lids are painfully sewn like those of a sparrow-hawk. The angry are steeped in a stifling smoke which hurts their eyes as their irascibility hurt their hearts. The slothful have to run relentlessly around the mountain, day and night, to the point of exhaustion, in order to overcome spiritual inefficiency, e.g., scorn of meditation, lack of vigilance, negligence, and procrastination. The avaricious cannot rise from the soil symbolic of their clinging to earthly goods. They appear as if they were irremissibly prostrated before the Golden Calf. The bitterness of their pain consists in not being able to turn their faces to Heaven. The gluttonous are literally tantalized by being placed around the finest trees laden with juicy fruits. Their aroma enhanced by a constant shower from the rocks (XXIII, 68-69) makes them all the more attractive, so that the souls behave like children who stretch out their hands for things they cannot get (XXIV, 108 ff.). Emaciated, with shining teeth (XXIV, 28) and fleshless skeletons, these dead persons seem to have died a second time. Here, Dante's magic realism reaches a climax. The souls, aerial bodies, seem, but only seem, forgotten and we are under the spell of living skeletons. With their eyeballs deeply hidden in their orbits (XXIII, 40) forming two eerie O's and the fleshless nose between them appearing like an M, these souls seem to say: We are the picture of miserable man OMO (homo) (XXIII, 31-33).

We see that with the progress of the action on the higher terraces the artistic rendering of the supplices is also growing. Therefore when Dante climbs through the last narrow gate and stair to the seventh circle, there he finds for the first time the real fire of purgatory as the adequate cleansing punishment for the lustful who were devoured by the fire of erotic passion. This fire is for Dante's art and logic a poetic magician's synthesis of the material fire of the Latin Fathers and of the fire wall surrounding Earthly Paradise of the Orientals.⁶ Stressing the Oriental concept Dante's artistic skill uses this new synthetic symbol at the same time for his particular politicospiritual doctrine, that the natural virtues when duly developed lead to an earthly beatitude which is the “conditio sine qua non” for the spiritual soaring to the beatific vision: The Earthly Paradise.

4. The Poetization of Asceticism and Mysticism

But Dante does much more with the penitent souls. Although he constantly stresses the fact that atoning pain is never disgusting, revolting, or horrifying (XXXIII, 72), there is, he also brings out, the souls' privation of God, their desire for Him, their temporary loss and inhibition of the beatific instinct.⁷ And to make this desire for God almost unbearable, and the insight into their own unworthiness intolerable, these souls undergo for their purification and perfection the same treatment which the mystics do on Earth. Visions and voices both exalt and depress them at the same time. All this occurs simultaneously in well-devised and artistic compounds. For instance, on the terrace of the proud, sculptures on the wall representing examples of humility attract these souls so much that they try with difficulty to lift up their eyes to these consoling corporal visions, curbed as they are under the weight of the stones they carry. But when they keep their eyes down upon the ground, they see only engraved pictures of pride, taken from the Bible and classic antiquity which show them their own disgrace and they cannot help trampling on them in shame-faced repentance. But a more unearthly “mysterious” impression—to stress our critical magic principle—comes from the fact that it appears as if these living caryatides (X, 130) seem to move in a museum of bas-reliefs, onlookers and at the same time part of this sculpture gallery of God's direct products of art (X, 99). Dante's scrupulousness in reproducing St. Thomas' ten subdivisions of pride⁸ thus works out very well artistically; with fewer sculptures there would not be the convincing impression of a museum, or of an art exhibit, a concept which Dante's artistic imagination anticipates, just as it does in other cantos, aviation or moving pictures, as we shall see later.

On the terrace of the envious, things shape up quite differently. The walls and the pavement with their bareness in contrast to the preceding circle offer no pictures because sewn eyes cannot see. The livid souls there, in their pale gray cloaks (XIII, 47), not only particularly pathetic because as spirits they wear clothes, but also because they behave in all their gestures like truly blind people, supporting one another, lifting their chins when they seem to hear something, undergo another type of mystical inner purgation. These envious souls strike Dante by their constant listening to mystical voices alternately relating instances of charity and envy. The psychological effect with the aid of this auditive means seems still more forceful than was the case in the preceding circle with the means of visualization. While the good examples are like a hearty rain, the examples of punished envy appear like claps of thunder.

Dante's magic realism is most varied and resourceful in demonstrating this inner passive purgation in the circle of the avaricious. The penitent souls themselves record the examples by an inner ecstatic urge, the same which makes the mystics cry out their pain and love. On the terrace of the lustful, vision, voices, and ecstatic cries are even supplemented by touch. The souls, marching in opposite directions, embrace one another upon meeting, but so brief is their kiss that it is almost a pax tecum. This, says Dante, looks mysteriously like ants meeting and stopping to ask one another the right direction (XXVI, 34-36). For these souls it is the method by which they learn how to give a chaste kiss of charity and embrace the others out of love of God, by the kiss to the leper. This experience makes them so disgusted with their old kind of life that they shout into the air the most horrible examples of sins of the flesh, some: “Sodom,” others: “Pasiphae,” each group outdoing the other, and then they are themselves ashamed of their outcries (XXVI, 81).

5. The Poetization of Dante's Participation in the Purgation of Souls

Dante, who cannot help crossing their fire in order to reach the Earthly Paradise, experiences their purifying pain to the point that he states that a bath in burning glass would be refreshing compared to this unimaginable heat. So much is needed to turn love into charity. But, lo! Dante's garments are not singed, because this is a cleansing, not a consuming fire (XXVII, 29-30). This example proves that Dante as the living man among the dead is given the particular grace of participating miraculously, not mystically, in some of the different mystical trials and illuminations of the souls. Therefore, this experience is not his own purgation. It is a type of instruction in purgation and a lesson in charity, an initiation, a most drastic retreat, a series of spiritual exercises which prepare him for his general confession on the top of the mountain in the presence of Beatrice. Stranger still than Dante's fire ordeal is his participation in the imaginary visions of the angry (XV) who like the blind envious cannot have corporeal visions because of the dark smoke. On their terrace it seems to Dante as though a screen (XVII, 21) were prepared inside his head on which to project, nay to flash (XVII, 25), in a quick sequence what we would call a series of changing moving pictures, seven hundred years before they were invented, as we mentioned before. Thus he sees in an ecstatic vision (XV, 85-86), Mary meekly entering the temple in search of her lost Child (XV, 89 ff.); he sees Aman, looking wild, on the gallows (XVII, 26); he sees the stoning of St. Stephen (XV, 106 ff.), who is at the same time pardoning his murderers. These ecstatic pictures are given in dynamic form, in foreshortenings and on double planes, and always a new picture breaks the preceding one like a soap bubble (XVII, 32). Dante, perturbed more than ever before and like a person just awaking from sleep, rubs his eyes and Vergil sees him stumbling along wholly benumbed (XV, 118-123).

6. Some Poetical Trimmings of Magical Realism

Dante, wandering from terrace to terrace, makes still other truly amazing discoveries. He finds that the very door to Heaven is at the entrance of Purgatory. This seems bewitching, but is actually very logical in this magic architecture, because any soul passing through this door is well confirmed in grace. Dante experiences that at the beginning of the climbing he needs an almost superhuman effort, because the stairs leading from one circle to the other through the narrow gates (XII, 108) are very steep. On the higher terraces, however, the gates widen, and movement becomes easier. Another surprise: after having witnessed the explosions of hatred in Hell, Dante is now astonished to hear himself called “Brother” by every soul. Thus he understands the growth in grace and charity. But lending a helping hand upward over difficult crevasses is even beyond the strength of such a spiritual guide as Vergil. Therefore, Heaven must interfere more directly. Dante, having fallen asleep (IX, 13 ff.) in the valley of the Princes, dreams that a mighty eagle has caught him like another Ganymede and carried him to the sphere of fire (IX, 17-30); and at his actual awakening Vergil can explain to him that Santa Lucia in cooperation with Beatrice had come down from Heaven and, light-footed and nimble, had carried him a good part of the way up to the great gate of purgatory. Dante undergoes other shocks, as when he sees sun (IV, 56-57) and moon (XVIII, 79-81) not on the expected but on the opposite side.

The magic mountain also has curious laws for earthly visitors. There are only right turns (XXII, 123), as any move to the left, the usual one in the Inferno, would mean danger. At nightfall the movements of the wanderers are hampered (XVII, 67-69; XXVII, 70-75). On the terrace of the slothful this law is aggravated, so that even Vergil seems paralyzed, and Dante feels like a stranded ship (XVII, 78). He fully realized what Jesus (John XII, 35) means when he urges us to walk as long as there is daylight. Dante sleeps and dreams three times (IX, 13 ff.; XIX, 1 ff.; XVII, 94 ff.) on his three-day journey and in each dream, conceived of as a magic superstratum in a magic world, equally introduced by the solemn expression “In the hour when,” there appear to him his protective helpers. After Santa Lucia who carried him off (IX, 59-60; 19-33), it is Beatrice herself⁹ who drives away the slothful and voluptuous siren at whom Dante still dared to smile in a dream, since he could not resist her smooth, sensuous, and melodious insinuations. Following Beatrice it is the young and beautiful Lea (XXVII, 97), who shows him in the third dream the beauty of active life, gracefully depicted by her gathering of the choicest flowers for a beautiful nosegay. Thus Dante may vie with St. Francis de Sales for the invention of the concept of a spiritual bouquet. Lea tells him of her more beautiful contemplative sister Rachel, who never leaves the mirror in which she sees God. This last dream is a gentle preparation for the apparition of Beatrice.

Dante also realizes the seriousness of the purgatorial pains in a concrete lyrical fashion. Even the souls which suffer least seem to say: “I can no more” (X, 139), and sometimes the pain changes their moaning prayers into an inarticulate: “hui” (XVI, 64). Nor is theirs an immediate purgation. The Roman poet Statius is released from purgatory just at the moment, when Dante passes the terrace of the avaricious, after a stay of 1200 years, of which he spent 500 with the spendthrifts. None the less, Dante also discovers that the holiness (XXVII, 11) of the so-called poor souls outshines their helplessness. Therefore they are always first encouraged by the positive example of virtues before they envisage the opposite disgraceful, remorseprovoking deterrent vices. But to make things lyrically still more beautiful, the first example given in each case is taken from the model life of the Blessed Virgin (XVIII, 113; XX, 22-23, etc.), the Immaculate, whom Saint Bonaventure, in this case the pattern for Dante, had praised as “septem vitiis capitalibus immunissima.”¹⁰ Mary is present still in another way. Her name on his lips, says Buonconte, killed in battle, saved him at the last moment (V, 102); the angels (VIII, 37) sent to the purgatorio came from her arms and motherly embrace and defeated the Serpent in her name; and now when the purgatorial “Prisoners of Hope” unconsciously pregnant with virtue already suffer like mothers giving birth to a child, they mitigate their pain by the ejaculatory cry: “O sweet Mary” (XX, 20). Even on the sculptures she seems to live and talk (X, 95) and Dante would swear when looking at the picture of the Annunciation that he could hear her say: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” (X, 43). Thus also the lyrical Mary theme appears incorporated in the magic realism of the Mountain.

7. The Poetization of Liturgy

One of the greatest discoveries made by Dante, the wanderer, during his four days in purgatory is that he does not find here a disorderly mass of souls, as was the case in the Inferno, but a well-ordered, silent and devout crowd (XXIII, 21), a part of the “turba magna” (ib.) once to adore the Lamb, in other words: he meets the Suffering Church. Consequently the souls as a group add to the mystical individual suffering and contemplation, the collective liturgy of hymns and prayers, and sacramental attitudes. For the most part they form processions as pilgrims to which the pilgrim Dante feels attracted (XXIII, 15). They also gather for devotions fit for their particular purposes. As Dante arrives in the different terraces at different hours of the day, he witnesses many of these canonical hours, according to the “religion of the Mountain.” The awe and recollection of the worshipers is only endangered by the frightening strangeness of the shadow of Dante's body, a recurrent motif. Dante's shadow seems as unreal to them as the voices and the gestures of the spirits seem outlandish to the earthly ears and eyes of Dante.

On the terrace of the angry, Dante overhears a wondrous Agnus Dei by which the souls implore the Lamb for mercy and peace (XV, 16-19) and all the voices unite in a choir of the sweetest harmony (XVI, 20-21). The proud souls of the first terrace say the Our Father, changing the text to correspond with their own situation. Thus they are praying for their daily manna in their purgatorial desert as the Jews did in theirs, and this manna is the suffrage of the faithful for which all the souls on all terraces will implore Dante (VIII, 71; XI, 32; XIII, 147). Dante is impressed by the reciprocation of these souls who offer on their part the petition “And lead us not into temptation,” for the living because there are no temptations in purgatory. The hymn “Te lucis ante terminum” in the Ante-Purgatory is not only sung but the whole Compline is staged by human and heavenly actors. The “leo rugiens” (lectio brevis from I Petr. 5, 8), the “pestis quae vagatur in tenebris” (Ps. 90), and the “noctium phantasmata” (Hymnus) are not mentioned, but to the horror of the souls who never can be tempted any more, a frightful spectacle occurs every evening: The temptations to which these souls consented and succumbed on earth reappear here much more frightful than any “negotium perambulans per noctem,” in the shape of the Serpent (VIII, 131), perhaps the same, says Dante significantly, which once gave Eve the bitter apple (VIII, 99). But every evening also two heavenly messengers “Angeli sancti … qui omnes insidias inimici … longe repellunt” (Oratio) appear with drawn flaming swords to drive the serpent away (VIII, 25-42; 94-108) and thus protect the still “exiled children of Eve” as the souls call themselves in the “Salve Regina” which they intone (VII, 76 ff.).

When Dante approaches the main door of purgatory, it not only opens automatically as in the Vision of Tundale¹¹ but it starts also wondrous organ music and all the souls sing the Te Deum solemnly and beautifully (VIII, 14-15). At the quasi-resurrection of Statius from purgatory to Heaven the whole mountain trembles as the Earth did at the death of Christ, and Statius appears to Dante and Vergil as suddenly and mysteriously as Christ the Risen once appeared to the disciples on the way to Emmaus (XXI, 7-13). At the same time a Gloria is heard, sung by the rejoicing souls, forgetting their own sorrow, Dante listening to the heavenly tunes feels something of the bliss of the shepherds on the memorable Christmas night (XX, 140).

Of course, it is fitting that Dante meets more often slowly moving penitential processions of praying shades (XI, 20), mostly weeping and singing at the same time. They entune the Miserere (V, 22) or cry for help with the Litany of all the Saints (XIII, 50; XVI, 19). The processional hymns of the angry are heard, although the singers cannot be seen in the stifling smoke of their dark night (XVI, 1 ff.). The gluttonous who have opened their mouths for good food rather than for the praise of the Lord suddenly understand altogether why their Divine Office stresses so much Psalm 50, 17: Domine, Labia mea aperies (XXIII, 11). The hymn of Saturday at Matins, Summae Deus Clementiae, containing the strongest prayer for the preservation of chastity, is sung even twice at each occasion by the lustful (XXV, 121). They have no other hymn but this (XXV, 131). These are some examples of Dante's inexhaustible variations of the liturgical theme embedded in the magic-realistic action.

For helping to perform all the liturgical ceremonies there are no priests. Priests are not needed where there is no sacrifice. But those who take care of the penitential rites are angels with priestly functions, beautiful angels, clad in the splendor of white rays (XVII, 52-57), their faces shining like the trembling morning star (XII, 89-90). They have delegated powers in a mystical penitentiary where it would be not compatible with the dignity of the Master to appear Himself. These angels with their blessings by the sign of the cross (II, 49) convey the sacramental atmosphere to the Mountain. They stand watch on the highest point of each circle to keep any soul from leaving the terrace assigned to it before its time is up. This function is merely formal, however, because no soul would do so; on the contrary, all of them are so eager to please the Lord, that despite their pain, they keep straight to their particular mode of purgation and try to accelerate the process so earnestly that they scarcely take time out to talk to Dante, which Oderisi, Pope Hadrian, Guido del Duca, Marco Lombardo bluntly tell him.¹² Conversely, the souls in the Inferno only thought of tricks to escape the devils. Therefore the much more important function of these reigning angels with their loving voices is to welcome the souls, first to the main purgatory with the symbol of the keys (IX, 76-132) and then to each one of the higher circles after their penance on the lower one is fulfilled. They open their arms wide to the redeemed sinners like Christ on the cross (XII, 91). They greet them with the beatitude most appropriate to their situation (XII, 109 ff.; XV, 37 ff.; XVII, 67 ff.; XIX, 49 ff.; XXII, 4 ff.; XXVII, 7 ff.), hinting in a melodious, poetical manner to the fact that purgation has brought about the heightening of the virtuous capacities of the souls to the full gifts of the Holy Spirit, which, when accumulated, will give them the power to soar automatically to Heaven from the plateau of Earthly Paradise. Thus the inner process of sanctification hinging on a major automaton is stressed as were the others.

The angels have more priestly functions: They bless, aid, and direct Dante in his symbolic penitential initiation into the mysteries of the Mountain (XXX, 82-99). The first angel draws the seven Peccata signs on Dante's forehead (IX, 112) like a penitential cross of ashes and each of the following angels removes one of these P's, revealing to him the true meaning of a heavy conscience and a conscience at ease. Their work is crowned after Dante's most perfect contrition and confession on the plateau when Matelda washes the remembrance of any guilt from him (XXXII, 1-3) and makes him drink the memory of good works instead.

8. The Poetization of Vergil's Guidance

Dante's spiritual guide, ever present and blindly obeyed (XVI, 6), is not an angel, but Vergil; Vergil who, though not a Christian, could not help becoming for many a guide by his literary work, and a directing-sign to Christ. Much to Vergil's own sorrow, he is so informed by Statius, the Crypto-Christian, who had read the poet's fourth eclogue with its curious prediction of the birth of a savior from a virgin and of a new golden age. This is the topic to be discussed by the two spirits, Vergil and Statius, on the way from the terrace of the avaricious to that of the gluttonous. Vergil cannot help envying Statius, who is on his way to Heavenly peace (XXI, 17), while he himself will return to the sad limbo, the “eternal exile” (XXI, 18), as he says bitterly. If some critics wonder why Vergil, the pagan, has such high powers as Dante's guide, one may conclude from the text that he, who particularly led Statius and others to Heaven, is also capable of guiding Dante at least to Beatrice and to “crown and miter” him (XXVII, 142).

Vergil is the most affectionate (XVII, 82), true (XVIII, 7), dear (XV, 25; XVIII, 13), and sweet leader (XII, 3) as well as wise adviser (XIII, 75), as Dante, Vergil's spiritual son (XVII, 92) and dear child (XXIII, 4), calls him. He awakens him when he has weird dreams (XIX, 34-35); he offers encouraging words (XIX, 25); and against temptation he gives him a simple, natural remedy: an upward glance toward the stars (XIX, 62-63). The most charming scene is that of Dante the child (XXVII, 20-45) who, refusing to cross the zone of fire, keeps so near the outer edge that he is in danger of toppling thousands of yards into that mythical ocean (XXV, 117), which no human eye has ever seen. Vergil must lure him into the flames by stratagem, the casual remark, that he already sees faintly on the other side of the fire the long-sought eyes of Beatrice (XXVII, 54). Upon other occasions he assumes strictly sacerdotal attitudes, such as teaching (XII, 84) and imparting blessings (XXVII, 142).

The situation of a pagan, such as Vergil, guiding a Christian, Dante, leads poetically to the development of the motif of the blind leader. Vergil who must show the way to Dante does not know the way himself. Although he finds the wide road, he does not discern the narrow gates. Therefore he must ask continually, first Cato, later the angels and the souls, what path to take in this strange “cloister of charity” (XV, 57).

9. The Poetization of Dante's Meeting with his Dead Friends

The meeting of Dante with his dead friends is a breathtaking, lyrical motif. In their dialogues Dante reveals himself as a pitiful soul (XIII, 53-54) of thoughtful manner (XIII, 85), while his erstwhile companions have become so gentle, brotherly and self-effacing, that they already speak another language. Upon seeing Dante, they do not exclaim like Dante's friends in Hell: “What a surprise!” but “What a grace!” (XXIII, 42). The souls, in a discreet (XXIII, 43-45) and noble manner, delicately share certain of Dante's earthly interests, whereas Dante learns unconsciously and gradually to view things from the standpoint of true eternity. Here are some concrete artistic consequences of this situation. When Pia dei Tolomei wants to relate to Dante her brutal assassination at the hands of her husband, she only evokes in a melancholy way the time when he lovingly gave her the dear wedding ring and then adds with a sigh: Well, “Siena brought me to life; Maremma to death” (V, 133-136), and she urges Dante to say some prayers for her only after having had a good rest from the hardships of his trip. The painter Oderisi (XI, 82) and the poet Guido Guinicelli (XXVI, 114), both once eager for glory, now gently reject Dante's praise of their artistic achievements. Upon meeting with Pope Hadrian V, Dante falls to his knees, whereupon the pope says: “Brother, get up (XIX, 133 ff.), here I am a servant like you” (XIX, 134). The neque nubent (of Math. XXII, 30) in the other world has its analogical extension also for the relationship between the faithful and the pope, “The only value left to me is a niece on earth.” With this imperceptible suggestion that Dante should try to procure the niece's suffrages in a kind of spiritual topsy-turvy nepotism, this unearthly dialogue abruptly ends the canto and leaves Dante perplexed.

Dante does not forget that these spiritual souls must also fit into the atmosphere of his Purgatorio. Therefore his friend Forese Donati, appearing as a meager skeleton (XXIV, 16 ff.), is recognized only by his voice. The beautiful Manfred, fatally wounded in battle, even in Purgatory retains his youthful blond hair and the scar on his forehead (III, 107-108). The Mantuan troubadour Sordello, to the great surprise of Dante, is able to embrace Vergil (VI, 75), whereas Statius is discouraged by Vergil in his attempt to do so (XXI, 132); and Dante never will know the exact code of the sentimental life of shadows. Similarly Dante is astonished by the abrupt manner of departure of the shades who rush back to their purgation, as does Marco Lombardo (XVI, 142-145) or Forese Donati (XXIV, 75 ff.). One of the most mysterious persons of all is Cato, the Pagan enthusiast of liberty, who, with his parted white beard, and surrounded by a halo of four stars, appears like a patriarch liberated from limbo. Dante has made him a half-saint and superintendent of the seven kingdoms (I, 82), a solemn creature, certain of a glorious resurrection on doomsday, despite his paradoxical suicide.¹³

The greatest shock is the appearance of Beatrice, who is far from being the lovely girl from Florence when she descends from Heaven. She is similar to the bride of the Canticle, or to the morning sun clouded in the East (XXX, 20-27); she is like an admiral in battle array (XXX, 58), or an adored mother who even when scolding would appear superb and beautiful to her son (XXX, 79). Dante's bewilderment reaches its peak when with the mysterious griffin she disappears heavenward. These are moments when logical allegorization would destroy all the poetry, while the literal sense finds the modern critic and artist entirely at ease.

10. Lyrical Elements in the Creation of a Magic Landscape

Until now we have considered, so to speak, only the necessary poetically transformed elements of the subject matter of Dante's Purgatorio. But what makes the poem more lyrical and underscores the magic realism decisively is the exploitation of astronomical and atmospheric conditions for a gamut of landscapes, seascapes, and skyscapes, whose beauty creates a melancholy mood of sadness and nostalgia in the reader. These scenes with their half-descriptive foreground and half-lyrical background create with comparative means a counterpoint to the leading melody of the main action and the dialogues.

When Dante comes out of the infernal mines of the Earth, the dawn of a dreamlike Eastern morning greets him. There are shining on a greenish-blue sky (I, 13-27) four unknown stars, grouped around the smiling, serene, and pure Venus (I, 19). The still, dark sea is moved by a slight breeze (I, 117), and with the growth of light it seems to tremble, covered as it is with tiny rippling waves. Not far from the beach appears a very unusual scene; there are meadows with flowers of all imaginable colors, and a beautiful, little, wondrous valley which, at nightfall under the setting sun of a foreign sky, evokes nostalgia. It is the kind of melancholy known to the sailor who finds himself at sea the first night after having kissed his beloved ones good-bye, or it is the type of sadness which overcomes the pilgrim who, deep in thought, approaches an unknown village at the hour when the Angelus starts to mourn the parting day (VIII, 1-6).

Later, Dante's and Vergil's silhouettes appear on the third terrace enveloped in the smoke of the angry souls; one is following the other, and Dante is rubbing his sore eyes (XV, 139-140) when the weak rays of the setting sun pierce the smoke clouds as suddenly as though they were alpine mist on a rainy day (XVII, 1-20). It is a totally different picture when in the late morning sun the glittering Holy Mountain appears like a blast. Dante has overslept because of the spell of the terrace of the slothful, and it is as though the sun were smiling ironically and blaming Dante for his nasty dreams (XIX, 37-38), which occurred under a condoning moon, which had had the uncanny form of an overturned bucket (XVIII, 76-81). An eerie impression comes also from Dante's walking between the setting sun and the fire of the lustful, keeping to the outer edge; but Dante's shadow, nevertheless, makes the flame darker, and it seems, more glowing (XXVI, 4-8), a most astonishing observation and artistic setting some hundred years before the impressionists discovered color reflexes in shades. The starry sky over the last stair on which Dante is resting during the final night is reminiscent of those clear nights, during which the flocks stay in the open, protected by their shepherd leaning on his staff. In like manner is Dante protected by Vergil until Dawn jubilantly chases the stars and the darkness away in all directions (XXVII, 112).

The most magic landscape, of course, is the dark green shadowy pine wood of Earthly Paradise. Streamlets, fresh and transparent, although appearing almost brown like the trunks of the trees, murmur in union with the birds singing on the ever peacefully moving branches (XXVIII, 1-33). Since a fiery but none the less mild sunlight casts a sea of light through the thicket (XXIX, 34-35), and rosy blossoms come from leafless branches (XXX, 22-24), and virtuous nymphs (XXIX, 4-5) dance in this woodland, Dante understands that Ovid, in speaking of the Golden Age, had in mind this Garden of Eden.

Dante as a poet knows that he does not have to compete with the painter in description and he draws mood and climate, as we have said before, rather from lyrical suggestions. Therefore there is still another layer of remembered earthly landscapes which become magic in the light of the remembrance of souls who lived or died therein. Thus is portrayed the battlefield of Campaldino (V, 92 ff.) with the wounded Buonconte, who, fleeing with his throat pierced, tinges the field with dripping red blood (V, 99 ff.); then he collapses and is dragged into the river on that stormy day (V, 119 ff.). Or to choose a brighter picture: There looms in the mind of Dante, who is on his way to Earthly Paradise, a Proust-like landscape-comparison of a balmy May air, full of the perfume of blossoms announcing an as yet unseen orchard full of blooming trees (XXIV, 145-154).

11. The Art of Using Comparisons

There is even a third layer of pictorial-lyrical evocations, those existing only in comparisons. Dante's casual remarks, actually, are full of imagery. Beatrice's name is in his mind like a refreshing spring (XXVII, 41-42), which will help him courageously even through the fire. It makes him feel like Pyramus, who on the verge of death opens his eyes again upon hearing the name of Thisbe (XXVII, 37-42). The souls with Dante among them as one able to procure prayers for their earlier release, feel as if they were being visited by a messenger of peace bearing the olive branch (II, 70-75). Dante on his part, surrounded by a pressing crowd of souls pleading for Our Fathers (XXVI, 130), feels like the winner in a dice game called Zara who tries to brush aside people who want to share in the winnings (VI, 1-12). Or he looks at the magic trees on the terrace of the gluttonous with such a concentrated attention that he could be taken for a birdhunter (XXIII, 1 ff.). Similes make the magic atmosphere appear quite natural. When Dante feels the Angel's wing touch his forehead for the first time, he lifts his hand up to his head like someone warned by the gestures of passers-by that he has something on his face which he cannot himself see, and Dante discovers that one of the seven P's on his forehead has vanished (XII, 127-135); Vergil cannot help smiling, having noticed Dante's surprise. When Dante comes back to himself from the vision of examples of anger, his ecstasy fades away and like a person awakening from a heavy dream, asks: “Where am I?” Finally, a voice heard all of a sudden, brings him to full consciousness (XVII, 40-48). Under the taunt of Beatrice, Dante bursts forth into tears as a crossbow bursts from extreme tension, so that the bolt flies through the air in lessened speed (XXXI, 16-20). On a more symbolic scale, the concept of the Suffering Church, as a flock: pecorelle (III, 79), capre (XXVII, 77), mandra (III, 86), is repeatedly suggested by the similes of the sheep either fearful or disturbed, trembling and timidly following the leader, with eyes and mouth turned down to earth (III, 79-93), or of sheep well under the protection of the shepherd (XXVII, 76-84).

Psychological similes of a resounding vibration come up even in the conversations, as when Statius, the saved, explains to Vergil, the non-saved, the latter's tragic mission: “You carried the lantern in the night, giving light to others, and remaining yourself in the dark” (XXII, 67-69), or when Dante compares his timidity in restraining his eagerness to ask questions to the behavior of the little storks who want to lift their wings, not daring however to leave their nest (XXV, 10-14). In other words Dante compares his preconceived but not uttered questions Mallarmé-like to flights desired but not made.

A simile sometimes transfers the central theme of the Purgatory into an analogy, taken, e.g., from the realm of insects, an analogy which will be dear to Santa Teresa one day later in history: We are worms destined to form the heavenly butterfly; we are insects in their deformity, helplessly exposed to the transforming power of divine justice and grace (X, 124-129). Guido Guinicelli, in order to demonstrate that the purgatorial pain is at the same time a solace, leaps back into the fire like a fish plunges into the water seeking its life element (XXVI, 135). Nothing could make clearer the implications that the poor souls are holy souls.

12. The Technique of Awareness and Surprise; Contrasts of Silence and Sound

To underscore Dante's bewilderment on this unusual mountain, there is furthermore a technique of awareness. Confronted with new and strange things, Dante often gets an enigmatic impression which announces something tremendous and unheard of and which grows still more in importance when elucidated. Long after having talked, sung, and initiated Dante, the enigmatic Primavera and forerunner of Beatrice reveals her name: Matelda (XXXIII, 119). The voices, heard by Dante, often are veiled. He is not able to ascertain whence they come, whether from the souls or the angels, from invisible spirits (XIII, 25), from a tree, from a rock, or from Heaven. Therefore Dante, in his poetically exact reporting, remarks: It was not clear whence the words came, but actually they were spoken (XI, 46-49). Little wonder that Dante is frightened by such a mysterious (XXIV, 133 ff.) hierophany. When Dante beholds in an imaginary vision Mary's meekness in admonishing Jesus in the Temple, he first sees an unknown lady and several persons in a church until he is able to identify the scene (acc. to Lucas II, 46-48). When the first angel arrives with the ghostly speedboat, Dante has not even time to coordinate his impressions: a wondrous light, something white, white wings, before Vergil cries: kneel down, God's messenger (II, 13-29). Suspense and incertitude are conveyed in a similarly impressionistic way when the abbot of San Zeno on the terrace of the slothful breathlessly tells his story without interrupting his course; and at a certain moment when the abbot moving away is heard from a distance only, Dante is unable to say whether he is still talking or has become silent (XVIII, 127). When the proud with their stones on their shoulders appear in the distance, Dante is frightened by the moving stones, or rather by something that moves and does not seem to live, it is to him just an “I don’t know what” (X, 112-114). Thus Dante's magic invention of moving stones anticipated Shakespeare's marching wood of Dunsinane in Macbeth. But the greatest suspense of all is, as Professor Singleton discovered, the moment when the procession of the Church entunes the Benedictus as though Christ Himself were to appear—but who actually appears is Beatrice (XXX, 19-32).

Despite the many happenings in the Purgatorio, the wanderers go long stretches in solitude and silence high above the deep ditch of this unique quasi-Carthusian monastery-fortress of God's honored prisoners. Solitude and silence are actually a dominant note in the lyricism spread over the mountain-city, which links Earth to Heaven.¹⁴ This mood is stressed from the outset by the appearance of only one old man, Cato, on the wide, vague and lonely beach (I, 31); it is emphasized by the wanderer's feeling entirely lost on the pathless plain (I, 118-120), and again by the already mentioned recurring silhouette of Vergil and Dante, one behind the other, on almost all the terraces as though seen from a ship in the magic ocean (IV, 136; XV, 40). It is stressed by the gigantic shadow of the Mountain covering a hilly, lifeless landscape (VI, 51); it is brought out by Sordello's isolated appearance in a complete solitude (VI, 59) like a lion in a desert (VI, 66) made more lonesome still by Dante's motifs and metaphors in his political remarks on the forsaken weeping widow, Rome, and the sick, neglected woman, Florence (VI, 112-113; 149-151). Even the path covered with those interesting bas-reliefs is said to be more deserted than the desert (X, 21); the terrace of the silent blind is, in the livid greenish-gray, terrifyingly lifeless (XIII, 7), particularly since not the slightest sound is heard (XIV, 142). We are definitely in the land from which no traveler returns. Dante, so talkative in Hell and Paradise, is here merely pondering over spiritual problems, a mute pensieroso who soon will see as a spirit the very places he now sees in the flesh. Thus he feels still more lonely, even in the presence of his paternal friend (XX, 151). Vergil's exclusive discussion with Statius makes him almost jealous and more forsaken than ever, soletto (XXII, 127). Dante's solitude assumes heart-rending proportions when the austere Beatrice has summoned the angels to ostracize him as a sinner among the saints (XXX, 103 ff.). Thus Dante experiences the inner loneliness of the lonely souls he has visited.

In this silence of the Purgatorio, paradoxically, there is much music, not only liturgical hymns befitting a church. The souls seem attracted by the soothing element of music as a healing medicine for their wounds. Therefore the angels sing the beatitudes to them. Casella is not hindered, except by the austere Cato (II, 120), from singing one of Dante's songs with a celestial sweetness (II, 113). We may recall also that the murmuring trees in the Earthly Paradise are tuned in as counterpoint to the singing birds, that the door to Purgatory is a resounding organ, that all the processions are singing, though in tears, and the procession of the triumphant Church fills the luminous air with the sweetest melody (XXIX, 22-23). The voices of unseen spirits flitting through the air are arranged in a concerto rolling forth and fading away pianissimo (XIII, 25-35). One thinks of the expression of St. John of the Cross: Silent Music.

13. The Artistry of the Word

Wondrous suggestions come often from single words. The terraces larger below, smaller above, are called by different names according to the circumstances: giri, gironi, cinghi, piani, cerchi, gradi,¹⁵ the process of purgation is called purgare (I, 5, 66; XI, 30), mondare (XVI, 31; XIII, 103), dismalare (XIII, 3), far lieto (XIV, 83), far bello (II, 75), assotigliare (XXIII, 63), rifar santo (XXIII, 66). The spirit of charity appears incarnate in the many diminutives: vedovella (X, 77; XXIII, 92), miserella (X, 82); enjambements express shock and surprise, as when Dante deep in thought, sees suddenly his path barred by a tree (XXII, 130-131). The most uncanny impression comes from the repeated use of the very strong verb gridar for expressing surprise, joy, disgust and other reactions of the souls, whose ecstatic utterances cannot be grasped by a non-superlative expression. Very strong syntactical condensations and far-fetched allusions enhance the mysterious atmosphere. The appearance of a white bas-relief is cast into one verb: biancheggiare (X, 72). The fundamental difference of the earthly existence from the post-mortem existence is underscored by Dante's using the past tense in inquiring of the personalities behind the souls: “chi fosti anzi la morte” (XVI, 43). Metaphors do the work of a metaphysical irony, e.g., when the slothful souls running relentlessly are likened to the slackened oar, which is plied again steadily (XVII, 87); or when Beatrice calls Dante's face, in contempt of his spiritual immaturity, a “bearded chin” (XXXI, 76), Metonymies contribute to representative dignity, as when the angels are called “Messengers of the eternal realm” (XXXII, 78), or when the hour of death becomes “the hour of good pain which unites us to God” (XXIII, 81). For more minute details in Dante's verbal art one can refer now to the book of Luigi Malagoli.

14. Conclusion

In conclusion we may say that, while Dante's Inferno is a very “earthly world” and the Paradiso a spiritualization which almost neglects the human element, the art of the Purgatorio consists in the creation of a very human, magic myth, including the poetization of theology, spiritual life, human relations, liturgy, landscapes, actions, and situations. The real meaning of Dante's display of creative imagination and captivating symbolism in his Purgatorio does become still clearer when we reduce his fantastic variations to their theme which scholars found very closely preformed in the sentence of Hughes of Saint Victor: “The virtues drive out the vices …, the virtues finally taking over the place of the vices are called sanities or healings. The joy over the recovered health are the beatitudes.”¹⁶ Such a retranslation from poetry into prose, which is supposed to have engendered that very poetry, is not only helpful to our own inadequate understanding of the spell of Dante's symbolic, magic, and persuasive reality. There is still implied the problem of the significance of Dante's poetry. Theologians, philosophers, and historians have done very much to find out Dante's sources. The literary critic, allegedly their opponent, is nevertheless grateful to them, because their doctrinal interpretations and verifications make Dante's subtle imagery and symbolism much more transparent, solid, secure, meaningful, and existentially important. Dante's painstaking in keeping strictly to the fundamental Catholic doctrine on purgatory is discernible in every line. Despite his apparent independence in the transformation of a traditional fire into a mountain, or in inserting an Earthly Paradise between Purgatory and Heaven, transformations more radical than the poetical changes in his Inferno and Paradiso, Dante's Purgatorio remains the dogmatic purgatory with its ontological truth. However, the formal truth is seen by a temperament and is broken by Dante's poetic prism into a bundle of most adequate, grandiose, and symbolic images, radiating all the more his firm, vivid, and unshakable faith (Par. XXIV, 142; XXV, 52-53). Therefore, Dante's Purgatorio, although it owes its reality only to the magic wand of the poet, is in the fullest sense littérature engagée. Modern readers under its cathartic spell cannot help feeling already with Dante the thread sewing their envious eyes and the heavy stone destined to curb their pride (XIII, 133-138).

Notes

1. Romano Guardini, Über das Wesen des Kunstwerks (Stuttgart: Wunderlich, 1949), p. 16.

2. Jean Danielon, “The Problem of Symbolism,” Thought, XXV (1950), 423-440, p. 428.

3. See however Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol., Suppl. LXIX, a, 4-7, quoted in Ernesto Trucchi, Esposizione della Divina Commedia. Purgatorio (Milano: Montaldi, 1943), p. 1.

4. Romano Guardini, Vision und Dichtung; der Charakter von Dantes Göttlicher Komödie (Tübingen: Wunderlich, 1946), p. 11.

5. Petri Lombardi Sent., dist. 17 and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol., I^a, I^ae, 102, 1, 4, Quoted by Ernesto Trucchi, op. cit., p. 2.

6. Bruno Nardi, “Intorno al sito del purgatorio e al mito dantesco dell Eden,” Giornale Dantesco, XXV (1922), 289-300, p. 289.

7. Santa Caterina di Genova, Trattato del Purgatorio, ch. 3, quoted by Paolo Perez, I sette cerchi del purgatorio di Dante (Milano: Cogliati, 1896), p. 50.

8. Giovanni Busnelli, L’ordinamento morale del Purgatorio Dantesco (Roma: Civilita Cattolica, 1908), p. 90.

9. Giovanni Fabri, “Il secondo sogno di Dante nel Purgatorio,” Giornale Dantesco, XXVI (1923), 97-109, p. 101.

10. Edward Moore, Studies in Dante, Second Series: Unity of Design in the Purgatorio (Oxford: Clarendon, 1899), p. 258.

11. Howard Rollin Patch, The Other World. According to Descriptions in Medieval Literature (Harvard Univ. Press, 1950), p. 113.

12. Attilio Momigliano, La Divina Commedia commentata. Il Purgatorio (Firenze: Sansoni, 1946), p. 411.

13. Ibid., pp. 264-267.

14. Ibid., pp. 262 and 268.

15. P. Perez, loc. cit., p. 89.

16. Hughes of St. Victor, Sermo XI, De spirituali sanitate, quoted in Perez, loc. cit., p. 96.